Video Game / NEO: The World Ends with You

This page contains unmarked spoilers for The World Ends with You, including Final Remix.

A new day; a new Game begins.^note Left to right. Front row: Nagi, Shoka, Rindo, Fret. Back row: Beat, Minamimoto.

Greetings, sheeple of Shibuya! Got some red-hot news for ya: a new Game has finally begun! Looks like the action is really heating up!

— Shiba Miyakaze

NEO: The World Ends With You (Japanese: Shin Subarashiki Kono Sekai, or New It's a Wonderful World), the sequel to The World Ends with You, is a Urban Fantasy Action RPG developed and published by Square Enix.

Shibuya citizen Rindo Kanade enjoys a rather normal day while meeting up with his friend Tosai "Fret" Furesawa. However, the day suddenly takes a turn when they witness people battling monsters in broad daylight, only to be further confused when Game Master Shiba announces the beginning of a new Reaper's Game. Rindo and Fret find themselves "accidentally" becoming participants and, together with their group, compete against other groups of players in order to have a second chance at life again by becoming the top team at the end of the week, unless they happen to come dead last and face erasure.

A playable demo was released on June 25, 2021 and the full game was released on July 27, 2021 for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, and September 28, 2021 for PC via the Epic Games Store. The game was released on Steam on October 19, 2022.

Trailers: Announcement Trailer, Release Date Announcement Trailer, Official Opening Cinematic Trailer, Final Gameplay Trailer

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Greetings, sheeple of TV Tropes! Got some red hot Tropes for ya!

