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The first half of this review is spoiler-free. There will be a spoiler warning, so read freely until you get to that point.

Welcome to the NHK is a show that suffers from many of the same problems as its protagonist, Tatsuhiro Satou. Sometimes it lacks focus, sometimes it tries a little bit too hard to be something that it's not, and sometimes it fails when it was just doing so well. But like its protagonist, I couldn't help but find myself rooting for it through the good and bad.
First of all, let me address the presentation of the show. The strong points are the OST, ... color palette, backgrounds, and opening & ending themes. The OST is full of great tracks; every single one is good and most of them surpass what you'll find in most anime. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that Welcome to the NHK has one of the best music libraries in all of anime. However, this great music comes with a catch: the sound design of the show is sometimes really jarring. Oftentimes, a great song will play during a scene where it just doesn't fit. That said, the music hits just right often enough to be one of my favorite anime in terms of music. The highlight would have to be the insert song "Youkoso hitori bocchi" (Welcome to loneliness). There's not much to say about the visuals. The color palette might be the best I've ever seen, and all the backgrounds look nice. The animation is pretty mediocre, and sometimes certain shots will have a weird style that just looks really low-budget, low-effort. The focus of the visuals are usually on mostly still-frames, dialogue scenes, and backgrounds, so the lack of quality animation is mostly ignorable. Lastly, the opening and ending themes. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's heard it that Puzzle is one of my favorite opening themes from any show. The ending themes are both really good too, but it took some time for the first ending to grow on me. One small aspect of the presentation that I really enjoyed is the title cards at the end of every episode. For some reason it was satisfying to me to finish the episode and then see a fitting message for the episode. Welcome to Reality! Welcome to Happiness! Welcome to No Future! Welcome to the NHK!

From this point on, the review will have spoilers. This section will generally focus on the characters and story. First thing's first: the first episode. "Welcome to the Project!" is the best opening episode to any anime. Hands down, without any competition, this episode is one of my favorites. There's something about Misaki that just draws me in. From the moment I saw her holding her parasol standing outside of Satou's apartment, I had the strongest feeling of intrigue and curiosity towards her. What does she want? Why is she so interested in Satou? What's her story? After this, the upcoming episodes are a major let-down. Yamazaki is introduced at some point, and although I really like Yamazaki, the shift in focus of the anime to be on Satou getting roped into making an eroge was disappointing. I remember being surprised at this development and though "oh well, the next couple episodes are going to be pretty boring, but at least after that it'll get back to focusing on the interesting parts of the story". The eroge that they make releases in episode 20. This is what I meant at the begginning of the review when I said that the show itself is like Satou. It's frustrating that the story showed so much potential which was spent on uninteresting fluff. This isn't to say that nothing interesting happens during the first 20 episodes. The "Off Meeting" was interesting, although I think the execution was questionable. The MMO and Mouse Road sections were really drawn-out and unnecessary. The way I feel about Satou getting himself entangled more and more into a pyramid scheme is the same way I feel about the show itself getting more and more focused on this arc: "No! stop! you're only making it worse by spending more time here!" The story regains focus in the last 3 or 4 episodes, but the main draw in the narrative of Welcome to the NHK is in its characters rather than the sometimes directionless plot that they're trapped in. Ignoring Satou's high school Senpai and Class-rep, the important characters are Satou, Misaki, and the legendary Yamazaki. My opinion on Satou is generally positive. He's a good main character who makes me feel hopeful and excited when he's doing well and working his way out of being hikikomori, and frustrated when he's doing stupid stuff like procrastinating on writing his eroge script and trying to trick his poor mom into thinking he has a girlfriend and a job. Misaki is my favorite character from the show and one of my favorite characters ever. This is the one show where I found myself wishing I could give the characters some legit advice. "Misaki, stop wasting your time on Satou! Get as far away from him as you can!" I basically spent the whole show wishing Misaki would give up on Satou and do start to do stuff for her own good. The last few episodes flip the script. Once Misaki's tragic backstory is fully revealed, I realized that Misaki relies on Satou just as much as he relies on her. Her self-deprecation and desire to find the one person who's more useless than her is... maybe not relatable, but it's understandable. I don't know what it feels like from experience, but her character is so convincing that I can imagine what it feels like for her. This also explains why she found Satou instead of anyone else. Is there anyone else as pitiful as Satou? There's also other details I like about her like her colorful outfits or the great performance of her voice actress Yui Makino (I watched it subbed, so I can't comment on the quality of the dubbed release). There's also Yamazaki, who's a cool side character and not much else. Yamazaki is what made the slow middle section of the show enjoyable to me, and for some reason it made me unreasonably happy that Yamazaki was so satisfied with his farm life at the end of the show. Speaking of the end of the show, the ending was the best part (aside from episode 1). I heard that the ending was controversial but I really don't know why. Everything that I hoped the show would do from the first episode happened in just the last 4.

