The World Ends With You/WMG

Red Skull pin in RG is the equivalent to the Player pin in UG
Think: Makoto popularizes Red Skull pin, and, meanwhile, gives one to Nao and to Sota. Then, OH SHI-, Nao and Sota die. Probably, while holding onto Red Skull pins. And - bingo! - they enter the Game, because they were holding onto them. So, if you die while you happen to have a Player or Red Skull pin, you enter the Game. Pro argument is that Red Skull pin is based specifically on a Player pin, and Megumi didn't notice this feature of a pin, or didn't want to change it to maximize the quantity of Players in the Game.

The lyrics to "Twister" make perfect sense, and the Conductor is Mr. Twister himself.
Oh, that Kitaniji. Always... mixing things up. Oh, and the candy cane was a canned recovery pin. What else... Oh yeah, Transformation is a message from the Conductor to the Reapers, Neku, and the Composer. My interpretation.


 * "Brain wave, main wave"
 * This does in fact refer to Kitaniji's plan, using Instrumentality to create a main thought or brain wave.
 * Psycho got a high kick
 * Indicating that Neku, who is Psycho according to some secret reports, is the only one who can stop it,
 * Collect and select
 * Show me your best set
 * This refers to the pins, indicating that he needs to take it seriously.
 * "Crystals, blisters"
 * It's all over now
 * The crystals are clear and impenetrable, just like thoughts are; however, they also cause conflict and pain, hence the "blisters" part.
 * Psycho cane
 * You're so keen
 * I need more candy canes
 * Considering this shows up when Uzuki and Kariya appear on the screen, I believe this refers to them. A cane has implications of punishment. The Pyscho cane therefore is Uzuki and the candy cane is in fact Kariya. The "you're so keen" part might be another taunt.
 * Alternatively, the Psycho cane part could refer to Kariya, who figured out what was happening in the games, if only somewhat.
 * "Cold cake, cold break"
 * This one's easy. Cold cake is sort of a deathday cake, a reverse of a birthday cake (which with birthday candles is normally hot). Cold cake indicates how unexpected Neku's death was.
 * Freak got a high kick
 * Mr. Twister
 * Moist with roistering
 * The fact remains that "freak" is used exactly like "Psycho" is. I believe this is Joshua this time, however. A Twister would be a manipulator. Moist with roistering means approximately, made damp with rudeness. In the secret reports, it is stated that Joshua is stressing Neku, making him sweat with his rude behavior.
 * Stick it up
 * Take it up
 * Step aside and see the world
 * This one is pretty easy, The World Ends With You -- it's up to Neku if he wants to see the world outside himself.
 * Effect has defects
 * "Take a bow to the moon (Bow-wow to the moon)"
 * As the secret reports stated, Neku's "defect" was his unstable Soul. The "effect" created a Soul versatile enough to allow him near-infinite pin mastery. However, even with this power, Neku is essentially serving Joshua (who uses the moon as his highest Player attack).
 * "Morning rays, Hairspray Queens"
 * "Get on their way to their nests, the west"
 * This one's a sad interpretation. The Haispray queens are Shiki and Eri due to their fashion obsession. Morning rays represents life, the west sunset or death. Eri is alive and Shiki is dead.
 * Another sad interpretation is how the lyrics represent the hivemind set of modern society and standards. Each waking day, dedicated to unity with others through pure material obsession and desires. The west likely means the cultural standards of the world being that of European and American ways of life and fashion.
 * "Honest, they once had a dream"
 * "Belles of society, in the shells of their unity"
 * This refers to the Bito siblings. They aren't as close because of internal conflict, especially Beat's first entry fee. But Rhyme's entry fee was Lost Forever and therefore she "Once had a dream".
 * Second sad interpretation for this one. People were born and filled with hopes of dreams, driven with well intentions and pure hearts, before society threw down their ideas and dreams as folly and unaesthetical.
 * Cornet'n spinet
 * "The sound flows, follows till they're home"
 * Coronets and spinets are both instruments, therefore these are referring to the players who have to follow the game's rules till they come back to life. It's notable that "Neku" is Japanese for "sound", suggesting that they can find success if they follow Neku.
 * Symbolic of the sounds of repetition and everyday routine until the day is over with.
 * Dragged by the power of dreams
 * That power is yet unknown
 * The only reason they want to do this is their own ambitions. The game doesn't know whether they're worth the effort until they prove their potential or "power" themselves.
 * People are still driven with desire, dreams, and motivation, but they have not taken the time in themselves to discover, learn, or understand their inner turmoils and complexities of what they want. They are also dragging on lifelessly day by day, with their weight of insecurities and unresolved inner turmoils being the chains and weights that drag them down.

The sequel will take place in another city.
This is basically a given; dialogue states that each city's game is completely self-contained, implying that every city has its own Game.

Mr. Mew is a demon.
Shiki points out that she can't really control him at all (presumably, he slashes while she carries him to the target with telekinesis). And apparently, Shiki animated him with a process called "psychomancy"...

Mr. Mew is Shiki's soul
It's not her body she's using, but a psychic shadow of Eri's, therefore the only thing from the Real Ground is Mr. Mew. The psychic connection is so strong, she just thinks the body she's in is the Eri Shadow.

Rhyme's Entry Fee was her own Death
Okay, so Rhyme, in addition to being The Messiah, is also deeply suicidal. Due to the many problems at home, she welcomes death and oblivion open armed. This is the reason why, in spite of being consumed by Noise, which The Secret Reports state, she.
 * I thought the game stated that Rhyme's entry fee was her dreams, whilst Beat's was Rhyme's memories of him?
 * It wasn't outright stated, just made obvious.

Rhyme's death was a suicide, due to an unattainable dream that was her Entry Fee
She had thrown herself into traffic, not intending for Beat to unsuccessfully try to save her. According to the Secret Reports, the original reason for the Entry Fee was to
 * This is disproven by Beat in W3 D4 when he told Neku that Rhyme had been chasing him when he ran out of the house after a fight with his parents. She never intended to be hit by a car.

Neku is a reincarnation of Haruhi Suzumiya.
His past was evidently as someone who thought of other human beings as nothing more than chaff to be discarded -- so he forced himself and a few others, those he found it worthwhile to care about, even by proxy, into a Closed Space where most people WERE nothing more than empty, hollow figments. He created both the, as a way to ensure that he would have something to do, and someone to care about, through his trials in that Space.

The Reaper Game is indeed part of Haruhi-sama's plan, but she's not Neku.
The Reaper Game is how Espers are actually made in the Haruhi-verse. When Haruhi-sama's subconscious chooses a follower, you don't think she'd let something as paltry as death excuse them from her service, do you? No! They're put through a grueling training process where they have to fight lesser people's negative emotions; and they have to justify themselves as unique beings in a world Haruhi-sama sees as full of conformity. Should they win, they return to life as an Esper; prepared to deal with the Celestial Beings that are Haruhi's Noise. There is the option of but that's delving into places mortal minds can scarcely comprehend.

Sho Minamimoto is still alive.
Note, Neku and crew see his "body" under a car and vending machine while heading towards the Composer. It seems Everything Fades after dying; so he was just incapacitated, not killed. Despite being such a massive jackass, he's the only Reaper who is really interested in art, which is the supposed reason for the Game; this probably is what saved him.
 * You-Know-Who did say that Sho was merely "retired early" from that particular Game.
 * Voldemort?

The current batch of Reapers were corrupt, resulting in the Conductor's interference
They were cheating, essentially. Most Players are killed on the first day by Noise without even being told about the Game and that they had to get Partners. Reapers relied on Noise far too much and their conversations imply they didn't expect any Players to succeed.
 * I thought Neku was the only one who didn't know the rules of the Game, and that only because his memory was gone.
 * This troper, having read the Secret Reports, thought it was relatively obvious that Kitaniji was trying to conceal the fact that the Composer was absent and therefore couldn't bring anyone back to life by making sure there was no one to resurrect. When that failed, he began bending the rules more and more (using a Player who already won as an entry fee, disqualifying Neku for something his partner had done before the Game without his knowledge or consent, making sure there were no other Players in the third Game, etc.) to make sure the survivors were erased.

Joshua is

 * I doubt it. Neku's memory was returned in full at the end of Week 1 (except for ), but for the entirety of Week 2 he regards Joshua as a complete stranger. Also, considering how much Joshua grated on him initially, it just plain isn't likely that Neku would have tolerated him outside of the Game.
 * BUT. Eh, eh?
 * For one, This Troper totally buys this, and thinks it makes the game just that much more awesome.
 * And, they'd make good fuckbuddies.

The events of The World Ends With You are simply part of a pen and paper RPG cooked up by a sufficiently clever GM
The Reapers keep referring to one of them running that week's Game as the Gamemaster. The Reapers also speak about the various rules of the game (and being constrained by them), even though they themselves dangerously powerful, can live lives in both the RG and UG, and supposedly rule over life and death itself. Even though the game should last 7 days, many missions refer to having a 60 minute time limit, suggesting that time is as flexible as needed by the Game. All these facts are also common features of pen and paper RPGs! Neku and the other main characters (Beat, Rhyme, Shiki, Joshua) are all PCs, and Mr. Hanekoma is the GM. Obviously the system they're using has some form of permanent death system Neku's ability to use so many pins is a result of NOT min-maxing: all the other PCs did and as a result reduced the number of pins/abilities they could use, in return for more power for the attacks they COULD use. Co-incidentally, this actually sounds like an awesome pen and paper RPG, and this troper would actually like to play it...
 * And now you have me wondering about how GURPS could be adapted to the Reapers' Game... Hmm, ability to use more pins comes out of your character point pool? Neku took some mental/social disadvantages (Loner, Bad Temper...) to get more pins?
 * Actually, everyone takes at least 1 disadvantage, in the form of the entry fee. Everyone except Neku focused their points into one or two attack skills (Beat: skateboarding, Shiki: psychomancy, or however she controls that cat thing, Joshua: his laser beam move and dropping stuff on people), Neku spread his points around so that he could master as many pins as possible (possibly due to an indecisive player?).
 * That explains why Joshua is such an asshole. His player's a Munchkin
 * Actually, Joshua's player being a Munchkin explains Joshua completely. "Oh, not only is he a living human who can interact with the UG, but is, and he can summon random large objects with his phone. Oh, and he can call down celestial laser beams."
 * Incidentally, Minamimoto would be something The GM created as an anti-Munchkin
 * Pins are a perfect example of the chip set form of modular abilities.

The Conductor's entry fee is his life in Shibuya.
Dialogue never establishes what Megumi Kitaniji lost in order to play the 30-day game against the Composer. However, it makes sense. An entry fee was paid. Kitaniji says several times how much Shibuya means to him, and that's why he's competing against the Composer in the first place. And yet, of all the Reapers in the story, he is the only one who is never seen on the streets of Shibuya. At no point does he cross "the river". For someone who cares about the district so much to never set foot in it, the most likely explanation is that he can't. Because it truly was the most valuable thing to him...