#-M

• 11th-Hour Ranger: At the end of Week 3 Day 4, Neku returns from the inverted Shinjuku to save the Wicked Twisters from Leo Cantus Armo. He then joins the party for the remaining three days.
• Aborted Arc: Some plot hooks from "A New Day" go unanswered. Whatever force that was backing Coco is unmentioned and the fight Coco was preparing to have Neku partner up with Minamimoto for is seemingly moot since the former was stuck in Shinjuku and the latter is doing his own thing and ignoring Coco's demands.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • Realistically speaking, Rindo's Replay ability being Mental Time Travel would mean that he would not be able to bring back any items or the state of his party from the future, but since this would really suck gameplay-wise the ability for your party's status to persist regardless of how much time travel you use is a convenience afforded to the player that effectively gives you a sort of pseudo-New Game Plus during time travel.
  • Relatedly, one day in which Replay is used is a Scramble Slam turf war, in which Scramble Points are accumulated during battle, with rewards available based on certain point thresholds. Logically, the changes made to the key fights involved would affect the Wicked Twisters' point total at the end of the Slam, possibly giving them a higher or lower reward than they received the first time through. However, being as getting Scramble Slam prizes is already a strong candidate for That One Sidequest, the prizes are awarded after the Slam ends the first time, and the redone fights do not involve the Scramble Points system.
• Action Bomb: Puffer Noise, upon having their HP depleted, will swell up and glow for a moment before exploding, dealing damage to anyone - Noise or Player alike - as they are erased. Cervus Cantus Alpha exploits this by summoning Hardcore Puffers throughout the battle; its battlefield-spanning electrical surge is not Friendly Fireproof, which means the Puffers' explosions can threaten the party even while they're taking cover from the surge.
• Alien Sky: The skies over Shibuya are replaced with a shimmering black-and-white film during Week 3, and it's one of the first things the Wicked Twisters notice at the start of the first day. It's said to be what the limit between the UG and RG looks like when you can actually see it, and this is a clear-and-present warning that the week is going to end with the Inversion unless Shiba is brought down. Said film also helps protect the Plague Noise from ultraviolet radiation present in sunlight, contributing to their threat level and indirectly worsening the coming inversion of Shibuya if the Plague Noise's numbers aren't kept down.
• All or Nothing: In this iteration of the Reapers' Game, only the top-scoring team receive any sort of reward at the end of the week, while the last-place team gets erased. It becomes doubly important during the final week as Rindo's last attempt to travel back in time means he will either save all his friends and Shibuya or lose everything.
• Alternate Timeline:
  • Every time Rindo uses his time travel ability, he basically abandons his current timeline to try and do things over a second time around, leaving the other timeline to be left in the dust. This is taken to a head in the finale, where the Souls from all of these timelines eventually break free of Rindo's time traveling Pin, forming Soul Pulvis.
  • In a more straightforward example, this game also has Another Day like the first game, which is explicitly stated to be in an alternate timeline, meant to justify having characters who were previously erased come back as bosses.
• Alternate Timeline Ancestry: Since Shoka became a reaper, Ayano has been a mother/big sister-figure to her. In "Another Day", they're literally sisters.
• Ambidextrous Sprite:
  • Characters with long bangs running down one side of their face such as Beat and Haz have the bangs' location swap depending on which side their character portrait is facing.
  • The Jupiter of the Monkey storekeeper has the brand's name on his shirt, and it gets mirrored whenever we see him facing to the left.
  • Shoka has a single earring in her Mr. Mew hoodie. Which ear has it depends on the direction she's facing.
  • Averted with Rindo's hoodie, with the Jupiter of the Monkey logo always oriented in the right direction no matter which way he is facing.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • When giving characters food, their preferences in the first game were only revealed after they ate their meal, requiring some guesswork while buying food. Here, you can tell who likes what while buying food, allowing you to hand-pick their favorites, which may give additional bonus stats. After ordering at a food place enough times, the game allows you to order "The Usual", which let you repeat your last meal for all your stat-maxing needs.
  • An encounter from a Noise sigils is guaranteed to include Noise from a certain Noise family, but in the first game, which sigil represented which Noise family varied from week to week (i.e. the frog-head sigil was tied to Frog Noise in Week 1 and Carcin Noise in Week 2). In NEO, each sigil represents a specific Noise family, full stop (i.e an encounter from a frog-head sigil will always include at least one Frog Noise), making it easier to hunt down Noise from a specific family if you're looking for it.
  • Unlike the first game, where Chapter Select was only available after beating the full story, this time it becomes available halfway through Week 1, allowing you to go back and grind for pins and food from an earlier day or finish any sidequests that you missed. Your progress in the day that you're currently on gets saved for when you finish exploring the past chapters, so you can take a break just before the boss of a particularly lengthy day without losing your progress. The Chapter Select menu helpfully lists which sidequests are left to finish on that day, and a late-game Social Network upgrade adds the list of Pig Noise as well. Also, your party status is kept intact, meaning you can bring Beat, Shoka and Neku to days where in the story, they weren't yet part of the party; in the previous game, your partner auto-changed when you switched to their week, and bosses were required to be fought with the story-assigned partner.
  • Rindo's Thoughts page lists all of the sidequests on the current day, as well as where to go in order to start them.
  • A lot of Social Network upgrades you can buy:
    • Once Eiji Oji is added to your Social Network, you can buy the ability to automatically convert all money pins into liquid assets upon acquisition. In the previous game, money pins had to be manually sold for cash one at a time since there was no bulk sale option.^note Remix versions allowed you to multiples of a given pin (of the same PP level), but each pin # still needed to be sold manually. Money pins are also no longer used in any Trades nor can they be equipped to master and evolve them, so there's no reason not to auto-sell them.
    • You can buy the ability to use a "Noise Magnet" while scanning, allowing you to attract any nearby Noise by holding the right trigger without having to physically walk up to them like you normally would. You can also buy a second Noise Magnet to upgrade its range to pull in any Noise that's on-screen.
    • A sidequest on Day 5 will add an NPC named Yuika Kaga to your Network, who grants the Garage Sale option. This allows you to bulk sale all unmastered dupe pins in a single button press at any store and on the Pins menu, saving you a lot of time and effort when you would otherwise have to manually sell dupes.
  • Pin mechanics have been tweaked substantially to accommodate the fact that you have less direct control over how attacks function and the fact that the game is multi-platform and no longer has to use a console-specific control scheme.
    • Pin gauges refill automatically when not being used, even if the Pin isn't Rebooting. Some Pins prevent this from occurring, however.
    • Pins with combo attacks will generally allow you to continue attacking even after the Pin's gauge is depleted as long as you're still in the middle of a combo when it expires. Pins with Charge Attacks that drain gauge while charging will also allow the user to execute their attack even after the gauge empties.
    • Pins now always start every fight fully Booted and charged up. This includes Chain battles, unlike the previous game where the statuses of your Pin's gauges and Boot carried over between Reductions, so feel free to burn as much Pin gauge as you need to win any round.
    • PP has been consolidated into a single type earned from combat. The varying Evolution mechanics from the original now take the form of maxing out a Pin's PP while it's equipped to a specific character, and you can buy an ability that reveals the Evolution requirements for every evolving Pin, including required party members that need to wear it if applicable.
    • You are now manually prompted whenever a Pin reaches a PP threshold for Evolution if you want to allow a Pin to Evolve. In the original game, Pin Evolution was automatic, meaning if you wanted to keep a Pin at max level without evolving it you'd need to gain other types of PP that don't trigger Evolution.
    • In the first game, every individual pin in an evolution chain needed to be mastered in order to count towards 100% Completion. This time, upon evolution the previous pin is automatically counted as mastered in the Records menu, making things significantly less tedious for completionists.
  • Puffer-type Noise turn into bombs upon defeat, which take a good several seconds to actually explode and can continue to be attacked while they're in the priming phase. The sole exception is if they're killed by a Killer Remix, which causes them to instantly explode, preventing them from wasting the Remix's limited time gauge.
  • Pig Carol has switched from each one only being vulnerable to a specific pin to each one being vulnerable to a specific element. Furthermore, as not all pins of the same psych have the same affinity in NEO, all the pins in your deck will flash with their element while fighting a Pig Carol to make sure you know which ones can hurt it.
  • The Plague Noise on Week 3 have the ability to drain your Groove with their attacks, hindering your ability to perform your Limit Break. In exchange, they also raise your Groove at far greater than the normal rate when hit with Beatdrops.
  • Whether or not you could equip a given thread in the previous game was determined by your Bravery stat; each thread also had an ability, unlocked by speaking to the right cashier with a sufficient Friendship. In this game, all thread abilities are known from the beginning, and whether they can be used is determined by your Style stat, allowing the raw stat boosts from threads to be equipped regardless of Style. Increasing Style is also much easier and faster than increasing Bravery: the highest Style requirement for any thread passive is 222 which can be reached halfway through the game or earlier, and all characters start with a decently high Style.
  • On the same topic, the previous game's shopkeepers would only have their Friendship increased if you purchased an item that required yen; trading items for pins wouldn't affect it. In NEO, any acquisition from a shop will yield a VIP Level boost.
  • Groove normally begins to drain to the nearest multiple of 100 if you go more than a few seconds without performing a new Beatdrop. During certain boss attacks that remove the boss from the field, the timer before the meter starts draining will be put on pause so that you don't lose your Groove just because the boss decided to use the attack.
  • Pale Noise and Boss Noise show up on the minimap making it easy to quickly scan and find their spawning spot. Boss Noise are also typically found in the first area of a Day for convenient farming and Secret Report collecting.
  • Revisiting previous chapters usually maintains whatever party you have in the most recent chapter. However, if you choose to revisit a previous chapter during the start of The Final Day'', when Rindo is the only member of your party, the game instead uses the full team including Neku.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Downplayed; out of the seven people who join the Wicked Twisters throughout the game, only six can be in battle at once — which in fact is entirely irrelevant until the postgame, because it's not until then that you ever have access to all seven at the same time. You can swap out the inactive party member at the statue of Hachiko in Another Day, but as the rule is explicitly described in-universe as only applying to combat, the seventh one will still be in your party for cutscenes.
• Arc Symbol: There are quite a few shots of the characters' mouths throughout the game. This is because the mouth is a symbol of and is used for communication. Rindo specifically wears a face mask so he doesn’t have to speak with others. It also highlights the Ship Tease between Rindo and Shoka.
• Artifact Name: Beat continues to call Neku 'Phones' despite Beat now wearing headphones instead of Neku.
• Artificial Brilliance: Since you have to control an entire party but manage a bunch of different inputs, any party member that isn't currently active will automatically dodge oncoming attacks. They can still sometimes get caught up in some attacks, but those are usually ones that hit for a wide range anyway. Best shown during the Cervus Cantus fight, where you have to avoid the boss's big lightning attack by hiding behind one of the cars. Hide behind one of them and your party members will all warp next to you and follow suit without much of a problem.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: The first game didn't think too deeply about the implications of the Players being able to interact with people in the RG, but the sequel briefly deconstructs this midway through the second week. One of the Purehearts imprints on a player to alienate her from her friends For the Evulz, while one of the Variabeauties takes advantage of being Invisible to Normals to shoplift clothes to relieve his stress.
• Audience Surrogate: Two different sets during Weeks 1 and 2, depending on whether you've played the first game or not. Newcomers will relate to Rindo and Fret, who are very dumbfounded by the confusing Game they've found themselves in. Veterans will find resonance with Minamimoto and Beat, who are caught off-guard by the differences between these Games and the last, and trying to make sense of it all.
• Auto-Save: The game features this, letting you pick up from where you left off very quickly and easily, as the game auto saves pretty often. Despite this, manual saves and multiple save files are still present.
• Back from the Dead: Subverted, though the intention is specifically to invoke this. During Week 3, Day 5, Shiba creates recreations of those who've fallen over the 3 weeks to mess with the Wicked Twisters, using their lingering memories and vibe and imprinting that into Noise facimilies of them, just to force the Twisters into a sick variation of Fighting Your Friend. This includes Fuya, Motoi, Kanon and Ayano. Being one of the few with not as close personal connections to them, and her Dive powers letting her see through the illusion, Nagi has to support each of her teammates through the subsequent confrontations with them.
  • Joshua invokes this at the very end of the game, giving both Shoka and Neku their lives back, though not without being a Troll to the former.
• Back to Front: Week 3, Day 3 starts at the end, with a Brainwashed and Crazy Fret standing over Kanon's body and wiping out the rest of the Twisters. Rindo, suffering from amnesia, has to jump back in time through the day to figure out what happened.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • The game goes out of its way to trick players of the first game into thinking that the "new Player" on Day 3 is Neku. Minamimoto is looking forward to meeting them, Fret is convinced they'll make a huge difference, it's mentioned that they have a sizeable pin collection, and Kanon suggests they might not be new to the Reaper's Game. Enter Nagi, whose pins are, in Rindo's words, "just a bunch of merch"; Minamimoto was only interested in her out of curiosity regarding her unique psych.
  • At the start of Week 3, Shiba announces that all the remaining Players have to do is find him and defeat him before the end of the Week, just as the scene cuts to a smiling Susukichi. It seems at first that Susukichi is smiling because he's looking forward to the challenge. But he's actually smiling because he can take down Shiba to stop his plan to destroy Shibuya. Susukichi couldn’t do that up until that point because before that point, the Game would only end if the Ruinbringers are taken down by another team. The rule for the third week is that someone has to take Shiba himself down before the end of the week, not his team and not necessarily by another team.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss:
  • Shoka is built up to be the boss of Week 2, Day 6, with the Wicked Twisters breaking up her Curb-Stomp Battle versus Motoi... except the boss fight ends up being with Motoi after he shows his true colors.
  • Week 3 Day 4 enjoys this twist enough to pull it twice. It sets you up to take on Kubo, but once you reach him it looks like the true boss fight will actually be against a Plague-filled Kariya. Nope to that either: it ends up being against an out-of-control Minamimoto's Cantus form, of all things.
• Bilingual Bonus: All clothing items sold by Il Cavallo Del Re have Italian names. The brand's name itself translates to "The King's Horse".
• Bland-Name Product: Mostly averted this time around; while locations in the original game were subject to minor name changes, in this game (and in the anime adaptation of the original) they have been Retconned to match their real-life counterparts. The only name that still plays this straight is Shibuya 109, which is still referred to as "104" in the game. With that said, while it's true for the major locations, one can still notice things such as "Family Stores" and "Unison" in the background. Apparently Square Enix didn't want to license FamilyMart or Uniqlo's name just to make the scenery more accurate.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Rindo and Fret are introduced to Minamimoto after he wipes out the horde of Noise that Fret carelessly scanned.
  • They are also introduced to Beat in a similar manner, only this time it's after fighting Tsugumi for the first time.
  • The real Neku saves Beat like this after the fight with Leo Cantus Armo.
