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A Roller Coaster of Disappointment

Welcome to the NHK has been a disappointing experience for me. It started strong, with an engaging premise and plenty of potential, but somewhere along the way, it lost its direction or perhaps it never had any to begin with and got lucky.

The first chunk of episodes had me hooked, but around episode 10 or so, the pacing slows down considerably. Things pick up again with the Island episode, which had the potential to be great, but the way it was handled left me unsatisfied. Worse, the show barely acknowledges its aftermath outside of a single scene. Then there’s the online ... game arc, which, for me, was lowest point. It dragged on and felt like a chore to get through.

One of my biggest issues with Welcome to the NHK is how it handles the themes it sets up. As someone who’s experienced isolation—though nowhere near as long as Satou—I couldn’t help but feel that the show only scratches the surface and I find his depiction unconvincing. Satou is supposed to have been a shut-in for four years, yet his social skills are strangely intact. Learning to interact with people again is a slow, painful process, and the show just glosses over that. He struggles with paranoia and delusions, which are somewhat accurate yet the portrayal of them isn't, but the deeper psychological effects of prolonged isolation—like cognitive decline, social anxiety, cynicism, hatred, bitterness, depression, suicidal ideation, etc —are barely touched on. It feels like the writers understood the idea of hikikomori but didn’t dig deep enough into what that actually means.

The way Welcome to the NHK approaches suicide is another issue. It’s treated almost like a joke at times. Satou comes dangerously close to killing himself, yet it’s never brought up again. It isn't even apparent that Satou was suicidal in the first place. He never deals with it. No one else even brings it up again, besides a few lines when he disappears to meet Kobayashi. In the final episode, he manages to stop Misaki’s suicide attempt by going full chuunibyou, and it actually works. And then… that’s it. The show ends. For a series that wants to tackle dark topics, it doesn’t seem interested in actually exploring them in a meaningful way.

Then there’s the resolution to hikikomori-ism in the show: just… starving. Satou and another character are forced to reintegrate into society simply because they run out of money. And while financial desperation can push people to change, if the show had taken a more realistic approach, it would’ve acknowledged that many people in that situation would just spiral deeper into despair. If someone already struggles with suicidal thoughts, starvation isn’t going to "fix" them—it might just push them over the edge.

Despite all my complaints, I don’t hate this anime. The first few episodes were strong, and the last episode was solid, but everything in between was a struggle. I rarely find myself looking forward to the final episode of a show just so I can be done with it, but that was the case here. Even so, I don’t feel strongly enough to rate it lower. If another anime frustrated me this much, I’d probably give it less than a 5, but Welcome to the NHK has something that keeps me from calling it outright bad. Maybe it’s the moments where it almost gets things right. Maybe it’s the potential that I kept hoping would be realized.

Either way, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not terrible, but it’s not particularly good either. It’s just… disappointing. For a show that's been on my PTW list since 2019 I have been thoroughly disappointed. The soundtrack was banger though. This show disappointed me so much, I felt the need to write my first review.

Final Score: 5/10