Neku's Composer-induced amnesia results in feedback when meeting with similarly powerful individuals.
This is bizarre, but hear it out. Almost every time Neku talks to the Conductor or Producer, he blacks out and can't remember the details of the conversation until the next day. This doesn't happen when he talks to any other people. And the only times this doesn't happen, the Composer happens to be nearby. The same Composer who is forcibly keeping him from remembering certain important details. There has to be a connection.
 * This may also explain why Neku's head hurts whenever he is around Minamimoto, seeing as Sho's abilities are almost on par with the Conductor's. His imagination isn't quite strong enough to erase Neku's memory, but perhaps it's strong enough to give him a headache.

Joshua possessed Mr. Mew during Week 1
Shiki says that she's not really controlling Mr. Mew, and Neku wonders if it's possessed. How else would be able to watch Neku? Plus, when first reaching the Statue of Hachiko, you see him in the background, but once the pact is made, he vanishes.
 * Jossed in the manga at least, where Joshua, er... stalks Neku during Week 1 and takes a photo of his backside from behind a corner...

The Composer was in fact planning to destroy Shibuya, but had changed his mind by the endgame.
Somewhere along the line, during his observation of, the Composer changed his mind. He resolved that regardless of how everything turned out,

The "Last" Game had an entry fee for both as well.
Related to the above: Every Game in the UG has an entry fee, regardless of whether it's the Reaper Game or between Reapers. So what do Neku and pay?

For Neku it's

For the Composer, it's

The Music that plays is actually what Neku is listening to at the time.
...On his headphones.
 * You can actually buy the TWEWY OST, full of the songs that played in the game. Now even you can feel like Neku with assorted Jpop-ish songs perfect for ignoring people as you walk through a crowded mall.

Neku isn't listening to music on his headphones.
It's my theory that Neku only wears the headphones so that people will leave him alone. Why would he toss them away in the ending if they had good music on them? Also, have you ever tried to talk to someone while wearing headphones like Neku's? It's not easy.
 * I like to think that he just switched over to earbuds. As for talking, he just plays them low enough that he can still hear.
 * Also of note: Neku's idle animation.
 * Would you disturb someone tapping their foot, clearly enjoying the music they're listening to? And for the fact that he does it mid-battle; I assume he's done it for so long it's become a habit.
 * He tosses the headphones away because no one stores music, good or not, on their headphones.

Joshua and Near are brothers separated at birth.
I want you to think really hard about this one. Joshua and Near are too much alike for it to be pure coincidence. Both of them are young, white-haired, Insufferable Genius pretty boys who nine times out of ten will refuse to give a straight answer, enjoy using people as tools to get what they want, have girly voices, and enjoy toying with their easily-pissed off partner. Don't you dare try and tell me it's a coincidence! They could actually be twins, considering we don't know.
 * What if they're one in the same?
 * Not to mention Joshua likes solving mysteries. If Joshua "is" Near, then...it's not too much of a stretch to assume Mr. H is really Mr. L. Scruffy-looking guy, willing to do immoral things for the greater good.... This brings up the question: If Mr. H is L, and Joshua is Near...does that mean Beat is Kira? Think about it...

Sho Minamimoto is a savant with a mental disorder.
He's obviously a very talented mathematical genius and a reaper prodigy, able to recite three columns of Pi at a whim and summon Taboo noise at will. At the same time, he's anti-social, arrogant, and shows the general make-up of a young sociopath. He frequently collects heaps of junk to the point of hoarding. He's shown narcissistic, sadistic and obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and in Another Day devotes his time almost exclusively to pins. Keep in mind this troper has no psychological expertise, but Sho can be summed up as Joshua if Joshua had been dropped on his head at birth.

Minamimoto is actually a Heartless.
It would explain a lot about him. Comparing him to Xehanort's Heartless: He has the golden eyes, the dark skin, the tattoos on his chest, the insanity. He summons the Taboo Noise because they attack anyone, similar to regular Heartless, and when he, his appearance changed because he became a purer form of Heartless. That would also explain
 * Related: Taboo Noise are actually Noise/Heartless hybrids.
 * Why can't Noise just be a subspecies of Heartless?
 * Aren't Noise usually just the soul warped? This could make them either Nobodies or Hollows.
 * Doesn't the game explain the Noise as being akin to a spiritual form of static? The secret reports make a few references to reality being much like sound waves, and that moving between the RG, UG and higher planes of existence is much like tuning a radio to the right frequency once you know how, with Noise being a semi-intentional by-product of this system. This explains why Noise are so lethal to residents of the UG: the erasure metaphor is more literal than it first seems, as losing to the Noise means your effect on the "wave" of the UG is erased from existence (hence why Rhyme could only be brought back as a Noise herself). It also explains why Taboo Noise are illegal to create: not only does it cause more Noise to enter the system (potentially destabilising it), but because they're much more powerful than other Noise, they're harder to defeat (a point of great worry for the Reapers, who could be reasonably be expected to eliminate excess Noise personally or at least use them against the Players).
 * With the arrival of Birth By Sleep, it becomes more likely that the Noise are somehow related to the Unversed - the Noise generate negative emotions, while the Unversed are the product of them. Their aesthetic is also in general slightly closer than the resemblance between the Noise and the Heartless or Nobodies.

The world Neku and friends inhabit is a parallel to Sora's world.
Considering the general premise (battling creatures that exist solely because of the negative emotions people feel) and the similarities between the protagonists and antagonists (Neku=Sora, Shiki=Kairi, Sho=Heartless, etc.) not to mention the game and the series were made by the same devs...

Shiki is a Bount.
Mr. Mew is her doll. She's just too nice to suck the souls out of people. Among other things, it explains Mr. Mew "doing his own thing" in fights.

Neku's final entry fee
Neku's entry fee for (Because Neku made the right choice in that final Game, his entry fee was repaid in full.) Alternative theory: Neku's entry was the parts of his personality that make him different from Sora. >.>
 * The Secret Reports make it clear that Neku lost his final game against Joshua -- whatever his fee was, he didn't get it back.

Joshua's Entry Fees
Everyone who plays the game has to have one. Yet they never talk about Joshua's. He has to have paid them, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to play. And the price had to be what he valued most. Now, what could the fee be, However, the entry fee for his second Game is something he finally found even more valuable.
 * ...Wait a minute,
 * Joshua lied. Duh.
 * Ah, of course. I'm too used to being in fandoms where you can actually trust characters to not lie about everything.
 * Don't the Secret Reports explicitly state that
 * Defeated doesn't mean killed.
 * So they both won and lost? That's... a little complicated.
 * Victory conditions were specified; failure conditions were not. That's how I see Neku getting out of it. I'm not convinced, however, that Joshua had to pay an entry fee; by his own admission,.
 * Defeated doesn't mean killed.
 * So they both won and lost? That's... a little complicated.
 * Victory conditions were specified; failure conditions were not. That's how I see Neku getting out of it. I'm not convinced, however, that Joshua had to pay an entry fee; by his own admission,.

The entire game is one massive jab/cheap shot at fashion trends.

 * Several of the reports state that the whole point of the Game is to
 * That someone in Square Enix is, of course, Nomura. This is all revenge for everyone mocking his zipper/belt-laden tastes. "Just because it's not 'conventional' fashion, you mock me!? You dirty sheep!" Et cetera, et cetera.
 * Nomura was the main character designer in TWEWY, so... possibly? I would have thought the main character designer would be pro-fashion trends though...
 * I dunno, the game seems neutral on the subject on trends. On one hand they can be used to properly express yourself, as shown with the Prince, but if you let yourself be influenced too much by them you just won't be... you, anymore. Plus the main characters--with the exception of Beat--seem up-to-date or trendy, even Joshua.

Shiki committed suicide.
I think this is kind of a given. Consider Shiki's lines about hating herself. Consider Eri's pauses around the word 'accident' when talking about her death -- they seem to indicate that there's something more to it. After finding herself in the UG as Eri, she may have decided that life was worth living after all and set out after a partner.
 * That would also explain why Mr. Mew was the only thing that she could control, and (if we can believe the secret reports), then it is possible that her power only extended to the one object that related to her happiest memories.
 * I would think she would only find herself in the UG after agreeing to play the Game, and if she really wanted to kill herself, why would she make an attempt to come back to life?
 * Because, she regretted killing herself.
 * Also that would make Eri feel guilty of "Killing" her best friend, as she told her that she wasn't cut out to be a designer, giving her the will to give up on everything.
 * Sorry, I like that theory as well, but I have to disagree. First off, Eri doesn't, in fact, pause around the word 'accident'; and secondly, Shiki initially only tries getting back to life because she gets to be in Eri's body. But as the Game progresses, she realizes that she'd rather give up on life. If she had killed herself, she wouldn't regret it, and she wouldn't have even gotten into the Game and gotten Eri's body. So I think it was a genuine accident, and she went along with the Game. Only then, when even being Eri wasn't enough for her, did she admit to herself that she didn't want to come back to life (until talking with Neku and seeing Eri during the Game convinced her).
 * It's probably worth mentioning that the Japanese word for "accident" (事故, jiko) is often used to describe incidents where people jump in front of trains.
 * But did she actually use the word 'accident' in the Japanese version?

Joshua is Haruhi Suzumiya
Haruhi finally had it and destroyed her universe, only rebuilding Shibuya, complete with people coming back from the dead, a lot of espers and psychos, alternate universes, death-gods, angles, ect. ect. Of course, she set herself in the center of everything as the great, almighty Composer, who everybody envies and knows. (Thous restoring her own world back to what it was like, before the baseball-stadion incident) She made herself a boy, since she didn't want any more male admirers, they just annoyed her. Neku is Kyon, but Haruhi/Joshua made him indifferent and sociopathic, so he wouldn't fall in love with no-one else, because he/she wanted him for her/himself, but undid this via character-development, when his/her unconsciousness realized, that he/she liked him better when he was still normal. Shiki is Mikuru, he/she made her unattractive and plain, so nobody would ever fall in love with her again (especially not Neku/Kyon), but that was pretty much blown by the entry-fee thing. Notice that Mikuru loved to buy clothes SHE(not Haruhi's cosplay-madness) liked, as much as Shiki does. Probably the trauma of Haruhi's forced cosplaying with her is still there and this is, why she pays such deep attention to trends, never to be embarrased again. Where the other characters ended up? That's still open for speculation!
 * Jossed, Joshua's entire motivation for destroying Shibuya was to prevent it from corrupting the other areas which means, they have to exist. Also, the Composer is far from almighty; he/she has no power outside his/her city (which of course with the above theory is irrelevant), can not restore the entry fees of players who lost, and has less power than the angels (and in fact is only capable of interacting with the Producer).
 * However, this theory could work with a little tweaking, in particular, Haruhi tried to rewrite the universe but either the Data Integration Thought Entity or the Sky Canopy Dominion (or one of their interfaces) hijacked her powers before the rewrite was complete. The hijacker then divided her powers amongst various people (these people would thus be the Composers). The hijacking entity itself is/are the angels and the Producers are humanoid interfaces.

