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Fridge Brilliance
- In the first game Minamimoto called the Players "yoctograms". When partnering up with the Wicked Twisters, he refers to them as "zeptograms", which is slightly greater than a yoctogram. Guess Minamimoto has grown a bit since the last game... or just sees the teens as slightly more useful to him since they're supposed to work together as a team in this Reaper's Game.
- Early in the game Minamimoto refers to the Reaper's Game as a 142857, or a cyclic number. Aside from foreshadowing the fact that the Wicked Twisters will have to cycle through the Game multiple times, the term cyclic number translates to "Phönixzahl", or phoenix number, in German. Sure enough, the cyclical Reaper's Game (and in turn, the cycle that leads to Shibuya's inevitable erasure), is broken when the Twisters erase Phoenix Cantus.
- Fret's first use of Remind is actually seen in the cutscene at the end of the prologue, when he's trying to remember the term for the superpowers he sees other players using. He ends up Reminding Rindo that it's called psychokinesis.
- The battle with the Soul Pulvis is a perfect way to cap off Rindo's Character Development. Every time he uses his Mental Time Travel they multiply and grow stronger, and he mostly uses it for two reasons; either he failed to make a decision when it mattered the most and it led to disaster down the line, or he made a decision, only to second-guess himself later and go back to try something else instead. In other words, every time Rindo fails to make a decision or tries to un-make a decision, it ends up generating more Soul Pulvis. The final battle is essentially a character whose Fatal Flaw is his indecisiveness confronting the manifestation of all the decisions he never made.
- The Plague Noise aren't weak to blacklights just because; it's ultraviolet radiation that exposes them. The first time you "fight" them, it's in the shadows of Center Street, where not a lot of sunlight gets through. The next encounter, where Shiba summons a horde of them, is at night. As for Week 3, where they are at their most copious, an alien sky is blocking out the sun. Further, ultraviolet radiation is a counter to many forms of externally-spread and airborne diseases, which is fitting of the virulent and destructive Plague Noise.
- Both NEW GAME (the intro theme) and INCONGRUOUS are mix of completely different genres, and may as well be multiple different songs in a single track. Sounds pretty dissonant, noisy at times even. It's only fitting then that part of the intro theme becomes the Final Boss theme against the giant Dissonance Noise Phoenix Cantus.
- Leo Cantus Armo and Felidae Cantus are weak to Water affinity Psychs. One could chalk this up to his use of fire attacks, but also, he's basically a giant cat.
- Shiba is weak to wind - he's represented by butterflies, an insect who's flight may be greatly disrupted by strong gusts.
- Another way to look at Shiba's weakness could be the relation to his frequent verbal motif of using heat-related vocabulary. Wind might snuff out a flame. Alternatively, wind can also cause fire to stir and thrive - a possible indication that as Shiba's desires for a thrilling Reaper's Game grow stronger, they end up causing nothing but destruction to what he truly cares about, as seen with the fate of Shinjuku.
- Grus Cantus, Tsugumi's Noise boss form, has bird-based imagery, rainbow feathers during part of the fight, and an ultimate attack where they move out of the battlefield and fire a rain of projectiles from a distance... all traits that Phoenix Cantus, the final boss of the game, shares. An appropriate parallel, given that Tsugumi's future visions are in a sense a time-focused ability, just like Rindo's Replay.
- At first, it's easy to assume that Nagi does not like Fret because she sees him as an idiot. But when Beat joins the team in Week 2, she's a lot more respectful and encouraging to him despite being well...Beat. It's a pretty clever way to show that Nagi's issue with Fret is not that she thinks he's stupid but that she can tell that he's not acting genuine but Beat's not hiding himself so she has a lot more respect towards him than Fret.
- Why is Shoka able to get under Rindo’s skin so easily from the beginning, with Rindo wondering how does she manage to be so damn annoying? Because she’s Swallow. Rindo has been confiding in her for years, so she knows how to press his buttons.
