Joshua
From The World Ends With You
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| Name | Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu |
| Age | 15 (just in appearance; he is much older than he appears to be) |
| Main Attack Style | High and Low (D-Pad or A B X Y Buttons) |
| Partners | Neku in the second chapter |
| Classification | Player (illegally), Shibuya's Composer |
| Nicknames | Josh, Josh Josh, Petit Prince, Pretty Boy, Prissy Kid, Pink (in the Another Day chapter), Rainbow (in the Another Day chapter), and Pinky (in the Another Day chapter by Beat) |
| Voice Actor | Japanese: Ryohei Kimura English: Aaron Spann |
Yoshiya Kiryu (桐生 義弥 Kiryū Yoshiya?), nicknamed Joshua (ヨシュア Yoshua?), is Neku's second partner in the Reapers' Game.
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[edit] Main Information
[edit] Game Manual Description
Joshua
"It's quickly evident Joshua is beyond his fifteen years—as sly as they come. Unfortunately, his insufferably snotty attitude only serves to widen the gulf between him and Neku...but his knowledge, especially about the Game, does earn him some points."
[edit] Personality
Joshua is an extremely intelligent character with a refined taste and knowledge for the world around him. Unfortunately, these traits are often overshadowed by his constant air of arrogance. He prefers to think and act by himself, always keeping his intentions mysterious. Joshua very rarely gets honestly worked up (and is usually lying when he appears to be), and is always teasing when he is not sharing information. These snobby qualities always make him appear condescending and antagonistic — especially to Neku. Nevertheless, his long history with Hanekoma has ignited a bond of trust between the two. Despite his interpersonal issues, he remains a mature and wise person at heart underneath his attitude.
[edit] Battle Style
Joshua attacks by typing in digits on a phone to summon random objects to bombard enemies from above. He has two ways of fighting: ground and levitation. When Neku first forms a pact with him, Joshua will only attack on the ground; after a specific plot point, Joshua will be able to levitate in combat. When Joshua is in the air, every input to his combo tree inflicts damage and is generally stronger, especially against groups of enemies.
[edit] Ground
While on the ground, as you progress through his combos he will target enemies. When he finishes the combo, things will fall on each enemy that was targeted, larger things fall that are targeted multiple times. Later on, he gets a camera on his phone that has a chance of bringing targeted enemies to the opposite side and immobilizes them.
- Left/Y while attacking Right/A or vice versa (During a combo): Phone Camera- stuns/switches the position of Noise
- Down/B (When idle): Sidestep- momentary invincibility
- Up/X (When idle): Levitate
- Any button (When knocked in the air): Safe Landing- prevents knockdown damage
[edit] Levitate
During Joshua's Levitation, he is immune to almost all ground attacks. However, if he is hit while levitating, he will be knocked down, then returned to the ground (if an attack does zero damage, unless it has a knockback effect, will not knock Joshua back down). When progressing through his combos, each button press causes a beam to attack an enemy. At the end of the combo, a larger beam (nicknamed the "Jesus Beam" by fans) comes down on one side and hit all enemies on that side twice. However, if you go through enough steps in Joshua's Combo Map (specifically, enough so that a single enemy is hit at least six times), then the finisher will change from his basic air finisher to a massively more powerful one, in which two colossal beams will fire down on either side of Joshua. This advanced finisher is also known as the "Super Jesus Beam," (again, the name was generated among fans) and damages enemies on both the top and bottom screens ten times each. It is recommended that a Combo Map Upgrade II effect be used, such as Pi-Face's Jeans, to help guarantee the effect.
- Down/B (When idle): Return to ground
[edit] Fusion Stars
The way Joshua gains Fusion Stars is through Highs and Lows. At the end of Joshua's combos, there is a number. That number goes up to the number at the top that the arrow is pointing to. The goal is to get the combo numbers less than, greater than or equal to the number at the top, depending on the symbol in the corner of the top numbers.
- Red arrow pointing up - greater than
- Gray horizontal line - equal
- Blue arrow pointing down - less than
[edit] Fusions
Level 1: Neku and Joshua drop various objects on enemies.
- Joshua: "Follow my lead!"
- Neku: "Screw that!"
Level 2: Joshua attacks the field with ice and Neku attacks the field with fire.
- Joshua: "Work for you?"
- Neku: "What do you think?"
