Ani-Mania: Reviews ‘Welcome to the NHK’

I’ve been promising this NHK review for a long time. While I COULD blame the delay on a massive, world wide conspiracy (which in light of the show’s premise would be completely appropriate), the truth is, its hard for me to write about a show that I *really* like. Sounds counter-intuitive, I know. You’d think the more I like something, the easier it would be to gush about it, but for me, it doesn’t work that way. If I think something is pretty good or just “okay”, its easy to talk about it. But if I really think its great, my opinion comes out something like, “NHK: watch it.” — which would be a great review coming from Yuki Nagato, but it doesn’t really work here.

Welcome to the NHK is special to me for several reasons. For one thing, it was among the last shows I watched at our local anime club before a long series of scheduling conflicts and life changes made it increasingly harder for me to find the time to drop in and visit. Until recently, I never did get the chance to finish it, so it was out there, this big, waiting block of unfinished business. The other reason is perhaps even more personal. If you’ve ever been a nerd, geek, or outcast of any stripe, NHK is going to strike a chord with you.

Our hero, or anti-hero, rather, is Sato Tatsuhiro. Sato has been living for several years now as a hikikomori — a recluse, or shut in — when he suddenly one day comes to the conclusion that all his troubles can be blamed on a mysterious organization, the NHK, or Nihon Hikikomori Kyokai, which has been broadcasting anime with seductive female characters as part of a far reaching plot to brainwash unsuspecting young men to the point that they can no longer leave the house, and remain locked away inside forever.

Then, there is a knock at the door. Fearing it might be a creditor who will interrupt his solitary lifestyle if he doesn’t do something to pacify them, Sato answers, and instead finds himself in a different kind of debt, when he meets the young Misaki, who promises she can cure him of his hikikomori disease if he will only sign a contract and agree to follow her program. If he completes the program, Misaki assures him he will no longer be a hikikomori, but if he defaults, he must pay a fine of one million yen.

Her “contract” is handwritten, and the “notes” for her program are scrawled in a spiral notebook, but something about Misaki intrigues him, and Sato agrees. Then, through another mishap, he learns that the person blaring the annoying anime theme music next door is his old classmate, Yamazaki. The two have been living next to each other unawares for some time now, and while they weren’t very close in school, they now strike up a friendship. Yamazaki has been going to school to become a game designer, and when Misaki pressures Sato about being a hikikomori, he lies, and tells her he is actually working on a video game himself. Desperate for some way out of the web he has created, Sato turns to his friend for help. The solution, to Yamazaki at least, seems obvious. Sato can help him with the game project he’s always wanted to work on. Then his lie to Misaki will become the truth. There’s just one — okay, a LOT of problems, but the biggest one is that Yamazaki wants to create a certain KIND of game. Namely, a risque hentai dating sim!

Thus we have our plot, and once the ball gets rolling, it more or less stays on course, with various developments along the way. But this doesn’t even BEGIN to do this show justice. The great thing about Welcome to the NHK is its brutal honesty. We are spared next to nothing as the opening episodes of the show paint a very ugly picture of Sato’s life. The Hikikomori problem, and the associated NEET phenomenon — individuals who are Not Employed, in Education, or Training — has plagued Japan for years now. While these kinds of social problems can be found in other countries, too, the Japanese do an interesting and particularly thorough job of categorizing their problems, and in much the same way that Victorian England dealt with various “Questions” about social issues, the Japanese view their contemporary social ills under very defined headings. NHK, then, could be said to address “The Hikikomori/NEET Problem”, and it does a very good job, but because it’s so honest, large parts of the series are awkward, uneasy, and downright painful to watch.

If you’ve ever been a geek of any persuasion, you’ll find something to recognize in Welcome to the NHK’s portrait of the dark side of fandom. It’s filled with black humor that somehow remains surprisingly light most of the time, though it does periodically dive into some very deep, very dark places. This depth gives the early parts of the series a slow, ponderous pace, but it also sets up some extremely vivid characterization. There aren’t many side characters in NHK — apart from Sato, Misaki, and Yamazaki, the only other character who plays a major role would be Hitomi, Sato’s old sempai, or senior classmate, with whom he shares a still lingering crush left over from their high school days. But Misaki will not be deterred. She will pursue Sato to the ends of the earth, even going to such lengths as dressing up as a cat girl and studying cosplay magazines to find new ways to entice Sato back to her.

The first half of the series is gold, but unfortunately, it falls into the same second season slump that plagues so many of Gonzo’s shows, albeit to a lesser degree. The third disc of this four volume set contains some great lines, like Misaki saying “I’ll just have to lure him back with SEX appeal!” or “There’s more to this moe thing than I thought!” My personal favorite is her simple overture to Sato while in catgirl attire: “Meow.” Unfortunately, these gems are orphaned in some largely empty side plots about Sato falling for a pyramid scheme and getting wrapped up in a gold farming expedition in an online rpg.

The ending — the show does HAVE an ending, something sadly not always mandatory for anime — packs considerable punch, but the writing never quite recovers to the very high bar that the stellar first season set for it. Still, NHK is a phenomenon, and very well worth watching. The acting is superb throughout the entire series. Chris Patton is in rare form as Sato. The role seems made for him, allowing him to be at times vulgar, over the top, self deprecating, but always unswervingly honest, whether that honesty is noble, or painful. Patton is probably best known for his roles as Greed in Fullmetal Alchemist and Sousuke in Full Metal Panic, but in my opinion, NHK ranks among his best work.

Sato’s friend, Yamazaki, is played by the equally prolific Greg Ayers. For a while, Ayers seemed destined to be forever type cast as a shy juvenile boy — witness his work as Negi Springfield in Negima, Pope Alessandro in Trinity Blood, and Yuki in The Wallflower. Seeing him as the brooding, dictatorial Yamazaki is refreshing, and hearing Negi’s voice shout and curse about finishing a dating sim is hilarious.

Stephanie Wittels does an admirable job as the enigmatic Misaki, bent on Sato’s salvation from hikikomori doom. She also voiced Kano in Air and Aoi in Tokyo Majin. Sato’s other potential love interest, the equally sour and smoldering Hitomi, gets her voice from none other than Luci Christian, who appeared as Lenalee in the recent hit D. Gray Man, Wrath in FMA, and opposite Patton as Full Metal Panic’s Miss Chidori. She also played in Negima as the lead heroine, Asuna.

Welcome to the NHK has already taken its place alongside Genshiken and the classic mockumentary, Otaku no Video, as a seminal work on the quirks of anime fandom, but it goes well beyond being a humorous commentary on a particular subculture, or even a social expose on a strange cultural phenomenon. If you have ever been a dork about ANYthing, or had even the smallest feelings of being estranged from society, NHK is bound to hit a nerve. It may be awkward and uncomfortable, but its raw humanity, made bearable by a large amount of truly genius comedy, make it one of the best shows around. If NHK was the only anime you watched this year, you probably wouldn’t know what the latest hit was, or what all of the buzz was about, but your time would have been well spent.

(In the course of writing this review, E. Douglas spent a lot of time playing the Love Hina dating sim, or gal game, as Yamazaki would affectionately call it. While this was a very difficult, time consuming undertaking, he did eventually date all of the girls, something he felt was important for him to be able to write from an authentic perspective, and so no effort was spared to give you the best review possible.)