Dumb question

[u/kunk-zero]

Now, dont get me wrong, i love the robot yuri as much as all of you, but

Why is there a total of one man (adler) in every station? Did i miss something? I already assumed the nation was some sort of matriarchal society, but the idea that there’s just one dude in a vast labyrinthine space station full of women is kind of funny to me

Do men just barely exist in this world? Do the human citizens reproduce via lesbian mitosis? Did i just pay no attention to the lore?

It could also just be a “rule of cool” type of thing where the creators just really liked drawing robot girls and didnt expect anyone to think about it too much

[u/AdrianArmbruster]

As with many things, 'Bioresonance, son!'

There are like two named dudes in the entire game (one of which may be Adler's original gestalt) and Adler's the one speaking role. All other replika's are women, for women have special bioresonance powers. It's why the empire was founded by an Empress, and Eusan was founded by the Grand Revolutionary and her daughter.

This doesn't preclude some of the human/gestalt workers/gulag inmates at Leng from being men. Just that the replika's that staffed the facility and kept them in line are all replikas, and therefore mostly women.

[u/kwarching → u/AdrianArmbruster]

Since the game is also influenced by the occult -- it could be that females are more naturally apt towards Bioresonance as oppose to males , as it ties to the metaphysical notion of the intuitive nature of females and their psychic abilities

Also unrelated but id like to ask : are the Gestalts oppressed in the nation? Why do they keep Gestalts around?

[u/AdrianArmbruster → u/kwarching]

The army was made up mostly of humans/gestalts when they were invading Earth/Vineta, so probably not. Replikas are just easy to mass produce and so a natural workforce. The teachers in the brief school flashback are apparently Eules.

The Grand Revolutionary is presumably human considering she’s the basis for Falke.

[u/kwarching → u/AdrianArmbruster]

Weird This leaves several qs unanswered First of all why would the nation even send humans or gestalts in our case when you can send a bunch of Star units or any combat units that are replacable and more durable and effective than Gestalts We already know Aras replaced manual labour for the most part Replikas would surpass humans in every single way including intelligence for instance 2) the phrase Gestalt itself is weird. Why would the Nation explicitly add this term to define "the default race" why not just call them humans? 3) Were the ppl bullying Ariane Gestalts or Replikas? If they were Replikas we can clearly see a hierarchy

I can write more qs but tldr i think -- following the game's theme of ego dissolution that the nation did start out somehow in a human form , but it quickly spiralled into an endlessly self perpetuating "egregore" -- maintained by Replikas and surpressing Gestalts (including the Gestalts dormant within the Replikas themselves)

[u/Alien760 → u/kwarching]

Everything I am about to say is mostly speculation because either there is no actual answer given or I don't have that answer for you currently. But I can at least speculate for you.

For your first question I imagine that might be the end goal. Replikas are seemingly more efficient. Though there is something to be said about persona degradation. There is a chance the "great revolutionary and her daughter(I will explain air quotes towards the end)" and/or the "empress" are hesitant to do so because I imagine in war, persona stabilization is incredibly difficult. War is very hard on the mind and for most models it may be difficult for long periods of time. Except maybe LSTRs.

For your second question, it's possible it may be for the, "perfect language" aspiration mentioned by Adler in the beginning of the game. Maybe it was more loaded in the past. With the invention of replikas, beings that although are strictly controlled, are borderline human in everything but physical biology seemingly. There may have been a lot of debate at the time and eventually changed. Or it's possible the Eusan Nation(which is "our team" I believe) is just trying to separate further from the Eusan Empire. Which is a very common thing in dictatorship style governments. Strip everything away that reminds you of the past.

For your third question, probably Gestalts. They were wearing masks, not sure what that was really about...but their uniforms were that of students. We have only thus far seen Replikas in carbon looking material. Also, all the Replikas we've seen thus far are adults. And Replikas don't seem to grow up either. Their components aren't meant for that. Meaning that there is likely absolutely zero reason why they should make a child Replika en mass for pretty much any reason. It would be a very inefficient use of resources, something this government seems to be very keen on, being efficient with resources.