  • Hazuki showing up out of nowhere to annihilate Kubo during the Darkest Hour.
  • Minamimoto rescues the party from a wave of Plague Noise on the Final Day'', allowing them to restore Tsugumi's soul.
• Book Ends: The game ends and begins with Rindo meeting with Swallow in the Scramble Cross by chance. This time, they both know who the other is and are comfortable with having a personal relationship.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Stacking Round-type psychs isn't fancy, but it is safe and easy to Beatdrop combo with.
  • Equipping an Auto Charge thread and a charging Psych, like say Psychic Shotgun, lets you tap the charge input and the character will charge it automatically, then release at full power. While this means giving up the thread slot for something that could have boosted stats or drop rate instead, this allows you to not have to worry about timing the charge input, still getting good damage in, while letting you focus on the other Psych inputs instead.
  • Psychic Shotgun in general is a great Psych for crowd control, with good range and good damage, and can slot pretty easily into most Pin Decks. The Yearlong Ensemble even uses a Psychic Shotgun Psych, while the Lustrous Ensemble consists of two Psychic Shotgun pins.
  • Low-calorie foods offer unimpressive stat increases, but can have decent stat to calorie ratios. Additionally, it's easier to have multiple meals before you get full, granting you more opportunities for a Tasty bonus.
• Boss in Mook's Clothing: The Maximizaurus Rex, a dinosaur-type Noise new to NEO that can be found as random overworld encounters during Week 3, has 44,000 HP, more than most bosses in the game, and its damage output is nothing short of astronomical and can easily wipe your team with a few good hits.
• Boss Rush: In Another Day, Coco accidentally puts the Wicked Twisters to sleep on Takeshita Street which causes them to fight the main story bosses. Unlike the previous game, equipment can be swapped out in between fights.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Thankfully averted with the Black Cat pin set. The last game's Darklit Planet set could normally only be completed by either defeating both the Final Boss and the strongest Super Boss on Ultimate difficulty or getting one of their drops as the random tradeable at WildKat, leaving you with no clear target for them (unless you were playing the Final Remix). Getting the different pins for the Black Cat set is not quite so brutal, and as such you can actually fight several bosses with them to get different other rewards.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Being possessed by a Plague Noise causes a person to become unnaturally hostile to anyone around them and start attacking indiscriminately if provoked. Prolonged exposure to a Plague Noise will eventually cause it to devour the host's Soul, turning them into an Empty Shell.
  • Ayano afflicts herself with a Plague Noise in a last-ditch attempt to convince Shoka to return to the Reapers. However, Plague Noise work very fast in corrupting and eating their hosts, and by the time the cast find her her Soul is practically already gone and can't be recovered even with a Dive. To stop Shoka from making any rash moves, Rindo has to use time travel to have her come to terms with the fact that they will have to erase Ayano.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Nagi and Fret share this exchange on Week 1 Day 6:
  Nagi: I can explain, but a lengthy diatribe awaits.
  Fret: Try to keep it to a single speech bubble.
• Breather Level: In-universe, the Twisters find themselves facing easier-than-normal Reaper missions (like obtaining a Noise's Easy Mode drop or winning 1 or 2 chain reduction battles) and a simple Hidden Object Game (with other teams helping) on Day 5 of Week 2. They suspect someone is going easy on them. And they're right, Shoka is arranging for easier challenges and providing the hints, but Motoi finds out and rats her out to Kubo, causing her to become Day 6's target.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • In-universe, Motoi launches funding campaigns during his boss battle, boosting attack or summoning reinforcements.
  • One of the "urban legends" in the city turns out to be a Reaper selling fights against Noise for 300,000 yen each. He claims that he did this so that lazy Players could get away with not contributing to their team's score by tacking on a few points to make it look like they're busy.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • The lyrics of "bird in the hand" describe a woman who no longer wants anything to do with someone of whom she was formerly "your biggest fan". What, precisely, broke the pedestal is not specified, but given that she says "not every woman likes it rough", there are a few likely guesses.
  • Motoi, the influencer known as "An0ther" becomes this to his fan Rindo after the latter realizes Motoi is willing to throw his teammates under the bus to become a Reaper, had manipulated him for some time and plagiarized much of An0ther's material.
• Brutal Bonus Level: In Another Day, Rhyme's Dive, found in Dogenzaka, is a 10-chain battle with a recommended level of 80 and a T-Rex Noise with a damage-increasing buff as the final fight.
• Calculator Spelling: During the last chapter, local Mad Mathematician Sho Minamimoto greets Coco with the phrase "Zero seven seven three four", meaning "HELLO". The latter is understandably puzzled with it.
• Call-Back:
  • The teaser site that lead up to the game's announcement reused the same countdown that was used to announce the original game's Solo Remix port.
  • In the first game's "Another Day" segment, Beat absent-mindedly asks if Ken Doi's restaurant serves curry. In this game, it actually is a curry shop.
  • The Trick Cards psych fires cards that heavily resemble Shiki's ESP Cards from the first game.
  • A random thought you can read, mission impossible, has the rando lamenting that he was being sent out to get a fuse but the only thing he knows about them is a mission from a game. A clear reference to the concert tech mission from the first game.
• Came Back Wrong: As the first we're seeing of him since Coco re-murdered him in Final Remix, players may be as terrified as the characters are of this new incarnation of Neku who has bleach blonde hair and a black mask covering most of his face. Actually subverted, the masked man is Beat. Neku came back just fine, just a little late.
• Cap:
  • In the beginning, at least, the player can only carry up to 99,999 yen. Anyone who hits this should be able to find some way of spending it, but it's not hard to bump it up to 999,999 yen and then 9,999,999 yen with a few friendship skills.
  • A character's base stats can be raised with food to 999 HP, 500 ATK, 500 DEF, and 300 Style.
• Cassandra Truth: Despite being told multiple times how they're dead, Rindo and Fret take their sweet time trying to come to terms to that and blindly play the Reapers Game until it all sinks in. That is, until it's proven that they actually never died in the first place.
• Cast of Snowflakes: As in the first game every character with a name, from the main cast, prominent NPCs both story-relevant and not, and shopkeepers all have unique and elaborate clothing and looks. Most NPCs, even unique recurring ones, aren't even drawn with eyes, but even they have a degree of variety to them thanks to mixing and matching different art assets (generic Players, notably, only have one body model but said model comes with a lot of hairstyle and clothing variations). The exception being, just like in the first game, the non-major character Reapers, who are all identical.
• Catchphrase:
  • Rindo, Fret, and Nagi each have lines associated with their latent powers that they say each time it's used.
    • "Here's an idea!" or "Time to change your mind!" for Imprint.
    • "We'll change our fate!" or "We're going again!" for Rindo's Replay.
    • "C'mon, think!" or "Try to remember!" for Fret's Remind.
    • "Pardon the intrusion!" or "Onward I dive!" for Nagi's Dive.
  • Shoka always says "Later losers," when ending a conversation. Eventually goes into Cerebus Syndrome territory when it's the last thing she says to Rindo before she's erased.
• Cel Shading: The reveal trailer shows that the game is in full 3D with cel-shaded graphics.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Rindo and Fret find that their phones cannot communicate reliably with the people they know during the Reapers' Game. They're as dead as Neku was in the original TWEWY. Or so it seems...
• Central Theme: The effect social media can have on communication. The game explores how social media has good and bad effects on communication and is even said verbatim in the Secret Reports. If the first game was about expanding one's horizons, this game is about how social media can expand one's horizons but can also hinder one's willingness to explore them too. This is represented by two people Rindo knows through social media, Swallow and An0ther. Rindo's relationship with Swallow represents the good because Swallow gives him helpful and meaningful advice and they form a real and positive connection as a result while Rindo's relationship with An0ther represents the bad because Rindo immediately trusts An0ther's real persona Motoi because of his reverence for him, not knowing that Motoi is actually a fraud, something Motoi's social media would not reflect, and as a result, Rindo is easily manipulated by Motoi. The good is also for Shoka, Swallow's real persona. Kaie specifically suggested she use social media so that can she can connect with others without her social awkwardness getting in the way. The good is that Shoka can connect with and stay connected with others the same way one can connect and stay connected with others through social media if they can’t meet in person, because Shinjuku Reapers aren’t allowed to reveal their identity to anyone who isn’t part of the UG, which is how Shoka met Rindo and stays connected with him. Rindo's preoccupation with social media can be seen as the bad because he neglects the real relationships he has in real life because he's too comfortable communicating through social media but too afraid to communicate outside of it. As said in the Secret Reports, social media can expand one's world, but it is still up the users if they want to see this world.
  • This is even reflected in the game's social network, a function the first game didn't have. The good is represented in how helping people in the social network completes the social network and gets the players rewards. The social network also reflects how the information someone learns about another through social media may not be true. This is shown by how several characters' profiles on the network change in the story, specifically that of Motoi, Shoka, Shiba and Kubo's among others to accurately portray their true natures.
  • This theme is reflected in the ending when Rindo finds Shoka. While Rindo could've found Shoka sooner if he checked his inbox, the plus side is that it represents him now being comfortable not hiding behind social media and having personal relationships.
• Chekhov's Armoury: Could fill its own page. The biggest tip-off to being able to use Rindo's Replay isn't the visions; it's the plethora of events that the Wicked Twisters disregard as unimportant the first go round.
• Chekhov's Gun: Mr. Mew. Turns out Tsugumi's Soul was sealed inside the plush doll when the Inversion of Shinjuku happened, thus turning the physical body of Tsugumi into an emotionless shell. Due to housing a Soul, the party is able to get Nagi to Dive into Mr. Mew and erase the Plague Noise sealing her inside, and during the final days of Week 3 Coco contacts Shiki to fix Mr. Mew so they can restore Tsugumi to normal.
• Child Prodigy: One of the sidequest Dives available on Week 1 Day 5 involves a kid whose Noise corruption angers him in regards to the cram school he has to attend. Once the Dive is resolved, he decides to get it out of the way so he can get to his one true love: math.
  Rindo: (Somehow, I feel like he'd get along great with Minamimoto.^note The boy is actually connected to Minamimoto on the Social Network.)
  Minamimoto: ...Heh.
• Climax Boss: Each Week has a member of the Ruinbringers as the final boss (or something close to it) after 7 days of build up. And as typical of the trope, at least one huge development tends to occur post-battle.
• Combination Attack: In lieu of the Light Puck or Cross Combo, NEO introduces a replacement called Beatdrop. By hitting enemies with certain attacks, such as the combo finishers on mash-type Psychs and fully-charged charge-type Psychs, a marker with a gauge will appear on the enemy. Following up one character's attack with another's while the marker is on-screen triggers a Beatdrop, filling the Groove meter at the top of the screen. When Groove is 100% or more, the character currently controlled by the player can activate their Limit Break and deal massive amounts of damage.
• Comeback Mechanic: Referred to In-Universe as the Upheaval Rule, which is applied to a number of missions and rewards the last-placed team with more points. Even with the bonus, it never seems to be enough to dethrone the Ruinbringers outside of Day 7, where the rule allows the team that defeats the Ruinbringers to take all of their points while hurling the Ruinbringers into last place.
• Comic-Book Time: Both NEO and the original game take place in a variation of the real world Shibuya, with culture and technology appropriate to the time they released. Despite the games being 14 years apart in the real world, this game states that the events of the original occurred three years prior, with returning characters from the first game having aged that amount (the ones that age, anyway).
• Company Cross References:
  • FanGO, short for "Fantasy GO", features various monsters such as nutkins, pupus, and cactuars. Rindo also has moogle, cactuar and tonberry stickers in his chat app.
  • "Simple and Clean" gets a couple of nods in this game, being used both to describe the style of clothing sold by Shepherd House and as an option while trying to guess a password used by the Deep Rivers Society on Day 5 of the first week. Similarly, Day 2 of Week 3 is titled "Dearly Beloved".
  • During a side quest, Nagi manages to convince Ken Doi to combine smaller portions of his three best curries onto a single plate as a "sampling" portion. Once the restaurant is officially open to the team, they can go there to eat said dish, which is appropriately named the "Triple Triad Plate".
  • Like Snow Villiers, Beat's blonde hair was hidden under black headwear in the first game, and is unobscured in this sequel.
  • Speaking of Final Fantasy XIII, the pattern on Rindo's Reaper Pin gradually changes throughout the course of the game, similar to l'Cie brands.
  • Leo Cantus Armo infrequently acquires an "Armor" gauge, which dramatically reduces damage to the enemy's HP gauge, a mechanic very similar to one from Kingdom Hearts III.
  • The character design's for this game's iteration of Dëf March are based on the cover art◊ of a compilation album Square Enix released in 2014. Said art also appears as one of the billboards in front of Tower Records.
  • Shiba's Desperation Attack is very reminiscent of Skoll's Desperation Attack from Kingdom Hearts III, ending with a giant meteor being summoned over the battlefield and the player needing to destroy it before it crashes into the ground.
  • Leo Cantus Armo's armored appearance is quite remininscent of Dark Thorn's design from Kingdom Hearts II, having claws and a added red mane that look a lot like its.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Invoked once again with Leo Cantus, who has the ability to perfectly evade attacks and counterattack while out of armor, including 300% Killer Remixes. However, this can be circumvented by attacking with multiple buttons at once, since he can only evade one type of attack at a time.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Downplayed; since a good chunk of pins in the game require landing a status effect for their Beatdrop to activate, bosses are not categorically immune to status ailments... they just shake them off a lot faster than normal enemies.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The item description of the "Legendary Shorts" (which are Neku's shorts) notes that "one of the buttons appears to have been reattached by hand", acknowledging a bit in the first game where Shiki had a Freak Out about the button being loose and insisted on sewing it back on then and there.
  • You can find a Reaper late into Week 1 who does the Reaper Review quiz from the first game, complete with the relevant catchphrases.
  • Tin Pin Slammer, a minigame from the first game, is mentioned occasionally, but it is stated to have fallen out of style during the Time Skip and is no longer popular. You can find an NPC who is struggling to find Tin Pin opponents since almost no one plays the game anymore.
  • The boss fight against Mr. Mew is essentially just fighting its Fusion Attack forms from the original game.
  • Mr. Mew is once again mistaken for a pig followed by an angry retort that he's a cat.
  • During Week 3, the players ask a Shibuya reaper if he's seen Ayano. The description given is that "she's got a mean RBF, long hair and she can come off kinda cold." The reaper mentions that it sounds a little familiar and asks if she's blonde, referencing Konishi from the first game.
  • Rhyme during her Dive in Another Day calls back to her Wham Line from the first game: "Don't you get it, Beat? I've been a spy all along."
• Creator Cameo:
  • The character Ken Doi is modelled after the game's director, Tatsuya Kando, while Dëf March's lead guitarist Ishimoto is named for composer Takeharu Ishimoto.
  • Hiromu Takahara, the real-life creator of the BLACK HONEY CHILI COOKIE fashion brand and the costume designer of Final Fantasy XV, appears in-game as the store's shopkeeper on Cat Street.
• Crutch Character:
  • In-Universe, Sho Minamimoto is this to the Wicked Twisters. His experience from participating in past Reaper Games and general fighting skills are shown to be more than sufficient in allowing the inexperienced Rindo and Fret to stand a chance in the ranking battles and take on powerful Noise way outside their personal skill level. They also generally follow his advice and directions on how to proceed throughout the week, making him basically the team's de facto leader. The best example of this is how the Climax Boss fight with Susukichi at the end of Week 1 is only winnable with Sho's help, as the team gets utterly creamed the first time they face him, ending in Rindo's death and necessitating him to use his Time Travel powers to convince Sho to join them for the actual boss battle. Sho announcing that he's leaving the team for good in the aftermath contributes to the Bittersweet Ending of Week 1, with the Wicked Twisters still alive, but also aware that they stand almost no chance on their own of making it through the next week without Sho's aid. Kariya calls the Wicked Twisters out on employing this trope, as it defeats the entire purpose of the Game.