Neku played the Reaper's Game for four weeks.
After Joshua shot him in the ending, there's a seven-day delay before we see Neku again. There's also a seven-day delay between the end of the third Game and the point when Neku finally goes to meet Beat, Rhyme, and Shiki. The Reaper's Game lasts... yep, seven days. This is probably to allow for Neku to appear in the inevitable sequel to provide a tutorial, and take the first Game's come-back-to-life-free card so that the new lead gets stuck in a similar series of multiple Games.
 * Yeah, yeah, Kitanji claimed Neku wouldn't get another shot. He was either lying due to not being able to enforce it, using weasel words and the impending end of Shibuya to make it "true" despite not being able to enforce it, counting on his own success at his Game with the Composer to give him the authority to enforce it, or just had his ruling overturned by Joshua.
 * If this is true, then how do you explain the people standing in a circle pointing at Neku the fourth time he wakes up in the Scramble?
 * Other players, perhaps?
 * While that's possible, consider how things are animated in TWEWY. They reuse animations/screens whenever possible -- I mean, all the hands (for the timers, holding Rhyme's pendant, etc.) are the same, no matter whose hand it's supposed to be. So I think the fact that a different animation is used when Neku wakes up in the scramble at the end is supposed to send a message that this time, something new is happening.
 * The first day of the game establishes the artistic 'code' that plot-unimportant Players are displayed in colour and plot-unimportant citizens in the RG are grey silhouettes. The ring of people surrounding Neku when he wakes up in the Scramble for the last time are grey silhouettes, which were meant to match/contrast the silhouettes that pass him every other time. Neku did not play a Game in that 7-day gap. QED.
 * Also worth a mention, the "7 Days Later" gap occurs after Neku's "WHAT THE HELL!?" So he woke up in The Scramble, thought he was playing the Game again, yelled in a crowded area for no apparent reason, presumably got looked at funny, and then went to Hachiko, meeting at least Shiki, if not the others. This also justifies his statement about meeting up with his friends for the first time in a week.

Yuuko Ichihara has something to do with the Reaper's Game.
The whole business with the entry fees sounds suspiciously similar to her 'price equal to the wish' thing. Perhaps she's the one who takes the entry fee (along with any memory of her involvement from Reapers and Players alike, as her price for the Reapers hiring her). Or maybe it's just that whoever invented the Reaper's Game in the first place knew her and modeled the entry fee after her way of doing business.
 * Or Ichihara's shop runs an archetypal, personal Game, or she is God or Satan in the Angel/Reaper hierarchy.

Hanekoma and Joshua are related.
Hanekoma is in fact Joshua's older brother, and they. In addition, this would make right.
 * Or he's Joshua's father. Joshua is a Jesus figure. A Greek writer named Celsus once claimed that Jesus's real father was a Roman soldier named Panthera. What's the name of Hanekoma's noise form? Panthera Cantus!

Neku becomes a famous author or artist by the sequel.
His "fiction" series The Reapers' Game was a smash hit. The main character loves his work. Alternatively, he could go into art like Mr. Hanekoma.
 * Stop making Neopie Paranoid.

"Players" of the Game are in a coma.
This would explain how they can come back to life without everyone in the real world getting all confused by dead people being resurrected, and why Eri talks about Shiki having had an "accident", as opposed to having died. While their souls are playing the game in the UG, their bodies are lying in a hospital somewhere, unconscious. If they're erased, they die for real.
 * Evidently, this means that Sam Tyler is also a player; replace Shibuya with 1970s Manchester in that case, however.
 * One problem. Neku wakes up at the scramble crossing. Presumably, he hasn't been lying there in a coma for weeks. And it'd be a bit much for the Composer to drag him out of the hospital and dump him there for a laugh...
 * There's also the memorial/offering that had been left for Beat and Rhyme at Miyashita Park. Admittedly, this troper doesn't know much about how the Japanese regard coma patients, but wouldn't an offering for the dead be a bit premature if that was the case?
 * This troper believes that the memories of everyone in Shibuya are rewritten so that they completely forget about the Players merely being comatose.
 * Actually, like many Square-Enix games, some of the story isn't present in the "story", if you catch my drift. If you scan the minds of random people, some interesting tidbits show up. One man describes how he often sees people disappear and reappear out of thin air, especially in Udagawa, so I think this indicates that they simply reappear where they died.
 * I'm pretty sure that guy was talking about how you become visible in stores.

Multiple Reapers' Games are run each week
The reason Beat and Neku fall asleep before completing the mission in Week 3 is to prevent them from getting involved in other games.

In the Another Day universe, the Reaper's Game is...
You guessed it, Tin Pin Slammer. Because why not.
 * Then why are there noise in Another Day? (Besides the obvious)
 * To get better pins to play with.
 * Since this is an alternate universe, it is very likely that the members and maybe even the hierarchy of the Reapers are completely different.

Neku's final entry fee is
That's why he couldn't ; it's similar to the third entry fee in that.

The sequel will take place in another part of Tokyo, possibly Minato
Why Minato? The Tokyo Tower is there! Also, in the sequel Shiki and Eri will be a famous Desinger-Duo and will have their own brand, called "Sherry" (Notice the pun?), Rhyme will be a famous singer (because of her name, her sweet voice, and how much I think the song "Someday" fits her), Neku will work for Gatito and be married to Shiki. Beat will be dead and has been playing the Reapers game in cycles for almost 20 years (Therefore, an important NPC in the game). Why? Because I like the idea!
 * That would be awesome. The only way it could be better is if Neku had ascended to Angelhood. (Presumably Beat would be a Reaper to be playing The Game for that long.)
 * Well, I actually wanted to turn that into a fanfiction, but School stress got in my way... Don't worry, I'm a good fanfiction author. Never got any bad critique on my fics. Oh yes, and I also would like to have Neku be accended to angelhood.
 * When you are finished, supply a link.
 * Back on topic, the Angel hierarchy would very likely be explored in more detailed.
 * That can work, after all thay are Neighbour.
 * This Troper would rather it be in Shinjuku. We've already gone with the big city approach, let's try a smaller town. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building could be that game's 104.


 * This Troper feels that Akibahara has some GREAT possibility for the sequel. Instead of Pins, Japanese phone cards will be the new Psyche medium, and the brands will range from a spectrum of entertainment companies, from video game developers, anime production companies, manga publishers, and even to movie studios, Japanese idol agencies and hobby content manufacturers. We can also only hope for a Macross Missile esque psyche as well. Plus some insight on the issues of the world as well ;3

The Game works much differently in other regions' UG.
The Composer's position is used to create the rules of the Game. Given unlimited power to change the workings of the world, two different people would probably not decide on identical rulesets. Given the significant differences between the personalities of the named Reapers in Shibuya, there probably isn't a particularly -esque Composer to every region of the UG, so...
 * Can we at least assume that Noise exist everywhere, and therefore play a role in each region's UG? (On that note, I just imagined several different uses of Noise in said games: a Pokemon-style game, a mounted combat game where you can ride various Noise into combat, and, um... My Little Pony-type Noise. I'm going to assume the last one is the fault of having a female Composer. And of course, the Furry in me has to offer up the idea of the players becoming Noise in a game, or at least developing their own Cantus forms.)
 * Oh, dear... it seems that, in suggesting this WMG, this troper has created a monster. Though a monster with potential entertainment value.
 * I smell OC fanfictions. Set in New York, Los Angeles and other famous cities.
 * Please do. Not since Pokémon have I seen such potential for videogame Elsewhere Fic, and we could all use a break from Neku/Joshua.

Joshua only shot Neku in the end to remove his last entry fee from him
I think, Joshua wasn't wanting to destory Shibuya anymore, since he made friends with Neku. However, when he revealed that he was the composer and the one who set up this whole chaos, Neku's character-development may not have dropped to zero, but he was so shocked that he probably thought that he should never have trusted anyone and that trusting people is just a way to get hurt over and over again. And THAT'S what Joshua took for Neku's final entry-fee: The experience, that he can't trust anyone on this world. Then, he shot Neku, erasing his entry-fee. Afterwards, he reset Shibuya to the first day of the first week bringing everyone back to life in the process. Notice that Joshua never said "If I win, I erase Shibuya". He says "The winner get's to decide. Of course, I've already decided." He never said, WHAT he decided. In the end, Neku stated that he didn't forgive Joshua, but trusted him. This makes much more sense, if you consider this theory. Also, many people think that Neku had to play the game again, since he woke up on the scramble in the end. But I think, that he actually woke up in the RG version of the scramble. You should notice how the sounds in the background suddenly decrease, as soon as Neku opens his eyes. I think, that's not a "dramatic pause", but just the people going all like "WTF? Where'd that kid come from?!" Neku himself probably thinks, that he's still in the UG (like the last three times he suddenly woke up in the scramble. Additionally, he's just REALLY confused, giving him a good reason to shout "WHAT THE HELL?!".
 * Adding to the fact that Neku never played a fourth Game is the fact that, if you look in the background, there is a circle of people around him, pointing to him.

Ex-Player are the some of the Shopkeepers
Think about it, Why would they sell the Pins all over Shibuya, if the Pin make the Player Psych work (More better), and give clothes that help the Player, Food to feed the Player, tag that No Employee see to remove, and how thay seem to be kind to the Player if the Player shop that long enough? I not saying all the Shopkeepers were Players in the Games. I mean Maybe some (like Makoto) are clueless about the games. But Just Think about it.
 * It's stated IN-GAME that Ex-players go on to become artists or in some other way creatively active. Shopkeepers are not exactly known for being very creative. Also, most of the things you buy are casual stuff like clothes and, well, food. And face it: Nearly every store in the world sells pins or badges those days. (At least were I life. And Shibuya's probably the same) Also, I suspect you to be eighter Beat or Google-Translation. For obvious reasons.
 * I would be Beat Yo! That again Serious Business is Serious Business
 * Lapin Angelique shopkeeper Princess K is mentioned several times to be the designer/creator of many of the clothing items in her shop; to ko-robber-ate, a guy in one of the music stores says he'll burn you a CD of his latest music, indicating that he's probably a singer-songwriter, even if he dresses like a square. not to say that all the shopkeepers are designers/players - just that it's pretty possible for some of them. (princess K still gives me Morticia Addams vibes, though. )
 * You know, actually... scanning stray thoughts and reading threads info will reveal a lot more about shopkeepers' secret lives : you've got many designers, a few musicians/singers, a DJ, a dancer, a comedian, a skateboarder, a football player, etc. They DO make a mark on society since people are thinking about them. And then of course there's Gatito, whose buyer is CAT, and there's Ken Doi in AD... (and then there's Tatsuya Omura). In short, you really may be on to something here.
 * And apart from that, this guess is Intentional Engrish for Funny.
 * Note that Ken Doi, so he's probably in on it too. Who says Ramen can't be an art form?

