Thread by @dogemperor

#すばせかの愛を語る #TWEWY #TWEWY15 #NTWEWY

So this is gonna be one of my infamously long threads, and actually not about political stuff, but more on a certain game series that is Very Meaningful to me and why :3

1/x

https://twitter.com/SquareEnix/status/1551945491809591296

So, I got into video games, and into TWEWY, a bit later in life than most folks in the fandom, and some time after the game came out and before KH:3D got more people into the fandom, and my intro was even a little unusual lol

2/x

I was on a lost weekend with people I pretty much consider "framily", they'd brought over a friend, we had met a long time before, and they knew my penchant for having maths as a bit of a special interest, my religious trauma, my mistrust of authority figures...

3/x

And at some point in the weekend we started talking about video games, and they mentioned this video game they'd been introduced to by their friend they were with, "The World Ends With You", and were raving all about it and how it was so surprisingly good,

4/x

and they turn to me and go "You need to play this."

"Well, I'll look for it..."

"No. You NEED TO PLAY THIS. There's this character Sho Minamimoto who reminds me SO MUCH OF YOU it's not even funny. Loves math. Wants to punch God in the face"

I am Intrigued.

5/x

So fast forward about eight months from the Lost Weekend, I'm having about as much of...a midlife crisis as one can who wasn't quite midlife at that point, wondering what the hell I wanted to do with my life, and just generally being in a dark teatime of teh soul

6/x

and I go into my favourite local game store (which sadly no longer exists), which...well, if Wild Boar had had a combination skate shop/game store that sold both new and used games, everything from original Super Nintendo on up, just a wonderful place all around

7/x

(Goddamn but I miss that skater-shop game store.) And I'd come there now and again to get used games and new stuff because the staff was good and they knew the kind of stuff I liked (weird JRPG stuff) and I'd even bought my DS and GBA handhelds from them, and...

8/x

so I'm doing my usual browsing, and...I see a copy of TWEWY, new in packaging, on display. I remember my friend insisting I NEEDED to get this, and honestly I'd seen elsewhere it was a good game, so...I get the dude's attention at counter and pick it up,

9/x

and damn near had to fight him over it 🤣 as he's commenting "Oh shit, we got this in? I've heard about this game, I've heard it's *so* good, you'd REALLY enjoy it"

And so I got it home, and...yeah, it actually turned out to be SURPRISINGLY deep to me, and

10/x

my friend *was not lying* about Minamimoto "being just like you fr", and honestly I did get some good messaging on letting other folks in, and how our worlds do expand and there were real messages in the game that resonated strongly with me

11/x

I wasn't really involved with the fandom at that point, because (well) after getting my bearings again I managed to get a job and a career that on one hand ate my life for the next five years but on the other hand arguably did open up my world to possibilities

12/x

(like, oh, the fact I got a network certification that not a lot of people have--yes, being pushed to expand my world kind of led to me having a CCIE-EI and going properly into network engineering, and eventually learning to value myself.)

13/x

So around 2017-ish I realized I needed to improve my work-life balance and went into consulting, and...not too long afterwards, Final Remix had come out; I didn't get it straightaway, because a) I didn't have a Switch, b) my favourite game store had long closed,

14/x

c) the GameStop where I live has historically been tits-on-a-bull level of useless in regards to more obscure JRPGs, and d) I was in some work getting myself established and later needing some emergency surgery.

I do remember being very pleasantly surprised about it

15/x

and it was *around* the time FR came out that I started interacting a bit with the fandom.

Cue...2020. The AX announcement.

I'd even at the beginning not thought we were getting an anime; I'd honestly thought they were going to have a panel on Shibuya street art,

16/x

and noted how it influenced stuff like TWEWY and Jet Set Radio and the like, one of the (at least to me) really interesting kinds of anime panels where you go into cultural history and talk about its influence (and I'd still honestly *love* to see something like this tbh)

17/x

But when we got the anime announcement I remember telling people "Expect an announcement of a sequel to TWEWY within 2 years because they don't do all this work with an obscure franchise if they're not gonna do something with it"

18/x

And the shocker to me was that Funimation had picked it up mid-production, and while the anime *is* very much the abridged series, I'll admit I like it for how it *does* embroider on some points they didn't get a chance to go over in the game proper.

19/x

The two things I wasn't expecting with #NTWEWY:

a) I wasn't expecting the Blessed Countdown to drop until after anime aired--certainly not in November 2020.

b) I wasn't expecting NEO to hit me like a freight train emotionally.

20/x

Though, really, in retrospect, I should have expected the latter. (this is where I go slightly political, I apologize in advance.)

So I mentioned "religious trauma". Anyone who follows this Twitter knows I Has It thanks to being raised by Christian Nationalists

21/x

and (and this is honestly the first time I admit this publicly) I was...in some pretty profound C-PTSD crisis by November 2020 (basically since September a lot of us who left that movement were seeing a whole lot of signs our worst nightmare was coming to pass,

22/x

in events that ultimately culminated in an attempted coup on J6 and which is arguably still going on in a legal and judicial front).

Earlier in 2020, my dad passed away, I finally went no-contact with my family over events related to my dad passing away and memorial prep,

23/x

the Breonna Taylor shooting (and protests, and rather nasty attempts by chuds to cause violence at protests *and* the cops helping out the chuds) happened in my hometown such that where I lived was under curfew when it wasn't locked down due to plague,

24/x

our state legislature stripped our governor of most powers to DO anything about the plague because they're in a party that's been taken over by Christian Nationalists...so by November I was extremely despondent, and was at what I call "bargaining".

