#are we talking about the same Neku Sakuraba here?? the one who hated lies in the first game

[purplelea]

Everyday I think about how Neku lied to all of the Wicked Twisters, including Beat, about who sent him to Shinjuku. He looked at them in the eyes and said "I have no idea." when he absolutely knew it was Joshua. He knew it but he also knew that 1. Joshua wouldn't want him to reveal that and 2. it wouldn't help anyone, just confuse things more. So he didn't say anything and focused on saving Shibuya. A true king.

[purplelea]

Related to my other post about Neku the other day.

This scene is what gives the best glimpse of what Neku was like before the Game. They just saw Rhyme getting erased, and Neku is hurt and lashes out on Shiki, opening about his feelings at the same time. We need to remember that at this moment, Neku is still amnesiac and doesn't truly remember anything about his past. Still, I believe he truly means those words since he never takes them back even after regaining his memories.

As I said in the other post, Neku doesn't hate people. What he hates is getting hurt because of others, and this is perfectly explained here: the word hurt itself is highlighted in his dialogue. But there's also something else, that we can find again in neo: it's this need of real, genuine human connection. Neku hates having friends because he thinks that the connection friends have is fake and based on lies. It tracks with what he says afterwards during his week with Joshua: you can't truly understand others, so any connection you will have with people won't be genuine and true.

At the beginning of the Game, Neku is selfish. There's no going around it: he pushes others away because they might hurt him, he tries to kill Shiki to save his own skin (remember Uzuki's words? "You're the star, kiddo. Just do things your way. [...] What are you waiting for? Do what comes naturally. Save yourself. Screw everybody else, right?"), he doesn't consider for a second that she needs him as much as he needs her to stay alive. Because of this selfishness, he doesn't believe that others can offer genuine kindness to others, that everytime someone does something nice to someone it's to get something from it—thus, the idea of people "pretending to agree with you" so you end up caring about them and getting hurt afterwards. It was all their big plan, right? And Neku doesn't want to walk into that.

So you'd think that because of that and his hatred towards liars, Neku would be mad at Shiki for lying about her appearance for almost the whole week, right? But our favourite emo boy simply tells her "Everyone has their off days, right?" when she apologises that they might fail the mission (and get erased) because of her. So what happened? What made him change that much? Well, the answer is simple enough: Shiki.

Shiki's kindness, her dream to make people happy with clothes, her insistence on the fact that "Not all lies are bad ones", her forgiveness and will go give others a second chance... Everything Shiki did, unknowingly, brought Neku to consider that maybe, just maybe, people weren't all that bad. Taking a peek into Shiki's world made Neku expand his own. She might have lied, but that was because she was scared and lost, just like him, and he sees himself in her—just two teenagers thrown into a game of life or death, holding on to their beliefs and trying to work together despite the hurt they're both carrying. I believe this is what makes Neku start to change—it's only the start, and his two other Partners will, too, help him to keep going towards that path of change.

It all comes up to that big lie in neo—that I already talked about here—the fact that he tells everyone that he doesn't know who sent him to Shinjuku. Neku, the blunt, brutally honest Neku Sakuraba, who hated lies because he firmly believed that nothing good could come of it, that they would only hurt people and especially people close to you like your friends, lying, openly, to the whole group of the Wicked Twisters—including Beat! Incredible. I just wanted to elaborate a little more on that, because that hatred ran deep, and despite everything, Neku managed to change that much.