  • Gameplay-wise, exactly half of the team can qualify for this trope by the end of the game. Rindo, Fret, and Nagi all have starting HP stats of 100 or less and Attack/Defense stats of 20 or less, and less than 50 Style. Beat, Shoka, and Neku each have individual values in a given stat higher than those three combined (aside from Beat's starting Style of 50). If the player neglects to eat at restaurants, the only stat improvements will be to HP, which will leave the Game newcomers very dependent on raw Thread stats.
• Dark Is Not Evil: It's touched upon in the previous game but enforced more consistently here that the Reapers really are just normal people trying to do a job. Unlike the previous game where many of the named Reapers were schemers out to either gain more power for themselves or reshape Shibuya against the people's will, the Reapers in this game actually are rather cordial or are immediately established to have positive qualities, with the only two notable exceptions being Shiba and Kubo (the former who was corrupted by the latter, who was in reality a rogue Angel). The other Reapers in fact, in their own different ways, are actually trying to stop Shiba from erasing Shibuya.
• Dead to Begin With: Unlike the original TWEWY where it was a big deal, Fret and Rindo are casually informed by Shoka on Day 2 that they're dead. Problem is, they don't believe it — and, as it turns out, they're right. Rindo, Fret, Nagi, and Beat were all brought into the UG while still alive.
• Death Dealer: The Trick Cards Psych involves the user firing salvos of ESP cards like bullets to deal damage. Depending on the specific Pin the cards can also come with elemental effects such as being on fire.
• Deck of Wild Cards: The Shinjuku reapers are revealed to be this over the course of the game. The Game Master, Shiba, effectively has Ayano commit suicide, and traps Tsugumi's heart and soul in a stuffed toy; Shoka is kicked out for helping the Wicked Twisters and eventually makes a full Heel–Face Turn; Hishima is willing to abandon Shiba and the city to their doom; Susukichi turns out to be Good All Along and was preparing to stab Shiba in the back and Kubo is actually an Angel knows as the Executor who manipulated Shiba and was plotting everything all along.
• Decoy Protagonist: Not for the main hero but for the main heroine. Prior to the game's release, a lot of hype was built for Tsugumi but not only is she not a team member, she also doesn't have a major role in the story until the final few days. Nagi would traditionally be the heroine since she is the only female member of the team and joins rather early but utimately the role would goes to Shoka, who will not join until the two-thirds of the game. Storywise, Shoka has the second most Character Development after Rindo and technically, appears before even Nagi does. To support this, her voice actresses are billed after Rindo's during the credits and the game files list her as "ch002" after Rindo's "ch001" instead of Fret. In addition, she is given plenty of Ship Tease with Rindo, a role usually given for the heroine.
• Degraded Boss: The Drum 'n' Stinger, Emo Puffers, Houseleon, Mammoth R&B and Phasaurus Rex are first fought as bosses before appearing as regular scannable Noise in later days. The boss versions drop different pins, have less HP and provide more PP than the regular versions.
• Deus ex Machina: Twice, by literal gods no less.
  • When Rindo is about to be erased by the Dissonance during his second attempt at Week 3 Day 7, Kubo and the Inversion are suddenly obliterated due to intervention from Hazuki Mikagi, an Angel who had never appeared anywhere else in the game prior to his timely rescue. Hazuki also gives Rindo the opportunity to Replay one last time when Rindo declares that he'll go back in time to save his friends and the city. This is Semi-Justified, as it's made clear throughout this game and the previous ones that Angels and their superiors are involved in complex schemes beyond the knowledge of most Players or Reapers, and something as grand as the Destruction of Shinjuku would have involved them by necessity- but the very same rules that allow them to have immense godlike power also greatly restrict their ability to interfere unless in dire or special circumstances.
  • After destroying the Dissonance and saving Shibuya, Shoka is warned by Shiba that Shinjuku Reapers aren't allowed to come back to life like Shibuya Reapers are, and if she decides not to return she will be Erased. While Shoka and Rindo are talking out their feelings on the matter, Joshua, who appeared only during the climax and is established to be an All-Powerful Bystander, shows up in front of them, brings Shoka back to life and tasks Rindo with reuniting with her.
  • In addition, Joshua states that he would have directly intervened had the Wicked Twisters proved incapable of handling the Dissonance, although it proves unnecessary by the end.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • All party members have at least one piece of Casual Danger Dialogue with each other, including Minamimoto, who leaves after Week 1 and does not fight together with Beat, Neku or Shoka in the main story, doing so only in Another Day and postgame revisits.
  • The Scan option is represented on the game's HUD by Rindo's Player Pin, and just like the actual pin, the symbol grows increasingly complex the more he abuses Replay.
  • When repeating the Final Boss battle, Minamimoto has his own timing in the battle-ending Killer Remix (right before Neku), instead of just substituting for whoever he was swapped in for. If Rindo was swapped out, Neku will take his place as the keystone of the attack.
• Disproportionate Retribution: During one sidequest in Week 3, lecturer and influencer Buddy Rapids intends to give Spicy Curry Don a scathing review online because he didn't get a glass of water (that he never asked for) with his curry (which he immensely enjoyed otherwise). The heroes have to Imprint the idea that Doi was too busy to get him to chill out a bit.
• Double Unlock: Social Network rewards. First you have to unlock the character's node itself by meeting said character. Then you have to activate it, which is done by doing their side-quest for RG NPCs, spending money for shopkeepers and automatically during story progression for important characters. Then you have to connect their nodes to Rindo through a chain of acquaintances. And only then can you actually redeem the reward by spending Friendship Points, which are gained from completing the side-quests. Somewhat downplayed, because most nodes are unlocked more or less with the story progress with little to no input from player (and you'll check every shop and cafe anyway), and most of the nodes with really important skills are activated the same way, requiring from the player only to do some quests to get a few FP.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: In Week 1 Day 5, you are made to repeat a password to a couple of Deep River Society guys to distract them and prevent them from joining an ambush later in the day. While you can remember the password on your first try, botching it allows you to make Fret use his Remind power on them, which is necessary for the achievement for finding all of the Remind pictures.
• Dramatic Irony: A late-game reveal has Shiba stating that he used his specialized Player Pins to find Neku and drag him into the Reaper's Game as he perceived Neku to be the greatest and most immediate threat to his plans. Anyone who's played Final Remix already knows that this wouldn't have worked since Neku's been dead since the end of the previous game, so a Player Pin that is designed to work on living people can't have been used on Neku.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Rindo always receives some sort of vague prophetic vision at the start of any day where he can use time travel. Turns out that this is Tsugumi's way of helping Rindo avert disaster and get closer to rescuing her.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Applies to the whole cast, given they go through three weeks of fighting, grief, and suffering, but especially for Neku. After three years of staying dead and struggling to save people from Inversion, he finally gets to return to life for good this time, reunite with his friends, and even part ways with Joshua on good terms this time.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Very early on when Rindo first gets his player pin from Fret, he accidentally drops it. Someone who we only see from the waist down picks it up and hands it back to Rindo. Observant players who remember the previous game will recognize Joshua's pants and shoes.
• Easter Egg: If, after Beat joins the party, you equip him with the Monocrow facemask that he wore before, he will wear it in battle.
• Evolving Title Screen: The real Neku joins the main cast on the title screen after completing the game. The order that the characters appear also changes.
• Exact Words: When Beat asks Shoka why the Ruinbringers can't be made Reapers given that they keep winning, she replies that Players can't be made into Reapers unless they choose to be. While this may be quite true, what she isn't allowed to say is the reason why the Ruinbringers don't choose to be made Reapers: They don't need to be made into Reapers. They already are.
• Expendable Alternate Universe: The timelines Rindo leaves behind are casually dismissed as irrelevant. This royally bites him in the ass come endgame, when it's revealed that they are used to fuel the Soul Pulvis that Kubo uses to trigger Inversion.
• Face Framed in Shadow: On week 3, increasing numbers of Shibuya RG residents are portrayed this way, to indicate they're falling victim to the Shibuya Syndrome caused by the Plague Noise.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The differences between Kitaniji's and Shiba's Games induce this trope for the Players dragged into it. The Secret Reports indicate this is by design as part of Kubo's plan to erase Shibuya.
  • Shinjuku's rules for the Game don't include an entry fee, and have Players team up into large clusters instead of small groups. With no incentive for personal growth, this leads the majority of teams to instead use a single strong Player as their collective Crutch Character, defeating the entire purpose of the Game as a vehicle for self-improvement.
  • The Players under Conductor Megumi Kitaniji were restricted to using pins they were compatible with, thus giving each Player a designated role; the ideal teams could compliment each other and complete tasks by working with other Players, like how Beat and Rhyme completed a mission while Neku and Shiki were preoccupied. Under Conductor Shiba Miyakaze, anyone can use any pin ^note This offends Minamimoto when he discovers this.; this encourages the fielding of Crutch Character Players who could use a variety of pins more efficiently than their teammates. In gameplay, the team mooks use basic Force Rounds and Shockwave psychs while their captains use a wider variety (Fuya plants Time Bombs and Minefields while Motoi uses Trip Wires).
  • Nobody but the Ruinbringers ever wins the Game, as the Ruinbringers are comprised of nothing but powerful Reapers and have the Conductor as their team leader, who cheats to award his team the victory on a technicality even if someone else actually manages to win. Having a single team win the Game so many weeks and keep on going is noted in the Secret Reports as crippling the resolve of the surviving teams. After Week 2, where the Purehearts, Variabeauties and Wicked Twisters all team up to mute the Ruinbringers and force the Game to an end, Shiba threatens a concession out of the Twisters, erases the last-place Purehearts and changes the rules to Sudden Death for the final Week.
  • Nearly every day has Rindo march straight into a bad ending on the first run through, requiring him to use his Replay to fix his mistakes. He was picked, in fact, specifically because he was the sort of person who would fail at nearly every task and need to use the pin over and over again.
  • In the final act, either Shiba erases Shibuya with his Plague Noise, or Rindo erases it with the Soul Pulvis. The latter being the consequence of Rindo's rampant abuse of time travel to fix all of his previous failures, using Replay to try and fix it will only make it worse.
• Final-Exam Boss: Two.
  • On the last day of Week 2, the player fights Susukichi and Mr. Mew again in more powerful forms.
  • At the end of the game, the Soul Pulvis switches between multiple forms which mimic previous standard noise encounters.
• Fixing the Game: It is eventually revealed that this Reapers' Game is completely rigged from the start as the best Player team consists of powerful reapers from Shinjuku including Shiba, who is both Game Master and Conductor, to make sure his team stays on top. The Secret Reports go into a little more detail about why: namely that only the Composer can return people to the RG and Shiba needs to cover up his lack of ability to do so.
• Floral Theme Naming:
  • Rindo, Fret, and Nagi all have first names alluding to flowers in some way, continuing the tradition set by Neku and his partners' surnames in the original game. This naming scheme also applies to Shoka,^note Additionally, Shoka's surname also directly references Neku's (Sakurane/Sakuraba) and sure enough, she ends up joining the party later on.
  • Each piece of clothing sold by Cony x Cony is named after a different type of flower, as opposed to the more descriptive names used for the other brands.
• Foil: See the list of people that contrast each other here.
• Food Porn: There are over ninety different items of food available for purchase across Shibuya, each one lavishly illustrated and described in mouthwatering (or not) detail.
• Foreshadowing: Lots of it, especially in the prologue.
  • Like in the first game, the opening is full of this.
    • Rindo and Shoka stand back to back. This foreshadows that they know each other but haven't seen each other face to face until that moment because Shoka is Swallow. Also, Shoka has a playful and mischievous look on her face when they both turn to each other, which turns into a genuinely playful one while Rindo looks shocked and surprised by her sudden appearance. This foreshadows that Shoka knows about Rindo more than she lets on and that she has benign intentions with him because she's Swallow. Also, she places her phone screen in his face to represent how she registers him into the game and that she's his online friend.
    • Kubo walks past Tsugumi and then does his characteristic finger to the head gesture. He's the one responsible for her current state of mind. Also, the fact that he appears in the opening foreshadows that he is not a minor character.
    • Shiba breaks the ground with a wave of his arm because he wants to destroy Shibuya.
    • Minamimoto kicks a bird Noise, representing his interest in what will be revealed to be the Dissonance Noise.
    • The ending foreshadows several things. Rindo’s smile foreshadows that Rindo is happy that his Time Travel powers allow him to make up for his lack of decisiveness and decision-making and comes after Fret motions for him to follow, foreshadowing his flaw of shirking responsibility and his not wanting to lead and make decisions but follow others instead. It also foreshadows that Rindo will use his ability to go back in time and save his friends when they all perish and only he survives, which is foreshadowed right before Shiba breaks the ground, which shows Rindo all by himself in the Scramble Cross looking around confusedly, which may be when Rindo is the only one who survives the Final Day’ and how Rindo feels about Shibuya without his friends.
  • Fret seems to use his remind psych when talking to Rindo at the Shibuya crosswalk when they first see Reaper's Game participants using psychs.
  • At some point, you start seeing the thought bubbles of strangers. And if you're aware of how the Reaper's Game works, you might be wondering why this is happening now despite, for all intents and purposes, you never saw Rindo or Fret die. In fact, the first of these thought bubbles can appear right before a scene where Rindo bumps into a pedestrian, something that shouldn't be possible if they were dead. This is because they aren't, the pins they got are special types that qualify living Players for the Game and awaken telepathy in said living players - all the accidental thought reading happens after they get the pins.
  • Just before they find themselves in the Reapers' Game, Fret and Rindo are heading to the Scramble Crossing to try and meet up with the latter's internet friend Swallow, after hearing they were in the area. Once they arrive, they're met with Shoka, Swallow's true identity, who's stationed there to induct new Players into the Game.
    • There is Gameplay and Story Integration that further foreshadows this. In the Scramble Cross on that same day, there is no person there to scan who matches Swallow. Furthermore, if you already know that Players can’t be scanned or you replay that day after Swallow says they’re a Player, you’ll notice that there is no Player there. Either Swallow left early or Swallow is Shoka, which is true because Shoka leaves shortly after inducting Rindo and Fret.
  • Minamimoto claims that the Reaper's Game is "142,857"; Rindo looks it up and finds it's a "cyclic number", but neither he nor Fret has any idea what that's supposed to mean.^note For the mathematically curious, a cyclic number forms a 'cycle' of itself when multiplied; in Sho's example, 142857*2=285714, *3=428571, and further. It turns out that the game Shiba's running has being going on a 'cycle' since the Shinjuku rules started; every Game ends with the Ruinbringers' victory, no matter what.
  • On the second day of the first week, Kubo makes a disparaging comment to Rindo and Fret about them being already dead. On the surface, this would indicate they were killed, since Players in the Reapers' Game have to be dead. However, during Week 2, the Wicked Twisters are informed that players are 'drafted' from the RG using certain Pins, like the ones Fret bought for himself and Rindo. Given that there's very little in this Game that Kubo isn't aware of, it could be a veiled and very nasty indicator as to his true aims.
