GamE thEorY (Week 1, Day 7)

Title	GamE thEorY
Protagonists	Rindo Fret Nagi Sho Minamimoto
In-Game Description	The Wicked Twisters find first place at their fingertips on the Final Day. Little did they know they need to take down the Ruinbringers in order to make the top spot their own. The gang does their best to track down Susukichi, painfully aware of how much is at stake.
Objective	(optional) Defeat the team in first place
Previous day	in2 the ✖ing
Next day	New Game

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or character details follow.

GamE thEorY is a day in NEO: The World Ends with You.

Events

• The Wicked Twisters hunt down Susukichi in an attempt to take first place from the Ruinbringers.
• Susukichi leads them around Shibuya with poorly-taken selfies.
• Minamimoto leaves just before the Wicked Twisters confront Susukichi.
• The Deep Rivers Society also challenge Susukichi and are defeated, losing all of their points.
• Rindo asks Susukichi about breaking the diagonal and angers him, attacking Rindo and defeating the Wicked Twisters.
• Rindo uses Replay to go back in time and figure out Susukichi's weak point is questions with no answers and to convince Minamimoto to fight with them.
• Susukichi attacks Rindo but is saved by a mysterious hooded man that Susukichi calls Neku.
• Shiba Miyakaze appears and rules that the Wicked Twisters received aid from a third party and are disqualified, thus meaning the Ruinbringers win.
• Shiba erases the Deep Rivers Society.
• Susukichi wishes to play another round of the Reapers' Game.
• Minamimoto leaves the Wicked Twisters.
• Rindo has a Trailer of Shibuya being destroyed.

Sidequests

• The Noisemaster Cometh: The Wicked Twisters fight a self-proclaimed "Noise Master" Reaper's Noise.
• Overheated Fanboy: Nagi Dives into Shuntaro Harima's mind and erases the Noise possessing him.

Plot

The final day of the Reaper's Game has no mission, but any team may challenge the first place team in order to win in their place, at the risk of losing all their points (and therefore moving to last place and being erased) if they lose. The Deep Rivers society, since they are in last place anyway, decide to search for the Ruinbringers; the Wicked Twisters also decide to challenge them, even though they are in second place and could safely continue into another round. This surprises all of the Reapers in the city, who express gratitude at the extra entertainment, although they believe the Twisters may be doomed.

The Wicked Twisters are sent a series of selfies by Kaichi "Susukichi" Susuki inviting him to meet him at different places in the city to take on the Ruinbringers. However, due to the large number of Support Reapers maintaining walls in the city, they usually find him gone by the time they arrive, and end up fighting several Noise and the Deep Rivers Society in his wake. They are also contacted by Motoi Anazawa who mentions that the Purehearts have fought the Ruinbringers before and learned that Susukichi has a weakness for being asked about "breaking the diagonal".

When they arrive in Shibuya Hikarie they discover that Susukichi has already defeated the Deep Rivers Society and has moved on to the Station Underpass where they encounter him. Mentioning "breaking the diagonal" only makes him more furious and Sho Minamimoto fails to show up to participate in the battle. The Wicked Twisters are defeated, and Rindo uses Replay to return to a point earlier in the day. He suggests that rather than chasing Susukichi around the city, the Twisters wait at Shibuya Hikarie to watch him fight the Deep Rivers Society to get an idea of Susukichi's strategy. In order to persuade them to do so, he describes his Replay ability to the group, perking up Sho Minamimoto's interest. He also asks Sho why he didn't turn up to the fight in the previous timeline, and Sho replies that since the timeline has now changed, he cannot predict what he would have thought or decided on in a different one.

Although they are unable to identify particular weaknesses by watching the fight against the Deep Rivers Society, the Twisters are able to overcome Susukichi with Sho's help; but after the fight has ended, he makes an additional strike at Rindo, who finds he cannot Replay as his Reaper Pin is still rebooting; he is saved by the arrival of an unknown player who Susukichi believes to be Neku Sakuraba, who disappears immediately afterwards. Shiba Miyakaze arrives and declares that since Neku is not a member of the Wicked Twisters, his interference in the battle has invalidated the Twisters' victory over Susukichi and thus the Ruinbringers are the winners of the game; he also erases the Deep Rivers Society, to the horror of Rindo, Fret and Nagi. Since the leader of the Ruinbringers is not present, Susukichi is invited to pick their prize, and chooses to restart the Reaper's Game. Demoralized, Rindo speculates that the Ruinbringers regularly maintain their victories by benefitting from last minute adjustments, and Sho announces that he will no longer work with the Twisters, having gathered all the data he needs. Rindo starts to consider attempting to recruit Neku.

Walkthrough

Susukichi fights in three alternating phases, and in addition has a special psych that affects the whole field. In his first phase, he simply charges towards his opponent in a straight line and punches. This can be relatively easily dodged. In his second phase, antlers appear on his head; his charges become longer and he adjusts his path more as he charges, making dodging more difficult. In his third phase, his skin turns red and the antlers turn black; in this phase he always tracks perfectly when charging, meaning that he must be avoided by repeatedly dodging until his charge ends, and also hits with a combination of blows if he gets into range, dealing greater damage.

His field psych will fill the board with Reversi discs. After a short period of time, he will pause a second time and all discs that would be captured according to the rules of Reversi are flipped over; any team member standing on a flipping disc will be stunned for several seconds and take substantial damage. The first two times he does this move, there will be a safe empty space; on the third time and onward, the corner discs are safe. However, beware of Susukichi striking you with his charge attacks while on a corner disc.

Trivia

• In the Noisemaster Cometh sidequest, the Reaper says "Then say hello to my little friends!" before fighting his Noise. This is a reference to the famous quote from the 1983 film Scarface, "say hello to my little friend!".
• Sho Minamimoto still appears in all fights up to the one against Susukichi, even if you fight Field Noise directly before approaching him. This suggests that rather than not turning up, he apparently secretly left.
• Since the Wicked Twisters did not lose their points and were not erased, it appears that Shiba ruled that Neku's interference completely voided the entire battle against Susukichi in both directions; so that while the Twisters were not counted as having won, they were also not counted as having lost.
• The corner pieces being safe during Susukichi's field psych reflect the actual game of Reversi in which a disc placed in the corner is completely safe. "Breaking the diagonal" in Reversi refers to making moves to prevent the opponent establishing a line of discs on the leading diagonal of the board, which is important because such a line can allow the opponent to safely capture a corner for themselves (since every move in Reversi must be a capture, moving towards a corner is normally dangerous because it provides pieces that the opponent can capture by moving into the corner).