- Swallow’s icon further foreshadows who they really are:
- If you look closely, not only does Swallow have the same color scheme as Shoka, black, white and purple, the purple can be misconstrued as orange from a distance, and if you look at the icon upside down, the swallow head looks like a cat head and looks a bit like a hood over the purple like Shoka’s Mr. Mew jacket hood. In fact, it has white eyes just like Mr. Mew. Furthermore, the swallow wings are angled a bit like Mr. Mew’s arms on hips pose. Swallows also have wings, like Reapers. The swallow tail can also be interpreted as a representation of her legs. So her icon can also be seen as an approximation of her appearance. This would also explain Shoka's choice of using a swallow for her online ID, because she otherwise has no bird themes. With that in mind, one can see her icon as being a representation of her character. When you look at Shoka from a different angle, the angle being when you learn that she's not only secretly helping Rindo and his team but also that she's Swallow, her actions take on different meaning.
- Swallow’s bird them can be a representation of Rindo and Shoka being Birds of a Feather because Rindo can be associated with the bird Dissonance Noise he’s been accidentally making.
- Motoi is the only major character to be a little rotund. You could say he's a big fat liar.
- The game has a subtle message about not being too attached to nostalgia. Characters from the first game don't appear much and even then, you know very little about them. You don't even learn much about Beat even though he's a party member for 2/3s of the game. Hanekoma, a major character from the first game doesn't even physically appear. In Week 2, Rindo is fixated on finding and recruiting Neku. This can be a meta representation of how some players wanted to play as Neku in the sequel and/or want Neku to show up asap. To cement this, Neku, the object of Rindo's interest in Week 2 doesn't join the fold until 3/4s into the last week. If you fixate too much on nostalgia, you don't learn the lesson you should learn from the current story and you won't enjoy it. The message can be as Hanekoma says in the first game, enjoy the moment.
- Another lesson in that vein is don't focus too much on prestige. This applies to both Minamimoto and Motoi. Rindo thinks highly of them because they're a strong veteran player and An0ther respectively and is blind to their faults as a result. Rindo also wants to recruit Neku because of his prestige.
- This also supports one of the aesops that you shouldn't judge people's worth based on their initial usefulness. Players who were surprised that Neku in Week 2 is actually Beat may be disappointed even if Beat is a well-liked character from the first game, like Rindo is initially. However, Beat ends up being useful for different reasons. While he isn't strong, Beat ends up being useful by being motivational at the team's time of need, something Minamimoto who is strong, like Rindo wanted in an ally, but is aloof and self-interested didn't do, and by using his Soundsurf powers.
- Being too focused on nostalgia can make the player themselves blind to one of the twists in the game, that Shoka is Swallow. If you think that Swallow is someone from the first game, characters you liked, such as Neku, Joshua or Hanekoma, you can easily miss the many hints that she's Swallow.
- This is also represented by Nagi's fixation on "Lord Tomonami". Like fans of the first game, Nagi is enamored with Minamimoto because he's a fan-favorite and as such, may ignore his characterization from the first game or even in this game.
- This is also represented by how at the end, the characters from the first game don't have a big role in the ending. The game is about the new characters, and as such, they play the biggest roles.
- Minamimoto resurfacing in the story in Week 3 Day 4, attacking Kubo and absorbing the Dissonance Noise then and there is not a random development. There's a good chance Minamimoto knows Kubo is not just a Reaper, so he not only takes the chance to sneak attack him, but try to absorb the Dissonance Noise to power himself up so he can destroy Kubo. The big threat he mentions that he needs to be strong enough to fight after his boss fight may be Kubo.
- On that same note, Kubo is missing right after Minamimoto attacks him. That was not only a misdirection to further deceive players into thinking Kubo is just a low-ranking Reaper but also that Kubo likely would have had to use some of his actual powers as Executor to defeat Minamimoto, which would show he is not a low-ranking Reaper and would reveal his true identity to not only Rindo's team, which contains Shoka, a Shinjuku Reaper like him and who would show the most surprise and initiative about this development, but also to other Reapers. So Kubo likely took the chance to run and keep his secret and fake his death to keep his secret further when Minamimoto went crazy from absorbing the Dissonance Noise.