  • While perusing the shops during Week 1, you can quite easily find clothes that give character-specific abilities for Rindo, Fret, and Nagi, but you never find anything that gives abilities for Minamimoto. Wouldn't be any point since Minamimoto leaves after Week 1 and doesn't get any specialized clothing until after beating the game.
  • After beating the first boss, Shoka notes that Rindo's team is suspiciously strong for newbies. While this seems obvious to anyone who knows who Sho is, it's more hinting that Rindo and Fret are living Players, who are against the rules - and far stronger than normal dead ones.
  • At one point, getting upset with the dangers involved in the Reaper's Game and their low odds of winning it, Rindo and Fret consider whether they can just quit by throwing away their Player Pins and walking out of the game, only to be swiftly interrupted by Kubo, who advises against that course of action, pointing out how valuable the pins are as their player IDs and taunting them if they have the nerve to risk throwing away such a valuable object on a 'maybe' chance of getting out of the game. Since neither Rindo nor Fret are actually dead, that's exactly how they leave the Game. Kubo's near instant interruption when they bring the possibility up also hints at them being his pawns, since he needs them to keep the pins on them to proceed with his plans to erase Shibuya, and accordingly is keeping a close eye on the pair of them to ensure that they don't go off-script.
  • On Day 4, the Wicked Twisters are in last place after being sent on a pointless task by Susukichi with the Deep Rivers Society taking down the target for the day. At the start of Day 5 though, the Wicked Twisters are above them in ranking. It looks like an error, but since Susukichi's a Reaper who's Good All Along, it's an early hint he's on the level and threw in some points like he promised.
  • When you first meet Motoi, he assures you that despite his foreign vocabulary, he's "as Japanese as curry rice." Curry rice was not originally a Japanese dish, which hints that he's a fraud and a liar.
  • One mission has the Wicked Twisters look for Neku, who's stated to be a very powerful and legendary Player from the past. At some point during the mission, Shoka shows up to snark at the Wicked Twisters, much to their annoyance. When asked why she just doesn't bother the Ruinbringers, she states that "they're already spoken for, Reaper wise". That is to say, they're already a team of Reapers, so there's no need for another Reaper to show up and bother 'em.
  • During the fight with Susukichi on day 7 he manifests some familiar looking wings this is a big clue that he's a reaper, which fits with how each week in the previous game ended with a fight with a Reaper. Tsugumi revealing herself to have a noise form confirms it further.
  • Shortly after The Reveal that the 'Neku' being hunted in week two was actually Beat, There's a cutscene of Susukichi speaking to the boss of the Ruinbringers, explaining the whole mess. Attentive players will note that the boss peppers his speech with a lot of fire-related terminology, exactly like the Game master Shiba- because they're the same person. The boss also brings up how preparations are already underway for some event the Ruinbringers are preparing, which foreshadows the twist at the end of Week Two that the Ruinbringers are planning to destroy Shibuya. Susukichi begging his boss for more time so he can 'flip some disks himself' also foreshadows that he's not on board with the plan to destroy Shibuya and is actually looking for ways to prevent it, such as acting as a Stealth Mentor to various teams in order to make them strong enough to take out Shiba if he fails to do so himself.
  • On Week 2, Day 5, Beat has a conversation with Kubo, wherein the latter mentions how he 'isn't allowed to fight back' and confidently claims that if he could, none of them would last a second. When Beat asks him if he's a Shinjuku Reaper, he flippantly responds "Maybe I am. What's it to ya?". He's not actually a reaper. He's an Angel, a being of higher power than a Reaper by a grand order of magnitude, to the point that the prominent one featured in the last game was the Super Boss and could utterly cream the player in combat even when holding back massively. If Kubo was actually allowed to act directly, rather than relying on Catspaws to avoid direct interference, he could likely wipe out every Player and Reaper in Shibuya by himself.
  • In the same conversation, it's clarified that none of the Wicked Twisters are actually dead. Instead, they've all been transported from the RG to the UG by means of special Player pins that were being handed around and trending between people, that effectively allow normal people to become Living players in the Reaper's game, analogous to Joshua from the previous one and with a correspondingly high level of power in contrast to actually-dead players. It's Lampshaded how this conflicts with the Ruinbringer's plans to dominate the team battles week after week, with Kubo theorising that Shiba engineered events in order to spice up the games due to the opposing teams being to 'weak' to make the games interesting anymore. However, by week's conclusion, Shiba proves he has no problem with blatantly cheating to ensure the Ruinbringers remain the top team. As it turns out, he never wanted stronger opponents to fight against, but was rather trying to find and draw Neku into his current Reaper's game, being convinced he was the only one who could upset his plans for the inversion of Shibuya and trying to eliminate him before then.
  • In Week 3, Day 3, it's shown how NPCs infected with plague noise rapidly succumb to Shibuya Syndrome, but Fret is able to bring one of them back to lucidity with his Remind ability. Later Fret is able to use it on Kanon after she's possessed to let her die as herself and on the final day the party is able to apply it to the whole of Shibuya to cure the city of Shibuya Syndrome.
  • In Week 3, Day 4, once Kariya is affected by Plague Noise and the Wicked Twisters have to beat them out of him to avoid him becoming an Empty Shell, Uzuki runs up in the aftermath of the fight, bemoaning how Kubo must be the one responsible for his current state, and ranting at Kariya for letting a bottom-rung Reaper get the best of him. Given that Kariya is all but stated to be the strongest of the Shibuya Reapers left after Neku was done with them, this hints that Kubo is a hell of a lot stronger and more dangerous than his 'minor' position in the Reaper hierarchy would indicate. Additionally, almost turning Kariya, somebody technically on his side, into an Empty Shell for getting in his way foreshadows that he did the exact same thing to Tsugumi when she discovered his plans back in Shinjuku, resulting in her current state.
  • In Week 3, Day 6, Susukichi announces his plan to "flip the Wicked Twisters". And this time by "flip" he doesn't mean defeat them. Just like in Othello, he means convert them to his side.
  • During the Final Day, when Rindo activates his once-a-day time travel powers to modify the outcome of the Hopeless Boss Fight against Soul Pulvis, he jumps back to several different conversations be had prior to the Disc-One Final Boss fight, in order to convince Hishima to speak to Shiba and agree a truce until they handle the massive Noise. However, there is one conversation option that doesn't factor into getting Hishima's cooperation at all- Coco- which foreshadows that the second Replay of the fight won't go well and Rindo will need further conversations and planning to properly combat and overcome Soul Pulvis.
  • Kubo seems to be a low ranking Reaper who is around just to do grunt work, but he is always around when big decisions are being made by the high ranking Reapers, such as the Ruinbringers asking to play again each time they win and Kubo being “on the way” to tell Shiba about Motoi’s intel. That’s because he’s not a low ranking Reaper. He’s Shiba’s actual boss and giving the actual go ahead for these decisions.
  • Shoka reacts with shock to Motoi revealing that he is An0ther. Shoka is the only other character besides Rindo to mention An0ther and Shoka is clearly shown later to not be a fan of An0ther herself. That’s because she’s Swallow. She’s surprised she’s just met An0ther because she knows Rindo’s a big fan of him. It’s also why Shoka is saddened by Rindo being distraught over learning that Motoi is a fraud. Shoka's reaction to Rindo saving her is also foreshadowing. Shoka is not only shocked he did it and relieved, she expresses a sad "better late than never” when Rindo finds out that Motoi is a fraud. This is also shown before Rindo finds out that Motoi is a fraud. Shoka acts shocked and sad when he and the Twisters arrive, contrasting her jerk behavior towards them. This foreshadows that her jerk behavior towards Rindo is an act and that she knows more about him than she lets on.
  • Shoka shows up several times to talk to Rindo each time Rindo messages Swallow.
  • On Week 1 Day 1, Shoka keeps checking in on Rindo and Fret even though she apparently finished her shift the minute she registered them into the Game. Shoka proceeds to do this for other days as well, even if she has nothing important about the Game that she needs to tell them. This foreshadows that she cares about Rindo's team more than she lets on.
  • In Week 2 Day 6, the Purehearts use many underhanded tactics. That’s an odd move for a team with a leader that’s trying to help out the Twisters. They’re also fought the most out of both rival teams in that day, with the Variabeauties only sticking to their single turf because their team leader is going to help the Twisters. Because the leader isn’t. Motoi is not only trying to beat the Twisters in the Scramble Slam, he’s trying to buy time so he can kill Shoka.
  • In Week 2, Rindo believes that Swallow is not one of the Wicked Twisters, which Fret agrees with. Swallow isn’t one of the Twisters. Yet.
  • In Week 2 Day 7, Shoka gives Rindo her contact information when she joins the Twisters. She’s the only character shown doing this onscreen. This is meant to throw off Rindo and the players that she’s Swallow. Nagi and Beat either did this offscreen or anyone can contact anyone on the RNS since Susukichi is able to message Rindo despite never being shown giving contact information to Rindo.
• For Want Of A Nail: During the final day, Rindo has to repeat events over and over again in order to thwart the erasure of Shibuya, with much of the work involving having various people speak with each other and perform certain jobs. However, by altering things so Coco escorts Rhyme to Kaie, she ends up missing Shiki whom she had been waiting for, and thus Rindo is forced to make numerous jumps through time to shuffle everyone's jobs around around so events line up correctly and they can defeat the Noise.
• Four Is Death: The Inversion of Shibuya happens by the Dissonance Noise in Rindo's Replay Pin at 44 minutes and 44 seconds past 4PM on the Final Day.
• Game Changer: Both figuratively and literally; the introduction of the Shinjuku Reapers has brought with it a substantial change to the rules of the Reaper's Game since the events of The World Ends with You. While the basic format still remains (The Game is one week, clear missions set by the Game Master, don't get erased), the Game is now far more complex. Rather than seeking a single partner, Players form "teams" with one or more other Players. Teams compete for points on a leaderboard by clearing missions and fighting other teams, and only the winning team reaps the rewards of the Game, while the team at the bottom of the pack at the end of the week gets erased. Furthermore, just clearing the mission isn't enough to earn credit, as the points only go to the Player who acquires the keypin awarded by the mission. There is also no time limit set for each day's mission telling by how Players don't get a hand countdown each day, so the Players are not at risk of facing erasure if no one completes the mission, and so there is technically no penalty to no one completing the day's mission. Also, no Entry Fee is taken from Players.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • In the intro section, there are no barriers holding Rindo back from going anywhere else in Shibuya, but he holds himself back from wandering away from going anywhere else other than the places with Fret. Once they go back to the Scramble Crossing, they mysteriously are pulled into the Reaper's Game, and now the barriers appear.
  • Rindo's Replay can only be used once per day. However, if - for whatever reason - the player hits the "Change Our Fate" option before the necessary changes are made, they'll get a brief scene of him experiencing the failure again before returning to the Replay void, implying a sort of "grace period" before the changes are set in stone. Come Week 2 Day 6, the player is required to trigger the "Change Our Fate" option after each change they make to the day, as Rindo finds himself needing to reach Motoi at Shibuya Stream sooner and sooner to hear what he has to say.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The chapter select has a bit more of this than it did in the previous game. TWEWY allowed you to freely change Neku's partner after rolling the credits, and though there was the option to use a different partner than dictated by the story (except during boss fights), advancing from one week to another would automatically change back to the intended partner of that week. NEO, however, adds members to your party over the course of the game, and maintains your current party when repeating previous days; furthermore, there is NOT the option to reduce your party size, which means that once you have five or six party members, there's no way to play through the first two weeks with the same party as the first time.
  • Along the same vein, the second Scramble Slam has the option to split up the team... the first time through. When repeating the Slam via chapter select, the full team is used regardless.
  • One Support Reaper tasks you to dress up one party member head to toe in Gatto Nero-brand clothes. Shoka, who is already wearing the brand in-story, even comments that they set the bar too low, but that doesn't stop you from having to buy a whole set anyway.
  • Cutscenes make it clear that Minamimoto is off doing his own thing for most of the time he's with the Wicked Twisters, as the characters act with surprise whenever he shows up. Despite this he still participates in every battle while in the party. This gives the impression he simply trails behind everyone else, rushes in to help with battles, and then backs off again until he feels it's appropriate.
• Gamer Girl: Nagi is a hardcore fan of the mobile dating sim Elegant Strategy. Shoka also enjoys FanGO a ton, considering that she used to play with Rindo under the handle "Swallow".
• Gemini Destruction Law:
  • Pig Mambo and Pig Bolero will revive if left alone for too long while their partner is intact. A Blast Mashup oughta do the trick if you switch targets...
  • Pig Waltz come in red and blue colors, and defeating one will have it revive as the opposite color. Should all of the Pig Waltz be a single color, they will all self-destruct, ending the battle in your favor.
• The Ghost: Hanekoma has disappeared from Shibuya as he's forbidden from intervening in events like he did in the last game. However, the Secret Reports the player can collect are written from his perspective as he comments on Rindo's growth.
• Giant Mook: Purple Noise found in Dives are massive in size, much more durable than normal, and more likely to counter-attack.
• Glass Cannon: The Black Cat pin set enforces this playstyle. The set is an offensive powerhouse, raising the effective Power of each pin to about 3,000 only while all 6 of them are equipped. However, this means you have no room for other pins to make up for its weaknesses: the set has no healing or defensive psychs unlike its predecessor the Darklit Planet set or the 4-pin Season's Greetings set, so you need to equip Regen threads or else performing a Killer Remix is your only way of healing: while Black Cat Crush has a passive ability that allows it to heal the user based on damage done, this effect is overwritten by the set effect while it's active. If you can't defeat the enemy in the first boot cycle, you need to be at the top of your game with Groove generation so you can use the 300% Killer Remix as a source of healing.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: On the Final Day'', Rindo rallies every character still alive plus several of Neku's old friends to defeat Kubo's Soul Pulvis and save Shibuya from Inversion.
• Good Feels Good: The entire reason there are sidequests in this game. The first one (near the starting point on Day 3) has Fret scanning Eiji Oji out of curiosity about a celebrity's thoughts, discovers he's hung up on ramen (again), and jogs his memories. Once Oji remembers the recipe he's going for, his passion has the party discovers it feels nice to do a good deed.
• Got Me Doing It: When performing Beatdrops with Minamimoto, both Fret and Neku will ocassionally imitate his use math puns.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: The Poltergeist Psych causes the user to telekinetically pick up a target then smash them into the ground, creating an impact crater that damages nearby foes.
• Guide Dangit: A few pins mutate rather than evolve, which means they need to be mastered by a specific character in your party. They're signaled by having "???" in their evolve information rather than a simple Yes or No, but they do not explain or hint which of your character need to hold it to cause that mutation. They're not necessarily connected to any character in particular, so the player just has to guess. Subverted way later in the game, as in the penultimate day of the game, a sidequest gives you the (admittedly expensive, at 10FP) skill to have that information revealed in game.
• Hackette: Rhyme turns out to have developed an interest in computers and quickly learned hacking to such an exceptional degree that she is able to hack into the RNS and directly communicate with its creator despite still being alive. Her skills are later brought into the fold as she is summoned during the final day to help the heroes save Shibuya by identifying corrupted data created as a result of Rindo's time traveling.
