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Kainé
Kainé is a character from the 2010 video game Nier, a spin-off of the Drakengard series developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix. She is a lead character and player companion in Nier, and prominent in related media and merchandise. During Nier she accompanies the unnamed protagonist in his quest to help a young girl called Yonah, first to cure her disease and then to rescue her from a being called the Shadowlord in a post-apocalyptic world beset by creatures called Shades. Kainé's storyline focuses around her quest for revenge against a monstrous Shade called Hook, and her history of discrimination due to being possessed by a Shade and being born intersex.
Kainé was created by Yoko Taro, director and story writer of Nier, as an unconventional female-identifying lead. Korean illustrator D.K created her design, and writers Sawako Natori and Jun Eishima contributed to her backstory. Her design was updated by Akihiko Yoshida for the 2021 remaster of Nier. Across all spoken appearances, she is voiced by Laura Bailey in English and Atsuko Tanaka in Japanese. The character was noted and generally praised by critics for her portrayal, though her outfit and swearing drew some mixed reactions. She is also a popular character with fans of the Nier series.
Kainé appears prominently in Nier as a companion character to the unnamed protagonist. She is a Replicant, one of the soulless artificial humans that populate the Earth following an apocalyptic magical pandemic. Human souls exist as shadow-like beings called Gestalts intended to rejoin with their Replicant counterparts. After the Replicants gained sentience and see the Gestalts as monsters dubbing them "Shades", the two sides come into conflict. Kainé was intended to be born female, but a fault in the Replicant production system causes her to be born intersex. Suffering discrimination from her home village the Aerie, she is cared for by her grandmother Kali, who treats her as a woman, encourages her to use feminine clothing, and influences her tendency to swear. When the two are attacked by the monstrous Shade Hook and Kali is killed, Kainé survives by being possessed by the disembodied Shade Tyrann. This causes further discrimination, and Kainé chooses to live only for revenge against Hook.
Kainé ultimately kills Hook with help from the protagonist, who encourages her to help him search for a cure to the Black Scrawl appearing among the Replicants and infecting the young girl Yonah. She chooses to live as a loyal ally and "sword" to the protagonist. She also interacts with his other companions, sharing a bickering relationship with the talking book Grimoire Weiss, and forming a sibling relationship with the young Emil who suffers isolation due to his petrification powers. She briefly sacrifices herself by allowing Emil to petrify her to seal away a powerful Shade when the Gestalt leader Shadowlord kidnaps Yonah. Five years later Emil releases her and she helps the group hunt down the Shadowlord. During one fight with Shades, the Aerie and its people are destroyed.
In the game's first two endings, Kainé helps the protagonist kill the Shadowlord and rescue Yonah before leaving them; the Shadowlord's death will eventually lead to the extinction of both Replicants and Gestalts. Subsequent playthroughs, which begin following Kainé's release from the seal, show further backstory for characters including Kainé and the Gestalts. The final two endings are based around a choice after Kainé is overwhelmed by Tyrann and goes berserk following the Shadowlord's death; the protagonist can either kill her to end her suffering, or sacrifice his and Tyrann's existence to restore her normal form, leaving her and Yonah with no memories of him.
Further details around Kainé's backstory are included in Grimoire Nier, a guidebook featuring plot and character summaries, short stories, concept art and developer commentary. She is the lead character in the Grimoire Nier short story The Lost World, and a playable character in the new ending section of the 2021 expanded remaster Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139... based on this story. As the world grows worse following the Shadowlord's death, Kainé has recurring dreams of the protagonist. She restores the protagonist's human form after a confrontation with the plant-like Sleeping Beauty computer system. Kainé is featured in the 2011 CD Drama NieR Replicant Drama CD The Lost Words and the Red Sky, which included both the in-game version and a non-canon version in a high school setting. She is also featured as a character in a special event in the mobile game Nier Reincarnation (2021).
Kainé was featured as a downloadable content costume for Drakengard 3 (2013) and Nier: Automata (2017), and featured in a crossover with PUBG: Battlegrounds (2017). Kainé was planned to feature in a collaboration with the mobile game SINoALICE alongside the Nier protagonist and Emil, but she was not included due to budgetary limits relating to her voice actress. Promotional merchandise themed after Kainé has been produced, including a plushy toy, a Nendoroid figureine, and a Play Arts Kai figurine which includes different accessories and pieces for poses.
Kainé was created by Yoko Taro, director and story writer of Nier (2010), in response to a female staff member's vague wish for a "male heroine". Yoko worked on her story with co-writer Sawako Natori, with later short stories by Jun Eishima further expanding on her character. Originally assuming her intersexality would be a hidden aspect of her backstory, Yoko was surprised that it formed part of the game's marketing. Yoko did not emphasise her intersexuality or the parallel narrative of Emil being gay, stating that people like them existed in real-life and it felt natural to represent them. He also described Kainé's intersexuality as fitting with her tragic backstory. Important to her in-game portrayal was the main cast's acceptance of her presented gender, with Grimoire Weiss never using insults based on her intersexuality. Her backstory was expanded through later short stories, something Natori was keen on due to a lack of direct exploration in-game. Kainé's relationship with the protagonist was not portrayed as explicitly romantic in-game as Yoko both felt unequipped to write a romance and saw the group dynamic as familial, though in the guidebook interview Yoko confirmed Kainé developed romantic feelings for the protagonist.