Rhyme is able to move between the upper and lower Noise Planes
In the first week, it's established that players can't see each other's battles when they're fighting the noise, but Beat claims Rhyme is the one who figured out how his attacks work. Since Beat doesn't appear to have the ability to move between planes when he's your partner, Rhyme must be the one with that ability.
 * Though Shiki does tell Neku to focus his thoughts on her during battle to help with her attacks early in the game, so there's probably some sort of psychic link given by the Pact.
 * So, Rhyme's ability to see Beat is akin to Neku's ability to see Shiki.

The Ministry of Finance and equivalent groups around the world are run by the angels
The various mints exist solely to explain where new currency comes from, when they need to change the amount of currency available they simply ask the Composers to change drop rate and or value of the pins.

Neku and his partner's shared HP is a side effect of the Harmonizer pin.
Thus explaining why Beat didn't get erased when Rhyme did.
 * Neku and Shiki share HP before he gets the Harmonizer...
 * Plus, Beat was well on his way to being erased when Rhyme did. Hanekoma had to work fast to make a pin for Beat to sync with, otherwise he'd have been toast.

The ability to spend any amount of time on a mission is not a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation
It is a side effect of the Composer's absence, which as noted in the Secret Reports makes the rules of the Underground invalid.
 * Maybe that why on week 3 time seen to fly away

This story is backwards.
is The Hero, and is The Dragon, not the other way around.
 * How exactly do you justify  then? If anything deserves a What the Hell, Hero? moment...

Shiki's actually played two weeks of the Reaper's Game. Furthermore, the first week playing was with Eri as her partner.
Shiki knows WAY too much about playing the game, even if we assume that of course she'll know more than Neku does thanks to his Laser-Guided Amnesia; there's no way she'd understand not only how to use the pins, but also that ONLY Mr. Mew worked, prior to making a pact unless she had already discovered this while in a pact in a previous game. This is why Eri not only refers to Shiki's death as though she could return (because she knows Shiki could still be playing), but also why Shiki gave up her appearance; the first time around, Shiki felt so worthless in comparison to playing beside Eri (who sounds like she'd be a total "psych whiz" like Neku) that she wanted to become Eri in subsequent games rather than admit that she wasn't good enough as herself. The Shiki/Eri week was several weeks if not months before Neku started, as otherwise Eri wouldn't have been able to return to life in the RG otherwise, but everything else fits (including why Eri rocks as a designer -- she developed her soul / Imagination while playing the game, thus when she came back, she was an artistic genius!)
 * There just two things wrong with that theory:
 * Mina talks to Eri about her desings in the Realground and how she hasn't made any, since Shiki is death, meanng, that she was great BEFORE Shiki had the accident, not afterwards.
 * The whole fight between Shiki and Eri, that made part of Shiki's angsting over comeing back to life, was based on a missunderstanding, they had when Shiki tried to desng something in the RG. If Shiki and Eri spent a week togheter afterwards, she would sure have explained Shiki how she really meant it and Shiki would have had no reason to angst over this missunderstanding.
 * I said it took place FAR before the current game. As in "Shiki and Eri were in one game together (after dying for some other reason besides those mentioned in the plot), came back, spent several weeks / months / years in the Realground being creative, then had the argument and the wangst right before Shiki died (again)." In other words, Shiki and Eri played a "straight" game (Composer and all) long before, hence Shiki's shock and surprise to discover that the Composer was not only not there at the end, but that she wasn't given a free pass back into life like last time.
 * I wouldn't say weeks, months, or years. Remember Uzuki and Koki's conversation? Uzuki had never seen a game run for multiple weeks in a row; Koki had, but stated that it was unusual. Three weeks in a row was practically regarded as unprecedented.
 * Correction, they said it was odd for them to be on duty for multiple weeks in a row.
 * You Know, We don't know how long, Maybe Shiki and Eri Played the Game from the Previous Composer, and Maybe this Composer wasn't a Jerkass as the Currant Composer.

Another Day Shiki is ERI
Think about it: If Neku was just seeing her as Eri, Joshua wouldn't just call her Green because of her Skirt, and she wouldn't say that her Boots are not made for sewer. Yeah, the real Shiki have Green Shirt, and Sandals are not made for Sewer (or even walking outdoor a lot), But Neku sees her as Eri, I don't think that he hear what he want to hear too, as for the name well it just a name.
 * Came to that conclusion as well. Also, her personality in Another day seems more like what Shiki decribed Eri to be like and less like Shiki herself.
 * See This Shiki have her personality, not acting as her and also she friend to Mina (and Nao-Nao somehow) and I don't know if our Shiki know Mina too, before.
 * ...aren't alternates allowed to have alternate lives/friendships/etc? Seriously, Konishi is Beat's teacher. It's plausible that Shiki can be part of a fangirl cheering squad.
 * Never think that Canon!Konishi was a Teacher before she lost her life? But You maybe right, I mean Higashizawa is Grily-Man and NO way that our Higashizawa was like that!!
 * Nonono, see, she seems to act like Eri because that's what we'd expect, seeing Eri's body instead of Shiki's. After all, Shiki did act like Eri for a while near the beginning~ We're used to Shiki looking like Eri, so we'd expect her to act the way she did before the whole Tomato in the Mirror incident which revealed that that wasn't indeed her body! It's just one big issue with perception.
 * Canon!Eri is friends with Mina. I dunno about you guys, but my bff and I are in the same social circle. There's no reason why canon!Shiki can't know Mina through Eri.
 * Ah, but Mina didn't know who Shiki was.
 * Well, I 'know' most of the people my bffs know by sight, but I don't actually know stuff like their names or how they know my friends. It's fairly possible that Mina would know Shiki if she saw her, but not her name or just by the fact that she and Eri were best friends. (Eri seems like she would have a lot of close friends.)
 * Actually, if you scamper around Shibuya before entering the Tin Pin Slammer contest, a conversation with Joshua reveals that Nekku is subconsciously refusing to perceive Shiki as she actually is, but rather is too attached to the state in which he met her.
 * But, Another!Neku didn't meet Another!Shiki in the same way that Neku met Shiki.
 * Joshua actually talks to and about player there, as Neku truly doesn't understand one bit of his rambling, even of whom he's speaking, as you do not meet Shiki by that point (or just I didn't, but Neku doesn't understand either way).
 * You know, RG!Shiki is very green. Well, yellow and green, but yellow's taken, and the green there is plenty for Joshua to dub her green. And RG!Shiki was wearing a skirt jacket shirt combo thing. Yeah, you mentioned the shirt thing but... As for the boots thing, we'll pass that off as also hearing what we want to hear as well as seeing what we want to see. Perception isn't just vision, after all.
 * You May Be Right... But really, Why would Neku see her as THAT. (Not saying, she is Bad Looking, Just OK)

The reason why Joshua didn't erase Shibuya was because he in fact lost the Game.
When I refer to Game, I mean the one between Kitaniji and Joshua. Joshua limited himself to letting a proxy, Neku, play for him, and he himself had no bearing on the Game as far as winning and losing THAT SPECIFIC GAME went. If Neku wins, he wins. If Neku loses, he loses. Since Neku didn't shoot, and therefore lost that final game, Joshua lost his Game with Kitaniji. He might have won the final Game against Neku, which lets him do what he had already decided to do to Shibuya. And so, the next point.
 * The entire thing was a set-up. Joshua was going to erase Shibuya because the people didn't change, so he goes and chooses Neku, who was entirely willing to kill someone to benefit himself on the second day with Shiki. If it is proven to him somehow that people can indeed change, then well, he doesn't erase Shibuya. Thus then Neku, in being unable to shoot Joshua who purposely acted like a humongous ass in those last moments proves that even cases like him can change. Aka, because of choosing Neku, Joshua's win condition for the game was that people couldn't change (Neku doesn't hesitate to shoot him), and his lose condition was that people could (Neku doesn't shoot). Neku changed, so he lost and therefore didn't erase Shibuya.
 * It might be needed to note that part of this troper's headcanon involves Joshua washing his hands of Shibuya by getting himself erased by his proxy's hand in his 'win' scenario.
 * This means that Kitaniji's running out of time was an illusion created by Joshua, which would explain why the first Secret Report implies that the Neku started playing at the beginning of Joshua and Kitaniji's game. As for the Producer's claim that the Composer beat the Conductor he did defeat him with Shiki, Neku, and Beat's help in the final battle, but that wasn't enough for him to win the game between them.

Joshua lied to Neku in "Another Day"
In "Another Day" Joshua claims to have already beaten "you". If he is talking to Neku then this is false because "Another Day" has to take place before Neku's fourth game (when they played Tin Pin Slammer, Neku won). If he is talking to the player its false because both of Neku and Joshua's battles are non-interactive.
 * Um... That Joshua claims to have beaten you, in a unseen, unplayed TinPin. But Hey, Maybe Neku is right he didn't Played TinPin with him at all, and is it funny that Never ever Play TinPin with Joshua in "Another Day..."
 * Didn't Neku beat Joshua in Tin Pin Slammer to win the right to wait for a mission rather than help with his errands?
 * Yeah but you didn't even Seen or Played. But Yeah Neku did beat Joshua on

Mr. Mew is posessed by the soul of Neku's dead BFF
Even though we learn that Death Is Cheap, we still don't find out whatever happened to Neku's BFF (the one, who caused his trauma) after his road-accident. If he got erased in his game-run, his soul is eighter still in Shibuya or has become a noise, as the secret reports implie. And Mr. Mew is a really, REALLY good fighter for a stuffed cat and seems to give his, errmm... very best. Ever seen this determination in his little button-eyes when fighting? And those CLAWS are surely NOT the doing of Shiki's grove-palm pin. At least I have never seen a car growing those when using such a Pin. Also, Shik said, Mr. Mew was "doing his own thing", she was just lifting him up. Therefor, Stuffed piggy... errmm, kitty is probably more than just a stuffed kitty. Since Shiki probably doesn't have any dead friends, it maybe Neku's. Or it's possesed by the "mean kitty" from Youtube. Eighter way, it would explain the mystery of "Nyan-tan" (Mr. Mew's japanese name)
 * Well this is better then Joshua posessing Mr Mew.
 * Well, there's another WMG that says Joshua is Neku's dead best friend, so technically it could still be Joshua.

'Good Omens' is a distant AU of this game and at least one creator of the game has read it.
The End Of The World As We Know It, all on the whim of, which is ! with rarely-opened shops! Snakes who wear shades and black clothing! Although 'Good Omens' has a distinct lack of math fetishists, and TWEWY seems to lack Nice and Accurate Prophecies.
 * That's just because there would be copyright issues if they copied all of it. And... wait, I'd say that the Nice and Accurate prophecies are a bit linked to the weird poem/prophecy that appears in the later stages of the game. So... it's a Japanese Good Omens. Awesome.

Mr. Mew is possessed by Eri
Specifically, Another Day's Eri, thus explaining why she doesn't appear at all in Another Day.
 * Well this is even better then Neku BFF or Joshua. What Next Mr H?

Wild-Kat is always closed because Hanekoma is avoiding the reapers.
In particular, if Uzuki decided to go there after the first week his cover would be blown since she'd know that he wasn't a player or a reaper.
 * Or the Player as will.

