#quite the contrast to the first game where Joshua joined up in Week 2 to ensure Neku could survive the week

[sage-nebula]

@smallestfish​

I typed about five cellphone screens arguing against this with things in the game, but I accidentally highlighted all but the last couple lines and replaced them with a closing bracket instead of hitting copy. So, heavily shortened, Josh was more respectful to everyone in this game than the first one. He made a bet that the city would sort itself out if it had a few extra lives, moved one or two pieces when it was necessary, and let his opponent paint himself into a corner. Then, either Haz or he could just make it magically better after anyway if things really did go south, and things did, so they did.  Haz was significantly more cruel than Joshua has ever been by resurrecting everyone except Rindo's friends just to watch the kid squirm, and we know he did it with the intent to see how Rindo would react. There's a question to be asked of why Haz only intervened after time travel stopped being an option, and the answer makes Josh look like he's only waiting for Haz and Rindo to quit first and make his intervention actually necessary and good.

Replying this way because typing in the limit-restricted tumblr replies is annoying.

I disagree that the Shinjuku Game is in any way more respectful to anyone than the Shibuya Game. The Shinjuku Game was explicit psychological torture on the Players with no end in sight but their own erasure. The Variabeauties, Purehearts, and Deep Rivers Society were stuck for I believe 30+ loops; that’s seven months. During that time they not only saw other teams erased, but knew that their own erasure could come at any moment, and it’s specifically spelled out in the Secret Reports that this has an averse psychological effect on the Players. Of course, not that we needed that; Fuya, a 27-year-old man, was reduced to hysteric sobbing once he realized that his and his team’s fate was sealed. Motoi was never what you’d call an upstanding person (he was a plagiarist and an art thief), but his facial expressions when his treachery is revealed show that his sanity has been slipping for a while and he, too, is left grasping for any hope of salvation he can find. Kanon outright says she knows the Game is rigged and there’s no hope of winning, but she’s willing to try whatever she can to at least make it fair; it’s pretty clear that this unwinnable Game has been breaking her morale as well. And hell, by week two we see Fret’s optimism shaking as he realizes that the Ruinbringers can snatch victory away on technicalities, so even two weeks in a Shinjuku Game is enough to start wearing down on Players’ psyches, let alone thirty.

In the Shibuya Game, on the other hand, while it’s more brutal in the sense that the Reapers are out for blood (everyone’s gotta eat), anyone left alive at the end of the Week gets a chance to be restored to life or become a Reaper. (Well, most everyone. I think in the OG Secret Reports it’s stated that some are still redistributed into the Imagination of the UG, but for the most part all winners get a chance to return to life or become Reapers.) On top of which, the Players aren’t pitted against each other; they’re allowed, even encouraged, to work together to complete the missions and defeat the Noise. Shibuya’s Game encourages personal growth and development, whereas Shinjuku’s Game encourages competition and, to be honest, psychological torment. Joshua wanted to erase everyone in Shibuya just as Hazuki did in Shinjuku, yes, but his Game is far less cruel to the Players involved, not to mention the Reapers.

But Joshua simply . . . didn’t care about that, for three years. For three entire years he sat back and allowed Shiba to waltz in and dethrone Uzuki as Conductor. He allowed Shiba to disregard Shibuya’s Game in favor of Shinjuku’s. He allowed the Shinjuku Reapers to erase nearly every single one of his own Reapers for daring to speak out against this, to the point where Uzuki and Kariya feel as though their only option is to keep their mouths shut and go along with it, for their own safety. For three years he allowed Shibuya’s Players to not have the chance to grow, to develop, to discover themselves, to question what it is they’d want out of a second chance, and instead undergo literal hell in an unwinnable Game with no idea what they ever could have done to deserve such punishment. (The answer is, of course, nothing. They did nothing to deserve it. They just suffered it anyway.)

