Trivia / NEO: The World Ends with You

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: As character designer Tetsuya Nomura noted when the game was first announced, Rindo's face mask was designed long before the COVID-19 Pandemic made them an ubiquitous accessory in real-life Shibuya (and the rest of the world). Ironically, Rindo would nowadays stand out not because he wears a mask, but because he wears it below his mouth and not over it!
• Acclaimed Flop: The game was well received with critics and fans, but in Japan, despite the Switch version being number 1 in terms of sales, it only sold around 18,000 copies on Switch and 9,000 copies on Playstation 4 for a roughly total of 27,000 copies sold in its first week, the worst opening in the series to date.
• Content Leak: Access to digital copies of the game was erroneously granted on July 16, 2021, over a week before the release date of July 27. Players pre-ordering physical copies of the game's Nintendo Switch version on Square Enix's store were accidentally sent functioning codes for the digital version.
• Creator's Favorite: In the Official Guidebook, Tetsuya Nomura mentions that Joshua has a "special place in [his] heart."
• Invisible Advertising:
  • Despite being highly anticipated by long time fans, many fans have accused Square Enix of doing this to the game, which directly led to it becoming an Acclaimed Flop. It's hard not to see why, especially when it got barely any advertising up to its release aside from the initial announcement trailer, and the trailers it did get being inscrutable to people unfamiliar with the franchise. The game being given no advertising a month before release during E3, either at Square Enix's or Nintendo's showcases didn't help. Ironically, Square's financial report of all things, which noted that the game "underperformed", seems to have brought more attention to it than the actual advertising did, with the game rapidly selling out in many stores shortly afterward.
  • It should be noted that this was very much averted in Japan, where Square Enix went all-in with an anime based on the first game, merchandise, TV spots, magazine features, and even a limited-time AR game. The problem was that they were so focused on boosting sales in Japan (where the franchise has historically underperformed) that they neglected to market the game in the territories where it actually sold relatively well.
• Meaningful Release Date: The game's global release date of July 27th is the same day the first game released in Japan.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Snarky Shoka is a far cry from Bailey Gambertoglio’s usual friendly young girls or adorable moogles.
  • Xanthe Huynh usually plays sweet or shy girls, sometimes even a mopey girl, but here she plays Kanon, who's a badass, confident, charming team leader.
• Pre-Order Bonus: Players who purchased the game before August 27th received the "Legendary Threads" (Neku's outfit) at the beginning of the game. They're not exclusive to early buyers, but they're normally end-game gear.
• Promoted Fanboy: Paul Castro Jr., the English voice of Rindo, is a huge fan of the original game, and described getting to work on NEO as "a dream come true".
• Reality Subtext:
  • The writers apparently couldn't help adding in some allusions to the COVID-19 pandemic, given one day's mission involves an idol group called the "Peroxidolls", an all-female unit whose gimmick is that they're dedicated germophobes who sanitize themselves and everything around them constantly and practice social distancing. There's even a music festival in the game's postgame chapter Another Day called Shibuyapalooza, in which one character states that it's finally around after getting pushed back a bunch because of "well, everything", likely alluding to the pandemic as well. Despite references to the pandemic, Rindo's face mask is purely coincidental as Tetsuya Nomura finalized his design before the pandemic.
  • NEO takes place three years after The World Ends With You and the events of "A New Day" included in the Final Remix rerelease. The time between the release of Final Remix (2018) and release of NEO (2021) is three years.
  • It's mentioned that the band Dëf March has finally reunited after several years for a performance in Another Day. Composer Takeharu Ishimoto's TWEWY-themed band, the Death March, was reunited to collaborate together for NEO after spending several years in limbo with the lack of TWEWY material to work on. The credits song for Another Day is one that the members performed together, which works with how it's the song Dëf March performs at Shibuyapalooza.
• Refitted for Sequel: The original proposal for TWEWY envisioned multiple teams fighting for control over territory all over Japan in the afterlife. NEO revives that idea with Rindo's team competing against other teams for control over parts of Shibuya in the Scramble Slam.
• Role Reprise: The release date trailer reveals that both the English and Japanese voice actors from the original game for Kariya, Uzuki, and Minamimoto are reprising their roles. Beat, Shiki, Neku, and Joshua's actors from both languages also reprise their roles, although Rhyme is still Darrin'd by Ayana Taketatsu as in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] and the anime of the first game.
• Sequel Gap: A full fourteen years passed between the release of the original (2007) and the sequel (2021).
• Technology Marches On: The game is set three years after the original (ostensibly set in 2006 or 2007), but this seems a little weird considering everyone suddenly jumped from waving around flip phones to digital wallets being commonplace in the span of three years. This is mainly the fault of both games reflecting the culture and tech of the time period in which they were developed in. The anime adaptation of the original uses Setting Update to move the tech standards closer to the 2020s, although this brings with it some inherent continuity issues.
• Typecasting: This isn’t the first time that Coco’s voice actress (Kitana Turnbull) played an adorable girl who pretends to be nice but turns out to be a Bratty Half-Pint Alpha Bitch.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Kubo was originally not in the original story draft. Tetsuya Nomura however realized that all of the characters, even the Reapers, were sympathetic in one way or another, and suggested that a character (originally two but seeing the writer worried about adding two characters in an already established scenario convinced him that one should be enough) should be included to match the Big Bad role that was used for Kitaniji in the first game.
  • Ayano was originally going to be a Player and Kanon a Shinjuku Reaper before they got swapped in development.
  • Tsugumi was meant to be the heroine but things changed in development and Shoka ultimately ended up filling that narrative role instead.
  • Hazuki was designed to fill the final boss role but he is ultimately never fought in the game.
  • Nomura considered using Joshua's adult form shown at the end of the previous game for his appearance in NEO but ultimately designed a version the same age as Neku currently is in NEO.
• Write Who You Know: The real Japanese fashion label BLACK HONEY CHILI COOKIE and its creator Hiromu Takahara appear in the game due to Tetsuya Nomura being friends with Takahara.