There's a third way to fix the freezing problem. It was mentioned in one of the
TWEWY threads (can't remember which) back when the English ROMs were first released. The
TWEWY freezing problem is present only in the US and European ROMs, and not in the Japanese ROM. It seems that the problem lies in the audio of the cutscene, rather than the cutscene itself.
1. You will need two copies of the
TWEWY ROM: one Japanese (called
Subarashiki Kono Sekai) and one English (either US or EUR).
2. Use
DSLazy to unpack both ROMs.
3. Copy the audio folder and its contents (all the .adx files) from the Japanese ROM into the English ROM (overwrite the English ROM's audio folder).
4. Repack the English ROM, and you're done.
When you play through the beginning with the modified English ROM, there will be no freezing. You'll end up with a
TWEWY ROM that has Japanese audio, but with English text and subtitles. This shouldn't be an issue for non-Japanese speakers because the beginning of the game contains subtitles for all of the audio; however, later on in the game (especially at the final battle) there's heavy audio dialogue with minimal subtitles. So use the modified English ROM just to get past the first cutscene, then save as soon as you get a chance. Once you've saved, replace the modded ROM with a clean dump of the English release (keep the save), and play as normal.
Compared with the other two methods, it sounds like a lot of work, I know. But I'm not a big fan of opening and closing my DS rapidly, what with reports of the hinges cracking from overuse. And I've never tried the slow-motion trick, so I can't confirm its effectiveness. But I
have tried this third method, and it worked for me. And since I'm proficient enough in Japanese, I didn't even bother switching back to the clean English ROM once I got past the first cutscene (I actually played the entire game in Japanese before the English releases came out).