#but Neku got SO MUCH MORE powerful during his three years in Shinjuku

[sage-nebula]

I started typing up a post on my opinions of the characters in Neo TWEWY, but when I got to Neku's segment it got so long that I realized it needed to be its own post. So if you want me to elaborate on how I feel they did my favorite boy dirty, head below the cut.

First of all, to get it out of the way: his English voice is absolutely atrocious. Given that he has the same voice actor here as he did in the original, I really don’t know what went wrong. Was Mr Corti mentally checked out and only doing this for the paycheck? Was the voice director high on cough syrup on the days Corti was in the office? Who the heck knows, but it’s bad. Not only is Neku’s voice way too deep (he was fifteen in the first game, he’d already been through puberty, his voice shouldn’t have broken again, it’s not like Beat’s did!), but there was pretty much 0 acting to be found. The closest we got to an actual performance is when Neku yelled Beat’s name a couple times during the chaos that went down at the end of Week 3. That was it. Otherwise, it sounded like Corti was just reading his lines with zero surrounding context and zero effort into actually acting them rather than just reading them while either half asleep or bored out of his skull. It’s supremely disappointing and an honest disrespect to the character. Again, I don’t know if this was because of the voice direction or what, but whatever it was, I hated hearing Neku actually talk and that kills me considering he was my favorite of the main cast in the original game.

Which brings me to the bigger issue, which is his characterization. Neo!Neku has zero personality. I’ve said this on multiple posts, and I’ll say it again. He has no personality. It’s gone. I think that when Coco shot him at the end of “A New Day” she not only killed his physical body, but also any semblance of personality he once had, and honestly it kills me because, again, he was my favorite of the original cast.

To elaborate:

Over the course of the original game, Neku goes from a closed off, snarky, trauma-ridden jerkass to a more open, snarky, loyal friend and defender of those who need it. By the end of Week 3 Neku is open to meeting new people (though he’s not completely open either; as he tells Joshua in his ending monologue, it’s still hard for him, but he’s trying), he’s more patient with those around him, he sees more value in the people and the world around him and he’s learning to open himself up and actually enjoy the moment, rather than just saying he does. Moreover, whereas he was fully ready to kill in order to escape the Game at the start (thank god for Hanekoma stepping in), by the end he breaks down crying over . . . well, everything, but in that exact moment it was because Joshua was hinging Neku’s own life on Neku’s ability to pull the trigger on Joshua, and he couldn’t. Neku underwent remarkable change over the course of the original game and I would never, not even once, say that I’d want Neku in Neo to be characterized how he was at the start of (or even in the middle of) the original game.

However.

There is no semblance of Neku, period, in the character that we get in Neo. The closest that we get to any kind of snarky humor from him is when he asks Beat if Beat died again, and that’s why he’s in the UG. Despite being fiercely loyal to his friends (and despite knowing that Minamimoto is a shady bitch out for himself first and foremost), he says with a smile that Minamimoto has ~changed~ or is ~trying to~ despite having absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever, and walking in on Minamimoto literally trying to murder Beat. He’s BFFs with Coco despite the fact that Coco killed him, purely because her motivations were good, and he chastises Beat for not trusting her even though Beat witnessed that murder and has had to live with it for the past three years. Many of his voice clips don’t sound like him (“well done,” for example, just sounds too proper for him, it doesn’t sound like the way he talks; “nice one” or “good job” would be more appropriate), he’s perfectly fine and not awkward at all with everyone calling him a legend, he seems to have no issue whatsoever with the fact that he’s been trapped in Shinjuku’s UG (or in-between the UG and the RG) for the past three years, and overall it feels a whole lot less like Neku-as-a-character and more like Neku-as-an-exposition-mentor. Like he wasn’t here to be himself, he was here because a.) it was expected because this was the sequel, and b.) he’s the closest to Hanekoma they could get, even though he’s not acting like Hanekoma either.

Here’s the thing.

Yes, it’s expected that Neku would have matured even more by the time this game rolls around than he had by the end of Week 3. It’s expected that, much like Beat, Neku has grown up and changed as a result of that maturation as well. However . . .