This is pretty much all of my big thoughts on Welcome to the NHK. If anyone wants to hear more of my opinions on this show or other shows, feel free to message me or leave a comment on my profile

This review will contain spoilers.

"I didn't realize it before, but making a manga is actually pretty strenuous.
Despite the boundless anxiety eating away at me, occasionally I'm able to draw a good line something, and I get a little spark of joy. And when that happens, I sort of feel an overlap with the girls' journey."
Art: The quote above is the afterward from volume 1 of the manga. Tsukumizu's artstyle in Girls' Last Tour is really sketchy-looking, and it gives the the vibe of an artist who cares more about the overall image that something creates rather than each line that builds up to it. The ... backgrounds often lack detail, and the farther back you look, the more abstract shapes become until a skyline becomes a mess of rectangles. The only problem with this style is that sometimes perspectives seem off and certain panels come across as notably unplanned or poorly thought-out. The character designs are simple but nice, and the style allows for some of the comedic panels to have characters squished down, which seems to have become a Tsukimizu staple given how often they're used in Shimeji Simulation. Despite any minor problems I have with the art, it's unique and appealing enough that I enjoyed it a lot.

"Reading it over again, I think Ishii (and Kanazawa too) must have been terribly lonely... Do we humans start building airplanes and what not when we're lonely...? Perhaps they were envious of Chito and Yuuri, who have the luxury of living together. I get envious of these two girls I draw all the time too. 'Ah.living just for the sake of living... How great would that be?' I think as I pet my outdoor dog."
Character (1/3): The quote above is from volume 2. This section will specifically be about Kanazawa and Ishiii. I'll have sections later focusing on others and the main duo. Kanazawa is fairly unremarkable other than the fact that he gives the girls the camera which becomes important in volume 4. Other than that, his role is identical to Ishii's but I think Ishii captures the emotion presented better than Kanazawa does. This feeling is "relief in failure" or something along those lines. This emotion is key to Girls' Last Tour. One of the main ideas that the manga presents is that failure and success are identical in some aspects. In this world, failure and success both mean the same thing: and end to your journey. And Girls' Last Tour is all about the journey and the goal. No matter what the goal is, whether it's practical or not, whether it's meaningful or not, whether it's possible or not, a goal keeps you going on the journey when there's nothing else there.

"It seems like mankind still isn't able to define the concept of life that well, In contrast with Chito and Yuuri's instinctive perception of it, maybe life is really something that goes on eternally, uninterrupted. Maybe it has no end... Thinking of it that way makes me a little uneasy. An uneasiness that my 'self,' for which an end will certainly come one day, could end up being left stranded eternally... Or maybe it's loneliness? Life, civilization, the universe-I'd like all of these things to be over at some point. I think that having an end is a very comforting thing."
Character (2/3): By the way, I'm going to list all of the volume afterwards in order preceding each section. The quote above is the afterward from volume 3. Aside from Kanazawa and Ishii, my favorite side character in the manga is the robot from volume 3. There's not much too him, but the concept of a robot driven by empathy rather than any specific "laws of robotics" or something like that is appealing to me. The explanation of what empathy means to this robot is also so simultaneously simple and impactful. "It means that when you are happy, so am I." Anyway I don't have anything special to write about Nuko or the elevator AI so I'll cut this section short right here. In short: Nuko is great but the AI is fairly forgettable.

