Key things
- Pascal teaches machine children fear and emphasizes the importance of experiencing both negative and positive emotions.
- A2 emphasizes the fear of being alone and recognizes the importance of valuing time spent with loved ones.
- A bitter irony is revealed when the fear of loneliness leads to cannibalism and shows irrational decisions made under stress.
The following contains spoilers for Episode 21 of NieR Automata Ver1.1a, which is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Goliath has been defeated and the children saved, but A2 receives an urgent message from the resistance camp. Meanwhile, Lily and her allies quarantine themselves from infected members of the Resistance after being exposed to the Logic Virus from one of the machine's distraught children, turning into zombies in the process.
Although Jackass, Popola, Devola and the others come to save them, Lily decides to stay back and kill the infected to stop the virus from spreading. A2 arrives on the scene just as the last survivor, Lily, who is also infected, asks A2 to put her out of her misery. 9S retrieves the final code and realizes that his feelings for 2B were mutual, while Pascal is confronted with the sight of machine children being cannibalized.
What it means to be human
Most people agree that experiencing both negative and positive emotions is vital to the human experience. With that comes the ability to grow, adapt and learn. Actively distancing himself from other machine life forms, Pascal founded his own village in hopes of living a more passive and rewarding lifestyle. This gave him the ability to empathize with and relate to other androids, even befriending the Resistance and gaining the respect of Lily, who had lost her friends of his kind. One of the main lessons he taught the machine children of his village was the concept of fear. Fear is what keeps things alive because it serves as a deterrent to doing activities that might otherwise be considered dangerous. In episode 18, the machine lifeforms exhibit exactly this behavior in response to A2's admonition. A2 herself strangely teaches them a different concept: being alone.
Fear of being alone
In an attempt to cheer them up, A2 stated how happy she was not alone; and when they asked what that meant, she explained how important it is to cherish the time one has with loved ones because they can easily end up alone every day. In the ensuing panic after the surviving machine children are brought to the resistance camp, one of them shows symptoms of the logic virus. It is implied that it was his own turmoil that infected her. In episode 6, the Logic Virus bore a striking resemblance to PTSD when 21S peeked into Lily's memories while administering the cure for her contamination. Subsequently, she was also the first of the group to become infected. Under stress, people (and even animals) can make irrational or extreme decisions.
Bitter irony
As Pascal gives testimony about what is left of the machine children, the first to be infected cannibalizes the rest, stemming from his fear of being alone and that he thought the music box he was carrying broke. Ironically, one could argue that A2 got this idea into her head because children in real life often overreact and take things literally. When it thought it was in danger of losing everything, it ate everyone else so they could “be together forever”. To a different extent, the 9S also suffers from this. After meeting up with 2B's old flight unit, he discovers a message left behind, confirming that 2B's feelings were mutual. But unlike the machine lifeforms and the Resistance, he is truly alone.
Community and family are a star aspect of what it means to be human. And with every meeting there is sure to be a breakup. Suffering from the same virus that A2 originally saved her from, Lily dies at the hand of the weapon that A2 protected Lily from.