1.) Beat is still noticeably Beat despite his maturation, and

2.) Neku didn’t get to grow up in the same way that Beat did, by virtue of being dead and stuck in hell for the past three years.

Neku’s life for the past four years has basically been a rollercoaster of trauma. First, his friend dies on his way to meet Neku, which Neku blames himself for (and I’m pretty sure this takes place about a year before the original game, though I could be wrong on that). Then, while he’s still struggling with processing his grief, he’s murdered by Joshua and put into the Reapers’ Game. He has to go through three extremely difficult weeks with his life on the line, during which he learns to process his previous trauma in a healthier way while getting a bunch of fresh new trauma dropped on his plate. He escapes that Game with his new friends, but then less than a year later he is murdered again, and this time he’s locked in a hellspace where Shinjuku used to be, and not only that, but he is trapped there with his murderer, who is not sorry at all that she killed him and instead believes that it was the right thing to do despite the fact that Shinjuku has already undergone the Inversion and Neku is just stuck there now with the thoughts of the nonexistent swirling through his head. Presumably his powers, which were already incredibly powerful, grow exponentially during this time as a result of the space he’s in, but that’s not really the point. The point is, Neku went through a trauma conga line with no time to really breathe or process any of it, and while I can believe that he came to trust Coco enough so that they could both get out of Shinjuku, I can’t believe that going through all that trauma without any chance to live a normal, happy life would produce a smiling mentor figure who’s just here to blithely exposit without any real emotion, or any of his trademark snarky humor. It’s not realistic maturation, especially because maturation isn’t supposed to stamp out aspects of your personality that make you, you. Just as Beat is able to still recognizably be Beat while also being more mature, Neku should have been recognizably Neku, and he isn’t. If you were handed the script with all the names blacked out, you would never be able to tell his lines were his. And honestly, that absolutely crushes me, especially since I was so excited for him to come back since I love him so incredibly much.

Honestly, I’m tempted to rewrite that last portion of the game so that Neku acts more like himself—so that we can actually hear him instead of this bland exposition fairy they put in his place. But whether I do that or not, just know that I found Neku to be incredibly disappointing, and I think he deserved better on just about every front. The only really good thing about him was his design, and the fact that he still did the fingers-to-temples gesture when he reached out to the minds of Shibuya during the end segment. (I was literally chanting, “do the thing, do the thing!” so I was very happy when he did, in fact, do the thing.) And considering how important he is as a character in this series, that was just . . . so incredibly disappointing.

[5nake-eater]

GOD Neo Twewy was SUCH a good game. I really love how, whereas the original game starts as trying to find friends and ends with you saving the world, Neo starts with you trying to save the world and ends with you making friends, it’s a subtle inversion that really works well. Anyways, my thoughts are gonna be under the read more, so if you want to avoid spoilers/my ramblings

First and foremost the way that they foreshadowed the twist of Rindo’s pin causing time distortions is absolutely brilliant. The first time you see the bird noise it appears at the end of the third day, after Rindo has time travelled for the very first time, but more importantly right after receiving a message from Swallow. You assume the birds are symbolic, especially since the next few days the birds show up once Swallow is mentioned. The setup is genius.

I know some people have said that the game feels too reliant on the original game, but I kind of disagree. While Neku and Beat make appearances that act as more than cameos, and there’s a lot connecting the game to A New Day, it’s really the new characters’ story.

Speaking of Neku and A New Day, my single gripe with this game is that Neku was in the UG for three years after A New Day, which ruins the ending of the original day. Getting to see him and Shiki reunite after three years was heartwarming, but I prefer the original game’s ending more. Parallel universes exist in the Twewy universe though, so I’m going to operate under the assumption that there’s the prime timeline following the ending of the DS game and the Neo timeline, with the Neo timeline being the only one where Shinjuku is destroyed, triggering the results of A New Day. Like VLR and ZTD

The ending? Fantastic. The entire ending sequence where you have to go through a Shibuya without the characters you met along the way? Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. It’s also the moment where the true themes of the game shined the brightest. No doubt COVID influenced the writing of the game, and during that section I couldn’t help but think of all of the people who lost their loved ones due to the virus. Rindo realizing Shibuya is worthless without his friends was such an amazing moment, and him deciding to fight to get them back even if it meant losing himself as a result was such a powerful moment

The bosses in the game were all brilliant, loved each and every one of them. Motoi’s fight was an obvious highlight, along with the fakeout final boss when you fight Shiba for the first time. 