Uzuki will be the next Conductor
It's established that Uzuki wants to make the game more rewarding for the Reapers and from what we see being the Conductor would be the best way to accomplish that.
 * Why not Kariya? In a single day (Week 3 Day 4), he proves exactly why he'd be better for the position than the actual Game Masters, and demonstrates what the Game is supposed to be about. He puts Beat in a position where he runs into trouble due to his flaws (being stupid and ), but also gives him everything he should need to overcome them. (Especially if he trusts his partner.) He gives them a fight afterward, and a challenging one that erases the Players if they lose it, but he doesn't go all out and concedes the battle long before he is erased. And after he loses, he gives back the entry fee.
 * Do he even want the Job? He did say he fine working as he is.
 * True. I propose that Uzuki will become the Conductor, what with her drive to succeed and ascend; Kariya, since he doesn't want the responsibility, will be her second-in-command (third? Given the structure of the Game) and her moral compass (sort of). With Uzuki's focus and Kariya's ability, The Game will reach new heights!

Mr. H is possessing Mr. Mew
Isn't everybody?
 * This one probably makes the most sense. His brand is Gatito (Kitten) and Mr. Mew is Gatito brand as an item.

Everybody is possessing Mr. Mew
Originally, Neku and Shiki was erased in the first week and the red skull pins spread around the world eventually causing all of humanity to merge into one collective mind which decided that the current world was wrong and travelled back in time to possess Mr. Mew so that it could change the future.
 * ...Sorta like End of Evangelion just without the orange tang? Wow...that is a distrubing thought. But it explains why Mr Mew is so good at fighting: it's dominant soul is that of Lilith. Also known as. Also known as !

Pokémon Mew is possessing Mr. Mew.
Or a demon. Or a cat. Or maybe it's a heartless. Or Axel. Or the Beldam from Coraline (it is stuffed, after all).

We are possessing Mr. Mew.
After all we are Playing as the Player, and we have a DS, D-pad (or ABXY Button)...
 * But what about Auto Play?
 * The DS itself.

Haruhi Suzumiya is possessing Mr. Mew, as are Shinji Ikari and some random Timelord
And Light Yagami, and Konata and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Danny Phantom....

Spock(!!!!!) is possessing Mr. Mew.
After all those years of bottling up his emotions, they have to come out somewhere. And besides, it makes about as much sense as anyone else who's claimed to be possessing it. On that note...

Darth Vader is possessing Mr. Mew.
Why not?

Kamina is possessing Mr. Mew.
Because he's just that Hot-Blooded.

Ermac...
or Geno, Kefka?, or Shiki herself possessing Mr. Mew.
 * Dear Composer, what madness have I unleashed?

____ is possessing Mr. Mew
Let see:
 * Joshua
 * Neku's dead BFF
 * Eri (Another Day)
 * Mr. H
 * Everybody
 * Mew(one)
 * A Demon
 * A Cat
 * The Heartless
 * Axel
 * Beldam
 * Us with the DS
 * Haruhi Suzumiya
 * Shinji Ikari
 * Some random Timelord
 * Kamina
 * Ermac
 * Geno
 * Kefka
 * Light
 * Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne
 * Danny Phantom
 * Giygas
 * The world's potential
 * Shiki Herself.
 * The Cheat
 * Jesus
 * Westley
 * Rincewind
 * Trope-tan
 * Madotsuki
 * John Lennon
 * Chuckie
 * Companion Cube
 * Several Frenchmen, over the course of the week
 * Spock
 * Darth Vader
 * A pig
 * Scrappy Doo
 * Team Rocket
 * Yoshi
 * Lufia
 * The word 'possessing'
 * Adam West
 * The Nintendo Wii
 * A clichéd, overweight parody of Spock
 * Wesley Crusher
 * Chuck Norris
 * Orihara Izaya
 * Albert Wesker
 * Mama Luigi
 * Naraku
 * Cerberus/Keroberos
 * Mew(two)
 * The Fayth
 * The Occuria
 * Xemnas
 * Alice Margatroid
 * Vilgax
 * Xehanort
 * Barthandelus
 * SCP-239
 * ZAG-RS
 * The two voices (Serena and Bellicus) inside Alien X
 * Yukari Yakumo
 * A jaywalker
 * Drizzit Do'Urden
 * Itachi Uchiha
 * Asteion
 * Marianne vi Britannia
 * Michio Yuki
 * Caim
 * Two or more of these people

So far, So good.

Mr. Mew is possessing us

 * In Soviet Russia, Mr. Mew possesses you!

Mr. Mew is Shiki's Persona
Mr. Mew, whilst being a physical object, is also posessed by Shiki's facade. From all the evidence avaiable (ie: He's a cat) Mr Mew is clearly a Neko Shogun meaning in a Persona game, Shiki's social link would be of the Star Arcana. This makes sence in a way, because Teddie's Social Link was that of the Star Archana and he has quite a few things to hide about his true self. Also, Instead of using Personas, players (due to thier current status) are instead like personas and use thier powers directly. The pins just allow a better focus on said attacks.

This also means:

The Noise are Shadows taken from wherever Shadows come from (Tartrus, Midnight Channel, whatever place they'll pop up in in Persona 5) and agitated as to attack any player they see

 * Except Players with pacts. Also FUCK YOU, OMEGA. YOU SHAN'T SUCCEED!

The sequel will be a fight between angels and demons.
If you fight over 7500 rounds of battles (yes I get it, I'm obsessed)your ESP'r rank is Demon. Seeing as the pervious rank is Angel, Demons probably exist but havenâ€™t come into play yet.
 * Theoretically, we already have Demons- Fallen Angels. Would Demons be the worst kind of Fallen, or something?
 * Nice try, but Fallen Angels is a lower ESP'r rank. Lower than Angels if I remember correctly.
 * Even more fun: this troper has heard that in the Japanese game, over 10,000 rounds of battles earns you the rank of God.
 * You can get it in the US version too, you just need exactly 10,000 ESPer points.
 * Wait a minute.... so this means--

The World Ends With You eventually leads into Disgaea.
Just read the entry above. It all makes sense!!! Demons are descendants of the Shinigami, Angels are, well... you get the point. Also, notice the simmilarities in the POINT of the main-characters Character Development!

The overall "personality" of a city is determined by the personality of its current Composer.
And I quote: "As the Composer has changed, so Shibuya itself has metamorphosed." In other words, Shibuya was screwed up... because was screwed up.

Shiki and Eri are one of the Same.
Just think about it.

Neku's final entry fee was the bullet in his gun.
Joshua had already decided to save Shibuya upon seeing Neku change and obviously wouldn't allow himself to die instead opting for last final mind-screw to see what Neku would do.After all, from Joshua's point of view, the one thing Neku would desire most at that point would be to kill Joshua and become the Composer.

The first tracking application added to Joshua's phone tracks not only the Conductor's Imagination, but any Imagination directed against the Composer.
Hence its reactions to Sho's trash heaps and the Taboo refinery sigil. Relatedly, said trash heaps could possibly be concealing the sigils used to create the ordinary Taboo Noise.

Haruhi Suzumiya is Joshua's mother
Because
 * Given what we know about Haruhi, this means that Kyon is his father. Daddy would be very disappointed in him.
 * Given Joshua's personality, I'd say that Itsuki-Niisan came over to "visit" with New Dad Kyon a few too many times while Joshua was still impressionable. Possibly the Itsuki > Kyon led to the Joshua > Neku interactions? There are a lot of similarities...
 * By that logic, would be Joshua's father. It's quite plausible really.
 * Kyon is Explains why we never heard his real name. Everything makes sense.

It's not the clothes themselves that give you stat bonuses.
Instead, they can act as more or less efficient conduits for your Bravery, turning it into raw power that grants you bonuses. Each item has a specific output range, i.e. there's both an upper limit to the amount of bravery it can convert into power, and a minimum amount necessary to make an item work.

Secret reports is all a lie.
Make a Good Discontinuity don't you think? You never know If he was really telling what he is saying, and if the Games was really about Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence them why the Games was about winning a New Live?
 * The purpose of the game is to resurrect artists, and to recruit people to keep the game running. However, various inconsistencies can still be found in the reports. For instance they appear to cover the entire game between the Composer and Conductor, but that game lasted just over four weeks and the reports only cover three weeks. He also claims that their are several paralel worlds (e.g. Main Story World and Another Day World) within each plane (e.g. Underground and Realground). When in fact the planes exist within the worlds. Also he claims that differnt worlds have different vibes which if true would mean that travel between the worlds is actually trivial (e.g. your doing it everytime you enter or leave a shop).

Each of the higher-ranked Reapers owns a chain of clothing.
Hanekoma, the Producer, has control of Gatito, which has the best pins and clothing in-game, while the others have less powerful items. Minamimoto has control of Tigre Punks (Note the messy art style and the "2" in one of the pins), Kitaniji owns Dragon Couture, Konishi has Pavo Real, and Higashizawa owns Sunshine Burgers (alright, not clothing, but...).
 * Wouldn't Kitaniji owning Hip Snake make a lot more sense?
 * Maybe he owns both Hip Snake AND Dragon Couture, considering his Noise forms.
 * I doubt that they own any of them (with the exception of CAT), but I think you might be on to something with them at least representing certain brands. Neku and his partners all have one or two brands that they like and enjoy most of their stat bonuses from, like Neku with Jot M and Shiki with D+B, so I don't see why the main Reapers should be any different.

Neku's fourth Game did not exist
Endgame:  The Secret Reports confirm that Neku was defeated. Failing a mission means getting erased, which clearly did not happen, and thus Neku did not lose. But he could not have won, because. If he neither failed nor completed the mission, it stands to reason that the mission did not exist. Furthermore, Neku did not have a timer. He had the same trick pulled on him in W2D3; he was so caught up in the prospect of a mission that he didn't bother to verify it.

Neku's Best Friend is Joshua very first partner.
From Neku's Friend being Joshua, How about Neku's Dead Friend being Joshua's very first partner in the Games?

People disappear in the Bermuda Triangle because there's a game area there.
To be more general, almost every single area on the surface of the earth is in part of a game area, but the Bermuda Triangle area is the only area where there is no land at all. Since no one lives in there, and thus no one dies, the Composer of the BT area has some different rules than Shibuya's Composer, mainly in that Reapers of the Bermuda Triangle area can go into the RG and kill people. Every single disappearance in the Triangle is due to Reapers killing them, and then removing the evidence by wrecking whatever the people were riding in. The only challenge is a week-long challenge, to stay afloat for seven days, by whatever means they can use. After seven days, the GM challenges all those who managed to survive. It's not impossible to fight Noise because there's an island on the Noise plane. If you manage to survive, the Conductor rewards you with a lifeboat; it would be ridiculously sadistic for someone to win, only to drown immediately and have to play over and over until you die.

On a side note, because of the rarity of Players, there are few Reapers, and everyone instantly becomes a Harrier. Points also increase a Reaper's lifespan significantly more there than in Shibuya.