- Each playable character’s stats reflect their strength in story:
- Minamimoto’s are a good amount higher than Rindo, Fret and Nagi’s because he’s been playing the current Reaper’s Game a lot longer than them and he was a former Game Master Reaper.
- Beat’s are below Rindo, Fret and Nagi’s because he has been out of practice for three years and those three have played the current Game for a week. His stats around the same as those three at the start of Week 1 because he got a living Player Pin too, which make Players more powerful than Players with regular pins.
- Shoka’s stats are around Beat’s when Beat joins because she never got a living Player Pin like those four, but doesn’t lag behind Beat’s because she was strong enough to win her Reaper’s Game and has been a Reaper for four years, so she’s stronger than an average Player.
- Neku’s stats are at best slightly below Rindo, Fret and Nagi’s, despite his legendary status because he is out of practice playing in the Reaper’s Games and hamstrung by the restriction to use one pin at a time in this Game instead of six in the last, so he lags behind those three, who have been playing the game for nearly three whole weeks. He also lags behind them because the three have living Player Pins, so they’re immediately stronger than the average player. He only doesn’t lag behind by much because he has strong Imagination.
- Unlike Minamimoto, Beat, Shoka and Neku are not stronger than Rindo, Fret and Nagi when they join the team. It is important because the three need to learn to not look for someone strong to carry them the same way they did with Minamimoto.
- The order of which the characters appear in the title sequence changes after players clear the main story for the first time. The order has some significance. In the first title sequence, Rindo appears last and by himself because it represents Rindo being closed off and not making much of an impact in the Game and in his own life at first because of his indecisiveness. In the second title sequence, Rindo is now the first character to appear to represent that his is now decisive and ready to lead. Shoka appears right after because she’s the deuteragonist to his protagonist. She appears after Rindo to represent that she’s his trusted friend and that Rindo isn’t closed off anymore. Neku is the last character to show up instead of Rindo because Neku is the least important party member, only showing up in the last quarter and only making two major contributions to saving Shibuya. Neku is more important to the story because of his legacy and prestige rather than his contributions. Neku appears last and by himself because he was separated from the rest of the playable characters and wasn’t even in Shibuya for most of the story. The last position can be seen as the bystander position as well. Rindo is in the bystander position because he doesn't want to make tough decision and he wants someone else to do it for him. Neku is in the bystander position because he ultimately has little impact on the story and is like a bystander because you don't learn much about him in the story.
- Why is Fret opposed to looking to recruit Neku? Not only did the lesson that you shouldn't look for someone strong to carry you sink in faster for him, he was probably reminded of his friend abandoning him even though Minamimoto being a friend to the team is a big stretch. It's also possible that he thinks the same situation with Minamimoto will happen again—someone strong like Minamimoto can ditch them too just like Minamimoto did.
- Minamimoto can be seen as a deconstruction of crutch characters. Because Minamimoto is a Crutch Character, the inexperienced Rindo, Fret and Nagi lean on him too much. If a crutch character is a lot stronger than their teammates to the point that they do almost all the heavy-lifting, there's no problems for them if they ditch their teammates, especially if they have no more use for those teammates. They'll have no problems ditching their teammates if they have a lack of morality and Lackof Empathy like Minamimoto does. Because he's so strong, the team was helping him more than he was helping them since he had his own agenda.
- Minamimoto and Neku are foils to each other in this story character-wise and in the roles they play. Both of them are veterans of the Reaper's Game and are powerful Players in the current Game. Minamimoto shows up from the start of the game and is a Guest Party Member while Neku shows up in the last quarter and is the Sixth Ranger. Minamimoto shows up at the beginning of the game but leaves the team after the first week while Neku shows up in the last quarter of the game but stays permanently. They both also don't have a unique psych that they contribute to the team, like Fret's Remind and Shoka's telewarp. Minamimoto is an Aloof Ally who barely cares about the team while Neku is The Mentor and is kind and nurturing to the team. The amounts their characters have changed also differ. Minamimoto is slightly nicer and not an antagonist but is otherwise the same person as in the first game. Neku has had a full character change and is now not bitter and cynical but kind and supportive. Minamimoto appears first but the Rindo, Fret and Nagi don't learn who he truly is until the last week. Neku doesn't appear until the last quarter of the story but the three learn about Neku as early as Week 2. Minamimoto is a Crutch Character that Rindo, Fret and Nagi rely too much on. The minute Minamimoto ditches them, they struggle to make it past a day. Minamimoto leaving is the start of the lesson for the three that they can't lean on someone strong to survive, and they have to learn to adjust accordingly. By the time the player gets Neku, they won't necessarily need him because they have already adjusted to not having a Crutch Character. The three not relying heavily on Neku shows that the three don't need to lean on someone strong anymore to survive. Lastly, Minamimoto was valuable because of his strength while Neku is valuable because of the nurturing and encouragement he gives.
