These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
The intro to the game simply has Neku explain how much he can't stand people in general. Basically, him yelling at a few people, then "I don't get people. Never have, never will." Doesn't really get elaborated on during the main story, but it finally gets an explanation in Another Day's Pork City quest: Neku blames himself for the death of his only friend.
This is actually hinted at in the main story, too: when Rhyme gets erased, Neku thinks, "I feel like crap. This is just like that time... That time? What time? ... I can't remember."
Base Breaker: Joshua. His Jerkassery is either incredibly hilarious or incredibly annoying.
Regardless of their opinion of his character, the question of whether or not Joshua is gay makes some fans butt heads, too.
Broken Aesop: A NewGamePlus bonus allows you to skip conversations by holding down L and R. The theme of the game is to stop closing yourself off from the world. Oops.
Difficulty Spike: regarding the first Tin Pin Stride challenge in Beat's week. It's devilishly difficult in comparison to the previous one, being the first one with full player roster (four, including Neku) and enemies having superhuman reflexes.
Escapist Character: Hanekoma. He's always two steps ahead of everyone and both God and Satan but, mostly because of keeping in the background of things, he manages to keep a sense of mystique and interest to keep from being obnoxious about it.
Fanon: The concept of a "Music" of Shibuya is widespread and largely accepted with no explanation in fanfiction; it's never even alluded to in the game, though it does make some sort of sense and fit with the musical theme naming (Noise, Conductor, Composer, frequency, etc).
Fountain of Memes: Pick Sho Minamimoto's out loud quotes. Any of them, and fans of the game just might start having quote-offs or break out into math speeches.
If you use Mingle mode and come across another player doing the same, you can access that player's shop, which consists of what the player's characters were equipped with at the time. Through this, you can, early on in the game, buy pins that you normally wouldn't get for a long time, such as the Anguis and the Darklit Planet set, and quite easily demolish every enemy that comes your way.
And of course the LASS thread set, short for "Lapin Angelique Suicide Special," which uses threads which require the SOS condition. The correct set of four grants an insane level of offense and defense, often meaning 0 damage on the user and Massive Damage to the enemy. There's even pins and threads which automatically inflict SOS at the beginning of battle. Combined with the Darklit Planets, any enemy you face is... pretty much SOL.
Neku and Joshua's Level 3 Fusion Attack. It can be used to basically skip the Nintendo Hard Phase 2 of Sho Minamimoto's boss fight by taking almost half his HP off. To put that in perspective, Shiki's level 3 Fusion has an Efficiency rating of 20, Beat's has an Efficiency rating of 30, and Joshua's level 3 Fusion has an efficiency rating of 99.99.
Some of Minamimoto's references are just random math terms thrown around for fun, but then there's the Level i Flare...
And the HP count of both his forms in the Noise Report... but this one should be easy to get, considering how he recites Pi in-game.
Also, there's a Japanese Culture Genius Bonus: In Another Day, when Beat is trying to become a comedian, it's just plain funny. It becomes funnier if you know that there is a Japanese comedian by the stage name of BEAT Takeshi.
Though bats in this game aren't really goddamned so much as Frogs (especially if you use Joshua's floating move) or Shrews (who use bombs and drill attacks for massive damage, and on top of that burrow underground, making them difficult to attack).
Later, you encounter Frogs that absorb either short-range or long-range attacks. Or a particular kind of frog that absorbs both.
Pork City has battles that pair these attack-absorbing frogs with the ELEPHANTS.
Ravens tend to be this too. The big raven boss, Cornix Canor, is very representative in that it stays off screen for 90% of the time and just decides to stop by every once in a while, flying past your silly attempts at hitting it.
Any Taboo Noise, because they're stronger, require you to pay close attention to the Light Puck if you want to do any decent damage, and actively seek you out during a Scan. Additionally, the 'Gotta Bounce!' option is disabled during their battles, so you can not escape them.
Not to mention the jellyfish. They multiply endlessly. If you try to get the red jellyfish's Hard drop by waiting for it to spawn, the battle can easily take up to 10 minutes just because they spawn faster than you can finish them off.
It doesn't take very strong slash goggles to see several of the male shop keepers crushing on the player as hard as the females when you get their Friendship up — the le Grand clerk in Cadoi City's offering to help the player slip into his purchases being the most explicit. He will drop several sexual compliments on the party as they shop — however, there's only a one-third chance that there's even a girl in the party, meaning two times out of three he's hitting on a pair of fifteen year-old boys.
There's also a fair amount of Les Yay, too — Shiki's most important character arc is her relationship with Eri, while Mina and Ai seem to care much more about each other than Makoto...
