Headscratchers / NEO: The World Ends with You

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• When and why did Tsugumi receive Mr. Mew? Let's disregard the meta reason that Hype-chan had him in 2012. Secret Report 19 says that it's Shiki's Mr. Mew, but she still has him in her phone call with Neku at the end of "A New Day" when it's too late to stop Shinjuku's Inversion and presumably before Gatto Nero started up so the timeframe is a bit shaky. The same report also suggests that Coco stole it for Tsugumi, but why? Maybe a case could be made that the Threads system is canon, but why go out of the way to steal a stuffed cat as a good luck present when Shinjuku was on the line?
• At the very beginning of the game, a truck is apparently hit by a Noise, causing it to flip into Fret. Wait, there's trucks in the UG now? It's possible that the Noise just freaked out the driver and caused him to brake hard enough to flip the truck - but then, people in the UG can't bump into people in the RG, but can get hit by RG trucks?
• How did Shiba get people on board with destroying Shinjuku? The Executor did it, of course, and the Secret Report Hand Waves it as Shiba being exceptionally charismatic, but c'mon. The guy that everyone said was super nice suddenly wants to take down Shinjuku's Conductor and then wipe their own home and everyone in it out of existence? Hell, pretty much every named Shinjuku Reaper is against it. With Shibuya, it at least makes sense since they only have each other and anyone who openly objects is probably kicked out and erased, but how did no one stop this before Shiba came into power?
• Why are Nagi and Kanon the only women Players in the Reaper's Game?
  • They're probably not, but it's made to look that way just for the sake of The Law of Conservation of Detail.
• Why was Nagi wandering around without any team membership trying to buy mundane pins in the UG on the third day of the Reaper's Game? The other Twisters at least seem to have been briefed by a Reaper and registered using the RNS app.
  • She mentions getting briefed by a Reaper in Day 3's end and Day 4's beginning though she couldn't keep up with the explanation which combined with her lack of death, led to her not taking the situation seriously like Rindo and Fret. And well, she's a merch collector and she's damn well getting her merch.
• Beat was brought to the UG by one of the Player Pins handed out in the RG, same as all the other Twisters. So why does he get the option to not join the game as a Player?
  • It's because Beat has one of the living Player Pins that he was able to appear in the UG relatively undetected since those things just pull the owner into the UG. Since he went incognito and probably used his Soundsurf to avoid Reapers, they weren't sure of his identity and couldn't register him into RNS. If this instead refers to what Kubo said at the end of W2D2, then that wasn't much of an offer to join or not since he says "Welcome to the Reapers' Game, kid," right after.
• Why are the Variabeauties apparently erased when Kanon is? They weren't erased as a team for coming last, and only Kanon was specifically infected with Plague Noise.
  • Two potential possibilities are A: They got wiped off-screen without Kanon's leadership, B: Joining a team effectively forges a Pact with the leader and if they go down, the entire team does. B would certainly save Shiba some time from not having to hunt down all of the losing team.
  • They might just be exaggerating, i.e. the Variabeuties aren't literally gone after Kanon dies but they're essentially screwed with dwindling numbers and without their leader.
  • Week 3 is also sudden death. The rules of sudden death aren’t fully elaborated on, but it’s possible that sudden death allows the erasure of a team before the end of the week, instead of at the end of the week like in previous weeks, which makes sense because not fulfilling the week’s objective will result in all the teams’ besides the Ruinbringers’ team’s erasure.
  • Another possibility is that the erasure of anyone in a team will result in the whole team being erased. In gameplay, it takes only one character getting a death blow to get a game over. That character doesn’t have to be the team leader. Any damage done to a character is subtracted from the team’s life bar. In team boss battles, the team shares a life bar just like Rindo’s team. If the life bar, which is an aggregate of all the team members’ health is depleted, the team loses. It’s possible, story wise that enemy team members get knocked out of the battle after losing an individual life bar so that players can’t just dogpile on one team member.
• How exactly does Ryoji's shop work? It's out in the open. Do Players just materialize right in front of him and then disappear right before his eyes after leaving?
  • There might be a radius around his shop where Players become visible, kinda like it's treated as the interior of a store even though it isn't one.
    • There's some merit to the radius theory as Rindo and Fret (and the DRS members) were able to wait in line for the cafe on W1D3, something that wasn't possible in the first game from Neku and Joshua not being able to line up for Shadow Ramen before in W2D3. Joshua could've requested a store sticker buff after that incident.
• How is Motoi Anazawa aware of how having his team members talk covers up the player's view of the screen? And how does merely raising money allow him to win a battle in the UG?
  • It's likely that during that attack he just has his goons surround the Wicked Twisters, all talking at once to distract them, and that's represented by the speech bubbles. They're already present fighting alongside him anyway. The Fund Me Plz attack is a bit more curious, but isn't everyone powered by their Imagination? So whether he's actually raising money or not, it's the mere concept that powers him up, and the "funds" would probably be coming from his supporters.
• About Ayano's pet iguana, 1) what happens to it after she dies, and 2) if she's in the afterlife how does she have a normal living animal companion? Can Reapers bring live animals into the UG like they would items and clothing? Or do animals also go to the UG when they die?
• If Rindo's pin is the key to Kubo's plan, if it came down to it could he just destroy it? Granted there's no telling what would happen to him if he did, but given how he's still alive and well after it breaks on its own the one time, would that be an option?
  • Why wouldn't Rindo be fine? He's a living Player, Shiba tells him to toss the pin to go home, and all that junk about Player ID and possible soul corruption came from Kubo who's making sure Rindo doesn't try to get rid of the pin before enough Dissonance gets built up. Shiki at the end of the first game was fine in the UG without her Player Pin too (as evidenced by the Red Skull pin working on her) and when Kitaniji destroys what he believes to be Neku's only Player Pin, he does so thinking Neku will be under the Red Skull pin's influence as well instead of getting erased.
    