Ok THE ENDING! THE ENDING! When Rindo meets Shoka for the first time since leaving the UG, THAT was a fucking powerful moment. I loved the reveal that Shoka was Swallow the entire time, and I loved Shoka’s characterization. Also, that Rindo gives Shoka a Nutkin at the very end after she has to restart FanGo when that was the animal Shoka told Rindo she caught at the very beginning? I loved that moment so much, it was such a clever and thoughtful callback

I’m really excited to delve into the secret reports and learn the lore of the game, and I am so glad that this game got to be made and put out into the world.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

This Is Your Life - NeShiki

A NeShiki AU for Week 2, Day 2. Neo Spoilers. Oneshot.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33449641

Shiki and Neku had been together for three years now… Three blissful years, even amidst all the heartache and pain of them having to live in the UG these days, but blissful they were.

Shiki could still remember well, the time that Neku had wanted to celebrate Christmas with her in the UG (their first Christmas together) and had wanted to buy a tree, of course. And he had… But he’d ended up buying a fake palm tree to decorate with instead of a pine tree, in fearing that if someone happened to see him in the UG… they might somehow link Christmas to the Christian God, and then that with the Composer, and then maybe jump to the right conclusion that Neku knew who the Composer was, and bring even more danger down on them all that way.

So, Neku had bought a fake palm tree. And, truly, it had been silly. Shiki had been sure to tease Neku for it, too. And later, even he’d realized he overreacted (even though they probably wouldn’t take back the chance to try and protect Josh, even if they could… as he had been pretty good to them since enlisting them here)… but even with the silliness, it was probably Shiki’s happiest memory. She’d put a Malibu Barbie on top as the “angel”, and Neku had replied that that seemed fitting of a fashionista like her… and it had all been ridiculous, and so much fun.

And it was for that kind of happiness, that Shiki was mostly glad that she had ended up in the UG with Neku again. She hadn’t killed herself after Coco had murdered him—even though a part of her had been tempted to, to Partner with him in the Game again if he had needed her—and hadn’t gone back to the old Shiki, but rather had gone to work getting Gatto Nero up off the ground with Eri.

But then… Shiki had died in another accident. Not a car accident this time, but a piano falling on her head, of all things, while she was walking down the street. Thankfully, she hadn’t felt that, and the next thing she’d known, she’d been in the UG with Neku and Joshua…

Shiki had then thrown her arms around Neku then and sobbed uncontrollably. And while Neku often tried to act calm, cool and collected, she thought that he had behaved as emotionally as she had when they’d been reunited.

Joshua had explained then, that he was just going to give her the penalty of not being able to play the Game again, since she and Neku were Partners (at the time, Shiki had wanted to slap Josh—thinking that he was trying to rip away her chance of trying to come back to life again—but now she understood he had just given her the solid of not having to play the Game again), and for that reason, they would be his unofficial Reapers working with him to figure out what had happened in Shinjuku.

Neku had apparently been working with Josh on that as soon as he’d died… though Shiki could tell he wanted to come back home, eventually, and so did she.

So, she told herself that when they stopped whatever was going to happen to Shibuya—Josh had to be mums the word about some things, it seemed—she would try and see if he would let them go back to the RG.

Shiki wanted to believe that Joshua would let them… seeing as how he hadn’t forced them to become actual Reapers, or anything—which he more than had the power to do so—and instead pretty much let them be Players, but without a Game to play.

