English Dub Review: The World Ends With You: The Animation “Turf”

Overview

Neku starts to remember his death, and it makes him more suspicious of Joshua than ever. Meanwhile, the game grinds to a halt as Taboo Noise attacks Players and Reapers alike. Minamimoto is the prime suspect, but what does he have to gain?…

Our Take

This time around, it was fun seeing Neku get excited about something after excited discovering that Hanekoma is behind CAT. He’s always serious, so it’s nice to see him lighten up a bit. We also get to find out that Joshua never died and he intentionally entered the game. That definitely riled up Neku and his trust with his partner is at an all-time low. Neku should probably be more careful at who to trust from now on…

With such a shrewd killing partner like Joshua, you would think that Neku would just end the matter then and there. But Neku chose not to confront Joshua about his memories of possibly being killed by him until after knowing that he’s not a real player. This narratively makes sense for him to say all that stuff to Joshua. Though it is a little weird for him to mention all that to Joshua after he lost his trust in him.

Overall, this was an ok episode that helps move the plot along. I do find Joshua’s abilities to be very impressive despite the new trust issues that have arisen. Yet it also helps with Neku’s character progression on who’s worth trusting in this bizarre scenario they’re both in. For someone with the strong desire to fight the Composer, there’s a sinister plan ahead, and no choice for Neku to not back out of the plan to save Shiki.