NHK ni Youkoso!
Welcome to the N.H.K.

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This is one of my favorite manga and, since it had few reviews, I thought I could add a bit more of information for those who are uncertain whether to read this or not.

Well, as it says on the synopsis, this manga follows the life of a hikikomori, who thinks an organization called NHK is targeting him. (oh really?!) xD
The main character actually posseses psychological problems, such as paranoia ,which leads him to believe his life is being controlled by NHK, and all the bad things that happens to him are their doing.

Suddenly, he meets a girl called Misaki who says he had been chosen ... to participate in her "project", and that she could help him have a normal life.
Just saying this the story sounds cute doesn't it?
Well, don't be fooled, because this manga isn't by any means cute nor lighthearted. Even thought on it's genres is written: Comedy and Romance, it's story and character relations are not gonna be like anything you have ever seen before. To describe it in one word I think: "bizarre" (or to use one that's not as strong) "unusual" would be the most suited.

It is a comedy though, since it does have humor, but the humor the author uses is extremely sarcastic and cynical that sometimes even made me feel a little bit uneasy.

Another strong point is the characters, their personalities and problems are so well-made and realistic that makes you think a real person could have the same problems and, many times, act the same way the characters did.(which was probably the author's intention (lol))

Well, if you want to read an amazing manga that is not cliche, this is a must.

After re-reading volumes 1-6 before moving onto the final volumes of Welcome to the NHK, I finally managed to finish reading the manga just now. My feelings are fairly mixed: I did enjoy my read but, at the same time, I was left thinking that there was waaaaaay too much padding forced in--far more than in the anime. Because of all the needless content, my enjoyment dropped considerably after the first two excellent volumes.

Volume eight was by far the most disappointing in the entire series. It all felt so pointless and, in comparison to the earlier volumes, it was far less entertaining. There was ... lots of chatter yet I never found myself caring about what was being said, or even following most of it. The story ultimately never went anywhere in the end; instead going in circles as Misaki pushed forward with her love contract, Satou went along with it because he had nothing else and Yamazaki rambled incomprehensibly about starting a revolution. All I saw were the difficult to follow conversations of not-so-sane people that were shoved in to extend the story to 40 chapters.

Whilst I am still covering the negatives, I will also add that I was not best pleased with how the original story was changed in the manga. There were lots of small (but important) alterations that were made; some of which seemed to have been made as the manga was on-going. A good n example is how Satou first said he was not a virgin (in the novel and anime he slept with his senpai whilst still at school) and then later said he was. The most bothersome change was how Misaki only lied about having a bad childhood in the manga: it made her already difficult to like character outright dislikeable... for no reason. Too many silly changes were made in order to extend the length of a fairly short story.

On the flipside, I did like the first two chapters of volume seven quite a lot. The events that took place in those chapters never occurred in either the novel or anime, and they were only able to work so well because Satou was still a virgin in the manga. Kashiwa's easily my favourite character in NHK, and the 'so near yet so far' romance between Satou and her is the most emotional part of the story for me. So, a few chapters that gave the pair more time together were very welcome additions. It was nice to see Satou confess his feelings in this version... even if he later went back on what he said because he did not have what it would have required for him to take his relationship with her forward. Life truly does suck.

In general, I do not like how open-ended every aspect of the NHK story is left, but I have still always found the relationship between Satou and Kashiwa moving. I actually came close to crying during episode 14 of the anime simply because, even. The reader/viewer fully understands why Satou doesn't do what his heart tells him to, yet it is hard to watch when you know the two could have been happy together. If only he had had the balls to put his arm around her when he was not a recluse and she was not married now--his future might have turned out slightly happier. What makes the whole situation agonising is the fact that Satou is a better match for her than her the guy she ended up marrying...

...Anyway, to sum it up, my thoughts are that, although still very good, the manga is definitely the weakest of the three versions of NHK's story. It has some nice additions but the majority of the new content does not actually add anything. We did not need to see Satou spend time at his parents, coming up with masturbation plans whilst he was supposed to be finding work, and we also didn't need to see him spend time wondering around homeless. The novel was a bit too short, the anime got the length just right and the manga dragged on for too long. I certainly do not feel bad about spending over £40 on the manga but I do feel I should have spent the money the anime instead. OH WELL!

What happens when a series about social issues is not really enlightening on said social issues but is praised because it addresses them?

Welcome to NHK in my opinion is among the "untouchable" series in an age I dub the generation of fantastic hypocrites.

It's not that manga has never been experimental or fantastic nor am I saying many of the fans of this series are dumb.

If anything I think it's the reverse. We've come to the point where intellectual laziness is so... on the surface that we now have a culture that's "smart" enough to belittle the moral cliches of underdog stories, harem, fighters shouting out ... their moves...things that were once isolated to Western anti-manga critics who couldn't appreciate the quirks of such romanticized storytelling.

You'd think this would be a good thing but the down side of this is that the very same intellectual otaku community can be forgiving if not apologists for these kinds of...I wouldn't say poorly presented because it does entertain...so I'd call it more of a inaccurate pseudo-social commentary going overboard.

