The Game is over... and so is Shibuya.
As per Wiki policy, all spoilers will be unmarked. Read at your own risk.- Four words only: the Inversion of Shibuya.
- Remember how buildings in Shinjuku just seemed to disappear under a Reaper skull emblem? It's less that they disappeared and more that they literally crumbled into the sky, and we get to see that happen in Shibuya here. The dark energy pulse that descends upon Shibuya before everything goes to hell does not help.
- Even worse, it's revealed at the end of Week 2 that Shiba, one of the Shinjuku Reapers, is trying to bring this about. While it's later revealed it was mostly due to Kubo's corrosive influence, this is a far cry from what Megumi Kitaniji sought to accomplish all the same.Uzuki: Are my ears playing tricks on me!?
Kariya: Don't think so.
Uzuki: I thought those slimeballs came to us because they needed a new home... but they've been plotting to destroy ours this whole time!?
Kariya: Wouldn't put it past 'em. Bet they had a hand in Shinjuku's downfall, too.
Uzuki: How could they...
Kariya: Meh. What's done is done. - This is on top of Hishima and Kaie talking about what they will do when it goes down, with Kaie prepared to face his erasure too. This - coupled with Shoka's boredom with the Game and later defection, Susukichi's desire to "flip Shiba's poison disc" no matter what he has to do, and Hishima giving up on Shiba - shows that the Shinjuku Reapers have suffered under a toxic boss to the point that they just want it all to end.
- And then there's the Soul Pulvis, a seemingly endless flock of bird Noise that erupt from Rindo's Player Pin at 4:44:44PM on the Final Day of the Third Week and consume everything in sight - human, Player and Reaper alike. And it's not implied with shadowy images alone; you get to see them strangle and erase Shoka in a cinematic. Unite the Players and Reapers into fighting back? There's too goddamn many of them, and erasing a murder of these crows is barely enough to stop the entire flock. Travel back in time to fight them before they become a threat? They feed on Dissonance and multiply, so you're just making the problem worse. It takes nothing short of a masterplan by all the Players and Reapers and the united will of Shibuya itself - in other words, a literal fucking miracle - to bring them into numbers reasonable enough to crunch them into a more manageable form.
- For the urine-soaked frosting on this bowel-breaking cake of terror, all of this was by design. Tanzo Kubo, a low-level Reaper ultimately revealed to be the Executor-rank Angel responsible for the Inversion of Shinjuku, engineered the entire game to bring about the Inversion of Shibuya. He empowered Shiba to create Plague Noise that corrode the boundaries between the RG and the UG, and as a backup he sought out a player with a stagnant Soul and a serious case of indecision (read: Rindo Kanade) and set him up with said time travel enabling Player Pin to serve as a nest for the Soul Pulvis, confident that one or the other would be able to do the job. It took Hazuki exorcising Kubo for a literal fucking miracle to even have a chance at saving Shibuya, and Kubo breaking Rindo's Player Pin after his failed Replay of the Final Day shows just how fucked Shibuya was before then.Rindo: (stares at broken Player Pin in despair) Shit...!
Kubo: Oh, you won't be needing that anymore... nyeheheh!
- For the urine-soaked frosting on this bowel-breaking cake of terror, all of this was by design. Tanzo Kubo, a low-level Reaper ultimately revealed to be the Executor-rank Angel responsible for the Inversion of Shinjuku, engineered the entire game to bring about the Inversion of Shibuya. He empowered Shiba to create Plague Noise that corrode the boundaries between the RG and the UG, and as a backup he sought out a player with a stagnant Soul and a serious case of indecision (read: Rindo Kanade) and set him up with said time travel enabling Player Pin to serve as a nest for the Soul Pulvis, confident that one or the other would be able to do the job. It took Hazuki exorcising Kubo for a literal fucking miracle to even have a chance at saving Shibuya, and Kubo breaking Rindo's Player Pin after his failed Replay of the Final Day shows just how fucked Shibuya was before then.
- The phenomenon and effects of Plague Noise. If you've seen social media succumb to mass despair, terror, and misanthropy in the wake of the 2020 pandemic, the idea of a virulent psychological phenomenon that makes your friends think the world's out to get them, leaving lasting traumatic damage that doesn't go away when the problem is banished, might hit a little too close to home.
- The final week of the game has Shibuya under an Alien Sky, just to show how dire the situation's become. The sky's blotted out and the city becomes literally darker, which lets Plague Noise grow and fester. Similarly to the first game, a lot of the NPCs start to lose their humanity, but rather than becoming a Hive Mind, the NPCs here succumbed to Shibuya Syndrome, which essentially drains them of all their energy and leaves them as an Empty Shell. Eventually, the NPCs, who had unique thoughts about their daily lives, are reduced to thinking a completely blank "..." instead while their faces are framed in shadow.
- Originally, erasure was the biggest threat out there, as it effectively means you die for real with no chance to return. Exorcism, on the other hand, is even scarier as your existence is completely and utterly removed from reality, with no one able to remember you any more than a vague feeling, and the process works retroactively, so not even going back in time can reverse it. Luckily it only happens to Kubo.
- One particularly concerning line in the Secret Reports suggests that the Higher Plane have been deliberately turning a blind eye to Kubo's actions as the majority of Angels believe that Shibuya needs to be cleansed. Just remember: Joshua used to be part of this camp before he got entangled with Neku. The fact that the Angels described in the previous game were seemingly happy that Shibuya managed to remain intact brings up some rather unsettling implications of what might be occurring in the Higher Plane's upper management, assuming their sudden change in demeanor isn't just a Retcon.
- Susukichi barely counts as Affably Evil throughout the game, and is usually hamming it up when he is on camera. It makes it all the more jarring at the end of week one, when Rindo gives Susukichi some bad information about Reversi and absolutely flips his shit. If it wasn't for Rindo's Replayer ability, Susukichi would have killed Rindo there and then over confusing him over Reversi rules.
- In the midst of all the supernatural insanity, The Reveal of why Fret is a Stepford Smiler is sobering Realism-Induced Horror. He had a close friend who was one day "gone" in spite of his attempts to cheer him up, without saying goodbye. It's heavily implied that said friend committed suicide, and Fret was unable to talk him out of it and still blames himself.