The Composer regularly brings back Reapers who were erased.
IIRC, while thinking about Sho, Konishi mentions that he has an "impeccable player erasure record". Reapers, so mentioning that about a Reaper who is still... er, alive, is redundant, like saying "he has an impeccable breathing record" about someone who is alive. Therefore, it's possible for a Reaper to be "alive" and not have erased the players they faced, suggesting that the Composer brings back erased Reapers, and frequently enough that someone's perfect erasure record is notable. are exceptions to defeat=erasure because Neku holds back before they're erased, which is more than can be said for the other Reapers faced.
 * Pretty sure that by "impeccable player erasure record" they meant that he killed off everybody. The idea behind being a good GM is not to pick them off one by one, Harrier-style, but to kill off players en masse with clever/difficult/ missions. Which is something Sho's good at (even though he spends most of the second week not doing so in a conventional way; this can be forgiven because he has bigger plans afoot).
 * It's been implied in the Secret Reports that you aren't supposed to actually play Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies games, though, and that death counts should be even on both sides. Thus a legitimately unfair mission is foul play. On the other hand, it's indicated that this is his usual behaviour, and he's being praised for it, supporting the second Troper's point. It all comes down to whether Konishi or the Secret Reports' writer knows better about what makes a good GM. Maybe killing every player is a bad thing in other Composer's Games?

The Game is real.
Or at least it would be, if the Reapers hadn't put up that pesky fourth wall.
 * How is that a wild mass guess? This game has a Troper Tales page. That in and of itself is proof that its real.
 * Who knows. Whenever they're talking to the Player, there's an equal chance that they're talking to you or Neku. Or maybe Neku's just meant to serve as an avatar of you within the game world.

Neku was talking to the player in the ending, and has always had Medium Awareness.
He trusts you. He trusted you to take him to where he had to go, and he trusts you to be able to figure out the ending and thus 'fix everything'. But he can't forgive you for, and he can't forgive you for everything that's happening. The line 'You can't see it, but those three weeks were very hard for me' is actually a slam at the player's apathy. But still, without you he could not move outside of cutscenes. So he trusts you, he has to. He want's to see you there, when he meets up with Beat and Rhyme and Shiki. And you are there. He says "Did I mention? I've got friends now" because he never truly acknowledged them as his friends during the rest of the game. He want's you to know that he's got other important people in his life now.

The World Ends With You is a part of the His Dark Materials Multiverse
We have three elements to people in both stories. Body=Body

Mind= Imagination The Psychs work by using Imagination. The Imaginations manipulates Dust into creating different effects on the world.

Soul= Deamons When Uzuki explained how to create Noise she explicitly stated that Noise are made out of Soul. If the body was lost when a Player Dies. And Imagination (as described by the Secret Reports) is destroyed upon Erasure. That simply leaves the Soul taking on a deamonlike form.

Erasure is simply dissolving peacfully into the universe which Word of God (ironic isn't it?) confirms is what most souls want. However those who have the will (Imagination) to keep existing play the Game. Like in His Dark Materials the best get turned into Angels. Like in His Dark Materials Angels are complicated in structure but look humanoid to humans and can travel through universes.

Shiki is an Alternate Universe incarnation of Mine.
They're both dark-haired, bespectacled girls who beautifully sew clothes that were designed by their much flashier partners. Both get rather... excited when it comes to their field (Shiki and Neku's loose button; Mine and wanting to dress every cute girl she meets in frilly dresses), and both have the Chinese Zodiac as a major presence in their lives. The key difference between them is Shiki's low self-esteem and envy; after making it through the Game, it's quite possible that she'll grow up to be much like Mine is now.

Shibuya is still screwed.
In The Stinger, Hanekoma tells Joshua that

Hanekoma controls all of Japan
Think about it. , as the Composer controls all of Shibuya. Since the only rank above that which has been firmly established is Producer, it is likely that he controls Japan and every city within. This of course would mean that the next rank up controls all of Asia, and the next rank is God.
 * Nice try but you're missing a step. Shibuya is a district in Tokyo. Hanekoma probably controls all of Tokyo. Knowing this is a Japanese Game he may as well be god.
 * Also, please note that judging by speaking styles in Japanese, Joshua is Hanekoma's boss rather than the other way around. (He uses -masu form and refers to Josh as a "kata" rather than a "hito" in The Stinger.)
 * I always thought that was sarcasm, or their little joke. Sanae calls Josh boss in English, too, but, he still has to have higher authority. Still, since most souls fade out when they die, and so many people who play get erased, there can't be that many   in existence, so it's not completely unreasonable to assume that they'd be understaffed and need to at least watch multiple districts. It gives yet another reason why he's never in the cafe.

Joshua played the game before he became the composer, but his partner didn't make it and was erased.
That's why his perception of people is just as negativ as Neku's. His partner had probably become his best (or possibly only) friend ever and he was so upset when this person, whom he shared his dream of escaping this hell of a game with, was just finally and completly gone, that he didn't take the offer to be revived. He was then instead made composer. Maybe he killed the current composer in an outburst of rage about the demise of his partner. Just like Neku was traumatized by the car-accident of his best friend, Joshua decided never to have such a close relationship again and hide himself under a mask of intrigues whenever he's talking to people, which is why we never actually saw Joshua's true personality.
 * That doesn't make sense. Remember when even Joshua himself revealed that Players who've had their partners erased can only survive for about 7 minutes before they themselves are erased, such as in the case of Sota and Nao? He couldn't have had enough time to find the Composer nor to outwit and erase him. And since Psychs don't exactly work without a partner, I doubt Joshua could've eliminated the GM of the week on his own, after his partner got erased.
 * The GM and partner died in a Double Erasure, problem solved.
 * Alternatively, he and his partner didn't get the points to come back to life (a possible outcome, even if Kitaniji was lying about only Shiki qualifying for resurrection). Joshua chose to become a reaper, while his partner didn't want to, and instead chose to fade into oblivion. Joshua wasn't happy with his decision, though.

Diego Armando is an incarnation of Hanekoma.
They both love coffee and speaking in cryptic aphorisms. They both have that scruffy-cool look. They both know far, far more about the plot than they first appear to. Armando is ostensibly Hispanic and calls his girlfriend "kitten", while Hanekoma's brand is Gatito, the Spanish word for kitten. Think about it.
 * Taking the premise that Hanekoma is  I don't but the Twenty Minutes Into the Future, and time travel could be a possibilty.

Neku's final entry fee was his status as the Conductor.
Assuming that you become Conductor the same way you become Composer (via the Klingon Promotion),   either did not want   to be his Conductor or did not feel that   The entry fee he collected, therefore, was   status as the Conductor.

Mitsuki Konishi is an Alternate Universe incarnation of Jihl Nabaat.
Every new piece of information we learn about Jihl matches up. First, there's their appearance (same general fashion sense, once you allow for the different settings, same glasses, just give Jihl a haircut and they've got the same hair, too...) Then there's their shared "cool, calculating" type of intelligence. Both of them hold ranking positions on the antagonist's side, and both of them trap a protagonist's beloved family member in an inanimate form and gloat about it. Finally, there's one of Jihl's lines from the trailer: "for every task, there's a perfect tool." Sounds like it fits Konishi's preferred method of letting others carry out her schemes for her, doesn't it?

May Kurokawa is Joshua's mother/sister.
Either or, depending on how old you imagine each of them is, but tell me you don't see the family resemblance. They have a very similar faces, from the jaw, nose, and brow, and the same hair colour, and they carry themselves with the same posture, too.
 * Only Six Faces, my friend. Besides, do we even know how old Josh is? He could be as old as Shibuya itself for all we know.
 * Still, ages aside, Joshua mentions that "Mother and Father call me Joshua", although he could be lying about having parents. It's also worth noting that May is probably the most dismissive of you prior to building up your friendship gauge, ("... (Are these children... customers?)"), but eventually warms up to you to the point of developing a crush (reminiscent of how Joshua's time around Neku apparently influences him not to erase Shibuya). In this case, Joshua's father could be a person who doesn't exactly watch what he's saying or enjoys teasing others, leading to the Jerkass we know.

Joshua is Sho Minamimoto's older brother.
They're far from close, but Joshua displays an uncanny personal understanding of Sho. He often shows off his knowledge of math and science, which is clearly equal or superior to Sho's, and there's a rather obvious connection between Sho's obsession with math and Joshua's math-related fusion combos. As for being older, Joshua only appears to be younger because his vibe must be reduced so much when he tunes down. On occasion he has patronized Sho as he only does with Neku, his or subordinate figure. Sho has always resented Joshua and felt that he's been stuck in his shadow, and thus strives for personal victory by trying to through any means necessary. As the older, responsible sibling, Joshua still has a sense of duty towards Sho, so while he still toys with him he spares him from erasure.


 * This troper thinks that this is a very well thought out theory(considering Josh's height change in Composer Mode.) As for the different last names, another reason Sho could resent Joshua is because they're half brothers. Think of it like this. Josh's dad left his mom for Sho's and sometime after Sho's birth went back to Josh's mom. OR OR OR an inverse could be that he resents Joshua because Sho's actually HIS older brother. But that theory isn't as cool as this one now is it?

Prince won the reaper's game at one point.
On Secret Report 7, a really good winning player will "soon make their mark upon society. His art, music, and other output become a part of culture, spreading and persisting through time, refining peoples' Imagination even without personal contact with the Player." It reminds me that sometimes people will think something like even though his voice isn't that great, he's still a big influence. And his blog gets about 100,000 hits a day!

Not to mention all his talk about making the trends work for you which is an actual part of the gameplay

The last game was a Secret Test of Character for Neku, which Joshua had planned out since the very start.
It's implied that the reason Joshua decides to not destroy Shibuya is because seeing Neku surrender convinced him that if an mega-emo like Neku could change then there was still hope for the people of Shibuya. But when you think about it, Neku had to change to survive. In a game that runs on The Power of Friendship being a brooding loner will only end up getting you killed.

My theory is that while Joshua was playing the Game with Kitaniji he was in reality playing game with himself. Basically, to take the most emo kid in the city and make him care about people. If it worked, he'd spare Shibuya, if not, there always Instrumentality. Rather than being the Composer's proxy, Neku was in fact the proxy of Shibuya itself. Winning three Games in a row basically proved that he's learned to play well with others, but Joshua needed to see for certain if the bonds he formed were real, or if Neku just saw them as tools to win the Game.

So at the end he played the Final Game with Neku. Revealing his true identity made him into someone who Neku truly hates, while making it a one-on-one gun dual made a game where friendship and trust is useless and the only way to win is to be cold and heartless. If Neku still showed mercy it would be proof that he had become a better person. Basically, when Neku lowered his weapon and told Joshua that he trusts him, he in fact won the Game and in turn saved Shibuya and all his friends.
 * I beleive this is supporterd by one of Joshua's lines right before the duel. "Remember what Mr. H. said." "Enjoy the moment" certainly doesn't fit here. The World Ends With You would make sense but not in this context. Therefore I have to assume Joshua meant "Trust your partner." This fits well with the ending. "I can't forgive you. But I trust you."

