NHK ni Youkoso!

Information of Anime

Satou Tatsuhiro is a 22 year old hikikomori (someone with acute social withdrawal).  He became like that when he drop out of college after an incident where he felt people were making fun of him.  He believes a secret organization called NHK (Nippon Hikikomori Kyokai) is behind all this.  However, he's actually a NEET (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) for nearly four years.  One day, a girl named Misaki Nakahara asked him to be part of her project in helping him cure his hikikomori disease.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The show revolves around Satou's hikikomori lifestyle & how he's improving on it.  It focuses a lot of the current social issues such as online gaming addiction, otakus, etc.  As Satou tries to escape his hikikomori ways, he runs into other problems.  His old schoolmate, Kaoru Yamazaki, tries to help Satou as well by building a galge game (dating simulation type) together which ends up as a failure later on.  He also runs into his other schoolmates that would try to help or sucker him into their world.  Things thicken up when Satou learns something about Misaki.

It seems Misaki has been watching Satou before the start of her project.  Her house can see Satou's apartment room & the park they meet together for her lectures to him.  Concern about this, Satou ditches the project even though there is a one million yen fine on it.  When Satou started to get over his hikikomori ways after his parents cut his allowance due to his father having medical problems, he starts to work in order to survive for himself  in terms of food & living expenses.  As that is going, Misaki starts to think about suicide.

When Satou learns about Misaki's suicide & the clues & hints she left for him, he attempts to save her.  After hearing from her uncle on how she was abuse by her stepfather & became a high school dropout due to her problems of not being able to communicate with others, Satou feels bad for her & tells her that NHK is behind all this.  Time passes after the suicide incident & Satou's friends have moved on with their lives to better ones.  Satou & Misaki on the other hand are still struggling a bit & agree to sign a contract together in being prisoners to NHK.  This is how the story ends.

My Personal Review

NHK ni Youkoso! is really a bizarre anime show.  At the same time, it touches on some of the current social issues that is happening in society.  This is a very good anime to watch & I personally recommend it.  Be advise though that it has some brief nudity in it due to some of the adult situations.  These occur physically & mentally/psychology.

Animation

The character designs are pretty plain as they seem quite flat.  The characters are drawn not proportional as the the limbs are strangely thin & the facial features are uneven at times.  Despite all that, the character faces are beautifully drawn for some reason.  The fashion is plain, but works well as it makes the characters look normal.  Those NHK aliens are quite ugly, but unique as they give off those evil looks & grins.

The backgrounds are ok & not heavily detailed.  They are drawn uneven in some areas, but it's usually in the non-city areas.  Overall, it's very balanced with the characters as well in terms of the colour toning.

The colours are quite dark & dull.  Nothing bright or bold.  Even that Puni-puni show isn't that bright.

The animation flow is pretty rough in some areas.  You can notice them when the character walk or run.  Quite a lot of jerking, but little sudden motions.  Even the funny & bizarre scenes have these jerky motions, making the animation not smooth.

Sound       

The sound effects aren't bad.  Nice selection of real & animation sounds.  Pretty much on cue too.

The voice actors are good.  They matched their characters quite well.  There are times that they change their voices too much that it can be a little annoying.  The projection of the voices isn't too good at times.  This usually occurs when the characters are thinking inside their heads.  It's something I never heard of before.  It's presented in a monotone like listen to someone's voice on the phone.  Usually, I hear the echo type so I'm not use to this kind of thing.

The music is mainly on the rock side.  You have a mixture of soft & hard.  At times, you get the Puni-Puni song running the background.  The way the songs is played is different at times depending on the scene.  Sometimes you hear only the bass of it because it's coming from the other side of the wall.  Well projected overall.

Story

Despite all the crude humour the show touches on on the social issues, it's really well written.  You get to understand some background on those areas such as the life of an otaku or a person that goes online to escape reality.  However, it sometimes doesn't show anything new about these fields to a lot of people such as guys playing as female characters on online games.  But the importance & actual facts about these problems are shown here.  Also, these problems are linked to certain characters in the show.  In other words, everyone has their own social problems & issues.  The way the characters get out of them are interesting for some & a bit confusing or forced.  I'll let you watch the show without me spoiling it to understand what I mean here.

The ending is somewhat complete & incomplete at times.  This is basically based on how each characters managed to solve their own personal problems.  Some managed to get over it & some are improving to get there.  When you look at it, this is quite realistic regardless on how much time as passed.  Some problems actually take time to resolve, while some can't be resolved at all.  Overall, I felt the ending was good.

Overall Conclusion

NHK ni Youkoso! is really a great show to watch.  Although it takes some stabs with cruel jokes on some people having those characteristics like an addicted online gamer or otaku, it touches these issues quite seriously.  The show is aimed to a mature audience, preferably college to working people.  This is really a must watch show.

NHK ni Youkoso! gets a nine out of ten.  It has a great storyline with a lot of real world issues that many people are facing today.  Although the jokes are cruel, you can see how deep those problems are.  However, the ending may feel incomplete to some people as it doesn't resolve a lot of the problems in the show.  Only some of them are fixed.

Last updated on January 14, 2008