#this post contains a cringeworthy number of acronyms

[ct-multifandom]

Nirvana Initiative open discussion post

I want to start a convo here on tumblr with all you AI enjoyers because so few people are talking about all the interesting content we’ve gotten and are still getting. I’m encouraging you all to rb, comment, whatever and go over this stuff with me! I wanna talk about AI!

Below I’ll rant about some things that caught my eye (pun not intended).

When the first AINI trailer came out I wanted to make an analysis and theory post but then I thought about it and was like. Wtf do I even say. I don’t have Twitter so I had to read up on Hidden Bats here and I watched Ryan Geever on YouTube’s videos about the ARG which I highly recommend because his explanation is very thorough and his theories are really onto something.

He talks about a lot of good stuff like the Philadelphia Experiment, the plot of an old, similar series this writing team worked on, and the relevance of the Lemniscate ARG, which I would not have connected on my own. I won’t retype everything he said, but I’d love to discuss some of the extremely solid connections he made.

Through his videos, I also found out the achievement list has been leaked. I took a look at it myself, but I won’t say anything about it because of potential spoilers. There’s some stuff that interests me on there, though.

I’ll make a bulleted list of questions I have:

Obv question: what’s the timeline here in relation to the events of AITSF?

What happened to Saito? And Yagyu’s body?

Why’d Date give up PSYNCing? What is he up to now, still ABIS or something else? Is he taking oxytocin without Aiba’s administration?

Did Iris recover from her brain tumor or not?

Is Komeji’s head a futuristic mascot suit that can emote where his forehead dot is the eye hole or is he just Shovelforge George irl? Is there a secret guy in there or is that his actual body?

Are the VLR spacesuits a cameo or do they have significance?

The game is made by “Team Zero Escape” and has more ZE references than usual. The ARG also has references to SHIFTing. Will the ZE universe be relevant to the story?

I’m behind on Hidden Bats, but is the current arc kind of like the ambidex game where the girls have to trust each other to get the best result, and Lumi trusts Mari, but Mari doesn’t trust her back?

Whereas the choice between Aine and Binato was between two second degree murderers, maybe this choice will be that Lumi did something in the past to hurt Mari, but Mari is holding a grudge in the present and is willing to endanger her as revenge, and we have to decide which is worse (like obv tAI the vote but y’know)

Okayyy nvm *edit* I caught up and it looks like as of now Lumina is just a normal nice girl and Mariha is a fuckin ass. I guess the voting this time won’t be trying to decide the lesser of two evils or neither, but to decide whether to treat a good and bad person equally or to deem Mariha unworthy of saving as some sort of extreme “justice”.

The last two characters’ names and pics were dug up by tech whizes from the website code and I like their designs. Wonder what their whole thing is gonna be.

Tokiko and Naix being real is very interesting. Dk what to say, but Iris was clearly right that they exist and are shady. Perhaps it’s true that her tumor-induced psychosis made her construe some stuff as it applied to the last case, but they’re very much involved in this one. How did Iris even find out about it?

Another obv one but why does Ryuki look so similar to Yagyu and why do they have similar naming conventions?

I’m curious about Gen, Shoma, and Kizuna because they’re new, but we don’t know a ton about them. Also Chikara sus.

Edit: forgot the locksmith guy even existed for a sec wow

What’s very curious is how Amame is getting such a major upgrade from being a background character like the driver or receptionist to being an actual major player. I love when stories elevate minor characters to the major cast for new arcs, but hmm…

Why isn’t Pewter in jail? This could point to NI being in a whole different timeline from TSF if he never did anything illegal in the first place.

The six years ago/six years later thing they have going on is confusing when you’re trying to analyze trailers. The leaked achievements tell us which protag’s story has which somnium, but which characters are associated with which time period?

Interested in how Sunaiku and the Hidden Bats victims will play into the game and to what extent. The last ARG was kind of unrelated to the plot of TSF, but everything there was included, albeit with a twist. Also, the last ARG feels somehow more relevant to this game than to the last? If there’s an AI3 will Hidden Bats be relevant to that as well?

Timelines aside, please let Ota keep his TSF character development. Also, Mayumi hasn’t appeared in any trailers and that’s making me sad because y’know,,,

I hope they talk more about the Wadjet system. Can Aiba and Tama use it to communicate with each other? Can they intentionally simulate ESP across time using it?

Do all PSYNCers have AI balls or is it just the two? Did Ryuki exist as one of the unnamed other PSYNCers in TSF and we just didn’t meet him yet?

Oh here’s one: in the character trailer, they list the VAs of the four PCs, Mizuki, Aiba, Ryuki, and Tama. They don’t list anyone else’s name. Maybe I’ve got my tinfoil hat on, but what if knowing someone’s VA would be a spoiler, 13 sentinels style? Maybe someone “new” is actually someone else who has the same VA as before?

Ik Mizuki was playing 999 in the very first trailer, which implies that ZE is a video game in the AI world, but could they exist in the same reality through worldline SHIFTing bs? Digimon vibes

Ooo, edit, but I noticed they told us Binato was “removed from reality”, not killed, which I just found out Uchi tweeted about too. Did they teleport him to the backrooms? Are they experimenting on him? I’d suggest my beloved sci fi horror trope that they erased all evidence of his life, but his disappearance is still listed on the Sunaiku news page, so that’s not it. It’d be cool if the post updated to just be about Aine after the vote was over, though, and his twitters were deleted as well as all mention of him on Aine’s. Is he stuck in some place between realities or in a different one?

Sunaiku and Aine both have Ai in their names *puts red thread on my detective photo wall*

I’ll add more stuff if I think of more, but I want to talk about this, so let’s treat this post like a discussion board! Let’s include spoilers for the first game as well as Zero Escape, but not leaks from this one. So excited for AINI.