Level 3: Crashes the moon into the Earth, inflicting massive damage to all enemies.
- Neku: "Another world awaits."
- Joshua: "And you're going."
[edit] Story
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Yoshiya Kiryu (who states in-game that his parents call him Joshua) is the second partner Neku gains. He is a special player in that he is not dead, yet can see the UG. He seems to have known Neku before he came to the Underground as the flashbacks show (Joshua is running towards Neku with a gun in his hand and it appears that Neku is shot.) However, in the last flashback, it is shown that Joshua was not aiming for Neku, but for the second game master, Sho Minamimoto, who had followed Joshua to the RG in an attempt to kill him and become the Composer. Wounded, Minamimoto tries in desperation to shoot Joshua; however, Joshua's undiminished powers as the Composer enable him to halt the bullets in midair. Joshua then kills Neku as he had originally intended, enabling Neku to be his partner during the second Chapter.
At the end of the "Joshua" Chapter, he is shown to sacrifice himself to protect Neku from a level "i" flare attack. According to the secret reports written by Hanekoma, however, it is revealed that Joshua transported to a parallel universe just before receiving the blow of Minamimoto's attack. This universe is seen in the "Another Day" chapter, where Joshua meets the "Tin Pin"-obsessed alternative versions of Neku, Shiki, Beat, and himself.
At the end of the third week (Beat's week) Joshua appears in the final fight against the Conductor's final form, a huge five-headed dragon noise. After Neku defeats Kitaniji, Joshua reveals that he himself is the Composer. Also, in addition to not being killed by Minamimoto, Neku was never the Reapers' target. Joshua killed Neku so that Neku could be his proxy in his and Kitaniji's game to see if Shibuya would be destroyed or not. After Kitaniji is erased (due to having failed his mission and the timer running out) Joshua proposes one last "game" to Neku. Both of them have a revolver, and they both shoot on zero, with the survivor becoming the Composer. Neku does not fire a shot, and Joshua remains Composer. However, Joshua unexpectedly chooses to maintain Shibuya, as Neku and three other players (Shiki, Beat and Rhyme) meet in the RG in front of Hachiko in the end. It is revealed in the Secret Reports that this is because Joshua realized that if Neku, the "worst person in Shibuya" could change, then so could Shibuya.
As a slight Easter egg, Joshua is also seen in Shiki Day 1, before the frog noise show up at Hachiko. He is likely observing Neku, his proxy in the game with the Conductor, from the RG.
In the bonus chapter Another Day, he enters the Slam-off along with Neku, Shooter, and Kitaniji, being decribed as "the Roy G. Biv of Tin Pin Tactics", who "knows how to fill a hole when he sees one". He joins Shooter and the rest of the Spirits, assuming the codename "Pink" because "Pink is the color of love, and a humanitarian like me loves people". He is the only one to suspect Rhyme's ("Black") betrayal, and later on chooses the rainbow colored slammer, which is likely a reference to his "title" as a talented Tin Pin player. Also, he is the only one willing (at first) to go with Neku into the sewer and does not seemed bothered when meeting the Joshua from the main plot line, only asking why it wasn't peaceful where his counterpart came from.
[edit] Name
Joshua may be a reference to the biblical figure Joshua, who created the laws and rules that the people of Israel live by, and liased with God on their behalf.
Similarly, Joshua may be an indirect reference to Jesus (the name Joshua comes from Jewish "Yeshua", which in Greek translates to Jesus). Also supporting this theory is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah; when God considered Sodom and Gomorrah for destruction, Abraham tried to find at least one righteous person. This is identical to Joshua, being the "God" of The World Ends With You universe, considering Shibuya for destruction as Megumi Kitaniji tries to "fix" the people of Shibuya.
The kanji of Joshua's Japanese name (桐生 義弥, Kiryū Yoshiya) literally translate from left to right as paulownia, birth, justice, increasing. This may also refer to his role as creator of the Game and suggests impartiality within it (although this is not absolutely established by the plot). He also makes a cameo in the beginning when Neku goes to the statue of Hachiko. At the beginning of his week as well, he goofs and calls Neku by his name twice, before asking what it is, but Neku doesn't catch on to this. However, it should be noted that this is only present in the North American/European localization of the game; in the Japanese version, he never uses Neku's name until they are properly introduced.
