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The World Ends With You Anime Reveals New Video, Opening Theme's Rapper, Visual, April 9 Debut

The official website for The World Ends with You the Animation (Subarashiki Kono Sekai The Animation), the anime of Square Enix's The World Ends with You (Subarashiki Kono Sekai) action role-playing game, revealed on Friday a new promotional video, opening theme song rapper, third key visual, and April 9 premiere date. The video previews the rap portion of the opening theme song "TEENAGE CITY RIOT" by the group ALI with newly announced guest rapper R-Shitei of the hip hop unit Creepy Nuts.

The third visual shows the main participants of the Reapers' Game, including the character Sanae Hanekoma.

The anime will premiere on April 9 on on the Super Animeism programming block on MBS, TBS, and their countrywide network of 26 other affiliates.

The anime will get a special program featuring the main cast on April 2. The website also teased an online event that will include a preview of the anime's first episode in March. The website will reveal more details on the event in late February.

The cast includes:

• Kōki Uchiyama as Neku
• Anna Hachimine as Shiki
• Subaru Kimura as Beat
• Ayana Taketatsu as Rhyme
• Ryōhei Kimura as Joshua
• Kenjiro Tsuda as Sanae Hanekoma
• Satomi Arai as Uzuki Yashiro
• Anri Katsu as Koki Kariya
• Kenji Takahashi as Yodai Higashizawa
• Takayuki Fujimoto as Sho Minamimoto
• Hitomi Nabatame as Mitsuki Konishi
• Hiroshi Shirokuma as Megumi Kitaniji

Takeharu Ishimoto is returning from the game to compose music for the anime. He stated he created music this time based on the fact that the anime is now in a different time period and is for an anime instead of for a game.

Kazuya Ichikawa (Monster Strike the Animation, Clean Freak! Aoyama kun, Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note) is directing the anime. Midori Gotou at SANZIGEN is supervising the series scripts. Tetsuya Nomura and Gen Kobayashi (Square Enix) designing the characters. DOMERICA (Flying Witch Petit) and Shinei Animation (Mysterious Joker, Doraemon) are producing the anime.

Ichikawa previously stated that staff kept some parts of the story and changed some parts in the anime in order to adapt it for the anime, but whether the story follows the path of the game, he stated he could not reveal that information at this time. He also stated the anime will depict Shibuya as it is today, instead of from 2007 in the game. The cell phones in the game will also be smartphones instead of flip-phones in the game.

Nintendo's website describes the game:

Complete the mission...or face erasure. That's all Neku knows after regaining consciousness in the middle of a busy intersection without his memories. Now he and his partner must fight to survive a life-or-death game in this twisted tale with more turns than the urban labyrinth of Tokyo they're trapped in.[...]
In the crowded chaos of Tokyo, players of the Reapers' Game must complete daily missions or face total erasure. Neku might not be enthusiastic about forging relationships, but with his very life on the line, he'll need to learn how to work together with a partner—and fast: they only have seven days.

Jupiter and Square Enix developed the original The World Ends with You game that shipped for Nintendo DS in Japan in 2007 and in the WEST. in 2008. The World Ends with You -Solo Remix- smartphone game developed by h.a.n.d launched for iOS devices in 2012, followed by Android devices in 2014. The World Ends with You -Final Remix- game shipped for the Nintendo Switch in Japan in September 2018 and launched in the WEST. in October 2018. Characters from the game franchise also feature in the Kingdom Hearts game series.

Sources: The World Ends with You anime's website, Comic Natalie