Yoko Taro is Becoming a Virtual YouTuber; NieR Replicant Event Announced for SINoALICE [Updated]

Iyane Agossah February 20, 2019 8:11 AM EST

Everything that happened during the NieR Automata Second Anniversary Livestream, including the reveal of Yoko Taro's debut as a VTuber.

Square Enix held today the NieR: Automata Second Anniversary Livestream, where multiple small announcements and information were shared. The stream can be found here.

First off it was announced that NieR Automata is getting new Line Stamps. They also showed off the PS4 avatars, 15 in total, and PS4 Theme included in the Nier: Automata Game of the YoRHa Edition.

Next, a collaboration between NieR Replicant and the Yoko Taro directed mobile game SINoALICE was announced. The collaboration will start on February 21 in Japan. SINoALICE was announced in the west a few weeks ago, so this collaboration event will probably be coming to the western version of the game as well at some point.

The NieR: Orchestra Concert 12018′s Blu-ray release was unboxed live too, starting the 33:30 mark of the stream, and around 5 minutes of footage from the concert was shown, along with a pretty interesting video showing the Blu-ray disc’s manufacture in factories.

Moreover, it was also revealed that Yoko Taro will be making his debut as a Virtual YouTuber. He will appear starting March in Jam Gem Jump!!!, a VR Radio stream held on Niconico Douga every Tuesday at 20:00 JST. NieR Automata‘s Producer Yosuke Saito is also part of that VR show’s production and shared on stream how Yoko Taro kept bugging him about wanting to try out becoming a VTuber, so they ended up launching the project. More information will be coming later.

Later on at the 1:14:00 mark, NieR Automata‘s seiyuu joined the stream. The ones present were 2B’s Yui Ishikawa, Pod 042’s Hiroki Yasumoto, Pascal’s Aoi Yuki and 9S’ Natsuki Hanae. They didn’t say anything substantial, but you should watch that part if you’re into seiyuu and understand Japanese a bit, as it was pretty fun. They retraced NieR Automata‘s history starting when live gameplay was first shown back at the NieR Concert in April 2016.

Lastly, they also revealed new information on “Stage Play YoRHa Ver 1.3a“, the upcoming stage play adaptation of NieR Automata in Japan. Most notably, they announced that Accord from Drakengard 3 will be appearing in it. Multiple representations have been confirmed so far: July 4 to 7 in Tokyo, and July 11 to 14 in Osaka.

As a side note, throughout the stream, they repeatedly joked about how they’d reveal new information on Platinum Games’ upcoming Switch exclusive Astral Chain, but needless to say, they didn’t actually reveal anything new on it.