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Kainé
Kainé is a character from the 2010 video game Nier, a spin-off of the Drakengard series developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix. She is a lead character and player companion in Nier, and prominent in related media and merchandise. During Nier she accompanies the unnamed protagonist in his quest to help a young girl called Yonah, first to cure her disease and then to rescue her from a being called the Shadowlord in a post-apocalyptic world beset by creatures called Shades. Kainé's storyline focuses around her quest for revenge against a monstrous Shade called Hook, and her history of discrimination due to being possessed by a Shade and being born intersex.
Kainé was created by Yoko Taro, director and story writer of Nier, as an unconventional female-identifying lead. Korean illustrator D.K created her design, and writers Sawako Natori and Jun Eishima contributed to her backstory. Her design was updated by Akihiko Yoshida for the 2021 remaster of Nier. Across all spoken appearances, she is voiced by Laura Bailey in English and Atsuko Tanaka in Japanese. The character was noted and generally praised by critics for her portrayal, though her outfit and swearing drew some mixed reactions. She is also a popular character with fans of the Nier series.
Kainé appears prominently in Nier as a companion character to the unnamed protagonist. She is a Replicant, one of the soulless artificial humans that populate the Earth following an apocalyptic magical pandemic. Human souls exist as shadow-like beings called Gestalts intended to rejoin with their Replicant counterparts. After the Replicants gained sentience and see the Gestalts as monsters dubbing them "Shades", the two sides come into conflict. Kainé was intended to be born female, but a fault in the Replicant production system causes her to be born intersex. Suffering discrimination from her home village the Aerie, she is cared for by her grandmother Kali, who treats her as a woman, encourages her to use feminine clothing, and influences her tendency to swear. When the two are attacked by the monstrous Shade Hook and Kali is killed, Kainé survives by being possessed by the disembodied Shade Tyrann. This causes further discrimination, and Kainé chooses to live only for revenge against Hook.
Kainé ultimately kills Hook with help from the protagonist, who encourages her to help him search for a cure to the Black Scrawl appearing among the Replicants and infecting the young girl Yonah. She chooses to live as a loyal ally and "sword" to the protagonist. She also interacts with his other companions, sharing a bickering relationship with the talking book Grimoire Weiss, and forming a sibling relationship with the young Emil who suffers isolation due to his petrification powers. She briefly sacrifices herself by allowing Emil to petrify her to seal away a powerful Shade when the Gestalt leader Shadowlord kidnaps Yonah. Five years later Emil releases her and she helps the group hunt down the Shadowlord. During one fight with Shades, the Aerie and its people are destroyed.
In the game's first two endings, Kainé helps the protagonist kill the Shadowlord and rescue Yonah before leaving them; the Shadowlord's death will eventually lead to the extinction of both Replicants and Gestalts. Subsequent playthroughs, which begin following Kainé's release from the seal, show further backstory for characters including Kainé and the Gestalts. The final two endings are based around a choice after Kainé is overwhelmed by Tyrann and goes berserk following the Shadowlord's death; the protagonist can either kill her to end her suffering, or sacrifice his and Tyrann's existence to restore her normal form, leaving her and Yonah with no memories of him.
Further details around Kainé's backstory are included in Grimoire Nier, a guidebook featuring plot and character summaries, short stories, concept art and developer commentary. She is the lead character in the Grimoire Nier short story The Lost World, and a playable character in the new ending section of the 2021 expanded remaster Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139... based on this story. As the world grows worse following the Shadowlord's death, Kainé has recurring dreams of the protagonist. She restores the protagonist's human form after a confrontation with the plant-like Sleeping Beauty computer system. Kainé is featured in the 2011 CD Drama NieR Replicant Drama CD The Lost Words and the Red Sky, which included both the in-game version and a non-canon version in a high school setting. She is also featured as a character in a special event in the mobile game Nier Reincarnation (2021).
Kainé was featured as a downloadable content costume for Drakengard 3 (2013) and Nier: Automata (2017), and featured in a crossover with PUBG: Battlegrounds (2017). Kainé was planned to feature in a collaboration with the mobile game SINoALICE alongside the Nier protagonist and Emil, but she was not included due to budgetary limits relating to her voice actress. Promotional merchandise themed after Kainé has been produced, including a plushy toy, a Nendoroid figureine, and a Play Arts Kai figurine which includes different accessories and pieces for poses.
Kainé was created by Yoko Taro, director and story writer of Nier (2010), in response to a female staff member's vague wish for a "male heroine". Yoko worked on her story with co-writer Sawako Natori, with later short stories by Jun Eishima further expanding on her character. Originally assuming her intersexality would be a hidden aspect of her backstory, Yoko was surprised that it formed part of the game's marketing. Yoko did not emphasise her intersexuality or the parallel narrative of Emil being gay, stating that people like them existed in real-life and it felt natural to represent them. He also described Kainé's intersexuality as fitting with her tragic backstory. Important to her in-game portrayal was the main cast's acceptance of her presented gender, with Grimoire Weiss never using insults based on her intersexuality. Her backstory was expanded through later short stories, something Natori was keen on due to a lack of direct exploration in-game. Kainé's relationship with the protagonist was not portrayed as explicitly romantic in-game as Yoko both felt unequipped to write a romance and saw the group dynamic as familial, though in the guidebook interview Yoko confirmed Kainé developed romantic feelings for the protagonist.