If you've ever spent a semester in college and suffered a fit of procrastination, you have probably felt exactly like Satou Tatsuhiro, the series' protagonist, on some level or other. At some point along the way, pressed with the stresses of college classes and the outside world, and left on his own without interference from his parents, he just stopped going to class. Spending every day in his room sleeping till late hours of the afternoon, reading comics, consuming junk food, beer, and cigarettes, and entertaining vague notions of employment that would never materialize, facing the consequences of his situation and climbing his way out became too much to deal with. Now that this limbo is causing paranoid delusions and has driven him to the brink of insanity, he's decided he has to break out of it, but how?
Conveniently, he runs into Misaki Nakahara, a young girl who claims she can cure him of his hikikomori condition. But in an attempt to impress her, he takes on a game design project with his next door neighbor Kaoru Yamazaki, who introduces him into further otaku habits and worsens his condition. The trio of young outcasts band together to overcome their social issues, but as Satou's journey to self-improvement becomes a roller coaster ride of repeated drops into the depths of otaku self-indulgence, it's not clear whether they will ever succeed.
If there was ever a single anime series to show to your anime-illiterate friends in order to teach them all about otaku culture, this probably it. The series centers around a group of hikikomori; people who don't leave the house, have little or no job, and spend all day at home engaging in geeky activities. At one point or another in the series, the characters variously engage in (and exemplify) such hobbies as moe toy collecting, maid cafes, hentai games, MMORPG's, Japanese TV, and good old-fashioned internet porn. In what is undoubtedly the cleverest aspect of the series, it points out and pokes fun of all of the over-used clichés and conventions of anime, manga, and games, while simultaneously employing those very conventions itself to advance the plot, right under your nose, in such a way that you don't notice its hypocritical nature.
Welcome to the NHK is at once very psychological and very silly. Each of the prominent characters has their own personality disorder or set of psychological issues which causes them to be reclusive and eschew the outside world. One character is almost downright schizophrenic, his would-be ex is a conspiracy theorist, and another character is a classic anime/manga/game nerd. Peripherally the series covers internet suicides, MMORPG addicts, and even the victims of pyramid marketing schemes. But however serious these issues are and how [melo]dramatically they are portrayed, they are simultaneously handled in a very light-hearted manner and used to construct hilarious gags. One could almost compare Welcome to the NHK to a somewhat more serious, slightly less perverted, and markedly less academic Golden Boy . Fan service and masturbation jokes come at you at a mile a minute, and yet in the midst of all this silliness, you are actually given a rather accurate and realistic look at the subject matter.
It's possible some would take offense at the show, feeling that their perfectly valid lifestyle is being criticized as a psychosis, but one has to admit that at least some of the world's most hardcore geeks must be driven by the very issues which this show makes the center of its story. No matter how proud you may be of your stellar mental health in the face of constant anime-watching, manga-reading, and gaming, you WILL still have found yourself in many of the situations which are the butt of this series' jokes. This is a series about otaku, for otaku, by otaku and there's no way it could detail the lives of hikikomori so accurately unless the creators had been otaku themselves. As such, in many ways Welcome to the NHK is the anime to end all anime, because it creates comedy and drama out of the very experiences and lifestyle which hardcore anime fans are most likely have experienced themselves in real life, and which sets anime fans apart from other people.
Lastly, I think it's worth mentioning that Welcome to the NHK is psychological in a very direct way that popular psychodrama series such as Neon Genesis Evangelion or Serial Experiments Lain aren't. The viewer is never left guessing as to the meaning of a scene or forced to refer to a flow chart or canon guide to keep up with the plot line. There are no real conspiracies or supernatural encounters in NHK,everything that happens could have happened to you.As a result, despite all the silliness, despite the fact that you're watching cartoon characters and wacky stuff happens, it feels very real – and not in a posturing gritty way either. I
would almost say that Welcome to the NHK is one of the closest possible TV series analogs to a movie like Tokyo Godfathers.
Welcome to the NHK is most definitely worth a watch. It engages in pseudo-psychoanalysis, sets up slapstick and situational comedy out of the issues it deals with, and stays just dramatic enough to keep you glued to your seat eternally itching to find out what will happen in the next episode. What's more, it deals with subject matter that every otaku can relate to, in a way that few other series have really touched on before. It is unique and original, it has a serious side with some real implications, and yet it is equal parts comedy (if not more so) and never really feels morbidly or dryly serious. Give it a shot.
Publisher: FUNimation
Rating: Teen
Available: Now