Beloved fighting-and-fashion JRPG, The World Ends With You, will be getting the anime treatment according to publisher Square-Enix.
The World Ends With You originally released on Nintendo’s DS handheld back in 2007 (later coming to Switch), and was widely praised for its breathless sense of innovation – its dazzling, dizzying split-screen real-time combat system is still peerless over a decade on – but its probably best remembered for its wonderful sense of style, eschewing the usual RPG fantasy tropes in favour of thoroughly modern trappings.
The entire game, whose tightly crafted plot is pretty tough to discuss without some serious spoilers, unfolds across Tokyo’s fashionable Shibuya district, heavily incorporating various aspects of Japanese youth culture, fashion, and consumerism into its core systems. It has a supremely likeable cast of characters, and the whole experience is bolstered by a striking visual style and stunning soundtrack, ranging from rock to hip hop to electronica.
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All of which is to say that there’s a lot of good stuff to draw on when translating the game to an anime. Exactly who’ll be given that responsibility, however, and indeed pretty much everything else regarding the new The World Ends With You anime project remains unclear at present.