• Happy Ending Override: The previous Secret Reports stated that the Angels were happy with Shibuya's state after the Game, but NEO's Secret Reports now say that the Angels wish for its destruction.
• Held Gaze: In Week 3, there are quite a few cut up shots of Rindo and Shoka’s eyes during their heartfelt moments that are cut in a way like this, highlighting their Ship Tease moments.
• Hollywood Hacking: Apparently, mundane hacking can be used to communicate between the RG and the UG. In this case, it appears to be because the RNS is an actual app distributed to Reapers and Players rather than a supernatural creation. A secret report notes that the hacker would need to be aware of the UG to do this though, which explains why only Rhyme, a former player, is capable of it.
• Hunk: Jo Makita, the owner of the SBY BBQ restaurant in Tipsy Tose Hall, is basically Colonel Sanders if he were Japanese and ripped.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Alas, subverted. Shoka's attempt to do this to the Plague Noise-infected Ayano fails horribly, and Rindo ends up having to use his daily Replays on easing her into the fact that her friend is beyond saving. Then the very next day, a similar situation happens with Kanon, but rather than simply attempt to appeal to her Fret manages to bring back her entire personality with his Remind power. They're still too late to save her, but at least she gets to die as herself.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Two Ensemble Pin sets are pretty powerful and not too difficult to obtain.
  • The Yearlong Ensemble is a pretty powerful set that offers HP restoration in addition to good damage, letting the team stay sustained. One is obtained for free late in the game, and the rest aren't too difficult to acquire.
  • The Stop-and-Go Ensemble are a trio of Pins that can be obtained after maxing out all the rewards from the Scramble Slam. Either with enough effort your first time around, or simply revisiting the Scramble Slams on higher difficulties and with higher Noise chaining, the set can be obtained, and all three receive a big power boost when used together.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Black Cat set have their attack tripled when all together, just like the Darklit Planet set from the previous game. Just like the Darklit Planet set however, it's very difficult to obtain, requiring some rare items, nearly a million Yen, and fighting a Super Boss or two.
• Interface Screw:
  • During the boss battle with Motoi, he launches conferences with his team-mates, filling the screen with text boxes.
  • The battle timer in Dives continues to run during the start-up animation of a Killer Remix.
  • Several types of Noise take advantage of the targeting mechanism, which prevents area attacks being used to find invisible Noise, since you can't launch an attack unless a target is visible.
  • During the final boss fight against Susukichi, the active character can be picked up and stunned by a bird Noise while the boss is charging his big attack. The inactive characters automatically dodge the boss' attack if the player controlled character does, but the player controlled character is grabbed and no longer can. Because of the way character switching works, this can leave the player having to frantically find an attack button that's available, not because they want to attack, but because they need to switch to a movable character or have the whole party wiped (or seriously damaged) by the area attack.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • The Noisepedia entries for the rival teams list their normal and "psyched" Mooks followed by their boss, but there's no slot for Kanon between the Variabeauties and the boss-only section starting with Go-Go Beringei, hinting that she won't be fought directly.
  • Near the end of the game, you can unlock a Social Network ability that shows the level at which pins with evolutions can evolve, and also which character needs to equip certain pins for them to mutate (as opposed to whether it can evolve just appearing as "???"). This shows that some pins need to be equipped by Minamimoto to mutate, all of which can only be obtained well after he leaves the party, spoiling that he eventually comes back (in Another Day).
  • Veterans of the first game know a pin deck has 6 pins. So when looking around the menu and observing there are 6 inputs for pins and how each party member can only equip one type with no overlap between them (at least without Social Network upgrades), it's not much of a logical leap to deduce the Wicked Twisters will end up with 6 people.
    • Even without prior game knowledge you could deduce the same thing from how there are six different inputs for psyches, or how the Killer Remix animation clearly has spaces for six cut-ins despite you only having five party members when it's unlocked.
  • Subverted with the Social Network, in which characters are laid out in a large diagram with lines connecting related characters, so you can tell who's related to whom. The Ruinbringers start out just below Rindo, but are moved to next to the Shinjuku Reapers, with their initial position likely to avoid spoiling that Shiba, the Game Master of the Shinjuku Reapers, also leads the Ruinbringers.
  • Averted with the save file. On the first week of the game, the save file does not specify Week 1 to avoid spoiling that the game has multiple weeks.
• Invisible to Normals:
  • Once again the case with everyone in the UG. Well, mostly. It's revealed in Week 3 that some special people (namely, former Players like Rhyme and Shiki) have the ability to see Players who were brought into the Game while still alive through the effects of Shiba's Player Pins. However, Neku and Shoka, being dead dead (Shoka being a former Reaper and Neku having been murdered in Final Remix), are fully in the UG and are thus still invisible to even those people.
  • This is actually exploited: midway through Week 2, one of the mysteries the Wicked Twisters have to solve involves people disappearing after going into the changing rooms. Turns out it's just a Variabeauty who was trying on clothes left without paying and decided to use this to steal wares, only to stop after the Wicked Twisters beat him back onto the straight and narrow.
• Ironic Echo:
  • At the end of Week 2, Shiba tells Rindo, "Well, we must declare a winner. And if you won't say it, then allow me: we win," after revealing himself as the leader of the Ruinbringers and forcing the Twisters into a tight spot. This gets sent right back at him at the end of the final day, where Rindo, after defeating Shiba, utters the exact same words.
  • At the end of Week 2 Day 6, Shoka mocks Motoi for trusting Kubo, a "total stranger," with the same words he used to mock Rindo for trusting him, "an absolute idiota".
    Kubo: Nyeheh. Turnin' his own words against 'im! Cheeky.
• "Jump Off a Bridge" Rebuttal: Used as an insult. When Fret asks for Rindo's opinion on Kanon's offer to team up against the Ruinbringers after a whole Day, Rindo snaps and says he needs more time.
  Fret: Well, how many hours is 'more'? We can't keep Kanon waiting.
  Rindo: I know! Now can you give me a friggin' break already!? Just because you'd jump off Tokyo Tower if Kanon asked-
  Fret: And what's that supposed to mean!?
• Kaizo Trap: Inverted in battles against Pig Noise. There's a timer in the top right corner, but the fight is not considered failed when it hits zero - it's considered failed when the Pig escapes. If you are fighting one Pig and manage to immobilize it, you can extend the fight beyond the stated time limit and potentially win.
• King Mook: The boss of Week 3, Day 3 is a giant Plague Stinger, much more powerful than the Plague Stingers that should have already been fought as regular encounters.
• Knight Templar: One of the Secret Reports suggests that this might apply to many of the Higher Plane, implying that they deliberately turned a blind eye to Kubo's actions because they wanted to see Shibuya cleansed. Suddenly, Joshua's misanthropic mindset in the previous game is given a lot more context.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • Both Rindo and Fret can't remember how they died, despite being very much alive before they wandered back to the Scramble Crossing and saw players fighting Noise. It's because of this that they are in denial that they died in the first place and blindly participate in the Reaper's Game, thinking it's some very flashy contest. Subverted, however, as they weren't dead to begin with.
  • Plague Noise are able to inflict short-term memory loss. As a result, Rindo spends a day using his Replay to steadily go back and figure out the course of events that took place on W3D3.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Kubo's role in orchestrating the Inversion of Shibuya is so utterly reprehensible that he gets "exorcised" by his boss Hazuki, a Deader than Dead version of erasure that not only kills him but also removes him and all traces of his existence from everyone's memories and every possible alternate timeline and past history, regardless of how far back in time Rindo goes.
• Last Day of Normalcy: The game starts with Rindo and Fret hanging out in Shibuya talking about innocuous stuff like games. Then Rindo gets a vision of Fret being ran over by a truck, and the two get caught up in the Reapers' Game.
• Last Ditch Move: Certain bosses like Ayano or Shiba cannot die until they use and complete their cinematic attack which prevent the use of Mashups while they're occuring.
• Last Lousy Point: For those filling out the Noisepedia, Noise No. 65 Plague Nemopilema has a 0.05% base drop rate on its Ultimate pin. It's a boss fight without a blue Noise symbol, and it doesn't appear in the Boss Rush, so cannot be chained to increase the chances. It just happens to be the second-last fight of W3D4 which necessitates the patience to run the Day over and over again or Save Scumming to have it drop.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • In the original TWEWY, the fact that the participants of the Reapers' Game were people that had died was a twist to the story. For NEO, the announcement trailer has the characters casually mention that they're all dead.
  • The trailer shows off Minamimoto as a playable character, despite the fact that he was seemingly killed off in the original game and only revived in the A New Day portion of the Final Remix Updated Re-release.
  • Tsugumi Matsunae, who was originally a "secret" character who appeared in a piece of key art shown after the ending in Solo Remix and had a brief cutscene appearance in Final Remix's "A New Day", appears in full in NEO's announcement trailer, and properly named to boot.
• Law of Conservation of Detail: Odds are that if a seemingly insignificant detail is mentioned, it will become important after Rindo uss his Replay. For example, on Week 2 Day 2, the Wicked Twisters get a phone notification about two people getting married. The people getting married are unimportant, but the notification comes just before Tsugumi finishes off "Neku", so it serves as a way of letting them know when they're out of time.
• Legacy Boss Battle: In Week 3, Sho Minamimoto reappears in his Leo Cantus form with all of the familiar Boss Banter you'd expect from the Grim Heaper. He also appears as a Super Boss in the form of Felidae Cantus, similar to Panthera Cantus from the first game.
• Legendary in the Sequel:
  • Neku is known as the legendary Player who saved Shibuya from destruction and everyone is on the lookout for him. You can buy his outfit from the first game, which is referred to as the legendary player's gear, in Jupiter of the Monkey.
  • Gatto Nero is a trending fashion brand made by Shiki and Eri with Mr. Mew as the mascot.
  • Ramen Don was a failing restaurant in the first game, but the revamped Spicy Curry Don is overflowing with customers who love the food.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: Nagi suggests splitting up during the second Scramble Slam in order to keep the pressure up on the other teams. If Rindo accepts the idea, there will be less fights to take care of, but only half the pin slots to work with.
• Level Limiter: Lowering your level raises the drop rate, giving you a higher chance of getting Pins.
• Lighter and Softer: Not in terms of plot but rather in terms of characters. The main Players in the first game were all tormented by their insecurities in some way, and a major focus of the plot was them overcoming their personal problems. The main Players introduced in this game are pretty well-adjusted with no significant skeletons in their closet by comparison, though Fret is revealed late in the game to be a Sad Clown. It also extends to the cast of Reapers, who are much less antagonistic this time around, with the exception of Shiba and Kubo, and the former turns out to have been a pretty decent guy who was corrupted by the latter.
• Light Is Not Good: NEO delves more into the hierarchy of the Angels, previously established as the Greater-Scope Paragon organization above the Reapers. With the revelations in this game, that they supported the destruction of Shinjuku and Shibuya rather than Joshua acting alone, and have destroyed many other cities in the past, they move closer to being the franchise Greater-Scope Villain.
• Limit Break: Mashups require at least 100% Groove to perform, but they can sweep the field for heavy damage if you use them right. The affinity is determined by the last Beatdrop performed. You can later unlock a second, stronger level of Mashup usable at 200% Groove, and near the end of Week 2 you gain access to the Killer Remix at 300% Groove, where the party teleports above the field to annihilate foes with a Magic Missile Storm before healing the party if enemies remain after the Final Remix is finished.
• Lost in Translation: Referenced in the description for the "Half-Hearted Summer Gift" thread, an accessory based on a chūgen gift.
  Tamao Sasai:^note Descriptions for threads from the Croaky Panic brand are written as the shopkeep's ramblings rather than a professional description Tourists often ask me what the heck this is, but I have no idea how to explain chugen in English. I guess "Japanese summer gift" kind of covers it?
• Love Triangle: The Social Network reveals that one divorced clerk has feelings for one of his coworkers, who is personally dissatisfied with her relationship.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "bird in the hand"'s opening lyrics are about a woman trying to fight off an Abhorrent Admirer non-consensually coming onto her, which is jarring in an otherwise light and funky-sounding song.
• Mana Burn: Getting hit by Plague Noise depletes the Groove Meter though they offer a lot of Groove back by landing a Beatdrop combo on them.
• Marathon Level: Diving into Rhyme in Another Day. Most Dive missions have three to five battles, but Rhyme has ten.
• Meaningful Name: "NEO" means new, representing that it is indeed The New The World Ends With You. But it also represents how everything about the game is an almost complete overhaul from the original, from both new main and supporting casts, to a new graphics and gameplay style. Several songs from the first game have been altered in some way, all of which are distinguished as a "NEO Mix". Even returning character Minamimoto is now in a new role instead of his old one.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: All of the human Players the Twisters face are male, which oddly implies that Nagi, Kanon, Tsugumi, and Shoka are the only women playing the Reaper's Game. While there are a couple of female bosses, they either aren't on the battlefield at all in the case of Tsugumi, or have transformed into inhuman Noise in the case of Grus Cantus and Iris Cantus. However, both Nagi and Shoka appear on the player's side and can be attacked by Noise and the other teams.
• Mental Time Travel: Rindo's Replay power allows his consciousness to jump back to key points. However, it only works with those points which he's personally witnessed, he's relaxed enough to adequately recall, and with which he's engaged: he can't just jump back to an arbitrary point. Because this is UG Shibuya, this typically means moments when he's not fighting or running for his life.
• Metal Slime: Like the first game, there are rare Pig Noise that show up in most chapters, found in areas off the beaten path, which have their own rules and a time limit but reward money or rare Pins. The UI also changes to be more bright and colourful to match the Pigs this time, while the NEO mix of O-Parts plays. Pig Noise also get integrated into the story for the first time, being the focus of one of the early game missions.
• Mood Whiplash: Week 2 Day 2 is an otherwise normal mission but has a middle section that is jarringly depressing. While taking a visit to Center Street looking for Neku, the party is suddenly approached by a Variabeauty who begs them to help a living friend of his who is possessed by Noise in exchange for information on Neku's whereabouts. Said living person is grieving the death of her love and best friend, who is strongly implied to be the Variabeauty who asked them for help. Even Rindo and Nagi don't really know what to say to him after completing the Dive.
• Mood-Swinger: When diving into someone's mind, their current emotional state influences the color of the lighting and the type of Noise- for example, if they're angry, the lighting is red and the Noise do more damage, but if they're sad, the lighting is blue and the Noise drain HP. A lot of people frequently jump from one emotion to another from round to round.
• Money for Nothing: Generally averted, as the game provides increasingly more expensive ways to throw money away at stuff that's otherwise impossible to get. Your money limit is 9,999,999 yen after buying both ShibuPay capacity upgrades, but the game will still try to sell you a Pin that costs a whopping 3,300,000 yen.
• Musical Nod: The theme song used in the announcement trailer segues into the instrumentals and vocals of "Twister -Solo Remix-", the theme song of the original The World Ends With You.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: During the ending, Beat gets ready to jump a guy who's trying to hit on Rhyme.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In one scene from Another Day, Neku and Beat note that they're getting a lot less screentime than their teammates and leave to play a few rounds of Tin Pin Slammer; a minigame from the first game that was the main focus of its own Another Day chapter.
  • Rhyme mentions that she communicates with Coco using Reaper Creeper, another game mechanic in the previous game.
  • Outside of croaky panic, there's a display covered in pins that appeared in the first game.

