At four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, all of the sick emotion I felt in the pit of my stomach welled back up to the surface, as if they were a deep-sea creature confirming its existence. A brief and apologetic conversation later, there I was. Flat footed on concrete in the Arizona sun. A feeling like the weekend had been completely wasted. Standing there, a single thought swam around in the salty hangover brine that my brain was suspended in: It’s a good thing I knew this was coming.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m not a prophet and I can’t see the future. If I did, I would have a much more solid history of gambling than I do. Instead, I’ve hedged the time of my 20’s on the idea that I can write about things. What I expected was a conversation where I got told I did it all wrong, that I’m a dumb motherfucker who needs to make room for the real professionals. That didn’t happen.

Picture me in a collared shirt and a tie. It’s an outfit that gets draped over my lanky body time and time again. I go to a convention or a show, dressed like a little kids idea of what someone who does this for a living looks like. Usually I am surrounded by people who’ve got a bright future in school ahead of them: Sometimes I’m glad that I managed to convince myself they’re missing out on some aspect of a story.

My arrival at TAIYOU CON in Mesa, Arizona went as plainly ever. A small convention with a big lawn, I take it as an excuse to see friends. I went in my collared shirt, my nice jeans. Checking into my hotel, I laugh about how cheap it is and how trendy it tries to look. Across from the bed: a giant mural of a woman with wide eyes. Several times during the weekend, I will turn and shiver when she stares right through me.

The two guests this year were KIRA BUCKLAND and KYLE MCCARLEY. We, here, at DEEP-HELL have professed love for NIER AUTOMATA. It is, after all, one of our favorites. Curious that we’ve never written about it, surely. Maybe there is a RULE like how we CAN’T TALK ABOUT DARK SOULS. They’re the voice actors behind the protagonists of the game.
Something in me was convinced I could pull off an interview this big. I’ve got the experience, don’t I? Let’s forget my amateur quality video reviews: I know how to get an interesting response to a question.

So I waited in line. I waited in line because that’s what you do when you don’t know if you’re getting media clearance. It’s what you do when the press liaison doesn’t respond to your emails. You wait in line till you get face to face with the person you’ve got a list of questions for: you have that list because you knew you were going to be asked for it. You send it out five hours later, back at your hotel, telling yourself “Oh, this isn’t going to happen.” Everything else afterwards is just dressing up a bad situation.

Here is a list of tips, based on things we know now we did wrong. Send out emails earlier. Do not run into your professional interview targets on three separate occasions, two of which involved you having two drinks in your hand. Try not to make eye contact, don’t wear your heaviest jacket in the summer. Most importantly: know what to do after.

An attempt at professional journalism had spectacularly blown up in my face. A likely thought gnawed at the back of my head: previous times I’d been denied interviews, it was out of politeness. All of the costuming and attitude I’ve learned since helped bridge the gap most of the time. The fact that press clearance and all that wasn’t granted had very little to do with me.

Saturday morning, with an empty inbox, I turned and stared at the woman-on-the-wall. My hotel room reminded me of Demolition Man. Steampunk Lightbulbs, repurposed car-parts as furniture. 55$ couldn’t by you taste, but it could buy you a hotel room with a downstairs bar attached.

NIER: AUTOMATA was released in 2017. Despite that fact, it is still probably my game of 2019, too.
Reaching a huge audience and near universal critical appraise, it’s had staying power in public consciousness. There’s no proof of that I can give more than local comic conventions. There is still yet more art of 2B, 9S and A2. With the presence of their voice actors this weekend, there was more than enough cosplayers of all three.

One of the questions in my interview notebook was primarily a question about getting emotional over dialogue. With that notebook in hand, I went out and started canvassing anyone I found.
Never assume just because you’re at an anime convention people will know what you’re talking about. Well it certainly helped that there were a handful of talented cosplayers there, it wasn’t a guaranteed way in.

So I ran with it – “Did Nier: Automata having a full English dub connect with you in any way?”

The most interesting response to that question was from someone who hadn’t played the game. Lacking proper console hardware or really the time to, they’d let me know that the game had been something they watched extensively. Having never been active with the mechanics, all they had to relate to was the way the story presented itself. One of their key points was the voice acting – having English voices to latch onto allowed them to relax and be drawn in.

DEEP HELL . COM’s personal stance on subtitles or dubs is basically whatever. We’ve all been watching Anime enough that we have room in our hearts for both, and we consider something getting dubbed in a new language part of an essential conversation. How a group of individuals thinks a work of art should be related to in a new art – as art, after all, is universal.

What people revealed continued to be the same answer over and over again. A work being presented in their language helped them connect more deeply with it. Nier: Automata could speak to them as individuals in a way it might not have while reading subtitles. More than a few people said this was because of a particularly effecting performance by Kyle Mccarley as 9S.

In some ways I still got exactly what I wanted to out of my interview, even if it didn’t technically happen. We still came away after all of it, knowing a little more about Nier: Automata.
So when I was shaking someone in a suit’s hand on Sunday afternoon, all I could really think about was how I didn’t let the weekend go. So in the salty-brine of my hangover head, the thought of “At least I knew this was going to happen” seemed like the perfect way to end that story.