World's End Club/Story

## Plot

Reycho and his fellow members of the Go-Getters Club, a class of weird sixth grade students, are interrupted by a nearby meteor impact while en route to a field trip from Tokyo in 1995. They awaken in an underwater theme park where a mascot robot named Pielope forces them to play a "Game of Fate," a life-or-death game in which players race to complete an assigned task. With the exception of Reycho, Vanilla, and Pochi, the others appear to be brainwashed. Reycho successfully stops the others from finishing their own tasks and wins the game, only to discover that everyone survived with their minds restored. Pielope attempts to start another game before being taken out by Reycho's classmate Pai, who announces that the game is cancelled on behalf of the mastermind hidden among the class. But she is knocked out before revealing the mastermind as the park begins breaking apart, with the class escaping in a submarine.

The Go-Getters find themselves in Kagoshima, 1200 kilometers away from their home city, Pai unable to remember the mastermind’s identity. The city is abandoned and overrun by strange monsters, so everyone agrees to return home to Tokyo and find out what happened to the world. But a debate among the group occurs over traveling through Fukuoka and the other Oita as the ideal route to reach Tokyo. The story diverges depending on Reycho's choice, with the class going their separate ways. Along the way, each member of the Go-Getters Club awakens to a mysterious superpower with the Oita-bound group learning it is 1996 while the Fukuoka-bound group are joined by an amnesiac girl they named Yuki.

The class reunites in Shikoku where they encounter the Master of a cult dedicated to a powerful artificial intelligence called MAIK while pursued by a rebuilt Pielope out for revenge. Following an incident in either Osaka or Kyoto, the latter event reuniting Kansai and Jennu with a mutual acquaintance, Pai would regain her memories and reveals the Game of Fate’s mastermind to be Vanilla who wanted to undo MAIK’s brainwashing on their friends. Furthermore, it is revealed that Vanilla died in 1994 from being hit by a speeding truck with her ghost seen only by Reycho, Pochi, and Pai.

The gang soon reach Nara and try to use a locomotive to reach Tokyo, only to be confronted by Pielope and learn the robot also seeks to punish the "traitor", resulting in two ending scenarios. One ending depicts the gang splitting up with one half is captured by MAIK's robots before the others rescue them from a factory in Nagoya, with the Master revealed to be overseeing MAIK’s maintenance. The gang steals a helicopter to reach Tokyo before it is struck by debris from an erupting Mt. Fuji, seeing their city in ruins moments prior.

If the group remains together, they continue towards Tokyo through Gifu where they find mushrooms that allow them to see Vanilla. On the way, Reycho defends everyone from MAIK's ships with his body partially destroyed in the process. The others learn he is a robot controlled remotely by Pochi, revealed to be the traitor Pielope was after. The others shunned Pochi and give Reycho a proper burial before reaching the ash-covered remains of Tokyo, having second thoughts about Pochi when since he helped them. They are then confronted by MAIK’s robots with Pochi revealed to be a robot too with and X on his head, revealing that he was an X-TYPE while allowing himself to be taken away to protect his friends.

But the kids hijack one of MAIK’s ships to rescue Pochi as the group meet MAIK itself. MAIK explains that Nyoro's father created it in 1991 to make the world a better place, secretly using nanomachines to gradually turn humans into emotionless and subservient “sheep”. MAIK then explains that it established the Go-Getters Club upon noticing the kids’ apparent immunity and unique abilities with Reycho and Pochi as observers, revealing that the “brainwashing” was actually a surgical process to remove their limitations while orchestrating various situations to awaken their powers in altruistic moments. MAIK then leaves the Go-Getters with an ultimatum to become humanity's “shepherds” or force it to kill the humans through its nanomachines.

The group attempts to destroy MAIK's supercomputer but reach a dead end while attacked by Pielope, revealed to have been installed with one of MAIK’s two sub-personalities when rebuilt. After being defeated, Pielope reveals that Vanilla survived the truck incident and is practically MAIK's hostage as it would let her die from oxygen starvation. With the help of the Otherworlder, a being representing the player who can collect knowledge from the games' multiple timelines, Pochi deduces that Vanilla and MAIK are at the Heaven facility located at the underwater amusement park all the way back in Kagoshima. They reunite with Vanilla and prepare to destroy MAIK's core when they are impeded by the Master, who reveals that Yuki will cease to exist upon MAIK’s demise, and Reycho after MAIK rebuilt him as a defense mechanism.

But the students reach out to Reycho, causing him to become self-aware as he destroys the barrier protecting MAIK’s core before shutting down. Yuki confesses that she is MAIK's other sub-personality, another robot being, and that she is directly connected to the core. This convinces the gang to depend on Pochi and Vanilla when the former uploads himself into the MAIK System to destroy MAIK’s personality, only to be blocked by a firewall as MAIK threatens to erase Yuki’s personality to force the gang’s compliance. But the other Go-Getters give Vanilla an administrator account to override MAIK’s commands, with Pochi dismantling MAIK with Yuki's code intact. The Go-Getters are then reunited with a fully aware Reycho who now speaks as humanity begins to recover.