N-Z

• Needle in a Stack of Needles: Day 5's target is a specific golden Pig Noise, with smaller, less valuable gilded Pig Noise scattered throughout. Halfway through the day, an imprinting mistake on the Wicked Twisters' part makes the needle-stack even bigger, with impostor Pig Noise absolutely flooding Shibuya, which makes finding even the less-valuable ones a trial.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The final gameplay trailer shows the Wicked Twisters fighting a boss Noise. Sho is in the party, even though in the game proper he's long since left the Wicked Twisters, and Beat would have been in his place.
  • Neku is given a major overhaul, now having blonde hair along with black clothes, a hood, and a face mask. It's revealed during Week 2 that this isn't Neku at all, it's really Beat. The real Neku does eventually show up during Week 3, albeit looking more similar to how he was in the first game.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Neku, Shiki, and Beat decimating the ranks of the Shibuya Reapers in the previous game has left them with only a skeleton crew, allowing the Shinjuku Reapers to move in and take over their Game.
  • In Day 5, Rindo and the gang Imprint on Ryoji to help him sell some ugly pig plushies, which turns out to generate worthless Pig Noise that are preventing them from tracking down the real golden Pig Noise. Thankfully, Rindo is able to go back in time and fix it, allowing them to complete the day's mission.
  • In Week 2 Day 5, the Wicked Twisters help out Ryoji again, this time to sell iris flowers, which are supposed to pass your bad luck to the person you give them to. A later sidequest on the same day has Eiji Oji feeling ill, seemingly due to having just received an iris flower from a fan.
• No Communities Were Harmed: Inverted; several thinly-veiled renames of real places from the first game have been undone in this one — "Towa Records" is back to its real-world name of "Tower Records". Played straight with the 104 Building, which retains its changed name.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The Wicked Twisters decide to help out Ryoji sell his ugly pig plushies by imprinting a winning sales pitch onto him. This bites them in the ass when said pig plushies cause fake golden Pig noise to proliferate all over Shibuya, making it that much harder for them to find the real one, which forces Rindo to go back in time to rectify his mistake.
• No-Sell: The Plague Noise are immune to damage and force the Wicked Twisters to run a few times until they figure out that using a blacklight will expose them as a counter.
• Nothing Left to Do but Die: Shoka. Rindo is shocked to learn that leaving the Reapers guarantees erasure, but doubly shocked to learn that Shoka knew that, and is quite prepared to be erased rather than eternally run the Reaper's Game. Eventually subverted when Joshua shows up and teleports Shoka into the RG.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: At the end of Week 2, when the Wicked Twisters actually manage to beat Tsugumi, putting them in first place and dethroning the Ruinbringers as the week's leaders due to the points earned from the act, Shiba turns up, reveals himself as the Ruinbringers' actual leader, and summons a horde of Plague Noise to threaten Rindo and the others into conceding their 'loss' against Tsugumi and putting the Ruinbringers back in first place for the week, or he'll have them Devoured by the Horde and take the points advantage that way. The Wicked Twisters reluctantly give in to his demands, facing the fact that it's impossible to win the reaper's game fairly unless they get stronger than Shiba and the Ruinbringers by the end of the next week.
• Ontological Inertia: The Secret Reports note that Shibuya River should have disappeared with Shinjuku, but it still continues to exist on its own plane.
• Painting the Medium: At the start of the demo, Rindo can hear dialogue from random faceless NPCs as he passes by them on the street. One of the first clues that something's amiss is that after Rindo and Fret grab lunch, all of the NPC speech bubbles become thought bubbles, representing the Mind Reading effects of the Player Pins kicking in.
• The Plague: The appropriately-named Plague Noise are essentially a monstrous form of one. They appear as glass-like, transparent Noise that proliferate quickly compared to normal Noise and attack both Players and living humans alike. They have the ability to possess people like normal Noise, but upon possession they function as a Hate Plague that causes the host to become violently hostile; if left untreated, the Plague Noise will devour the host's Soul, leaving them an Empty Shell before jumping to any nearby targets. The only way to stop them is erasure, but they are intangible normally and can only be rendered vulnerable through exposure to ultraviolet light (which incidentally renders them visible to RG people who have a "sixth sense"). A dangerous side effect of Plague Noise effectively existing in a limbo state between the RG and the UG is that they slowly erode the metaphysical barriers between the two existential planes, which can cause the RG and UG to merge with devastating consequences.
• Plot Hole: At the start of the game, Rindo and Fret are introduced to the Reaper's Game when they inadvertently walk into a battle between Players and Noise, during which an explosion flips a truck that crushes Fret and triggers the first use of Rindo's time travel powers. However, later in the game, they are told that Noise battles still take place on a slightly different plane of existence than the UG, thus making it highly unlikely that Rindo and Fret are able to just waltz into a combat situation without realising that they have Player powers. It's possible that Kubo interfered somehow, since he needed Rindo to start using the Replay pin to build up Dissonance Noise and to have a good reason to reset the timeline, as well as highlighting the benefits of relying on his Reset Button abilities of his own free will.
• Plot Tailored to the Party: The plan to counter the Soul Pulvis by cheering up all of Shibuya at once required the help and powers of every character still around by that point. Except Beat. Even if she feels bad about it, Rhyme couldn't fit him or his Soundsurf anywhere in the plan, so he's just kinda left on standby until the Final Boss shows up.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Neku is on the cover art and shows up to join the party though that's really Beat. The real Neku joins the party after W3D4 and Shiki, Joshua, and Rhyme all appear in person on The Last Day.
• Product Placement: In addition to the game's own made up brands, there's a shop on Cat Street that sells clothing from the real-life fashion label BLACK HONEY CHILI COOKIE.
• Promoted to Playable: Sho Minamimoto, who was the boss of the second week in the first game, is alive and a playable character in NEO.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: After Haz erases Kubo and his noise Shibuya is finally safe, albeit at the cost of Rindo's friends. Rindo however decides to turn back time, explicitly risking the lives of everyone in the city, because he personally doesn't feel it was worth it. This is portrayed as a positive decision rather than a highly selfish one.
• Puppet Fighter: Every playable character is assigned to a button depending on the pin they have equipped, allowing you to control up to six characters at once. Be careful about using multiple pins simultaneously, though, because it multiplies the damage you receive if you get hit by an enemy attack.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Rindo's second attempt at the final day does save Shibuya from destruction, but at the cost of the erasure of EVERY other member of the party. Rindo eventually decides that Shibuya is empty without his friends, and when given the chance by Hazuki, decides to rewind time one more time to try for an outcome where Everybody Lives, even though this risks them failing and dooming the city.
• Rare Random Drop: A bit more pronounced with pin drops than it was in the previous game. TWEWY had all boss enemies except for a specific two made into Blue Noise after beating the game, making the rest chainable even if they weren't otherwise; those two had all of their drops with at least a 1% drop chance, so you could always guarantee the drop from a given enemy if you were prepared. NEO doesn't do the same honor; Susukichi and Mr. Mew's second fights only appear in the post-game Boss Rush, while the Plague Nemopilema, Felidae Cantus and the Alpha versions of Grus Cantus, Iris Cantus, Cervus Cantus, and Shiba can't be chained at all; each of these enemies has at least one drop with less than 1% base chance.
• Real-Place Background: And how. The game's map corresponds closely to real-life Shibuya and the appearances of locations are nearly exact, and even many of the shops and destinations in the game have real-life equivalents (the Hachiko Cafe in the first area, for example, is exactly where a Starbucks is in real life). Even the money system, "ShibuPay", is a reference to "UnionPay", a real service that's heavily advertised in the area.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The demo prominently features new rearrangements and remixes of songs from the original game, on top of brand-new songs.
• Red Herring:
  • During the prologue, Rindo keeps bumping into other people because he's looking at his phone while walking, with Fret warning him that it's dangerous. It can be easy to assume that Rindo's obliviousness got them into a fatal accident offscreen on their way to the Scramble Crossing, which is how they ended up in the Reapers' Game, but it's eventually revealed that the two of them never died and got dragged into the Game by the Player Pins Fret bought.
  • Also in the prologue. For anyone who played the first game, they might recognize the person who returns Rindo’s pin as Joshua, based on his pants. Because Swallow says that they’re in the Scramble Cross, it is easy to assume that Swallow is Joshua because Joshua was at 104 when he returns Rindo’s pin, which isn’t far from the Scramble Cross. Joshua isn’t Swallow, Shoka is. She’s the first person Rindo and Fret meet in the Scramble Cross. On closer inspection, Swallow is quite sassy in their text messages, which can also make players think Joshua is Swallow. There’s only one other character who is sassy, Shoka.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The Final Gameplay trailer opens up with a red sky over a destroyed Shibuya.
• Retcon: Neo's Secret Reports contradict some details from the original Secret Reports.
  • The Angels were previously established to have thought Shibuya as the optimal parallel world after its Game. However, the previous game's events are now dubbed Shibuya’s impurification with most Angels in favor for its destruction and turning a blind eye to Kubo's actions.
  • The Producer's identity, role, and existence is a crucial secret that is only supposed to be known by the Composer for the sake of the UG and RG. The NEO reports mention that some Reapers have tried to contact Hanekoma and that his cafe is welcome to them.
    • It is hinted in the first game that Kariya will figure out who Hanekoma is, so it isn’t out of the realm of possibility he and other Reapers could figure it out, especially since Hanekoma was someone who suspiciously had access to the UG, has extensive knowledge of the Reapers’ Game and is not a Reaper they know.
• Ret-Gone:
  • The Reaper Pins that are used to pull living Players into the UG have this side effect. Rindo, Fret, Nagi, and Beat having been pulled into the Game means that no one in the RG remembers them except for those who have already been to the UG before. Their erasure just cements this: Rindo's second attempt going through the Final Day leaves him the Sole Survivor, and when he's returned to the RG, everyone but him has forgotten about his friends.
  • The Inversion causes entire cities, or even individual wards of a city on Tokyo's scale, to be erased from reality and memory. When the Wicked Twisters learn about this, they're shocked that a city could just up and vanish like that without them having heard about it, but show they indeed have lost any memory of Shinjuku.
  • Kubo's exorcism takes this to another level. Even in the UG, people only vaguely recall him when directly reminded, and Kubo is still physically gone when Rindo travels back in time to before it happened. However the consequences of his actions still remain and the heroes are left to deal with it.
• The Reveal:
  • The mysterious girl who first appeared in Solo Remix is revealed to be named Tsugumi Matsunae. Her true role is the Sole Survivor of Shinjuku's destruction whom the cast go to for answers and the one responsible for the visions that Rindo and Neku receive.
  • When Neku faces off against Tsugumi, he reveals that he's actually Beat.
  • The leader of the Ruinbringers turns out to be Shiba, the Conductor himself, thereby making it basically impossible to defeat the Ruinbringers conventionally. This reveal drastically changes the setup of Week 3, where all pretences of a normal Game are dropped as the Players and Reapers go head-to-head.
  • A good chunk of Week 3 involves providing clarity to a bunch of events that occurred during Final Remix and the Time Skip. Coco murdering Neku was an extremely desperate plan to get Neku over to Shinjuku's UG and attempt to prevent its Inversion and save Tsugumi from being Erased, although Joshua did the honors of sending Neku to Shinjuku after his death due to lack of trust in Coco. As a result of Joshua's interference, Neku was unable to leave Shinjuku's UG for three years and teamed up with Coco to investigate the reason for Shinjuku's Inversion, but during Shibuya's time of need Coco returned to help protect the city and Neku was allowed back into Shibuya to team up with Rindo. Coco resurrecting Minamimoto was also a contingency plan of hers that happened to benefit the heroes in the long run.
  • The identity of Swallow is revealed to be Shoka, who reveals this to Rindo right as she gets erased during the second attempt of the Final Day. Then gets inverted when Rindo reveals to Shoka after the third attempt that he knows she's Swallow.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Kubo promises Motoi entry into the Reapers in exchange for him spying on the other teams and relaying his findings to him. The mission to erase Shoka on Week 2, Day 6 was meant as his ultimate test — killing her would be what secures Motoi becoming a Reaper. Unfortunately, not only does he get his ass kicked by Shoka and the Wicked Twisters, Kubo never even told Shiba about Motoi like he said he would, which all but dooms Motoi to erasure on the following day when his team ends up in last place.
• Rewatch Bonus: After some later game reveals, going back to the earlier chapters can make you see scenes differently, especially knowing who Swallow is or knowing that the Ruinbringers are a team of Reapers.
• Riddle for the Ages: Invoked by Minamimoto during Day 7. He neglects to show up during the initial battle with Susukichi, which goes awry for other reasons and forces a Replay on Rindo's part. When Rindo inquires as to why he sat the battle out, Sho points out that this version of him has no way of knowing why that version of him didn't contribute. This is likely a lie because Minamimoto says earlier that he wants to test a theory related to Rindo’s powers when Rindo is trying to ascertain how often and when he can use his powers, which he tests by forcing Rindo to Replay, confirming that the Dissonance Noise are coming from Rindo’s Replays. He also likely forced Rindo to Replay to see whether he can absorb the Dissonance Noise or not.
  Minamimoto: Any previous calculations got erased the second you revised the equation. No way to solve for that answer now.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory:
  • Since Rindo's brand of Time Travel is Mental Time Travel, this is Required Secondary Powers.
  • As it turns out, anyone who has been in the UG before Shinjuku got Inverted in Final Remix retained their memories of the city; all other living people had their memories of its existence deleted.
• Rivals Team Up: Kanon suggests this midway through Week 2. Her plan is for the Variabeauties and Wicked Twisters to team up to mute Tsugumi and Susukichi, force their captain out, mute him too and force the Ruinbringers into last place, erasing them and giving a Player team a chance of leaving the Game; the only amendment Rindo makes is ensuring Motoi's cooperation on the Final Day. This plan is so effective that the only reason it failed is because said captain is the Game Master and the Twisters couldn't harm his Plague Noise at the time.
  Kanon: Let's cut to the chase: why don't we work together? [...] C'mon. This Game's been bugging out for long enough. I say it's time we hit the reset button.
• Ruder and Cruder: Despite both having a Teen rating, the original game had almost no profanity, while NEO somewhat regularly has characters say "shit" or (less often) "asshole".
• Sacrificial Lion: All other player teams get erased at the end of each week to highlight how dangerous the Reapers' Game is. Kanon gets erased on Day 3 of Week 3, to instead show how dangerous the Plague Noise are.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: One Support Reaper tasks the Wicked Twisters with investigating urban legends, half of which are Players and Reapers alike screwing with people in the RG out of pettiness or profit.
• Self-Duplication: The Jelly Noise's main schtick is the ability to create copies of themselves^note unlike in the first game, where the original and spawned are distinct Noise. The original Jelly Madchester, Swechno and Neocoustic can be distinguished from the duplicates by the patterns in their bell, while the Jelly Germanic can create exact copies.
• Sequel Hook: The secret ending of Another Day reveals that the Minamimoto of the main universe is planning to challenge the Composer again.
• Set Bonus: Pins with a phase engraved into them are part of an ensemble. Most of them are some variant of increased damage or Reboot speed, but two of the standouts are the Yearlong Ensemble which massively boost the Life Drain effect of its pins and the Black Cat Ensemble which deals triple damage, just like the Darklit Planet set from the previous game.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Rindo's time reset ability is first put in use to save Fret from being crushed by a falling truck, and gets used all throughout the game whenever Rindo's first attempt at a day ends in disaster, which is often. Each time he uses the ability, the deleted timeline becomes fuel for a Dissonance Noise strong enough to destroy Shibuya which will be unleashed at the end of the Game, meaning he is unwittingly making sure the bad future of Shibuya's erasure will occur. Finally, Rindo uses it one last time to stop the Dissonance Noise itself and save his friends from erasure.
• Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Shiba has Plague Noise take the image of erased Players and Reapers to emotionally attack the Wicked Twisters. They're aware the Noise are just fakes and take them down, but it still troubles them to fight.
• Ship Tease: Plenty of moments shared between Rindo and Shoka during Week 3, complete with awkward conversations and a lot of blushing. Day 2 specifically has Rindo use Replay to avoid Shoka making a rash decision to save Ayano, complete with Rindo comforting her throughout the day and ends and saying variations of "I'm here for you" three times total.
• Shout-Out:
  • Rindo met his friend Swallow through Fantasy GO (or FanGO for short), an ARG where you catch monsters on the streets of Shibuya. Specifically, the monsters in that game are Final Fantasy monsters, such as a Nutkin.