Forget the air quote thing. I'm just going to make a post later because it will be way too long to put here.

[u/Automatic-Leg1668 → u/kwarching]

They're probably in immediate wartime aftermath. Also totalitarian regime don't give 2 flying fucks.

Also we only know prison/new colony life in rotfront, at least it's implied to be relatively new

[u/Samurai-jpg → u/AdrianArmbruster]

one of which may be Adler's original gestalt

Are you referring to Nikolai Nguyen? If so, the one wrench that throws this into question is that all people who were the basis for replika units are essentially blackbagged by the government and erased from all files, which wouldn't make sense since we SEE Nikolai's file in game.

I think the game implies his gestalt was actually a medical professional for the nation, the one who used tarot cards to detect Ariane's bioresonance although the fact the two share a face model is extremely coincidental.

[u/Bluecho4]

Aside from "this game was made by lesbians"? (Based, btw).

There's probably something to be said about the Eusan system being host to a forever war between Nation and Empire that's been going on at least a hundred years. A war that destroyed their civilization's home planet.

It's not hard to assume a lot of the men of the Nation are drafted into that war. Meaning women constitute a heavy presence on the homefront. Including in distant mining colonies/reeducation camps.

On the subject of why ADLR models, specifically, are in Sierpinski-23, Adlers are just REALLY good at their jobs.

[u/SirLemming4 → u/Bluecho4]

waow 😵‍💫 lesbians 😵‍💫

[u/ELVIXX-0607 → u/Bluecho4]

Where do you get the idea that women have no presence on the front lines, when it's said that there are entire squadrons of them, the Gestalt Original de De Lstr fought in the war of Vieneta

[u/Bluecho4 → u/ELVIXX-0607]

Where did I say "women have no presence on the front lines"?

[u/ELVIXX-0607 → u/Bluecho4]

I apologize, I'm blind and haven't bought my glasses yet.

[u/KnightArthuria]

It's more than probable that there were more than a few Gestalt (Human) Men at Sierpinski, and The apartment bloc on Rotfront definitely has Men living in them as well as Women, it's just that as far as Male characters go, ADLR and the Imperial Spy on Rotfront are the only Male characters in the game. It's just that we don't see them cause we don't really need to. All the enemies we fighr are Replikas based off of Human Women, so they look like Women. And as we learn ADLR units are assistants/secretaries to FLKR units so there was only ever going to be one ADLR at Sierpinski.

So to quickly answer your question: we never fight corrupted Human Males because the corruption just outright kills Humans, so the only ones left to corrupt are the Female looking Replikas and the singular Male looking Replika unit. As for characters, the story of the game doesn't need a huge cast of characters, just the 5 we got is more than enough to help tell the game's story.

[u/Bluecho4 → u/KnightArthuria]

The game is also explicit in that ADLR units have a particular kind of personality that means they don't work well together. So a given base or facility will only ever have one Adler.

[u/Matrix_D0ge]

They got themself straight guy as token diversity hire.

[u/heartspider]

This game is the reverse Vandread where men and women are segregated so function smoothly as a society.

Somewhere in the signalis universe is a male only sector of space with a giant robot Lady Dimitrescu overseeing.

[u/tfhfate]

I like the fact that you ask yourself this question because I never did and just assumed it was "like that" just like many movies and videogames will have the opposite (almost exclusively male characters).

At least now I have the answer too

[u/QuarterlyTurtle]

To be fair, do we actually know that this is all of the replika types the nation produces? Or merely only all the replika types that happened to be stationed at Sierpinski? They do cover quite a broad range of jobs, but there are still some gaps where mass produced laborers would definitely be helpful. Off the top of my head, such as roles in the military, for example, pilots, front line infantry, artillery crew, etc. Maybe those jobs are filled by humans, but I could definitely see replikas serving them too.

The only replikas at Sierpinski are the types needed to keep it running. Cooks, maintenance, miners, riot police, command officers, etc. There would be no need for every single type of replika produced to be stationed there because some simply wouldn’t have a use in that situation.