Maybe it's because of my ignorance of the Japanese culture and the Japanese language but since I perceive myself as a hikikomori... things like the way a woman falls under the lap of this protagonist is just as bad in my opinion as the fantastic elements of portraying hikikomories as being totally in the dark in a cave-like room.

It's not so much that this has no realistic connection to how Hikikomories live but that there is a sense of "wrongly demystifying" the whole turmoil of a Hikikomories' life. But again, I'm mostly basing this from my own experiences and thoughts.

That said, it's really hard to go against this type of series which is why I claim it to be untouchable...especially from someone who isn't equipped with the communication ability to cement the cons of this series.

Still, I think even if there is someone with the right tools, it's going to be hard because it's about a series where you "excuse" the flaws and praise the... social clues the series gives you even if the clues themselves are mostly hollow and makes the character cheap.

The easiest example of this is the whole inclusion of the love interest in the first place. Even if you take away the fact that it's about a hikikomori and treat it as merely a manga character...you could easily see the shades of Mary Sue super qualities in the characters.

Without going into spoiler territory, the series just can't carry itself as being character oriented despite what one reviewer said. Instead, it relies on bizarre illusions, a cheap non-descriptive "conspiracy" to create a sort of equally cheap "passing the buck" atrribute in the protagonist, a character that has almost no difficulty in gaining talents and finally a character that for the most part is a Hikikomori "because" the plot asks him to.

It's really complicated to explain without pointing to each scenario specifically but this is the thing. Even in an average quality harem series, there tends to be a character study in between each scenario. Welcome to NHK for the most part replaces this with "time skips" and then immediately after that provides a sort of "eye dazzling" iconic image. (An example of this would be the getting caught naked in front of the computer pic that you might have seen in some imageboards or forums)

In many ways, these scenarios might seem like a good way to present the problems with humor but it doesn't. If you really look at most of the comments on this series, the fans don't really gain anything insightful to say except that they feel there's analogues of this series to their problem...which as controversial as this is, is like saying Christianity gave you the key to solving your problems even though you joined mostly for the community rather than the doctrine and instead of following the teachings of the Bible...you follow the teachings of the priests.

It's more feel good but...where is the substance? Where is this highly praised representation of social issues? There's mostly none.

Or rather, it's not about the series not giving anything to the social issues it addresses but that it mostly gives off a vague Barnum effect rather than any stand on the issues except the shallowest ways of addressing such issues.

Then again, these type of series are almost like a Hollywood film...a reviewer for example would mention Tyler Durden of Fight Club which is equally a shallow movie about a shallow subject that gives enough "Barnum effect" that it's fans think it provides some in-depth social commentary even if they as fans aren't really able to show that they have grown as a person or they have better understood their problems because of this series.

It's not easy justifying this though. In fact I keep going around and around on this point in a loop because I don't know how to pinpoint the con to one effective and efficient example.

Another analogy I thought of is akin to one character in the basketball anime Slam Dunk doing a between the legs dunk...it's fantastic if it happened...but the soul of what made Slam Dunk "inspirational basketball" would be lost in favor of "eye dazzling" if that happened even though each character has their "Genius" skills in the series.

It all goes back to this issue of fantastic hypocrites.

I'm not saying I'm immune to this and certainly in the past there has been fantastic elements to manga and anime series that I've looked past on (i.e. the liberties DragonBall took of the character Son Goku) but...it's the issue of "ridiculousness".

It's one way if one is merely anti-ridiculous or pro-ridiculous or even a shade of grey on both. It's another if we live in a generation where this attitude is wide spread to the point that these types of series are praised highly.

It's a case of extreme "ridiculous apologetic-ness" on one end (the shallowest and clearest examples again being things like Naruto being an orange ninja with a lame cloning power that he uses as offense rather than stealth or even in Hollywood analogues of people excusing the new Karate Kid despite the name being used to hump on a series and the protagonist using Kung Fu) to a separate case of "ridiculous praising" (i.e. there are many fans of this series that can say with a straight face that this series portrays the issues accurately minus there being a love interest falling in one's lap without realizing that if you took away the girl most of the events of this series won't happen the way it happened at all)

In the end though, I'm not really sharing this review to convince the reader to avoid this series. I think the premise of these type of stories begs them to be checked out regardless of their quality. Rather I post this as a sort of warning to those who find this series in anyway special. A warning in the sense of looking beyond the surface quality or the surface feeling this series gives out. That said, I would have hoped I could have been a whole lot better at communicating which areas one should not settle and be wary of praising but like I said, I'm not the best equipped at presenting the criticisms of this series but in a site where there are only positive reviews, it almost feels like a duty to share a negative one to balance out the perspective on this series but more than that, I hope this bad review could inspire someone to write a "better" bad review here and everywhere else where the balance is off just so we don't lose ourselves in the effect of "Manga becoming Air".

(Source of "Manga as Air" is found in the book Manga: 60 years of Japanese Comics since it seems neither Google or DuckDuckGo is showing an easy reference behind the meaning of that quote)