- Shoka probably had to set her phone or her Swallow account on silent so that Rindo doesn't catch on that she's Swallow.
- In Week 2, Shoka gets defensive when Beat antagonizes the Shinjuku gang. Not only is that because she's not happy being grouped together with a group that Beat is making out to be a group of villains, but it's also because the gang is still like family to her despite their differences and Shiba's goal of destroying Shibuya. Also, Shoka knows that not every Shinjuku Reaper is a bad person or on board with that plan, telling by how in Week 3 Day 2, she says she wants to believe many of them are not on board.
- Unlike Neku, Rindo never puts down the object that represents his desire to not communicate with others, his face mask. Except he did. Throughout the game, Rindo is never allowed to wear his facemask again to obscure his mouth so he doesn't have to speak after the very beginning of the game. From the get-go, Rindo isn't allowed to shut himself out from those around him because he's the leader of his team. By the time of the third week, when he is referred to by his mask by Kariya and Minamimoto, Rindo is surprised each time, meaning he has basically forgotten he still has it on his chin. At that point, since Rindo still has on his mask on his chin by the ending, the mask really can be considered at most a form of fashion like Rindo lies about in week 1, especially because before he bumps into Shoka, he has no reason to have to keep it off.
- There is another object Rindo has that needs to put down though. His phone. Throughout the game, almost all of his sprites have him holding his phone. Even his field model has him holding his phone when he is not soundsurfing. This is represented by Rindo putting away his phone to physically reach out to Shoka when Shoka says that she and him can be real friends now.
- Why does Neku have Gatto Nero clothing or new clothing despite the fact that he was out of Shibuya for three whole years, and as such wouldn't be able to go clothes shopping? He clearly didn't go shopping either because he has no idea what brand his current clothes are or that Shiki is the designer of them. Because Coco probably got him changes of clothes and food while he was in the ruins of Shinjuku. There's a good chance that Coco got him Gatto Nero clothes because they were designed by his close friend.
- The opening is made up of snippets of events and includes flashes of important parts of the game, such as Rindo and Shoka's relationship, Kubo being more important than he looks, Rindo's multiple Time Travel efforts and Shiba's goal of destroying Shibuya and unlike the first game, the opening theme is a mashup of multiple themes that will play in the game rather than a main theme like Twister. The opening can be seen as a vision of the events of the game.
- Susukichi doesn't like situations that aren't black and white. That's because he is in one. He wants to stop Shiba from destroying Shibuya because he knows it's wrong but he doesn't want to turn on someone who leads him.
- There are four reasons why Shoka doesn’t reveal herself to be Swallow to Rindo.
- Shoka is not comfortable with personal relationships like Rindo.
- If Shoka reveals herself to Rindo, the other Reapers will know that she’s helping him and the Twisters because they would know she already knows Rindo and is close friends with him.
- If Rindo knows that Shoka is Swallow from the start, he will ask her directly for help. This will not only blow her cover more easily, but will also not teach Rindo that he needs to learn to survive on his own to survive the Reapers’ Game.
- By Week 3, Shoka has resigned herself to her fate of being erased at the end of the week, so she probably wanted to spare him the heartbreak, although it’s not impossible for Rindo to eventually figure out that she’s Swallow.
