If you somehow don’t know, the Olympics are going on right now, and there are many stories that can be told about it. However, swimming has been one of the games’ more “unique” topics, and not exactly for the reasons you’re thinking. Sure, there are certain countries, like the United States, that have done incredibly well in swimming events, but there are “other reasons” to talk about it. You know, like how athletes keep getting sick after they swim in the Seine? Or, in the case of the Japanese national swim team, moving to Nier: Automata. Yes, this is real.
We don’t have the best video of it, but the clip below shows the Japanese swim team doing a routine to the title “A Beautiful Song,” which is indeed from the game. According to the team, as noted by Polygon, they wanted to “express movement of chess pieces in the water with victory at the end.”
As you can see above, the Japanese swim team came to play, and they knew the kind of routine they needed to match the songs’ ebbs and flows and powerful beats. No matter how the routine went, though, let’s acknowledge the fact that an RPGs soundtrack was used at The Olympics!
Think about that for a moment! Not only did this swim team pick a track from Nier: Automata to do a routine to, they then had to truly work hard to make that song work, and they crushed it! We don’t truly know why they decided to pick this particular song or what led them to do a song from this game, but does it really matter? These events are global in the best way, meaning that people who never heard of this game might check it out simply because of what this swim team did.
It also highlights the beauty and wonder of video games, as it clearly inspired some Olympic athletes, and we know they’re not the only ones inspired by other media. For example, previously in the Olympics, US runner Noah Wyles won a big race in a track event, and he celebrated by doing a Kamehameha gesture, showing his love of anime.
When it all comes down to it, athletes of all shapes, sizes, and nationalities love all sorts of media and get inspired by things you wouldn’t expect. We hope the teams at PlatinumGames and Square Enix have heard about this and celebrated that their title was literally on the Olympic stage.
