"The World Ends With You" is a JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game) released for the Nintendo DS in 2008 by Square Enix. The story is about 15 year old Neku Sakuraba finding himself stuck in the midst of a chaotic game for survival called the Reaper Games, and if he fails to meet the games requirements he will be erased, or simply put, removed from existence; it's a little bit more severe than death one could say.
Now, what was most appealing to me when I played this game at the age of 15 wasn’t just the original and zany setting, but also the characters who got caught up in it and how they grew because of it. The protagonist starts out as a very closed-minded individual. He hates people and thinks as long as he stays out of their way, he should do the same. This is the reason Neku defaults to wearing headphones all the time. It blocks out the world around him, preventing him from becoming a part of it. However, over the course of the story, Neku will be forced to do all of the things he despises most: socialize, cooperate, trust, and most of all, be trusted.
Neku’s journey for survival begins when he wakes up in a Shibuya (a well known Japanese city) intersection, unaware of how he got there, or unaware of anything for that matter, as he finds out he has amnesia and the only thing that seemed to carry over to the present situation is his distain for humanity. In the opening part of the game, Neku is paired with a girl named Shiki Misaki, a bright and cheerful person who keeps trying to make Neku open up to her. They are paired through a ritual called a pact, which makes them partners throughout the game of death that awaits them. Ironically, they later learn that the only way to face the challenges to come is to learn to trust one another.
Onto the deeper symbolism, the game itself is a large analogy much like Dante's "Inferno." To elaborate a bit more on The Reaper Game, it’s a competition for those who have recently passed away to get a second chance at life. Anyone able to survive the week of challenges thrown at them is promised a chance at resurrection. Reapers, which are death gods, run the games and are in charge of killing off players, which they survive off of. The Reapers attack players by sending monsters called noise after them.
Now this is where the symbolism kicks in.
Neku’s trademark headphones are specifically to keep the noisy hustle and bustle of every day life out. Yet, the very thing he seeks to shield himself from takes physical form in the monsters the Reapers send after him. Neku must silence the noise and rescue people afflicted by it’s curse while worrying about his own survival and learning to trust. All the while, he has been given two gifts that essentially contradict each other. The first is the invisibility that comes from being deceased. Throughout The Reaper Game, Neku and the other players cannot be seen by normal people; only the Reapers and fellow players can see players. Not being seen by people is something Neku has always dreamed of, and he couldn’t be happier about it, if his existence wasn’t on the line.
The second gift is the ability to read people’s thoughts. Neku, who never wanted to hear people’s ideals and thoughts verbalized, is now given the ability to hear them straight from the source; it's an ability that he keeps for three weeks time. “All the world needs is me. I got my values... so you can keep yours.” Over the course of his stay in the games, he realizes how naive his opening sentiments were. This idea is summarized by a character named Sanae Hanekoma, who acts a kind of advisor for the game. “Enjoy every moment with all ya got. Listen up, Phones! The world ends with you. If you want to enjoy life, expand your world. You gotta push your horizons out as far as they'll go.”
Hanekoma, Mr. H for short, offered this advice as a cure to Neku’s closed- minded, emotionally unavailable, mind set. In a later set of dialogue, Neku comes to the realization that understanding other people isn’t just hard, it’s impossible. That’s why you have to do everything to help build a bridge between your own world and other peoples. Meeting other people, experiencing new things, and becoming close to others is how you expand your own world, which is just a tiny grain of sand on the beach of humanity. You can either stay confined to one tiny speck on the planet, or see everything there is out there.