- It’s no wonder that Susukichi lost his fight to Shiba. In his Noise form, he’s a big target and slow. Shiba is not only a smaller target but also faster. Shiba is also generally not vulnerable unless he is making his own attack, either teleporting around or creating illusions of himself, making it even worse for a slow fighter like Susukichi.
- Unlike the other days where Rindo needs to use Replay to fix his mistake, Week 3 Day 4 has no hints or no seemingly irrelevant things that indicates that Rindo will need to Replay. There’s no way for the team to anticipate the Plague Noise being built up in Miyashita Park, besides just checking for a big Plague Noise making more Plague Noise. That’s because Kubo gave Rindo his Replay ability. Kubo can better anticipate if Rindo will need to Replay and can plan accordingly. Also, Kubo needs an extra Day of Rindo using his pin to make extra Dissonance Noise. Kubo doesn’t plan anything for the Final Day where he makes his reveal besides the team being winded after fighting Shiba because Soul Pulvis is already very strong at that point and any Replays will just make Soul Pulvis stronger. Case in point, even when the team is not winded and they have Shiba and Hishima, two strong Reapers helping, they still get defeated.
- Why does Minamimoto go through at least some Character Development despite his goal not changing? That’s because he had to hide in Shibuya’s UG for at least three years. He had to reflect on his actions and goals at least once. Watching the other teams play in Shiba’s Reaper’s Game probably made him reconsider treating others on his side as disposable trash so that he can better use them to reach his goal.
- Week 3 Day 2 is maligned for the difficulty of the multiple choice part where Rindo needs to mentally prepare Shoka to fight Ayano. This part is important for two reasons. For one, it highlights the simple fact that people are not always easily understandable. This applies to Shoka especially because are the players only now seeing her real colors. For two, it highlights one of the aesops of the game. One needs to see their circumstance and take action. Convenient answers are not always going to be around. It also highlights that Rindo needs to learn to understand his friends.
- Exorcism seems like a weird term compared to erasure but it makes sense for two reasons. For one, it makes sense, because it relates to Kubo being a Satanic Archetype and exorcism means to rid a person or place of an evil spirit, which Haz does by essentially erasing Kubo from Shibuya and Shinjuku physically and from the memory of everyone there. For two, it's possible that exorcise was chosen because it sounds similar to the word excise. Excising like erasing is the act of getting rid of something. But unlike the act of erasing in terms of say an artwork and in the game itself, erasing only gets rid of something in the present. Excising is the act of not only getting rid of something, but getting rid of something from the past as well. An example is getting rid of scenes of a character in a television series, not only from a recent episode but also from older episodes.
- Speaking of Kubo's exorcism, you'd think that with the sheer threat he posed in defying Hazuki's directives, the Composer (either Haz or Joshua) would have done something sooner, but then you remember that Angels aren't allowed to directly interfere with the Game, meaning they wouldn't act against Kubo unless he broke a cardinal rule. "But he was erasing Shibuya itself!", you might complain; yes, that defies the directives as mentioned, but he was doing it through proxies like Rindo and Shiba. So what was the impetus that got him exorcised? He attacked a Player unprovoked - namely, he broke Rindo's Player Pin. With that attack directly influencing the Game while it was still going, even if it was right at the end, every other infraction was weighed against him all at once, and he was exorcised in moments. Hazuki fixing the Pin afterwards was not just his Dare to Be Badass to Rindo, but also an apology from the Higher Plane for the infraction, allowing Rindo to replay the Game one last time without Kubo's hand on the scales.
- There is no major progression in the game's story because the Wicked Twisters are being put in the shoes of the other teams. Unlike the main characters of the first game, Rindo, Fret and Nagi don't have raw talent, so their bigger power doesn't make a difference because they can still be beaten by other teams who have been playing the Reapers' Game longer. The story only starts making major progress when the Twisters decide to stop playing by the rules when the possibility that the game is rigged comes up.
- This is illustrated in the Secret Reports. This Reapers' Game, unlike the first game's, is purely a competition and won't teach any valuable lessons by doing things like making Players have to learn to cooperate with one another's different and varied abilities and by taking an entry fee from them. As such, any Player can easily allow him or herself stay on the sidelines and let another team member make decisions, like Rindo does or a team can become too reliant on one team member to carry them like the Twisters do with Minamimoto or the other teams do with their team leader.
