By now, you may have heard about The World Ends with You, but if you haven't, it's a story of several teenagers being trapped in a life-or-death battle called the Reaper's Game, and being forced to fight monsters known as Noise, complete missions and grow as people if they hope to return to their ordinary lives. The story is rather elaborate and engaging, has memorable characters and is unusual in that it takes place in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, rather than a fantasy or sci-fi setting. The game has an excellent story, but does the anime adaptation do it justice?
With that out of the way, I'll focus on how well the adaptation represents the game.
The fact that the anime has a mere 12 episodes to adapt the plot of the game means that a lot of the game gets cut out, but that isn't always a bad thing, since many of the cut parts are rather extraneous. The fact that there are three weeks in the game(Episodes 1-3 cover Week 1, 4-7 cover Week 2 and 8-12 cover Week 3) probably complicates matters when it comes to deciding how to adapt the series. Perhaps extending it to a 2cour anime would have allowed it to go more in depth, but I doubt that the game has 24-26 episodes' worth of material.
As for what gets cut out, a lot of the worldbuilding and other information from the Secret Reports(e.g. what happens to a player's entry fee if they lose but get brought back to life) gets cut out, but that's often unavoidable. Some plot elements that get cut out are largely extraneous (e.g. Beat being told that he has less than a week to live, but nothing happening to him). Occasionally, the anime adds extra scenes, which are usually fairly well-done and add a lot to the story.
The art is fairly good overall and helps capture the unique visual style of the game. The fact that the characters have more variance in their facial expressions and body language than in the game(which has a finite number of sprites), helps the series portray some emotional moments better.
The fight scenes are passable, but many of them boil down to Neku and his partner hitting the enemy repeatedly until they manage to activate a Fusion Attack to finish their foes off, making them a bit monotonous and poorly choreographed.
I have mixed feelings about Neku's Adaptational Nice Guy treatment. On the one hand, making him more likable earlier on makes it easier to get invested in him. On the other hand, making him less of a misanthrope early on means he has less room to develop. It's also a shame that they removed his monologue from the ending, in which he sums up how he changed over the week and his feelings regarding a certain someone.
All in all, the anime is a decent way to experience the story, but I recommend playing the game if you have the time and money, as well as a console that plays it.
Anime Decent adaptation of an excellent game
By now, you may have heard about The World Ends with You, but if you haven't, it's a story of several teenagers being trapped in a life-or-death battle called the Reaper's Game, and being forced to fight monsters known as Noise, complete missions and grow as people if they hope to return to their ordinary lives. The story is rather elaborate and engaging, has memorable characters and is unusual in that it takes place in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, rather than a fantasy or sci-fi setting. The game has an excellent story, but does the anime adaptation do it justice?
With that out of the way, I'll focus on how well the adaptation represents the game.
The fact that the anime has a mere 12 episodes to adapt the plot of the game means that a lot of the game gets cut out, but that isn't always a bad thing, since many of the cut parts are rather extraneous. The fact that there are three weeks in the game(Episodes 1-3 cover Week 1, 4-7 cover Week 2 and 8-12 cover Week 3) probably complicates matters when it comes to deciding how to adapt the series. Perhaps extending it to a 2cour anime would have allowed it to go more in depth, but I doubt that the game has 24-26 episodes' worth of material.
As for what gets cut out, a lot of the worldbuilding and other information from the Secret Reports(e.g. what happens to a player's entry fee if they lose but get brought back to life) gets cut out, but that's often unavoidable. Some plot elements that get cut out are largely extraneous (e.g. Beat being told that he has less than a week to live, but nothing happening to him). Occasionally, the anime adds extra scenes, which are usually fairly well-done and add a lot to the story.
The art is fairly good overall and helps capture the unique visual style of the game. The fact that the characters have more variance in their facial expressions and body language than in the game(which has a finite number of sprites), helps the series portray some emotional moments better.
The fight scenes are passable, but many of them boil down to Neku and his partner hitting the enemy repeatedly until they manage to activate a Fusion Attack to finish their foes off, making them a bit monotonous and poorly choreographed.
I have mixed feelings about Neku's Adaptational Nice Guy treatment. On the one hand, making him more likable earlier on makes it easier to get invested in him. On the other hand, making him less of a misanthrope early on means he has less room to develop. It's also a shame that they removed his monologue from the ending, in which he sums up how he changed over the week and his feelings regarding a certain someone.
All in all, the anime is a decent way to experience the story, but I recommend playing the game if you have the time and money, as well as a console that plays it.