YoRHa before YoRHa
It's always fun for me to find out stuff about my favourite series. No surprise I'm so fond of lore heavy stuff, right?
No surprise I got so fond of Yoko Taro's works either. Today I want to talk about YoRHa and, if you played NieR:Automata, maybe you're reading this thinking: "I already know what YoRHa is! Androids, glory to mankind and all that jazz". And you are right. Partially. I want to talk about something outside the DrakeNier narrative universe that it's very hard to investigate because it has a more popular homonym in a popular game1.
But first let me tell you how my search started. As I've mentioned at the end of my last month wrap up, I've recently watched a couple of Nier stage plays, namely YoRHa Boys and YoRHa ver.1.2. Those two plays serve as prequel stories to Automata2 and feature a lot of music from Automata and, in YoRHa 1.3 specifically, other games in the series with Emi Evans (famous Drakenier vocalist since 2010 Nier) and Marina Kawano (that you might recognize as the Weight of the World japanese singer) on stage.
At the end of YoRHa Boys (the first of the two plays I watched), a song I never heard of starts playing. That's what I later learnt to be called "Guadalcanal" and I was sure I had never heard that, but something was awfully familiar. It didn't sound as a Nier song, it sounded like a Drakengard 3 song. And, yes, I know Monaca is responsible for both games' soundtracks, but the vibe is very different. It specifically sounded like the boss tracks, those named after angels 3.
I needed to know more. And what I found out on a first quick investigation was:
- it's name and the name of it's sister track Normandy, debuting in the very first YoRHa stage play in 2014
- A version of Normandy is featured in NieR Re[in]carnation, specifically in the The Sun and The moon album 4
- There's a cover of both songs in the GEMS COMPANY Hai to Inori single, ending song of the second part of the Automata anime
- The songs were originally sung by a group of three vocalist called YoRHa
This is the actual YoRHa I want to talk about. Who are they? I actually don't know. All I found on vmdb searching for their name was the page of the 2014 CD featuring Normandy and Guadalcanal. I started digging a bit more: I wanted to know why both songs sounded so much like Drakengard 3 and, would you believe YoRHa is also credited in that soundtrack? Look at the vocalists of most of the second CD tracks. Those are the aforementioned boss battle songs! There's also this video suggesting Normandy is actually a DOD3 hidden track, but I'm not sure how reliable this information is.
Do I have any more leads? Yes, actually. According to Nier wiki, YoRHa was a group from DEARSTAGE. I know absolutely nothing about japanese talent agencies, but what I can get from this page, is that GEMS COMPANY is also from DEARSTAGE, as well as Marina Kawano.
But there's more! A man named Takuya Iwasaki is pointed as the director of this company. I don't know if this is an absurd case of homonymy, but Takuya Iwasaki is also in the credits of most Drakengard and Nier games in producer position, until 2010 as a cavia employer, after that as part of ILCA.
And that was unfortunately it. Not sure if this was somehow interesting for you, but I find all this stuff very fascinating. If you have any other informations, please let me know. I'm super curious!
this will not be a comprehensive research of all is known about YoRHa. It's what I've found out with my nonexistent knowledge of the japanese language.↩
YoRHa and all its different versions tell the Pearl Harbor story that you can also read in the actual game, YoRHa Boys is a novel I also talked on a previous monthly wrap up.↩
I wrote an entire article on DOD3 soundtrack, if you're curious about that you can read it here.↩
this might be a good time to kindly ask once again Square Enix to release a single player non gatcha version of Reincarnation.↩