Over the past few days, I played the demo for NEO: The World Ends With You, watched the final episode of the TWEWY anime, and finished The World Ends With You: Final Remix.

After debating about how to cover all of these things, I decided to just have one big TWEWY extravaganza blog post!

Let’s start with the anime.

The World Ends With You Anime Adaptation

When I started watching the anime adaptation of The World Ends With You, I had concerns. The beginning feels very rushed as a result of cramming the entire game’s story into 12 episodes, although it was still incredible just to see a game I love so much in anime form.

However, the pacing improved dramatically after the first few episodes, and I ended up enjoying it overall.

The anime has its flaws. Some parts don’t come across quite right, and there are a few changes I wasn’t crazy about. Most of these changes are probably also the result of the fast pacing, although there was one near the end that I don’t know why they changed.

Yet the anime also pulls off some scenes incredibly well. There are even a few parts that I’d say the anime did better.

I expected the anime to cover A New Day, the new epilogue added for the Final Remix version of the game, but it didn’t. Instead, it ended on the game’s original secret ending, expanded to include some more details in a way that I thought worked very well.

Meanwhile, I used the anime as a guide to keep my Final Remix playthrough in check, as I’d follow up each episode by playing up to the same point in the game.

The World Ends With You: Final Remix

My playthrough of the original The World Ends With You was absurdly long, since I wanted to complete everything. For the Final Remix, I was much more restrained and stuck mostly to the main story (and of course, A New Day).

I was a little worried about revisiting a favorite game, afraid that it might not resonate with me as much over a decade later.

My concerns were unfounded. The Switch controls are cumbersome, and I quickly decided to stick with the touchscreen controls since the Joy-Con controls are somehow even more awkward, and I forgot how some parts of the game require you to grind a bit for specific pin/material drops, but I was immediately sucked into the game just like I was when I played the original.

I love The World Ends With You. The story, the characters, the foreshadowing, the humor… and all sorts of little fun details I forgot about that all come together to make it a unique experience.

Comparing it to the anime after each episode provided extra entertainment as well, and I’m really happy that I decided to play through The World Ends With You: Final Remix after all.

And then I played A New Day.

You unlock the three “days” of A New Day by completing certain challenges in the main game. A New Day itself doesn’t seem to distinguish between days, however. I only knew I was on a different day by seeing that the menu screen said so.

Anyway, Neku and Beat find themselves back in the UG for a new Reaper’s Game, and they’re joined by a Reaper girl named Coco who is one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever seen. Neku is also having visions of destruction and a mysterious girl wearing headphones. Shibuya’s layout has been shuffled around so that the streets don’t go where they’re supposed to, and most paths are gated. Remember how I mentioned grinding for drops in the main game? That’s a core focus of A New Day, and it’s so tedious… I felt like it went out of its way to be as tedious as possible.

Meanwhile, the story is… strange. I dislike several aspects of A New Day’s ending, as well as their puzzling presentation.

I’m glad I played the NEO: The World Ends With You demo before A New Day, because if A New Day was my only brush with new TWEWY content, I’d be very nervous.

NEO: The World Ends With You Demo

Fortunately, the same can’t be said for my time with the demo! The demo covers the first two days of NEO: The World Ends With You, and it’s fantastic.

Rindo and his friend Fret are going through what seems to be a normal day until they find themselves in the Reaper’s Game without much knowledge of what’s going on except that teams are competing for points and they need to fight Noise.

The characters introduced in the demo are likeable so far, but what really impressed me was how much NEO feels like The World Ends With You.

Scanning is back, although now you can move at the same time. You still use scanning to read people’s thoughts and start battles with Noise, and chaining encounters is back as well. I came across a Pig Noise, too!

Combat is pretty different now, since the game is 3D and uses ordinary controls, but – and this is kind of amazing to me – it still captures the feel of the original. Every character can equip one pin, and you use that pin’s button commands to switch to control that character in battle. This adapts the sense of controlling multiple characters at the same time to a 3D single-screen system, and you alternate back and forth to build your gauge for a powerful attack similar to how the light puck functioned in the original and the cross-combos work in Final Remix.

I am seriously impressed by how much the combat feels like TWEWY combat despite having such significant changes.

I almost regret playing it, because partway through, I had to remind myself that this was only a demo and I would have to stop. I’ll need to wait another month to play more NEO: The World Ends With You, and the demo was so good that I want to play more now.

Conclusion

That was a lot of TWEWY content to talk about, but what are you thoughts? How do you feel about The World Ends With You, its anime adaptation, Final Remix and A New Day, and the demo for NEO: The World Ends With You? Personally, I’m even more excited for NEO than I was before!