This review contains minor to moderate spoilers.
I chanced upon this anime while I was browsing a social anxiety subreddit. A user had shared a link to one of the scenes. It was two snapshots of a bespectacled man, and on the bottom of the screen it was captioned "A drama has a logical progression, outbursts of emotion, and a resolution. Our everyday lives are just filled with nebulous and vague anxieties forever and ever."
Intrigued, I began to embark in a great journey. Anime has taken to me to many worlds, fascinating, reality-shattering, deathly frightening, but this anime was different. It was not inspiring.
Welcome to the
...
NHK is about Tatsuhiro Sato - a hikikomori - someone who doesn't attend school or work and lives off another's income. He lives next to the easily irritated and passionate closet otaku Yamazaki, who acts like both an advisor and a depression-buddy to Sato. He's eventually visited by a level-headed and strangely eager girl, Misaki, who offers to counsel Sato to help him escape from his current condition. Sato thinks that some huge corporation - the NHK (Nippon Hikikomori Kyokai, a play on NHK, the Japanese public broadcasting station) - is out to get him.
The story is told in a loose arc structure. A couple of main characters are introduced and developed, and then the side characters come in to mess with Sato for a few episodes before vanishing. The setting is mainly focused around Sato's cluttered and disgusting apartment, but once in a while he leaves the house and some huge event befalls him. What's interesting is that I never felt that the "home" episodes were lackluster. What the episode lacked in the inherent interesting-ness of the content, it made up with detail, sweet and bitter detail. We see the characters make a video game, talk in a park, listen to a shoujo anime opening, roll around in bed hallucinating. You can get a kick trying to analyze the small events that happen, and maybe find something valuable about character development. Like most good stories, clues are left for people to take. NHK is not an action anime, or at least the action is deeply internal. I always found myself evaluating the characters' emotions and linking them with whatever just happened. That's one of the enjoyable aspects of this show.
I liked most of the characters; I particularly endeared myself to Yamazaki and Sato, in whom I see many of my problems and worries reflected. The characters aren't archetypes. Sato isn't a hero, merely a broken man with human desires. Yamazaki's somewhat of a comedic sidekick, but he isn't there for slapstick humor or to highlight the protagonist's differences. Misaki isn't a sex symbol, a tsundere, a yandere, a kuudere, or some other dere. My main criticism would have to be "the boy and girl meeting each other and turning around each other's lives" trope. I just wish that we could see someone solve their problems by themselves. It's because I don't have a magical girl in my life, and I don't want anybody else to have one, haha.
I actually had trouble distinguishing this anime from reality at times, because of how unadorned it is, especially when compared to a lot of other shows out there. There wasn't a main villain, no character to which the majority of the blame could be attributed to. All the characters fight with themselves, others, and the circumstances. Idealism is dead. There isn't any "pure love". All the relationships were tinged with the essence of "love-hate". No tearful farewells in which the characters forgive each other, fully learn from their mistakes, and start anew on a white slate that is bound to stay clean from now on. That's the stuff of fantasy. As a result, I didn't feel like a crusader when I finished the show. It's too damn cynical. There wasn't a standard to look up to, because the characters are so flawed. But for me, it made me fulfilled to watch on. I took the characters as comrades in a hidden struggle. This is a true slice-of-life, and the faked-up comedy or melodrama is kept at a minimal. I never felt that the anime was manipulating me (except the end), like it never told me to: "Feel sad now!" or "Relish the doom that has befallen the protagonist! Share his dread!" Some of the high-impact scenes, I felt utter ambiguity, and I didn't know whether to snicker or sit there blank-faced and maybe slightly teary-eyed.
The art would have to be the weakest point, but the fact that it hooked me, someone who lives off moe and the pretty scenery of Kyoto Animation, it attests to the quality of the story. Sometimes it had the effect of sandpaper on the eyes, but it was never close to unbearable. The art, is for lack of a better word, simple, but I think that it suits the mood of the story fine.
The openings and endings are decent. They were all very different in style, and it was astute for the composers to demonstrate the facets of hikikomori life: the melancholy, the mania, and the wistfulness. Voice acting is unpretentious and fresh. It never stood out or drew unnatural awareness to itself, which is what good voice acting should do. I also had a faceclap moment when I noticed that Yamazaki's voice actor voiced Sunohara in Clannad.
And that is the main reason why I loved this anime. More than anything I've ever saw, I related deeply to this anime. No, I felt that the author Tatsuhiko Takimoto probed into my thoughts, not the thoughts that run through your head in words, but your innermost subconscious, the ideas that ring so true to you but seem to never be able to materialize into a defined shape, and legitimized them. Many series have a loner character, but sometimes I just don't feel that the author understands what it truly feels like to be lost in the world (coincidence that Tatsuhiko is almost identical to Tatsuhiro?). This series drives those feelings into the heart of the viewer, during which I hope even the people on the opposite side of the social spectrum can become aware and understand.
I recommend this series to those who like me, have struggled with adapting into society. To those who haven't, you probably won't enjoy it as much as I would, but nevertheless it's a poignantly told story.
Apr 5, 2014
NHK ni Youkoso!
(Anime)
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This review contains minor to moderate spoilers.
I chanced upon this anime while I was browsing a social anxiety subreddit. A user had shared a link to one of the scenes. It was two snapshots of a bespectacled man, and on the bottom of the screen it was captioned "A drama has a logical progression, outbursts of emotion, and a resolution. Our everyday lives are just filled with nebulous and vague anxieties forever and ever." Intrigued, I began to embark in a great journey. Anime has taken to me to many worlds, fascinating, reality-shattering, deathly frightening, but this anime was different. It was not inspiring. Welcome to the ... |