- This adds to the theme of the game. Going with the flow will not win the Twisters the game. They have to be actionable and look at their circumstance.
Fridge Horror
- Everyone remaining in timelines when Rindo leaves them persist until he returns to the future and changes fate, at which point their physical bodies are instantly disintegrated, leaving only their anguished souls to return to the main timeline as noise. He does this to his closest friends many many times, completely unable to tell that it works this way, until the last few uses, where the stakes are so high that it's worth it. Fret even asks at one point what will happen to them once Rindo leaves, and Beat consoles him by guessing that they'll just poof into the new timeline not remembering anything... If only.
- The plan to weaken Soul Pulvis is essentially making the old souls in the old timelines get overridden by the same soul in the new timeline. So they essentially do poof into the new timeline not remembering the old timeline.
- One of Motoi's crowdfunding campaigns during his boss battle is to add extra reinforcements to the Purehearts. That's scary when you think about how exactly you would add extra people to the UG. So is he paying to have them killed, or paying to have them kill themselves?
- Ayano going so far as to risk, and ultimately lose her own life trying to convince Shoka to come back to her takes on an even more tragic tone when the ending reveals the Shinjuku Reapers are barred from returning to the RG. Turning her back on the Reapers meant Shoka had submitted to certain erasure, and Ayano was fully aware of it.
- What foreshadows this is that Ayano says Shoka will be erased when she tries to convince Shoka to come back when Shoka decides to turn on the Shinjuku Reapers. She wasn’t saying she’ll be erased as a result of aligning with the Wicked Twisters and losing to the Shinjuku Reapers. She’s saying that Shoka will be erased either way. She will be erased if she fails to stop Shiba or be erased if she saves Shibuya.
- Shoka snitched on Rindo's Replay on W2D7, followed by Ayano Plague Noise-ing herself on W3D1 and announcing it on W3D2. Yep, Shoka knows she stopped any chance of saving her adoptive sister.
- Even if Susukichi's plan to keep the Twisters in the Shibuya River had worked, the Dissonance Noise in Rindo's Reaper Pin would most likely still had triggered at 4:44PM on The Last Day so long as Rindo was still alive by then. And given the River's connection to certain other places, that could have spelt disaster for the Higher Plane.
- According to the Secret Reports and implied dialogue from Kanon, she and the other two team leaders have been playing the Reaper's Game for at least thirty weeks. Thirty weeks playing the same rigged game over and over only for it to feel impossible to win will completely ruin your mental state. Fuya's seemingly over the top reaction to his erasure is now pretty justifiable, while Motoi's trickery and schemes to get out of this rigged game are at least understandable, and poor Kanon did everything she could and fought as fairly as she could, only for her to not only face erasure but suffer from Plague Noise taking over. Even though it's not explicitly explored, the toll the game had on the other team leaders meant that they could not catch a break.
- It's a good thing that Shoka Took The Bullet for Rindo in the second iteration of the final day. If Rindo took the hit, Rindo wouldn't have survived to attempt another Time Travel. If Shoka was the sole survivor, she would've been erased after the end of the Reapers' Game because of the Shinjuku Reaper rules, unless Joshua decides to throw her a bone, but Shoka would be left as the sole survivor of the team instead then. There's a good chance Haz would've not saved her from Kubo because he saved Rindo specifically to give him another opportunity for another chance to save Shibuya and his friends, especially because logically only someone holding that Pin can Time Travel. If Shoka didn't take the bullet, she would've either been erased or the sole survivor and friendless and alone again.
- Joshua does note he would have intervened if things got too hopeless so it’s likely he would have stepped in if Rindo was likely to be killed. Although whether or not he would revive Rindo and the others is unknown.
- For gameplay duration it's brief, but in the version of Shibuya Haz restores after exorcising Kubo, Rhyme must have no memory of her brother for the second time in as many games. Fortunately she is able to recover the memories this time around by Rindo negating Beat's erasure by Dissonance Noise.
