The World Ends With You
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The World Ends With You
Imprinting

The player imprinting on Futoshi.

Imprinting is a method of contact between the Underground and the Realground. It features as a gameplay mechanic in The World Ends with You and NEO: The World Ends with You. In the games, Players need to collect memes to imprint ideas into people's minds in the RG.

Method[]

Speech Bubble - Exclamation Question SR Spoiler warning: Plot and/or character details follow.

Imprinting requires no physical manifestation in the UG, and can be performed by anyone with a vibe equal to or higher than a Player. An imprinter can confer thought onto a person in the RG, which they parse as a burst of Inspiration. Sanae Hanekoma considers it "unreliable at best" due to how imprinting needs to be interpreted by the imprintee, and might not reach them. However, he still uses imprinting in his works as CAT, because art can be a medium for mass imprinting: his art is imbued with two command codes, "Enjoy the moment more", strengthening viewers' Imagination, and "Gather", calling to those with strong Imagination. Megumi Kitaniji imprinted on the Red Skull Pins he spread throughout Shibuya during the Long Game to make people bend to his will of turning Shibuya into a hivemind.

Mechanic[]

In The World Ends with You, imprinting is a game mechanic used to influence people of the RG. Imprinting can only be done when an RG person starts to think about something related to solving the mission, and the Player has at least one meme on hand. This may not always be the correct meme, as the Player can encounter several, but when it is, it will advance the mission and the plot. Imprinting is a mechanic in Shiki, Day 3, Shiki, Day 5, Shiki, Day 6, and Joshua, Day 3

In the anime, Players do not need to collect memes. Neku and Shiki are able to imprint ideas into people by simply thinking of the phrase in their mind.

In NEO: The World Ends with You, players will encounter several key words, and will need to string two of them together in order to achieve a viable response, with only certain combinations working.

Trivia[]

  • In the first game, there is track called "Imprinting" for unknown reasons, raising the possibility the track would originally play during imprinting sessions.
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