    Secret Report 21 talks about the Replay Pin's mechanics, namely that it stores the past timelines' distortions, multiplies them with each Replay, and generates Noise from them. Given the keyword "stores" and Kubo's certainty that the Dissonance will be unleashed, it seems likely that destroying the pin will just set off the swarm earlier.
    • How about getting rid of it? It might go off and release the Noise anyway but if he doesn't actually need it then he could in theory have it taken somewhere where it wouldn't pose a threat to Shibuya - i.e. maybe give it to a Reaper or someone else who can go to the RG and have them take it somewhere else, like the ruins of Shinjuku perhaps, where the Noise can be unleashed and run their course without there actually being anything there to destroy.
    • Letting the Dissonance "run their course" doesn't seem likely. To quote the definition of Noise from the first game's Secret Report 4: "And what are Noise? Entities without conscious will, only the drive to multiply. Thus, they constantly thirst for Soul, attacking Players and possessing humans in the Realground." Putting them somewhere like Shinjuku's ruins is no good since the place is cleansed and devoid of Soul; the Noise would just move on from it and target any juicy human-rich environment around them. They wouldn't stop until an Inversion is triggered or Kubo tells them to stop, and if he wasn't exorcised, he'd just lead them back to Shibuya. Though considering that this Game has been going on for a while now with many eyes on it, it's doubtful that any of the Composers or Angels would allow the problem to leave Shibuya and enter other turf in the first place, not to mention Joshua letting this whole mess happen to show Shibuya's people can stand on their own to the Higher Planes.
      
      Whether Rindo can get rid of the Replay pin is another matter. The only time frame where he both knows about the Dissonance and is able to ditch the pin before it activates is during a Replay. What happens if he tries to get rid of it then is anyone's guess: maybe he can't separate from it, a Temporal Paradox, aborting the Replay entirely...
• What are the logistics of Shinjuku being wiped from the face of the planet? Even if everyone's memories of it and everything in it were erased, does that mean there's just a void or a wasteland or something where it used to be? And what about important locations there, like the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building; would no one question that the entire metropolitan area of Tokyo just has no governing body anymore?
  • Good chance it wasn’t physically destroyed but erased from reality because only beings of the Angels’ level can erase a city directly. Anyone not involved in the Reaper’s Game forget it even existed. Angels even have the ability to make people cease to exist at all even in the minds of people involved in the Reaper’s Game based on what Haz did to Kubo. And telling by Uzuki’s explanation diagram, the land that used to be occupied by Shinjuku gets annexed by another surrounding city predictably, being annexed by Shibuya. Good chance is, Angels’ powers rewrite reality to accommodate the absence or revival of something, telling by how Shoka can just be revived in a random place in Shibuya and apparently be given another life to accommodate her revival telling by Shoka’s offhand comments about what’ll happen if she returns to the RG, and telling by how she didn’t have a life in Shibuya’s RG before that, meaning she’ll have to be given something in the RG to allow her to live as a regular human who would need things like a living space. So good chance is, Tokyo adjusted accordingly and have their metropolitan area somewhere else, even possibly in the space that Shibuya annexed.
• How was the early destruction of Shibuya averted when Rindo went back in time on the penultimate day? They didn't do anything besides fight Susukichi, so why wasn't Shibuya destroyed the second time around if they didn't actually do anything to stop it?
  • Exactly that. They fought Susukichi and stopped him from trying and failing to take down Shiba by himself, thus not giving Shiba a reason to end Shibuya by his hands early.
• Why is Beat so uncharacteristically silent before the identity reveal? He says "S'all comin' back to me now." during the reveal, but it's not like anything happened to him from his dialogue about getting the living Player Pin from his classmate and finding himself in the UG. It's misdirection about 'Neku' obviously, but you'd think he'd say something when saving Rindo's ass or when he's about to be erased by Mr. Mew.
  • The first was because he was on edge and guard because he and the team could easily get erased by Susukichi right afterwards. The second was because he was beaten up by Tsugumi and could possibly barely speak. Also, both times can be because Rindo is a complete stranger to him. He thought he was just saving a random stranger from erasure. He only speaks to Rindo when Rindo openly mistakens him for Neku and when Rindo saves him from Tsugumi, which showed Beat that he can trust Rindo.
• What sort of punishments can a team leader hand down to a misbehaving subordinate? The shoplifting Variabeauty and the Pureheart who imprints on people For the Evulz stop when Rindo threatens to report them to their respective leaders, but it's unclear what the team leaders could do to the people in question.
  • It's possible there's a means to evict a player from the team, which could result in erasure or at least no chance of winning the game. Violence is another possibility as team leaders are implied to be the strongest members of their team.