The point is: The Composer is the one who creates the UG. He is the one who creates the rules for how it operates, both within the limitations of the Game and otherwise. When Kubo and the Shinjuku Reapers came to call, and Kubo made it known that he wanted to “purify” Shibuya the way that he did Shinjuku, Joshua made a deliberate choice to enter into this Game with him and leave Shibuya to its fate. He flat out says this is his intention in “A New Day”:

Now, while one could try to argue that he was lying here, because he lies a second after this about not caring about Neku anymore (although in my opinion his definition of “care” is still pretty damn selfish), his actions in Neo make it abundantly clear. Joshua could have very easily done what Hazuki did to Kubo three years ago by booting him out of Shibuya and back to the Higher Plane. He could have easily let Uzuki keep her spot as Conductor and protected his Reapers from erasure by the Shinjuku Reapers. He could have very easily just returned Neku to the RG (thus protecting him from the Shinjuku Reapers / Kubo) instead of locking him in the remains of Shinjuku. He could have very easily done all of this and it would have been within his rights because whether the Higher Plane likes it or not, Shibuya is still his city and he didn’t technically break any rules by choosing not to go through with the purification. Whether Shibuya was purified or not was his call, even if they didn’t like his choice. It’s the reason why Hanekoma is in angel jail and Joshua is not.

But he didn’t. He chose not to. I’ve seen some speculate that this was due to Higher Plane politics, that Joshua wanted to show the Higher Plane that Shibuya was worth saving because it had citizens who could stand up even against angels and win. He wanted them to see what he sees in Shibuya. But even if that was his intention, countless lives were lost because of his decision. Countless people suffered because of his decision. The Variabeauties, the Purehearts, the Deep River Society—hell, even Reapers like Ayano and Susukichi—their erasure dust is partially on Joshua’s hands. He could have prevented all of this and he made a deliberate decision not to. The fact that Hanekoma makes a point in multiple Secret Reports (getting increasingly frustrated each time) that Joshua had opportunity to do something yet chose not to tells us all we need to know about how tied Joshua’s hands were, and the fact is that they were not. Or if they were, the only person who tied them was Joshua himself. 

A few final notes:

1.) My original shitpost was not about Hazuki’s morality or saying that he’s a “better person” than Joshua, but merely pointing out that he did more to save Shibuya (despite it not being his city and not his responsibility) than Joshua did, which is factually true. Joshua did nothing beyond show up for “moral support” for Neku and return Shoka to the RG. (And as far as we know, it was only Shoka. The Variabeauties, Deep River Society, and Purehearts are presumably still erased since they lost the Game.) Even after Neku and the others were perma-erased, Joshua did nothing. He did not intervene. He claims to Neku later that if things got really bad he would have, but again . . . everyone died, the city was on fire, and he was nowhere to be found, so I personally don’t think his word is worth very much here. Bottom line, I’m not saying Hazuki is a better person than Joshua—honestly I think they’re on the same level, more or less—but only that it’s hilarious that he actually took action to save a city that wasn’t his.

2.) For emphasis, Hazuki didn’t have to intervene. Shibuya is not his city. It’s not his responsibility. He could have returned to the Higher Plane to do angel things if he’d really wanted to. He exorcised Kubo for erasing Shibuya once he saw that Shibuya was actually going to be erased because Joshua had saved it once and he was curious as to why, and he couldn’t quite figure that out if Shibuya was gone. But he didn’t have to, and in fact he points out to Rindo that he won’t be able to do so again. But either way, it really wasn’t his job. It was Joshua’s. Joshua just chose not to do it, for whatever reason.

TL;DR:

Joshua let a lot of people suffer and perma-die when he very easily could have prevented it for reasons that are unfathomable even to the Producer (“Does [the Composer] have a plan at all?” — Secret Report #20), and while this was perhaps due to Higher Plane politics and wanting to Prove A Point to the angels of the Higher Plane, that doesn’t change the fact that the suffering and erasure of countless individuals was a direct result of his inaction, or that another city’s Composer had to step in to give the Players a chance to fix the mess because Joshua himself couldn’t be bothered to do so.

#neo: the world ends with you #ntwewy #neo twewy #long post for ts #smallestfish #also Rindo was Joshua's proxy so . . . if Rindo lost Joshua lost #and Joshua STILL did nothing even when Rindo DID lose #HAZUKI had to intervene #quite the contrast to the first game where Joshua joined up in Week 2 to ensure Neku could survive the week #(but also to needle him back to his old ways - or try to. or see if Neku would regress with needling. for science.) #Joshua's such an interesting character but he is not nice or selfless or even good #the only nice angel is Hanekoma #and that is Facts #ntwewy spoilers #neo twewy spoilers