Beat is much smarter when alive.
His primary point of characterization is that he purposefully became a failure because of the way his parents treated him in comparison to the way they treated Rhyme. He acted out more and more in a series of failed attempts to make his parents leave him alone.

In the UG, you're who you think you are, and after hearing what a dumbass he is so many times, Beat believes it. OH SHI-
 * Don't forget the reason Beat is in the UG in the first place is that he's quite literally Too Dumb to Live (this is the guy who tried to take the bullet with a car). Anyway believe he said that Rhyme always was the voice of reason.
 * Beat wasn't Taking the Bullet, he was trying to get out of the way. He grabbed her instead of pushing her, meaning he was only Too Dumb to Live insofar as he didn't have good enough spacial skills to realize that.
 * If you tell anyone something often enough they'll begin to believe it; it has nothing to do with being in the UG (that's not how the UG works, anyway). Beat's a dumbass from the moment you meet him, so if he really is a case of Your Mind Makes It Real, his self-imposed stupidity began before he died, not after.

The Reapers Game is being played in real life, by living, by people all over the World

 * AND I JUST LOST THE GAME! (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
 * Considering this series has both a Troper Tales page and two WMGs it must be a conspiracy of former players to prepare future players. Note to self if I must die, die in a city.

== After the last Game, the Composer had reality altered so that the rest of the world thought Neku, Shiki, Beat and Rhyme never died. But he couldn't do it himself... he requested help from Lain. ==


 * Come on, watch the beginning of episode 5 and tell me you don't think that's one crossover that needs to be done. THE COMPOSER IS TELLING YOU USELESS HUMAN TO GIVE UP ON YOUR PATHETIC LIFE, among other things.

UG Shibuya is a setient being.
Fact one: UG Shibuya is made of Soul. Fact two: erased Players, Reapers and Noise dissolve into Soul. Fact three: one's Soul can be reassembled ino previous form without much demage to personality or memories (like Rhyme was, mostly). Conclusion: SHIBUYA IS ALIVE. Paranoia Fuel ensues.
 * Additionally, it's a very popular theory already that the Composer is part of Shibuya itself. Probably merges with its Soul or something.
 * As I think about it now, Composer being the embodiment of collective mind is both probable and... disturbing.

Joshua has a Stand.

 * It explains where all the trash he throws around in battle comes from. And maybe the Jesus Beam is his stand ability?

Joshua is sulking at the end because none of the other characters became Reapers.
It's stated in the Secret Reports that the intended path for those who win the game is that they become Reapers themselves, so at the end of the game Joshua made them that offer. What's more Joshua really wanted them to accept because whether he would admit it or not, he had grown attached to them and wanted them to stay in the Game and the UG with him. They refused, electing instead to return to their lives in the RG. This is why he is upset during the ending and why Mr H. is chiding him on how it's "their world" and he can't fault them for their decision.
 * In the Japanese version Hanekoma accuses Josh of being lonely at the end, so there's no doubt that he regretted returning everyone to the RG. However, my thoughts are that Neku is the only one that he would truly miss. He never met Rhyme, only met Beat when he was being attacked by him, and only very briefly saw Shiki, so the only reason Josh would feel any attachment at all to them is because they're friends of Neku's. I think Joshua was sulking at the end because Neku chose the company of his friends in the RG instead of Joshua in the UG.

Neku's final entry fee was the bullet in his gun.

 * The final confrontation was a Secret Test of Character for Neku, and Joshua never planned on upholding his end of the bargain had Neku decided to shoot. Josh just wanted to see whether or not he WOULD.

Another Day is an alternate reality Joshua created to make up for what he did.

 * The stinger ending shows  shows that he really did have a change of heart about people, and it's understandable he'd be lonely.   possibly implying Joshua intends to find some way to circumvent his situation. Thus, he creates Another Day, to both have the opportunity to hang out with Neku, and make up for all the pain he put the Players through by giving them fun world to play around in. Think about it, there's really no drama in Another Day, not really. The Reapers are much less threatening, some are straight-up friendly. The biggest conflict involves TIN PIN as opposed to life or death. And throughout AD's plot, it seems like Joshua is really enjoying himself, especially when he gets to tease Neku some more.


 * Actually not quite, Mr. Hanekoma mentioned that Another Day was the parallel universe that  He didn't make it, it was already there. It was stated somewhere in the game that there are multiple planes of existence out there, and Another Day was an example of one.


 * True, this one's pretty much Jossed, but this is such a comforting/heartwarming idea that I now choose to believe this over the game's actual endgame plot. Damn you, troper...!

777 and Konishi are Beat and Rhyme's real parents
Think about it. How many naturally blond, light-eyed people can there be in Shibuya? And the fact that they both seem to be in their twenties at most can be explained away by Reapers not aging after they die. Who knows how long they've been that young?
 * While there's no that reason it couldn't be true, there are a couple problems with this theory. Firstly, the game's Shibuya isn't populated by normal, realistic Asians, it's populated by anime characters. In TWEWY's Shibuya, you're just as likely to be blond as you are ginger or ash, and your irises can be any colour under the sun. Konishi and 777 both being blond doesn't mean a lot--Eiji Oji, Rayca Hoshi, Anna Aoi, and Akira Yoshii are all blond too, but none of them the same yellow as Beat and Rhyme. You're also suggesting that Konishi and 777 were on good enough terms to stay together for at least 2-4 years while they made babies, when Konishi was a manipulative ice queen who . She also, while being the total antithesis of Beat (whom she absolutely despised), her "daughter" just to manipulate him, and then thought that the most satisfying use of her last moments was to break his heart. Even though he wasn't as nasty about it, 777 was pretty excited by the prospect of Offing the Offspring for a bounty, too. If Konishi and 777 were Beat and Rhyme's parents, they certainly weren't very good ones.
 * The whole premise of it is pure, unadulterated crack, but with that said... If you wanted to, you could twist things to make 777 be a pretty decent undead parent. For instance, you COULD--and this is a big emphasis on the hypothetical, here--say that Konishi was not being entirely truthful about Beat's entry fee, and that it was his family/loved ones' memories of him that, not just Rhyme's, in which case, if 777 were his father, he wouldn't remember Beat. Konishi is the big monkey wrench here, because she'd be a bad parent, fullstop, and would probably take great care to make sure it was never even a possibility.

Rhyme can use all the pins, too.
Think about it. We never see her in battle, and the weapon she uses is never seen, either. Possibly, she also had a high amount of thus making it so she could also use all of the pins.
 * We technically do see Rhyme fight in a cutscene (W1D3), but we only see that she either uses a Positive (mêlée) psych, or poses like she does while Beat kills things. The only time she talks about herself or Beat using pins is when she tells Shiki that they "had extras" of the Cure Drink pin, meaning that one of them was unable to use it. It's as you say: we have no indication either way of what the limit is to Rhyme's power. It's just as possible that she can't use psychs at all.
 * But doesn't a Considering that Rhyme's entry fee was her hopes and dreams, that could indicate that she had a powerful imagination. Also, we may not see her weapon because she doesn't have one, much like Neku.

The sequel will be about
That's right, the cry "WHAT THE HELL?!" totally makes sense about it. Just think,
 * If there's going to be a sequel, why would they make a sequel with the exact same story as the original?
 * See Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.

Tin-Pin Tutorial Guy in another day is Another Day!Hanekoma

 * Canon!Hanekoma was worrying that his Another Day counterpart might become aware of him. The second Tutorial guy dissapears is the second that you can no longer meet Hanekoma at Pork City. Also Joshua recognizes and is shocked at who Tutorial Guy is, under the hood and he comments on those glasses.
 * It's probably actually intended to be that guy you can fight by the end of the quest storyline, the Tin Pin Magician or something, who wears red glasses IIRC. He's one of three guys you never meet in the "canon world", apparently based on game-makers or something. Joshua's dialog with him all but states he's Tutorial Guy.

The World ends with you is set in the same universe as Persona.

 * Joshua and Kitanji are Philemon/Igor and Nyarlathotep respectively, the pins are Persona and Neku has the wild card ability. Kitanji's plan is similar to that of Nyx, to make everyone apathetic using his power.

Mr. Mew is Shiki's Stand

 * It's possible that it was like that before she died, but it only manifested during the game.

TWEWY is an alternate reality created by Shinji Ikari during instrumentality

 * Think about it. Neku is a self-alienating character who uses earphoses (which may or may not actaully have music playing. Another similarity) who only wins the game (i.e. returns to life/the real world) by accepting others. Sorta like End of Evangelion and how you return from the LCL sea. Kitaniji's plan is basically Instrumentality (Kitaniji is Gendo?). And Joshua gives of way Way WAY to many Kaworu vibes. White-Haired Pretty Boy? Check. Wicked Cultured? Check. Might be in love with the protagonist? Check.  Check. Both enjoy messing with their chosen Messiahs? Check. So yeah, The World Ends With You=Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The Reaper's Game is at least partially based on, or dexended from, Umineko no Naku Koro ni.

 * It would explain so many things. After all, Beatrice is able to create "furniture" to serve her, and the Reapers can do that... at least on a lesser scale. Like in Beatrice's game, there are different rules for each round, but the main goal is always survival, and the game always differ depending on the Game Master. Just like in Beatrice's game, there are external forces that are meant to keep the game under control, and to punish Game Masters who disobey the rules. Not to mention the use of RED TEXT to highlight important details...

Mr. Mew is possessed by this one certain black cat from Ghost Trick.
Mr. Mew is a black cat who's protecting a red head. Sounda like  alright.

The entire Game is a test that is being run by GLaDOS.

 * GLaDOS decided that portal testing wasn't enough and so hacked a computer in a hospital in Shibuya and used it place several different groups of hospitalized people under a mass hallucination. They then begin running around Shibuya believing themselves to be dead. The Reapers are in the same boat and GLaDOS made them as assistants so she doesn't have to do the testing on her own. Mr. Mew being possessed by her raw mind, Joshua is the Anger Core, Hanekoma the Curiosity Core, the Conductor the Morality Core, and all of the GMs, save for Kariya, are the Intelligence Core. The Cores still exist because GLaDOS rebuilt them with the Morality Core simply telling her what things are immoral and not preventing her from doing them. Minamimoto is the only one who figured out the hallucination and tried to get out of it by creating Taboo Noise to overload the system. However, he didn't know that Hanekoma/Curiosity Core was planning it from the beginning to see how the Players and Reapers would react to Taboo Noise. The Noise are GLaDOS' way of weeding out bad test subjects and Erasure is dying for real. The concept of Imagination is GLaDOS trying to learn more about humans by seeing what they like other than cake and parties. The shops are all places where GLaDOS allows the hallucination to partially wear off. Another Day is not an alternate universe but, in fact, what GLaDOS thinks she learned from the experiment, that humans are obsessed with pushing pins around a table. The Player Pins are mind reading devices that GLaDOS built using tech from an abandoned lab owned by the Japanese branch of Aperture Science. None of the "living" people can see the Players or Reapers because either they were ALSO under a mass hallucination or GLaDOS equipped the Players and Reapers with invsibility devices. The Final Game between Neku and the Anger Core ended how it did because it was GLaDOS' final test to see if humans could actually change as drastically as the rest of the testing showed. It worked and in turn reprogrammed Anger Core into a Forgiveness Core. Neku's "WHAT THE HELL!!!!" is him realizing exactly what happened after everybody comes out their hallucination. His speech is similar to Still Alive because he's trying to tell GLaDOS that instead of being angry like GLaDOS hypothesized, he was thankful. The secret ending is Curiosity Core telling Forgiveness Core that it's okay that the hypothesis was wrong because the experiment was a huge success and ought to be made note of.