It's even lampshaded in the bonus chapter at the end of the game, where Joshua's codename is 'Pink', someone comments on how a Rainbow Tin Pin Launcher was 'made for him' and he's the 'Roy G. Biv' of Tin Pin, and Josh himself offers to escort Neku alone down an abandoned drainage river and "spend some quality time". Shiki is torn between shock and Yaoi Fangirl-ism.
Larynx Dissonance: Admit it, when you first heard Joshua's voice, you were surprised that it was coming from the mouth of a 15 year old boy.
Magnificent Bastard: Joshua and Kitaniji arguably qualify since their plans both failed and succeeded at the same time, but Mr. Hanekoma is the crowning example of this trope. Just read the Secret Reports.
"Meme" is actually used in the psychological context rather than the present-day "internet joke" definition...
But while we're on the subject, Sho would like to you know that you are so zetta slow!
One Reaper uses the typical internet-memetic catchphrases "Oh really?" (orly?), "I see what you did there," (i see what u did thar) and "I know, right?" (inorite?)
Joshua can lock on to a single enemy multiple times to attack it For Massive Damage!
The proof is in the pudding. The pudding... OF THEIR DOOM!
Sho's also used similarly to Ultros to tell some Incredibly Lame Pun, but math related.
Joshua and his Super Jesus Beam. Joshua is a form of the name Jesus, after all.(Yoshua and Yeshua have the same root name.)
"Another Day" presents us with a considerably more upbeat Neku, whose love of Tin Pin Slammer prevents him from being the antisocial jerk he is at the beginning of the main game.
There's a party in my mouth! Explanation
Beat says this if you give him food he really likes
It gets even better if you listen to the lyrics of some of the songs. For example, "Game Over" is apparently sung by a businessman signing contracts and climbing up the corporate ladder.
The Game Over sequence. The music suddenly stops, Neku whispers, "I'm fading..." in a horrified voice, and then both screens turn to static. It's even worse when you're fighting Game Masters, as they'll make a snarky comment too.
Sometimes, it'll be your partner who speaks when you die, and their death cries can get pretty horrifying. Like Beat, who, instead of whispering like Neku, screams"RHYYYYYME!"]] That one's more of a Tear Jerker, however.
The Progfox is a boss that shapeshifts and has different forms. This◊ is one of them.
Towards the end of Week 3, everyone in Shibuya being brainwashed by the Red Pins is kinda horrifying.
Player Punch: Several. The first one (Rhyme's erasure) gets pulled surprisingly early, and it's far from being the last.
Punchclock Villain: Arguably, most of the Reapers. They're inarguably the antagonists, but most of them don't have anything personal against the Players and are just doing their job. Furthermore, a good deal of them are quite decent, and will be at least grateful if they are helped by Players, like 777 and Kariya.
Minamimoto. So zetta annoying, especially when you have to replay his Hopeless Boss Fight and actually win. And, inevitably, Kariya and/or Uzuki.
Konishi can be rather difficult as well, since she's a very confusing Puzzle Boss who can easily destroy you if you can't figure out exactly what you have to do just to scratch her. The solution is implied before the start of the battle, but it isn't explicitly stated and requires you to do things that you would not have thought about before.
It's really not that Rhyme is unfeminine; if you know that she's female it's perfectly easy to see. It's just that a) they don't give you an indication of her gender until pretty late into the game and b) one is so used to seeing Bishōnen who look even girlier you just assume it's a boy.
The Woobie: All of the main characters have their moments of being this.
Shiki has self esteem issues (to the point she took on Eri's body in the Reaper Game, only to realise this made her feel worse) and feels very guilty over the fact that she's jealous of her best friend.
Beat accidentally got himself and his sister killed and is beating himself up about it, then tried to revive her by joining the Reapers only for Konishi to crush her Noise form. Plus he's The Unfavourite to Rhyme and constantly mocked by enemies (and sometimes other players) for being an idiot.
Rhyme dies three times. First when she and Beat are killed in a car accident, then when she performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save Beat from a Noise, then again when Konishi crushes her as a Noise. It's also implied that her payment for entering the game is all her hopes and dreams, and the secret reports claim that they'll be lost forever since she didn't make it to the end of the week.
Even Neku and Joshua can be seen as this. The former is implied in Another Day to be anti-social because he believes he got his friend killed since he asked the friend to come over and he was knocked over by a car as a result, and the latter is hinted in the secret ending at wanting to be friends with the other players, but being unable to.
Woolseyism: The game is just about made of them. Example given: Beat's rough, tough-guy speech patterns in Japanese were changed to Ebonics for the English version.