Shiki did still work on Gatto Nero with Eri. Very rarely, Joshua would tune her into the RG, so they could work on a few designs—she would go and see her bestie in the dead of night—and the next day, they would be back to having to e-mail it again… It was hard, but Shiki would take it.

So, this was the life that Shiki and Neku (and Josh, to an extent) had had for three years. A lot of the time, they would live with Joshua at the Shibuya River—because it was faster to be able to work with him on things that way—but other times, they needed their private time and stayed in an abandoned house together. Relators said that it was haunted, which was why people didn’t go there, but Neku—who had learned how to scan Souls during some of their time in Shinjuku—told Shiki that that wasn’t true in the slightest: to which she had had to giggle, that people could be so superstitious.

This was the life that Shiki and Neku had built for themselves… And maybe it was a little reckless to split up from Josh, when they had so many people gunning for them. But she and Neku deserved some happiness, right?

They both had seemed to think so… but now Shiki was very much wondering about that, when in this new Game… Neku had been caught—after he’d been unable to help himself from aiding Players in need—when he’d been going back from the Shibuya River to their home.

And Shiki hadn’t heard from him since he had headed for the Room of Reckoning this morning.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened. And Shiki did find herself going outside, to hear players and Reapers alike talk about how they were going to catch Neku.

“Oh, Neku,” Shiki thought, as a tear escaped from her eyes now, “I should have made more of the trips to Josh myself. I’m less recognizable than you are, since my Entry Fee was my appearance and most people don’t know what I look like now. Nor am I a ‘legendary player’. Your leaving now had foolish written all over it, and I should have seen it and gone in your stead!”

The fact that Neku hadn’t even had time to text her since he’d become the UG’s most wanted didn’t bode well to Shiki, either.

And Shiki was freely crying now—and near a panic attack, as she clutched at her arms—but she told herself to hold it together. It wouldn’t do to start fretting while standing over here at her and Neku’s dining room table…

Their dining room table that Neku had once gotten so sick at, almost acting liking he had Malaria, as he how tripped down the stairs and into it, while Shiki had looked up from her knitting, horrified—even after being in the UG, he had gotten this sick, when she wouldn’t have thought that that was possible—and she’d had to lay him down on the table to get him to drink medicine as fast as she could then, as his fever had been great… and he had finally grown to like the stuff, and the flavor of it that she liked, too… And then, thankfully, he’d been alright.

If Shiki started losing it so that she couldn’t help now, she would never again get to heal Neku, or share more of her favorite flavors with him.

So, she had to do something!

Shiki no longer had Mr. Mew on her… she had given him to Tsugumi for her to use as a psych—as she’d had an even harder time finding a psych she could use than Shiki had—when it had seemed that she might be able to save Shinjuku in those early days… but she hadn’t gotten him back since Tsugumi had been lost.

But still… Shiki thought she could probably use some other psychs now, like telekinesis, if she had to.

She thought about calling Joshua for aid here… but Shiki feared that his hands were tied with the Higher Plane on this one. And if he was going to help Neku, he was probably already doing it or would have done so by now.

So, Shiki couldn’t waste time on that.

Instead… she prepared to run all over Shibuya to find Neku, if need be, but instead ended up going to the Scramble (so close to her and Neku’s home), which was pretty much right where she and Neku had met: since Hachiko Statue was right there.

Somehow, Shiki had known Neku would be there… and her instincts had been absolutely right about that.

Neku looked exhausted, worn down, and beaten, as he knelt on one of the Scramble Crossing’s many crosswalks now… All of the Players and Reapers fighting him must have really taken a toll on him, Shiki thought despairing and empathizing with Neku immediately.

And Tsugumi was about to erase Neku!

Shiki didn’t even think about what to do then!

She thought she saw a blond boy worrying with a certain pin, but she couldn’t process that now. Instead, she dove in the way of Neku and Tsugumi (holding him tightly as he shook, after she’d just saved him).

And after she got her bearings, Shiki very swiftly snatched her Mr. Mew from Tsugumi’s grip, synced up with Neku—and how she adored, that even now… that he was able to do that with her; if that didn’t show what they were to each other, she didn’t know what would—and did a level three fusion with him once more.

