Our pilgrimage to Shibuya October 2025 (in Shoka cosplay)
When my friend first introduced me to TWEWY in 2017-18 (ish?), we made a silly promise to someday go on a pilgrimage to Shibuya together. We've known each other for a long time so there has been many such promises and discussions, many of which never got realised - including my whimsical dream to someday do a cosplay of a character I like.
Then came NEO TWEWY and Shoka-chan! I instantly realised that ohhh, we have the same hair, same style! So maybe one day I could cosplay as Shoka and go take some pictures in Shibuya?! My friend took that idea seriously and even gifted me a set of Shoka's costume for my birthday some years ago.
That idea and our promise to visit Shibuya together finally came true in October 2025. We went to check out all the hot spots in TWEWY/NEO and took as many pictures as we could.
It all started at the Scrambled Crossing with a view of the 109 (104 in the game), of course!
Then Hachiko! It was very crowded there, the line of people queuing to take pictures with Hachiko was so long that we couldn't get any frontal shoot, so only the side it is.
From there, we headed to Tower Records and passed by Modi Building, which was once OICity in real life or Cadoi City in TWEWY before the rebranding in 2015.
Tower Records view from atop Miyashita Park (yes, the Park is on top of a building)
Miyashita Underpass (y'all see all the little symbols on the walls?!)
The Phone booth of Love (Spain Hill)
And of course, Cat Street where Mr.H's cafe would have been in the game! We didn't try any cafe, but went for the famous Iyoshi Cola on Cat Street.
And back to Scrambled Crossing once more, heading back to Shinjuku.
While we also checked in many other places around Shibuya like Dogenzaka/Tokyu Plaza/Takeshita Street and spent many hours wandering around Shinjuku, there were still places we couldn't check out yet, like the Shibuya River area or Udagawa Back Streets. Well, maybe those are for another trip someday soon.
Just a side note: cosplaying in public is not encouraged in Japan, specifically for costumes that may take up space or include props that may poke into people. I could only do this because the Shoka costume is pretty lowkey, basically even more lowkey than what normal people would wear in Shibuya.
All in all, you could only immerge in the kind of hectic melting pot that Shibuya really is by being there yourself. I do recommend going on a pilgrimage one day - no, maybe it will take several days cuz it's just that crazy - just remember to save up a lot of energies for the trip! I'm glad I was able to go before I became too old to do something like this, teehee.
Not gonna lie, I hate the word "unalive" due to how it's currently being used. There are so many other euphemisms and ways to say someone died that sounds more respectful than that.
Anyways, I couldn't help but think what being "unalive" is when there's also the word "undead". Undead is used for beings who are basically "live corpses" like vampires, zombies, mummies, etc. - dead bodies who move like they're still alive but they are corpses. And then, it hit me - doesn't the word "unalive" describe the characters of TWEWY?
The reapers and players are all just souls who can take on a live form - the reapers can manifest themselves in the RG anytime and the players can do the same when in marked areas - and at that point they could interact with anyone and anything in the living world. But if they die in that state, they'd probably just disappear cause they're just souls - there's no corpse. Their actual dead bodies have probably been buried or cremated at that point. So in the moment these souls manifest as "alive" in the living world, I guess in a way they're "unalive": living ghost like the "undead" living corpses.
I dunno where I was going with this but Happy Anniversary to The World Ends with You! I wish I could've made something better but my laptop broke lol.
Quote 1: "Almost Christmas means it wasn't Christmas!" - Phoenix Wright, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Quote 2: ""Trust your partner"... And I do. I can't forgive you, but I trust you." - Neku Sakuraba, The World Ends With You/Subarashiki Kono Sekai
Propaganda
Quote 1: Top tier line. There is a reason why AA fans reblog this each year - Submitter/Mod Chaos, parts taken from the propaganda submitted
Quote 2: This isn't the LAST line of the game, but it's close, and it's a key line of the closing monologue. Neku has gone from one of the most insufferable misanthropic edgelord 15-year-olds in human history to a caring person looking at his home and the people in it in a new light. He has done so as a direct result of a three-week series of brutal death games played in the afterlife for the chance to come back to life. He's been forced to team up with three different people, partners who challenged his view point and forced him to grow. The second one, Joshua, was an EVEN MORE INSUFFERABLE misanthrope who nonetheless seemed to get Neku better than anyone else... and was also incredibly suspicious to the point where Neku accused him of being his killer... and sacrificed himself for Neku at the end of their week, along with Neku discovering Joshua apparently DIDN'T kill him after all. Emphasis on "apparently". At the end of the third week, Joshua comes back, completely unharmed, and drops a series of reveals where "I never said I DIDN'T kill you, tee hee" is arguably not the worst part of the murder alone. (He's also planning on destroying the city. Oh, and he's directly responsible for the brutal death games.) Then he challenges Neku to a shootout for the fate of the city, where Neku finds he can't shoot the guy. Joshua doesn't have the same problem... But then Neku wakes up on the street, alive for the first time in weeks, and the city hasn't been destroyed. We cut to a week later, where Neku addresses Joshua, pointing out how incredibly traumatizing the whole experience was, but also admitting that even so, he's grateful to have met his partners. He can't forgive Joshua for putting him through this shit, but he still trusts him. He closes the monologue by telling Joshua that he's meeting up with his new friends for the first time in a week, and asking to see him there. And then those friends call over to him, and the credits roll, and the player SOBS. - Submitter (Shout out to this person. Not only did they write these GIANT paragraphs for both of their submissions but they told me how to tag them. Thank you so much <3)
TWEWY sprite edit commission of Akane Kurashiki from Zero Escape for @lapinparka !
I used NEO TWEWY Shiki’s sprite for most of the base, but I used Konishi’s torso for the torso here as well! I also drew the wings completely manually, which was rough but was an interesting challenge! I had a lot of fun with this edit!
