English Dub Review: The World Ends With You: The Animation “The Hour of Reckoning”

Overview

Neku and Beat race to the Shibuya River to take on Minamimoto and the Composer! But as the final days looms, they’re still doomed unless they can track down Konishi. They’ve already looked everywhere in Shibuya; where could the Game Master be?

Our Take

This time around Neku and Beat now enter the tunnel in an effort to seek out Minamoto, also finding out exactly where Konishi was actually hiding. Given her shadow powers, she can actually hide in the dark scenery without knowing it, thus finding it hard for them to really find her. Even I was caught off guard at first that she would hide in the shadows. Regardless, Neku must defeat Konishi to clear the game.

Aside from the Konishi battle, the development with Beat using his leftover reaper powers to rescue Rhyme was more than a little dubious. It would occupy about as much screentime and wouldn’t have to rely on a deus ex machina to make sense. And when it’s done, they must now face the mastermind on who is actually behind the red skull badges.

The next episode is most definitely the last. I also need to point this out, but for whatever reason, the streets of Shibuya also seemed to be void of the effects of the red skull pins during the fight, but I’m willing to let that oversight slide as I’m also curious in regards to how they’re going to fill out the entire episode with just the final battle which I hear was quite grandiose and emotionally poignant within the game’s narrative this show is based on…