after rewatching madoka last year i’ve started thinking automata is in some part a madoka fan-game, and this is why it’s so distasteful to some original nier fans
tbh, i don’t have much more than the opera boss being the witch sayaka part of the show, but i do feel like taro and urobuchi have some similar likes in what they want to do with their stories (“wouldn’t it be fucked up if…” + please cry)
i get the impression taro is more interested in being a pervert between them tho, and his texts gain something from that. and maybe that’s why automata is both less interesting to a lot of previous fans as well as more immediately popular, because it, at least stylistically and gamewise, dials all the perversion down to give something more digestible. at least the sidequests are still full of sickos and freaks. is yoko taro the only one at square who’d put in a sidequest helping out a guy fix up a malfunctioning boydroid only to find out he’s planning to “make a family” with him? some habits will never die even as the rest of the work is more “palatable”. i need to play the pissing dragon game where you butcher your sisters to steal their man-whores. that one seems good. wait those characters are extremely mahou shoujo coded, this fucker definitely watched madoka and loved it