How the world ends with you has made teenagers in beautifully human difficulty

Teenagers in trouble are one of the most common types of characters in video games, but they are also one of the most difficult to do well. This is partly because it is difficult to capture the storm of emotions that is teenage experience - especially if writers have left this turbulent age far behind - and partly because it is very easy to Make boring teenage characters. Youth and inexperience are often the cause of the problems of adolescent characters, and it is easy for players to be frustrated by them, especially when it comes to depression. However, The World Ends With You proves that when teenagers in difficulty are doing well, the results can be incredible.

The World Ends with You is a JRPG of action in the current Shibuya, a Tokyo shopping center with a population density estimated at 14,679.09 people per square kilometer. These are young people - or young appearance that were once people - who use art, music and fashion to declare their existence, and that has something to say about unfair systems and depression . It is above all a story of adulthood for four children: Shiki Misaki, Daisukenojo Beat Bito, Raimu Rhyme Bito, and especially Neku Sakuraba. All reflect very real ways whose adolescents are rejected by society and their peers. They are also dead, and the whole game is structured to bring out the best and worst of them as they struggle to win the 'Game Reapers and regain their lives.

The World Ends with You is in many ways a very dark comedy, which allows it to seriously deal with the emotional problems of its young actors while keeping the tone relatively light. The game shows them both to embark on fun hijinks and suffer under the weight of their mistakes, all under the constant and disturbing reminder that these children are dead. And if they are not very lucky and very cautious, they will be more dead than dead in the hands of a ruthless bureaucracy of the afterlife. The high-risk and high-risk nature of the game of mowers, the focus on the second chances and the learning of your mistakes, and the playful amortality of all this makes it a very engaging scenario.

More than that, however, The World Ends With You forces its young characters to realize what is most precious to them by removing it. The results tend to be ironic or tragic - Shiki does not realize how much she was angry once she was walking in the body more conventionally attracting from her best friend Eri, Beat sacrifices her life to try to save her little sister Only to find a stranger for her -But the Neku trip shows what is the final goal of the game of mowers. All this suffering exists to temper the characters and make them stronger, yes, but it is specifically intended to help them overcome the personal defects they have neglected in life.

The jealousy of Shiki towards his best friend almost ruined their friendship, but after literally marketing instead of Eri, Shiki decides to win the match so that they could reconcile. Beat was constantly fighting with her parents, struggling at school and did not know where he was going into life. After his link with his little rhyme sister has been torn off by the game of mowers, Beat focuses much more about recovery and becomes the kind of brother she could admire.

The harvesters, meanwhile, have already pushed back the limits of their previous lives. Their eccentric habits, their modes of weird speeches and their attitudes larger than strongly contrast with the more realistic nature of the main distribution, but they also serve another objective: show that the harvesters have already identified what is the most valuable . Constant food references from Yodai Higashizawa to the obsession with Sho Minamimoto for mathematics and art through the will of Uzuki Yashiro to earn points and gain promotion, every reaper of the game has something that does moving forward. Def Märch has his group, Mitsuki Konishi has his ambitions, and even the notorious lazy Koki Kariya is motivated by her concern for her partner. Although the Reapers are in no way models for the protagonists - in fact, Neku spends a lot of the game trying to make their way in their ranks and succeed most of the time - they represent the themes of the Game.

Speaking of themes, let's talk about depression and alienation, which are a vital part of the teenage experience - and one of the reasons why teens are so difficult to write well. Show me a teenager who has never done something stupid in an emotional explosion and I'll show you a liar. All of the World Ends With You reflects the very real ways whose teens are rejected by society and their peers, from Beat and Rhyme, getting spilled by a car in Shiki fighting with Eri by jealousy, but Neku takes the cake. After the death of his only friend in the past, he became more and more enclosed, misanthropist and generally unpleasant to rub shoulders with. Unfortunately for him, the nature of the fighting system of the game forces him to associate with another dead player or to stop exist, and if he does not learn to trust his partner, he will win Never the game of mowers.

The result is one of the best representations of the struggles to be young and suffering that I have ever seen in a video game. Neku has a reason to be depressed, but his refusal to leave someone else in his little world directs him directly to almost kill shiki on the day 2 of the week of the game of mowers on the orders of a coal liar. This moment does more to increase the stakes in a single brief kinematics that some games do it for all their duration. Just like that, it becomes clear that the misanthropy of Neku is not only boring, it is dangerous.

The problem is that Neku spent years locked in his own head. Not only does he want to trust others, but he does not know how to identify what is most important for him until he is already too late. Throughout The World Ends With You, the player has the chance to see it slowly disappointing toxic coping mechanisms and achieving positive personal growth, although it has been chosen for the game of mowers specifically because it is rather awful.

Overall, The World Ends With You does a fantastic job by recognizing the very real problems of pain, isolation, depression and body image that teens can cross without ever feeling these problems for Influence or points. Neku, Shiki, Beat and Rhyme all end up feeling like very real and very complicated people, who are all allowed to make mistakes and grow. Beyond that, the game captures the feeling of being young and uncertain, but allows the player to slowly find his place just like Neku does the same, making it one of the passing stories in adulthood The most effective I have ever encountered. I really believe it's a reference for how to write teenagers in difficulty in video games.