25/x

And so when NEO:TWEWY was announced, I pretty much told myself to survive until it came out, and to keep myself alive for that, so...yeah, uh, the Blessed Countdown kinda kept me as part of the remainder 🥲

26/x

And getting to #NTWEWY when it did come out--well, there were small vindications (Fairy Kei Coco! Fairy Kei Coco! :D) and larger vindications (W3D7'' made me sob for reasons I'll get into) but there were three segments that were such *WHAM* sessions for personal reasons

27/x

Like I noted, in 2020 I'd basically made the decision to go no-contact after my dad passed on, and relating to...well, my sib.

My sib was a very good person, if occasionally feisty, in the few years she managed to get out of the cult before being sucked in again.

28/x

When she was out of the cult (ironically at a religious college at another denomination) she made friends with a local group of gay men, went clubbing with them, and was friends even after college until a falling out happened, she moved back home, and got sucked back in

29/x

#ntwewyspoilers

And it was where I learned that LGBTQIA people weren't horrible and were just people, and...Kanon's character, and the Variabeauties, just remind me so much of my sib in that time it fucking hurts and I cried with Fret when he couldn't save her

30/x

And...when my mom died like a decade ago, I'd...had a crazy ass hope that maybe the family would step away from the cult, and if I couldn't get my old sib back, I could at least get a nicer and not-as-culty sib

I didn't realize how far she was gone till my dad was dying

31/x

#ntwewyspoilers

And that's also why...the whole stuff with Shoka and Ayano hit SO hard. Much like Shoka did with Ayano, I looked up to my older sib.

Much like Shoka, I couldn't save her.

Much like Shoka, I had to ultimately make the decision to go my own way.

32/x

#ntwewyspoilers

And yes, I cried like a fucking baby on that part, because I knew how that was hell for her.

And the third whammy...well...dear gods

Minamimoto, after...another round of engaging in dangerous stuff to try to get enough power...

33/x

#ntwewyspoilers

and it's becoming obvious *one* of his goals is trying to STOP Shibuya from being Inverted, and he utters...

"All the points were set as variables, but the trajectory remains the same...is a transformation even possible?"

I fucking sobbed.

34/x

#ntwewyspoilers

Fucking sobbed like a god damn *child* for a good solid half a fucking hour muttering to myself "Jesus hell, you left-hand-path mathemagician, I know exactly how you feel, thank you for summing up mathematically what I have felt ever since I was 13"

35/x

Because growing up in a Christian Nationalist hate group, I have always had a powerful incentive to try to stop things from turning to a bad end.

I know (to borrow another Minamimoto-ism) if I didn't, my own numbers would be crunched.

Because somewhere along the line...

37/x

Somewhere along the line growing up, after finding out I'd been raised on a diet of lies and factoring things out for myself...I had realized I wasn't cis, and wasn't het, and didn't have the same faith of hate that they did, and I never came out to my folks on that,

38/x

and it was ironically after I went no-contact that I finally did open up my Twitter and start being, you know, more open about all this.

And...I felt the same helplessness that Minamimoto felt in seeing all vectors along parallel-world timelines going to the same fate.

39/x

It is an unspeakable horror, and I pray that nobody here ever has to live through that.

And this is why W3D7'' of #NTWEWY spoke to me so powerfully, and really was a beautiful way of showing we CAN change our fates...if we work together and expand our worlds.

40/x

Rindo has always been an interesting contrast to Neku to me, in that...Neku shut everyone out with his own walls, and had to learn to tear those down and connect with others to expand his world.

Rindo's issue is he goes along with the flow and he doesn't speak up,

41/x

#ntwewyspoilers

tries too hard to not be the nail that gets knocked down (really, that's also an interesting theme with the *Shinjuku Reapers* and their own failure, they don't want to rock the boat of their management and it led to one and almost *two* tragedies),

42/x

#ntwewyspoilers

and it's only when he's *forced* to take charge he grows, but...in W3D7'' this shows how even small encounters, small bits of reaching out...can actually get everyone to work together towards a goal and everyone can make a *new* and *better* vector

43/x

#ntwewyspoilers

And it's literally stuff like "Take the busted Mr. Mew to Shiki to fix, and then we can get Tsugumi out of it".

"Actually listen to Minamimoto's solution, and have Beat listen and forward it to Rhyme, who translates this for Kaie and everyone else."

44/x

#ntwewyspoilers

Kaie researching with his own "Virtualized Shibuya" he's been making to save SOMETHING of it and realizing it's workable, and helping direct (and also using Shinjuku's data to reboot Shinjuku).

Everyone being directed to give their own special talents,

45/x

#ntwewyspoilers

all to the goal of awakening the very souls of Shibuya itself and their voices collectively being the voice that shakes their hearts to consciousness, that grasps that zeptopercent of a chance and makes it its own.

That's a HELL of a message to me

46/x

And really, all in all, it's as I said on one of my first commentaries on Twitter on this game:

The world *ends* with you.
The world *begins* with you.

That's a hell of a powerful and deep message, with many more layers than one realizes at first.

47/x

And honestly there's a lot of strong imagery that comes out of that on many levels, but...that's for another essay :D

I will say I am definitely one of those who is convinced of the old trope that TWEWY is a franchise that comes into your life when you need it most.

48/x

And so, in light of that, I would pass along Hanekoma's sage advice: "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."

Thank you, creators, for expanding my own.

49/end