There will be a My Immortal-style fanfic featuring a Mary Sue character.
If there isn't one already. I bet I gave at least one fanfic writer ideas...
 * "WHAT ARE YOU DOING MOTHERFUCKERS!" it was... Rhyme!
 * And then Beat was a zombie.
 * I TOLD YOU RADIAN! I TOLD YOU ABOUT ASMYTOTES!
 * ... I might actually write one now as a joke.

The sequel will be primarily a personal journey
With no "saving the world/town/whatever".

Neku's success abolished the UG and the Reapers' Game entirely
He killed the Conductor and many GMs, Joshua changed his mind about humanity, and Shibuya was metamorphosed as a result. To what degree? The Game is never brought up again after Neku's revival except in past tense, not even in the final two secret reports. Hanekoma and Joshua are seen sitting around doing nothing, and we don't see any more Reapers in the plot. It's possible that when Joshua decided humanity was capable of redeeming itself, he no longer needed a method to force the issue.
 * Yeah, but Shibuya isn't the only place with a Reaper's Game. Presumably there are many regions where the Game is played, with just as many Composers and Reapers for each.

Neku wasn't really Joshua's proxy...
He was Kitanji's.

Hear me out here. In this explanation, Instrumentality wasn't his main goal, only a feint... or a fallback, if that's what it came to. He manipulated Joshua, who disproved of his plan, into choosing Neku to be his proxy. Why Neku? Because he was the perfect person for it. Kitanji wanted to prove to him that people could change and Neku was the best choice for this. He went to Mr. H and got his help on this, of course. This was why Kitanji didn't just erase Neku outright. Because Neku was still useful. He basically risked everything, to the point of 'What the Hell, Hero?' standards, including his own life. Why? For one, he admired Joshua. Another reason was that he was just too powerful. So he had to take another route. He used Beat to try and attack Neku and Joshua because He knew that he wouldn't really have it in him to kill his friend. Sho was made GM because he knew Joshua was going to enter. The Taboo Noise was the Spanner in the Works that killed off some of their forces and some of the players. And in the Third Week, he took the gamble to it's limits. He made it Neku's last week because he didn't want people getting suspicious. He instigated Emergency Call since the Reaper's Game really was in danger. If Joshua destroyed Shibuya, how the hell were they going to play it? He also started Instrumentality in full effect as his backup plan and to point the focus to him. He removed all of the other players to give Neku a reliable partner: Beat. The Iron Maiden being made the Game Master? He was running out of good canidates and she was the most ideal. It all came to a head AFTER his death during the last 'Game' between Joshua and Neku. Neku had changed, giving Joshua reason enough to believe humanity was actually worth believing in. Thus, not only was Neku spared but so was Shibuya. Kitanji died... but not for nothing.

Neku will return as a Cameo Bonus Boss / True Final Boss in the sequel.
Frist, we would be able to see how much more he develops since the the first game. After a conversationwith the new protagonists, he tests them out with one of his old partners (preferably Shiki or Joshua). Of course to make him the True Final Boss, he would obviously be using the Darklit Planets deck.

Ventus will appear in the sequel.
Because now that Neku is appearing in Kingdom Hearts 3D, crossovers are in play.
 * No. Kingdom Hearts itself is a crossover-game. It has never given any other series an excuse to do insane series-spanning crossovers, and it never will.

ALL the angels are fallen.
Think about it: All the "angels" are supporting a grand scheme to keep the players from the afterlife (not all of them, but a select few willing to obey them). If they were really angels, they would know what the afterlife is like and know what keeping the players away from it means. .

The TWEWY-verse is another world in the Kingdom Hearts universe
With Neku confirmed to appear in Kingdom Hearts 3D, it's basically confirmed that TWEWY is part of the Kingdom Hearts universe now. The only problem would be whether Shibuya itself (and perhaps Tokyo) would be a "world", or if the world would be Earth.
 * Neku is confirmed to appear in Traverse Town, not Shibuya. How he got there is another question entirely, though.
 * Judging by what Traverse Town is (a hub for those whose worlds were destroyed), this points to the possibility of Shibuya/Earth/Neku's Kingdom Hearts World has been destroyed or taken by darkness, hence why he's in Traverse Town.

The TWEWY-verse is NOT another world in the Kingdom Hearts universe
Pretty straight forward, as all the other Disney and Final Fantasy characters have been markedly different in KH than their original canons, Neku in 3D will be in alternate universe version of Neku from his original game in the same way Leon is an alternate of Squall, or the way Jack (both Jacks actually) is both different from, and didn't learn the lesson in, his orignal movie.

Joshua was not the Composer, but the Composer's Proxy.
The Composer was looking for a proxy in his game and decided that the best possible one would be a sociopathic teen who already had a small amount of psychic power. The resemblance to the Composer was an added bonus, allowing Joshua to serve as a decoy target for Minamimoto's first strike, if it came to that. He found Joshua and granted him the ability to see into the UG. He then manipulated events such that Joshua would meet Mr. Hanekoma and told Mr. H to explain things to him. Finally, he planted the idea of trying to jack Shibuya into Josh's head and manipulated him into killing Neku, who would serve to help Joshua's goal. Josh would barge into the Shibuya River, find the Conductor, think he was the Composer, and Erase him. However, things didn't go exactly as planned. Josh killed Neku, but didn't realize that he could break into the game until Week Two. As a result, Minamimoto's plan to release Taboo Noise had already been enacted. So the Composer gave Joshua his Jesus Beams to fight off the Taboo Noise. The Composer also transported Josh to the Tin-Pin-verse immediately before Sho's i level Flare, thus why Mr. H had to go get him. Any questions?

Joshua never tells a lie in the game.
Just because manipulating everyone without stooping so low as to lying sounds, to me at least, like the kind of thing he'd get a kick out of. I've replayed the game with this in mind and the only part I'm iffy about is that he does say "Yes, I'm alive." (end of W 2 D 6, I believe, after blasting off the rhino). However, since we never get clear rules of the Game system, much less how a regular one normally goes, I personally believe the bastard could have cheated his way into Technically not a lie. Alternately,, or it might have been Lost in Translation. (Anyone who has any clue - as opposed to me - is welcome to confirm or infirm this.) This would explain his cheerful tendency to not answer anything directly at the beginning and never denying that he killed Neku.

Joshua's mannerisms are meant to annoy Neku
Joshua's Ambiguously Gay attitude toward Neku was just another way to bug him. Way to be a Jerkass Joshua!

Some of the music in the game is, in universe, Def Märch's music.
This is going off the theory that the music is actually what Neku's listening to through his headphones. In that case, who's to say that some of the music (Three Minutes Clapping, Transformation, and Twister Gang Mix come to mind) isn't some Def Märch music? And I know that Neku didn't have a clue who they were when he and Shiki met 777 in Week 1, but maybe he just found the songs on some website and downloaded them without looking at the artists' name?
 * Not all of the game's tracks play from the beginning of the game onward, and you can get Neku to buy CDs in-game, so it's possible that he began listening to their songs after he was introduced to 777 as well. Def Märch prides itself on being "totally indie", so they've probably reinvented themselves a number of times with different band names, and 777 is just a pseudonym, so they could be any number of the artists on the OST.

Think about it. Neku's extremely upset when he finds out  had been the Composer and put him and Shibuya through all the stuff in the game, and was going on about how he had thought he had made a friend he could trust. Plus  never really specified what the entry fee was, probably feeling it would be repetitive to repeat what Neku had just said.
 * Except that  was the very reason.

At least a few of the major Reapers were remade by the Composer after the end.
It would make some things in the potential sequel cooler. Plus, with, maybe he felt that Kitaniji  , and decided to give him a second chance. The others could be from unfair erasure or something along those lines.

The ending wasn't about Joshua regaining his faith in humanity; it was about him seeing the error of his own ways.
According to the Secret Reports, Joshua's change of heart at the end of the game is what caused the people of Shibuya themselves to improve. But didn't Joshua say that the only way to prevent Shibuya from corrupting the rest of the world would be to destroy it completely? What reason would he have to think that, when simply changing his own mindset would have sufficed? The ending was also about him growing up and learning the same lesson Neku learned; that simply wishing everyone else out of your life isn't going to solve anything. This is supported by the fact that Joshua seemed to be just as misanthropic as Neku, only his hatred of other people manifested in a different way. His experiences with Neku brought about an epiphany that other people's values matter just as much as his own.

The story is All Just a Dream for Eri.
Let me put it this way. Maybe she has been placed in coma trying to cope with the guilt of Shiki's death. All the characters in her dream are aspects of herself.
 * Shiki = Ego/Self
 * Neku = Id
 * Beat = Super Ego
 * Rhyme = Anima
 * The Composer/ = Shadow Archetype

Rhyme has Time-based psyches
No real point to this WMG, besides the possibility of making Rhyme Time jokes.

If Joshua is the Composer's Proxy, then the Composer is really Eri.
Think about it. She went to the Reaper's Game before Shiki and has knowledge of it since. Knowing that saying "you're not meant to be a designer" wouldn't cheer her up, Eri has planned on showing her the Reaper's Game. Therefore, she planned her death. It would appear that she killed Beat and Rhyme to give her support. On the sixth day for Shiki, she pretends stupid of not knowing Shiki watching over her talking to Mina about her. At the end of her week, Eri plans on letting Shiki stay at the Reaper's Game for a little longer by making her Neku's entry fee. Throughout the second and third week, she's watching from behind the scenes while Joshua acted as her proxy in the end. When Shiki comes back to life, Eri has decided to quit on being the Composer and gave this position to Joshua.

Eri, Will be a Player in the Next Games.
Just becasue we know Eri and would be use to Eri, To compurt with Shiki really act.

An Expy of Sora or Riku will be added.
That if Disney don't approval using Sora or Riku for the Next TWEwY Games.

Rhyme uses Dragon Couture pins.
This is based on how Rhyme uses different proverbs, such as her "haste makes waste" comment to Beat. The names of many of the pins in the Dragon Couture line follow a similar theme, such as "Live Slow, Die Fast."

TWEWY is really a sort of humanity-test...
Maybe TWEWY is really a test from Square Enix, to see if we'll actually listen to the point of the game ((aka: people are cool and stuff, go out and interact)) instead of going "Complete ALL the postgame stuff!" and "Must... get... 100%... completion...".