With NEO: The World Ends With You‘s release in the rear window, players can now take some extra time to reflect on how Square Enix arrived at the stylish sequel to a cult classic. NEO: The World Ends With You reviews leaned positive at launch, and while improvements to combat and a compelling story certainly helped propel those critiques into a friendlier tone, one thing remained utterly consistent between the two iterations of Shibuya’s UG: Aesthetic.

There’s a good reason for that style remaining so recognizable, as plenty of veteran talent returned to help design some of NEO: The World Ends With You‘s memorable characters. Gen Kobayashi joined Square Enix in 2003 and worked on the original The World Ends With You as a character designer, reprising that role for the sequel. Adding to that insight is Miki Yamashita, another character designer who joined Square Enix in 2014 and has been an artist on several Kingdom Hearts projects.

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Screen Rant recently interviewed both character designers on how NEO: The World Ends With You‘s colorful cast came to be. Read on to learn more about the Reapers, which fashion trends made the cut for the sequel, and more.

The first The World Ends With You stood out partially because of its style, which was made with real-world Tokyo in mind. What sort of real-world influences played a role in character wardrobes and aesthetic?

Gen Kobayashi: With NEO: The World Ends with You set in present-day Shibuya, I was conscious of trying to bring out each character’s presence and personality in their design. In order to do so, I referenced real-world fashion and how people piece together their own outfits.

Are there any fashion trends in particular that you used as inspiration for the characters’ wardrobes? They’re all so fashionable!

Gen Kobayashi: Each of the characters in the game have their own fashion and personal taste, so I researched many different types of fashion that helped to inspire the designs for the game. I also looked at celebrities and the different outfits they wore, which I feel was equally as inspired by that as I was with general fashion trends.

Miki Yamashita: I can’t identify any particular trends I sought as inspiration, but since the game is set in present-day Shibuya, I tried to make the fashion “current” by incorporating items that didn’t exist as much when the original game was created, such as skinny jeans and wide-leg pants.

What sort of personality traits are exaggerated by the character designs of the main cast in NEO: The World Ends With You – for instance, what is Rindo’s design attempting to convey?

Gen Kobayashi: I can speak to Fret as I led his design—with him, I tried to express his happy-go-lucky personality through his love of stylish fashion.

What sort of opportunities does the shift to a fully 3D game give NEO’s character design team?

Gen Kobayashi: In the original game, we put emphasis on elements that complemented the 2D design such as utilizing silhouettes; however, for NEO: The World Ends with You, we needed to think about each characters’ design as a 3D figure. We had to consider a number of additional details in the designs—even something like the soles of each character’s shoes needed attention, which was not really a requirement in the original.

Is there a character among the cast that was the most fun to design?

Gen Kobayashi: I like huskier characters, so for me it was fun designing Susukichi. I think he is a very unique character, all things considered, and I hope some of our fans enjoy him.

Miki Yamashita: Nagi was my personal favorite to design. As the first main character I was in charge of, I really enjoyed discussing with the larger team to establish the overall direction of the character. I first started with the concept that Nagi is a bit of a Stan [of the video game character Tomonami], and I really got into it as I designed her Otaku fashion items, such as her “ita bag.”

How much do other designs in the game, like the stylized environment or the monster aesthetics, influence how you want to present the main characters?

Gen Kobayashi: Generally speaking, I would say that those elements didn’t affect the overall design of the characters heavily. This is because many of those aspects of the game—characters included—followed in the footsteps of the first game in terms of design and aesthetics.

Over a decade later, The World Ends with You is still a visually unique, memorable title. Was there ever any temptation to dramatically change up the look of the game and its characters, or was NEO always going to continue on the same appearance fans had grown to love?

Gen Kobayashi: I believe the unique character appearance is an important component of The World Ends with You, which is why we decided from the early stages to follow a similar approach.

How much room is there to design character and enemy looks in the urban fantasy space?

Gen Kobayashi: As long as we abided by the rule of making characters that could exist in modern-day Shibuya and ensured that each character’s role was properly defined, we had a lot of freedom to create the type of character that we thought would fit. I didn’t feel any restrictions in particular.

Miki Yamashita: Relatively speaking, I was given liberty in designing the characters. I think one difficulty point in the process was trying to make them look modern, while at the same time incorporating quirky elements that would leave an impression.

Do the Reaper designs draw from any different inspirations than Players? Some of them seem to live up to the image “reaper” would bring to mind, but others seem pretty close to Players.

Gen Kobayashi: The new Reapers that appear in this entry are Shinjuku Reapers, so in order to differentiate them from a fashion perspective as well, I referenced the night life of Shinjuku to create designs that were different from those of Shibuya Reapers and Players.

Miki Yamashita: I incorporated small differences to give the Players, Shinjuku Reapers, and Shibuya Reapers all a slightly different feel. I tried to be conscious of Shinjuku being a more “adult-like” setting, while Shibuya is more bustling and lively. Furthermore, I believe the Players’ attire is a little more typical or ‘normal’ compared to that of Reapers.

NEO: The World Ends With You is available now on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, with a PC launch planned for later in 2021.

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Cody Gravelle
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Cody is Screen Rant’s Game Reviews Editor. He joined the team in 2018 and has been reporting on games pretty well every day since – except on weekends, where he’s typically playing them instead. Despite being in a field ostensibly about critiquing and enjoying quality games, his most played game of 2019 was Fate/Grand Order – something unlikely to change in 2020 and beyond.

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