History Fridge / NeoTheWorldEndsWithYou

* Swallow’s icon further foreshadows who they really are. If you look closely, not only does Swallow have the same color scheme as Shoka, black, white and purple, the purple can be misconstrued as orange from a distance, if you look at the icon upside down, the swallow head looks like a cat head and looks a bit like a hood over the purple, like Shoka’s Mr. Mew jacket hood. In fact, it has white eyes just like Mr. Mew. Furthermore, the swallow wings are angled a bit like Mr. Mew’s arms on hips pose. Swallows also have wings, like Reapers. The swallow tail can also be interpreted as a representation of her legs. So her icon can also be seen as an approximation of her appearance. This would also explain Shoka's choice of using a swallow for her online ID, because she otherwise has no bird themes. With that in mind, one can see her icon as being a representation of her character. When you look at Shoka from a different angle, the angle being when you learn that she's not only secretly helping Rindo and his team but also that she's Swallow, her actions take on different meaning.

* Each playable character’s stats reflect their strength in story. Minamimoto’s are a good amount higher than Rindo, Fret and Nagi’s because he’s been playing the current Reaper’s Game a lot longer than them and he was a former Game Master Reaper. Beat’s are below Rindo, Fret and Nagi’s because he has been out of practice for three years and those three have played the current Game for a week. His stats around the same as those three at the start of Week 1 because he got a living Player Pin too. Living Player Pins make Players more powerful than Players with regular pins. Shoka’s stats are around Beat’s when Beat joins because she never got a living Player Pin like those four. Shoka’s stats don’t lag behind Beat’s because she was strong enough to win her Reaper’s Game and has been a Reaper for four years, so she’s stronger than an average Player. Neku’s stats are at best slightly below Rindo, Fret and Nagi’s, despite his legendary status, because he is out of practice playing in the Reaper’s Games and can only use one pin at a time in this Reaper’s Game, that’s why he lags behind those three, who have been playing the game for nearly three whole weeks. He also lags behind them because the three have living Player Pins, so they’re immediately stronger than the average player. He only doesn’t lag behind by much because he has strong Imagination.
** Unlike Minamimoto, Beat, Shoka and Neku are not stronger than Rindo, Fret and Nagi when they join the team. It is important because the three need to learn to not look for someone strong to carry them, the same way they did with Minamimoto.

* Why is Fret opposed to looking to recruit Neku. Not only did the lesson that you shouldn't look for someone strong to carry you sink in faster for him, he was probably reminded of his friend abandoning him even though Minamimoto being a friend to the team is a big stretch. It's also possible that he thinks the same situation with Minamimoto will happen again. Someone strong like Minamimoto can ditch them too just like Minamimoto did.

** This is illustrated in the Secret Reports. The Reapers' Game unlike the first game's is purely a competition and won't teach any valuable lessons by doing things like making Players have to learn to cooperate with one another's different and varied abilities and by taking an entry fee from them. As such, any Player can easily allow him or herself stay on the sidelines and let another team member make decisions, like Rindo does or a team can become too reliant on one team member to carry them like the Twisters do with Minamimoto or the other teams do with their team leader.

* The game has a subtle message about not being too attached to nostalgia. Characters from the first game don't appear much and even then, you know very little about them. You don't even learn much about Beat even though he's a party member for 2/3s of the game. Hanekoma, a major character from the first game doesn't even physically appear. In Week 2, Rindo is fixated on finding and recruiting Neku. This can be a [[AudienceSurogate meta representation]] of how some players wanted to play as Neku in the sequel and/or want Neku to show up asap. To cement this, Neku, the object of Rindo's interest in Week 2 doesn't join the fold until 3/4s into the last week. If you fixate too much on nostalgia, you don't learn the lesson you should learn from the current story and you won't enjoy it. The message can be as Hanekoma says in the first game, enjoy the moment.

* Fret's first use of Remind is actually seen in the cutscene at the end of the prologue, when he's trying to remember the term for the superpowers he sees other players using. He ends up Reminding Rindo that it's called psychokinesis.