And once everyone was distracted by the laser show Mr. Mew was putting on with his eyes, Shiki grabbed Neku’s hand and ran.

Somehow, some way… she discovered she had a new psych like Neku did, as they sped away—that must have been activated the times Joshua tuned her back and forth—because Shiki could mess with their frequencies!

And for now, she got them both to the RG: Neku holding her and kissing her body all over in thanks and worship, as she did so.

She could breathe again.

And Shiki knew that their perfect life together would continue on… thank God or the Composer, she thought, grinning ear to ear and kissing him back.

Author’s Note: So, this is based on how after Tsugumi erases Beat or whatever… if you look closely, there’s a pair of white shoes that walk towards him afterwards.

And tbh… I was mostly certain that Hoodie was going to be Beat, and he was, but just for fun, I let myself imagine it was Neku or could have been him on this day. And I thought those shoes could have been Shiki coming to save him (because I thought they looked like the shoes she wore at the end of TWEWY, but now I think I’m just crazy). I also thought it might have been Rhyme coming to try and rescue Beat, but I doubt that, too. It was probably just Tsugumi walking or something.

But this whole story is based on that first fun AU idea. And that’s also why it ends right when Shiki saves Neku/when we see those shoes walking towards him or whatever.

Hope you all enjoyed!

And the medicine thing, is based on how… I think Neku didn’t like certain medicines in TWEWY? Or maybe none of them? Shiki liked one of them, though (I think). So, that’s what that whole thing is based on. I wanted it to be food, but I couldn’t find a canon food that Shiki liked that Neku disliked, that he could have changed his mind about for her, so this it was.

And it's NeShiki Day! I actually didn't think I would write this for NeShiki Day (I had something else done). And I just wanted to write tonight, and I didn't know where it would lead me. But, hey. It's NeShiki right on NeShiki Day. I think it's only right I share it for that day!:)

[longroadstonowhere]

bit more rambling about neo twewy cuz i don’t have work tomorrow so i have a harder time convincing myself to go to sleep

still riding the high of figuring out fake-neku was beat, honestly, but i’m kinda wondering if they got a different voice actor? or maybe he just sounds different because he’s saying more stuff than the little sound bites we got in twewy, plus beat is three years older so his voice might have changed in that time? i dunno, something to look up when i’m done with the game and not afraid of spoilers

of course, now the question is ‘who the fuck is sparrow’, joining ‘where the fuck is neku’ and ‘what the fuck is going on’ - collecting quite a collection of mildly outraged questions, haha

oh! putting on paper now that ‘blond person in front of computer’ is rhyme, because of course i’m guessing that, i love rhyme, i miss her, please give me all the rhyme screentime please - i assume she’s speaking with beat? who could be reporting in at regular intervals with what he’s seeing? or possibly with shiki? i assume all of them are looking for neku, since he’s definitely actually missing

hm... i was gonna ask where the fuck is joshua on top of all this, but i think the final bits of the last game suggested that he and hanekoma were basically taken in by their superiors and taken to task for what that game turned into? and especially considering how uzuki was game master when the shinjuku crew showed up, that definitely suggests that there was a major power vacuum caused by the events of twewy (not that uzuki doesn’t deserve the position of course, but she was definitely still climbing the ranks during the game proper, jumping up to game master probably wouldn’t have happened that first if things had turned out differently)

.... man, swallow’s probably the leader of the ruinbringers, huh? that makes the most narrative sense at this point, i think - or they’re a reaper, that’s a possibility that’s on my mind at all times, believe you me (or they’re kanon? doesn’t feel right but the possibility is there, i will admit)

not gonna play as much tomorrow as i’d like to, since i have a chiropractor appointment and i’ve obligated myself into going to ikea (i mean, i have to go to ikea for some furniture of my own, but my parents also want stuff from there and i’ve told them i’m going so now i have to go), but i’m super excited to see what the end of week two brings us and who our next guest party member will be (since i assume beat will be leaving as minamimoto did before him)