  • Fret calls scanning his "galaxy brain". Just to make sure you never forget it, he'll frequently begin battles with a cry of "Galaxy brain, activaaaaaate!"
  • At one point, Fret asks Rindo if he's "Dr. Zoolittle".
  • A sidequest on Day 7 involves a Reaper who's essentially a walking movie buff, quoting lines such as "You feelin' lucky, punk?" and "Then say hello to my little friends!".
  • While looking for Neku, Fret finds a bystander noticing someone acting "sus" — and when reporting this to Rindo, he says that the someone could be an impostor.
  • Somebody on the localisation team seems to be a big fan of RuPaul's Drag Race and related media, since there are quite a few nods to it in this game:
    • One of the thoughts from an NPC that can be scanned is titled "Inner Saboteur".
    • Fret lets out an "And I oop!" after Nagi shuts him down at one stage.
    • Members of the Variabeauties can shout "Work, henny!" during battle.
    • "The level of incompetence...far too much."
    • At the end of Week 2, Shiba tells Rindo and Kanon "Two teams stand before me..."
      Shiba: This is your last chance to impress me and save Shibuya from erasure.
    • "Wait, fracking!?" "Uh, no." "Not that."
  • Pin 267 is named "Doku Doku Panic".
  • Sometimes when escaping random battles after Shoka joins the party, she will say "I pretend I do not see it."
  • Sometime in Week 3, Shoka hits Rindo with "That's rough, buddy."
  • Continuing the trend of The Wizard of Oz references from the first game:
    • Our playable team is named The Wicked Twisters.
    • When Nagi breaks into stuttering "Tomonamoamonamo...", Fret asks her if that was some kind of magic spell.
    • The heroes could have gone back home at any time just by giving up a pair of red-colored accessories they took from the villain at the beginning of the adventure.
    • In the epilogue, Tsugumi (who dresses like a palette-swapped Dorothy) says "There's no place like home, right?"
  • One of the Purehearts dips in and out of speaking French, and refers to the Wicked Twisters as "Les enfants terribles".
  • When using a Heavy Slugger Psych, Nagi sometimes exclaims "ATATATATATATATA!"
  • During the final attack on Phoenix Cantus, a few party members strike poses bearing resemblance to attacks in Dragon Ball Z. Nagi does a Kamehameha, Shoka does a Masenko, and Rindo does a Spirit Bomb. These are the same poses the Twisters make when they use charge attacks like bombs.
  • Shibuyapalooza in Another Day shares a similar name to the real-life Lollapalooza music festival located in Chicago.
  • Leo Cantus Armo's armored form bears a resemblance to some iterations of Ganon from The Legend of Zelda, resembling a boar with an added red, fire-like mane, specifically Ganon's appearances in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and The Legend Of Zelda Breathof The Wild.
  • Mind-reads in this game have attached Twitter-esque handles; one for a young rail enthusiast is @TaroTheTankEngine
  • After relaying The Reveal about Kubo's Angel status to Hishima, the Reaper is unsurprised. He relays his logic to the party: "After eliminating the impossible, he was the only one remaining."
  • There are some references to Kingdom Hearts here and there.
    • On Week 1, Day 5, the Twisters have to answer a three-stage password. The answer to the third part is Simple and Clean.
    • The title for Week 3, Day 2 is called Dearly Beloved.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: Several characters returning from the first game have changed their outfit style in some way, reflecting Shibuya's ever changing fashion trends and a significant amount of time passing between TWEWY and NEO.
  • Coco is the most straightforward as she completely revamped from an obnoxiously bright Harajuku-style fashion to a more contemporary at time of release princess-style look.
  • Uzuki now wears formal business attire, reflecting her promotion within the Reaper hierarchy and alignment with the Shinjuku Reapers. Conversely, Kariya retaining his style from the first game demonstrates his lack of change overall in the three year Time Skip.
  • Beat now doesn't wear a beanie and now wears a black hoodie and doesn't have as many chains to represent how he is Older and Wiser now, albeit not much smarter. He also has a hairstyle similar to Neku's to not only commemorate him but also to reflect this.
  • While Neku's preference in color hasn't changed, his ensemble has switched from Jupiter of the Monkey threads over to Gatto Nero and he no longer wears headphones, affirming his friendship with Shiki and his character development from the last game.
• Sixth Ranger: Shoka becomes this, joining the party at the end of Week 2.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: Subverted. Shoka initally joins the Wicked Twisters as The Mole in order to redeem herself in the eyes of the Reapers. However, her guilt over betraying the Twisters and her love of Shibuya causes her to refuse to come back to the Reapers, defecting from them in favor of the Twisters.
• Shown Their Work: Rindo is an avid player of Fantasy GO, but finds that he cannot play it during the Reaper's Game, which takes place in the UG. Furthermore, at several points, the party has to rely on directions to find their way to their destination, despite Rindo often looking up other information on his phone, indicating any GPS functions of Players' phones are non-functional during the Game. The latter helps to explain the former; FanGO is an Expy of Pokémon GO, which doesn't work if the user's location data is unavailable or tampered with.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Shiki only turns up during the last hour of the game but plays an instrumental role in helping avert The End of the World as We Know It, repairing Mr. Mew so that Tsugumi can return to her body and convince Shiba to help the heroes prevent Shibuya's Inversion.
• Spoiler Cover: Shoka is clearly plot-relevant since she's with the main cast on the cover art (and the title screen) despite being a Reaper which foretells her joining the Wicked Twisters, since all the other Wicked Twisters besides Neku are present.
• The Stinger: The main story and Another Day both have unlockable post-credit scenes.
  • Finishing the game again after getting every Secret Report leads to Joshua and Haz going over their actions in the Game.
  • Finishing Another Day after beating its 3 bonus fights, all in the same run, leads to Minamimoto's Inner Monologue about using Soul Pulvis's power to regain his strength and taking on the Composer again.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • Whenever Fret uses his "Remind" psych, it's accompanied by a childish doodle of whatever he's trying to remind his target about.
  • The brand croaky panic leans heavily into this, with the clothing consisting of cheap-looking novelty items and the pins all sporting crude, simplistic designs.
• Super Boss: The most powerful enemy in the game is a souped up version of Minamimoto's Leo Cantus called Felidae Cantus, fought as part of an optional challenge in Another Day.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Playing a life and death game for weeks straight takes its toll on the characters. One or two members from each rival team express that they’re on edge and are sick of playing the game, which makes sense because they’ve been playing the game for over 30 weeks. It doesn’t take one week for Rindo to also express the same sentiment. After failing to win in their first week of the Reapers’ Game, Rindo and Fret are on edge and dejected that they have to play another week.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Most of the first game's clothing brands have been phased out in favour of new ones, with only three of the originals making a return. However, many of the new brands bear a striking resemblance to their predecessors, even beyond their shared Eastern Zodiac Animal Motifs:
  • Joli Bécot provide flashy club wear with a light cowboy motif, just like D+B did in the first game.
  • Cony x Cony's main store is located just down the road from where Lapin Angelique used to be, and takes its place as the source of fantastical Elegant Gothic Lolita clothing.
  • garagara deals in vintage '70s clothing much like Hip Snake, just with even more emphasis on the hippie vibes.
  • Il Cavallo Del Re is this game's provider of high-end Italian formalwear in the same vein as Pegaso.
  • Hog Fang is practically Wild Boar in all but name, offering American-style street clothes inspired by hip-hop and skater culture.
  • Shepherd House and Top o' Topo are an interesting case. While their styles closely match brands from the first game (Mus Rattus' simple but affordable clothes and Sheep Heavenly's vivid, girly apparel, respectively), their animal motifs have traded places — Top o' Topo represents the rat instead of the sheep, and the opposite is true of Shepherd House.
• Temporal Mutability: Rindo's ability to Mental Time Travel gives him a Temporal Balancing Act flavor, allowing him to alter any event he wants as long as he is able to travel to that specific point in time and have enough influence on the outcome, and once he hits the "Change Our Fate" button all previous timelines are overwritten by the new one. That last bit becomes one of the biggest plot twists in the game, as the act of destroying dead timelines produces Dissonance as a side effect since all of the cognitive energy of every living entity in a dead timeline has nowhere to go once it's overwritten.
• Timed Mission: Each Dive has a time limit which, if left to run out, will automatically end the Dive and force the player to try again.
• Time Rewind Mechanic: This is one of the primary mechanics of the out-of-combat gameplay, alongside Impressing innocent Shibuya travelers with memes (previously seen in the original), Diving into their brains, and helping them reassemble their memories. In the original trailer it's shown when Rindo helps Nagi obtain a merchandise pin for which she was desperately hoping, before she was thrown into the Shibuya UG.
• Time Skip: NEO takes place three years after the original game, during which Shibuya underwent some changes in structure and style as well as some brands rotating out in favor of new ones.
• Totally Radical: Beat can come across this way. This can even come up in some of the translation changes in the user interface: the "CHANCE!" and "GOOD!" attack indicators in the original Japanese are changed to "DROP THE BEAT!" and "SICK!" in the English translation.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • The trailers for the game cover the major event of Week 2 Day 2 where the party encounters Neku, and the cover prominently features his new Darker and Edgier design. Both of these are to deceive the audience, as the trailer stops right before "Neku" is revealed to actually be Beat.
  • The final gameplay trailer and its thumbnail include a menacing shot of Kubo standing before Rindo and his shattered Player Pin amidst the ruins of Shibuya, giving away that he's a much bigger threat than he lets on.
• Triumphant Reprise: The game's intro theme, NEW GAME, consists of four different tracks being World is Yours, Twister, a brief bit of INCONGRUOUS, and We're Losing You, all only playing bits and pieces. World is Yours itself plays in full at the end of the game as the Final Boss theme, sounding more upbeat and more produced, with the song reflecting Rindo's journey throughout the game.
• Twin Banter: The owner and shopkeeprs of Cony x Cony are twins and speak in such way.
• Unmoving Plaid: In all official artwork, the plaid on Fret's pants is jarringly flat, perpendicular to the viewer. Averted with his in-game model, on which the plaid wraps to the surface like any texture.
• Upgraded Boss:
  • Week 2, Day 7 features two rematches against Susukichi and Mr. Mew, who use mostly the same attacks when fought in Week 1, Day 7 and Week 2, Day 2.
  • Another Day features more powerful Alpha versions of the Shinjuku Reapers.
• Variable Mix: Using Soundsurf on the overworld adds a beatboxing track to the music.
• Video Game 3D Leap: Zigzagged. As opposed to the 2D sprite-based first game, the announcement trailer shows that NEO has full 3D environments and gameplay. That said, the game does make use of Cel Shading in order to give the 3D graphics the same kind of look as the 2D art. The game also still makes use of 2D art for cutscenes and character interactions.
• Video Game Dashing: Once you get a specific party member on your team, you can access a special ability called Soundsurf on the overworld, allowing Rindo to dash around quickly. However, going hand in hand with the music theme of TWEWY, the dash can only be consistently maintained by tapping the dash button in steady rhythm to the music, and staying on-beat rewards additional Groove every few beats that can be brought into the next battle you fight. You can even do this in the final battle to dodge one of the final boss's attacks, and doing so boosts your Groove immensely.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: A problem for recurring NPC Eiru in-universe, whose distinctive high-pitched voice combined with his androgynous appearance and fashion sense often gets him referred to as a girl by people around him. This causes him a significant amount of angst, and it isn't until Eiji Oji sings his praises on live television that he starts to accept his voice as a unique part of his identity.
• Wallet of Holding: Simultaneously justified and averted. Since the party has access to modern tech everything is handled through ShibuPay, a digital wallet that holds all of your funds and can theoretically hold an unlimited amount of money. However, for some reason there is an arbitrary Cap on how much money you can hold despite this and you must expand it by buying Social Network bonuses.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: As it turns out, everything Coco did in "A New Day" — up to and including murdering Neku — was actually a desperate attempt to save Shinjuku from destruction. As such, Neku is forgiving enough to consider her a friend by the time of NEO, where Coco helps to save Shibuya.
• Wham Episode:
  • Week 1, Day 7. Just like in the first game, it turns out the game isn't over yet after one week. The Wicked Twisters fight Susukichi and barely manage to win thanks to the help of a mysterious person assumed to be Neku. However, because Neku interfered with the fight, Shiba declares the final mission null and void and declares the Ruinbringers as the winners. The Wicked Twisters are allowed to play for another week, but the Deep Rivers Society gets erased for coming in last, proving to the Twisters that their existences are at stake. And to top it all off, Minamimoto leaves the team, leaving the Twisters with very little chance of winning again without his help.
  • Week 2, Day 2. The person who everyone thought was Neku actually turns out to be Beat, who ends up joining the Wicked Twisters.
  • Week 2, Day 7. Just when it seems like the Wicked Twisters have finally defeated the Ruinbringers and come out on top, it turns out their leader is none other than Shiba, who coerces Rindo into conceding lest the Twisters all be erased by Plague Noise. Shiba promptly pushes the Game into its third Week, and Motoi's attempted redemption is cut short when he and the Purehearts are erased by Shiba for being in last. Also, Shoka, who joined the team earlier that day, is revealed to have been spying on them for a chance at rejoining the Reapers, only to shock both Shiba and Rindo by saying she wants to stay with the Wicked Twisters.
  • Week 3, Day 4. Minamimoto returns, absorbing the strange birds Rindo's been seeing (revealed to be Noise) and seemingly becoming Brainwashed and Crazy... only to be defeated by the real Neku upon his sudden return. It's also revealed that the bird Noise are created as a by-product of Rindo using Replay, as well as that Replay is a power that should be beyond even Reapers.
• Wham Line:
  • On Week 2, Day 2, after rescuing who is implied to be the Legendary Player, Neku, the person finally speaks in a pattern familiar to those who played the first game:
    "Neku": S'all comin' back to me now. Listen up, yo. I ain't Neku. The name's Beat, yo!
  • On Week 2, Day 6, Rindo repeatedly rewinds time to stop Shoka from killing Motoi. This line from Shoka, however, which the Wicked Twisters hear the final time they listen in on the conversation, turns the entire conversation on its head and reveals that Shoka was helping the Wicked Twisters while Motoi was only out for himself.
    Shoka: (to Motoi) I know you're the one who's been tattling on me to Ayano and Kubo.
  • On Week 2, Day 7, the Ruinbringers' leader reveals himself and shows why the Ruinbringers have an unbroken winning streak.
    "Allow me to re-introduce myself: I am your illustrious Game Master... the Ruinbringers' leader... the one and only... Shiba Miyakaze."
  • In this exchange near the end of the game, Shoka reveals her identity as Rindo's internet friend Swallow.
    Shoka: And here I was... thinking we could finally play together in person.
    Rindo: Huh?
    Shoka: FanGO. The new update oughta be out by now, right?
    Rindo: How do you even know that?
    Shoka: Uh, 'cause we've been playing together for ages?
• Wham Shot: After defeating Tsumugi's Mr. Mew dolls during Week 2, Day 7, she refuses to accept defeat and begins transforming into a Noise which, to those who played the first game, reveals that the Ruinbringers are Reapers.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: A minor case — Ayano's pet iguana is never mentioned in any capacity and its fate is never addressed after Ayano herself dies.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: Anyone can wear any clothes in the game and nobody bats an eyelid; there isn't even a Bravery requirement for men to wear women's clothes as there was in the previous game(in which women's clothes usually have a significantly higher Bravery requirement, and Shiki starts with a rather high Bravery stat despite being the first partner).
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: The Ruinbringers always maintain such a huge lead that they can sit out entire missions and still keep the top spot. This is one of the first hints that the game is rigged in their favour.
• Wreaking Havok: The Psychokinesis Psych allows the user to generate a giant piece of rubble, then use the left analog stick to roll it around and crush foes under its massive weight.
• Xanatos Gambit: Kubo's main plan is for Shiba to cause the Inversion with his Plague Noise, but as a backup, he gives Rindo the Replay power to bring about the creation of the Soul Pulvis, which would do the same thing. If Shiba is beaten or makes a truce, the Inversion still happens. The protagonists only beat this by arranging a complicated plan that might not have even worked if Kubo hadn't been exorcised from the entire timeline.
• You Are Too Late:
  • When Ayano inflicts herself with Plague Noise, the Wicked Twisters find out from a Reaper that the event happened the day before, making it too late to do something about it and too far back to use Rindo's Replay to stop it.
  • This game reveals that Coco's extreme actions in "A New Day" were all in a desperate attempt to stop Shinjuku's Inversion, but done too late to save it.
• You Have Researched Breathing: For some reason, you need to buy the ability to vault over any Insurmountable Waist Height Fences you come across.
• You Wanna Get Sued?: The Roller Skates' description has the croaky panic shopkeeper talk about "Moonlight Locomotive" which has someone attempt to correct it to Starlight Express until they're told to stop before they get into trouble.

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And with that, I bid you adieu.

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