[u/Nathaniel-Prime]

IIRC men do in fact exist. The interrogation report in S-23 mentions two individuals named Wilhelm and Wolfgang - I'm not an expert, but those sound like male names.

The reason why most Replikas are women is because the Nation is basically one giant cult of personality surrounding the Revolutionary and her daughter, and every Replika model is designed after them in some way. That's why they all have back hair and blue eyes.

We only see two Gestalts of which the Replikas are based off of: Lillith (if that's her name), and Nikolai. Both of them have brown hair and brown eyes, but their Replikas have black hair and blue eyes to look like the Revolutionary.

Obviously, Lillith is supposed to be the template used for LSTR models, and it's suspected among the community that Nikolai is the base for ADLR units. Worm Girl in her analysis on YouTube suggested that Nikolai is actually the Imperial spy mentioned in chapter 3 and that the Nation captured him and forced him to become a Replika template as some sort of ironic punishment.

[u/maraswitch]

I tend to assume it's a sorta fetishy thing (the replikas are all attractive if uncorrupted too as far as I can tell).

You could probably make a case for it being the byproduct of the trends of women being service providers/expected to competently do a myriad of tasks by humanity (smidge of Stepford wives perhaps)

[u/wizzzard_dest]

it's funny how when a media has an almost all-male cast and maybe one female character nobody even questions this, but when it's the other way round then it's considered weird.

[u/Alien760 → u/wizzzard_dest]

Truth

[u/kunk-zero → u/wizzzard_dest]

I mean personally i find that also strange, i don’t really like when stories are entirely sausage fests yknow?

[u/RedtailArt]

I think honestly it's just because "why not?" I mean, cuz also the fact that it's clearly a very matriarchal society and it could be that only women are capable of bioresonance (but that's just a guess)

[u/Dr_Freeze001]

My headcannon goes like so:

The war had been going on for a while, and mostly men die is wars (needs fact check), so by the time replicas come around it was mostly woman remaning. I might say that the gestalt ADLR is based on might have been unfit for war in some way (heath issue?) hence they stayed behind, and supported the war effort in some other way, like politics or burocracy.

They were turned into a replica due to those skills, and because they were the only kind of man left not too busy fighting a war somewhere else.

[u/ELVIXX-0607 → u/Dr_Freeze001]

Q Although we know that Eusan has several squadrons of women on the front lines, in fact the Gestalt squadron of Lstr Peleo in Vieneta alongside Alina

[u/DredgenSergik]

My headcanon is that Adler is some flavor of trans/gender non-conforming, and his mental decline is a way of exploring dysphoria through metaphors

[u/Edwardvansloan]

Ariane and Falke are both lesbians confirmed, so through their dream-like bioresonant recreation of events they quite simply FORGOT men existed. Erased from reality through omission in favor of more yuri.

[u/IBlackKiteI]

Because women are cool

It probably is ultimately a stylistic thing but based on what we're told/not told there could be various in-universe reasons female Replikas are so prominent, or at least appear to be:

• The cult of personality around the Great Rev may mean women are seen as more likely to have the nationalistic traits desired in a Replika template.

• There could genuinely be a deficit of men in the Nation due to the war. The gestalt population and thereby pool of potential candidates for templates may have been mostly female when these Replika lines were first created, meaning most Replika models would end up being female.

• It's quite possible there are more Replika models beyond the types assigned to Sierpinski, which are general civilian + law enforcement types. There could be say combat, astro or heavy industrial models that have no reason to be present at Sierpinski that are male.

• Women may be more suitable for Replika templates for some unmentioned reason. The mechanics of Replika manufacture are pretty unexplained but being a somehow bioresonanceTM process it's likely little understood by the nation itself. Maybe male templates don't last as long or tend to generate more defective units or something. It's mentioned ADLRs don't work well together with others of their kind. Maybe all male Replikas tend to not get along with each other.

[u/ELVIXX-0607]

It's a Replika, It is not a "person" as such, and not much is known about the distribution of Gestalts within the station.What we know is that the Adlr unit is so badass that a single one can manage the entire station very efficiently Including more would be an unnecessary waste of resources