"Why are there always wars...? Why can't everybody have equal lives...?
I read a lot of books and think about this.
I'll make attempts to get to the bottom of it...or I'll dream about my ideals...
But I don't get it. I start to hate everything.
Thinking wears me out.
Maybe thinking too 'big picture' doesn't make people very happy The only feeling I want in life is the texture of the persimmons from the persimmon tree in my family's yard."
Story (1/2): Here I'll talk about the biggest flaw with Girls' Last Tour. The story is great and I'll write about why in the final section, but the largest flaw with the manga is the worldbuilding. The world isn't really the point of the manga so it's easy to discredit complaints about the worldbuilding as irrelevant or missing the point, but it still bothers me that the story of the world is so unexplored. Any consideration about the background of the world falls apart after any questions are asked. How did the fighting of the war reach so deep into the city as shown in chapter 27 when most of the city is still intact? Why are there residential areas so close to the giant mechas? Why was the city built in layers? What sort of apocalyptic event killed everybody on Earth but miraculously left four or five people not only alive, but completely unharmed? Why are there no corpses? What started the war in the first place? Some of these questions might have answers, but there's just so many questions to ask and not enough thought put into the world to address most of them. It's different from "we don't know all the answers" too, because it's clear that there are no reasonable answers to some of these questions. This is more of a character-focused manga rather than world-focused so it's fine that there was more thought put into the characters, but the review would be incomplete if I didn't write what I thought about the worldbuilding considering how large of a flaw it is relative to the rest of the manga.

"I like dreaming of the past.
Meeting people I'll never meet again, my childhood self talking to my mother or father..
Then when I wake up, I feel sad.
Does that sadness stem from having lost those things? Or is it because I've remembered that l'd forgotten even the
things l'd lost..?
Humans long for things to stay the same, for eternity, but on the other hand I think that the act of forgetting heals us."
Character (3/3): Time for the most important part. Chito and Yuuri are the heart of the manga. Most chapters for the first five volumes consist of these two talking, driving, and exploring. The characters simple enough that they're easy to understand from the start, but their interactions with each other and the world around them are still endearing. Yuuri's drive to eat fits perfectly into the situations where the girls have to look for food, and Chito's drive for knowledge is more interesting in a world where most knowledge has been destroyed and forgotten. There's not a single boring chapter because these two are always there to bring some light into the cold, dark, uncaring world. The more you read, the more you'll notice subtleties in their characterization. For example, you might notice that Yuuri is surprisingly more inquisitive than Chito is. Oftentimes their conversations will start by Yuuri asking Chito to explain something. The combination of simple characterization with subtle detail makes the situations relatable. Every experience that they had in the manga was something that I could feel for myself. Excitement when they find food, worry for each other, intrigue when they find a new person or area, and most of all the grief at the loss of the reliable Kettenkrad. The breakdown of the Kettenkrad marks the point in the manga where the journey will become a lot harder for Chito and Yuuri.

"This world is so massive and complicated that many things pass us by without us even knowing. But no matter what, Chito and Yuuri believed that the joy of living would never pass, and I want to believe that too... I think that's what I had in mind as I drew this...probably.
Thank you so much for reading my clumsy work all the way to this point."
Story (2/2): The concluding four chapters of Girl's Last Tour cemented it as one of my favorites of all time. There's not really a good way that I can describe the emotions brought up in these chapters, but it's a mixture of sadness, happiness, and maybe some other emotions too. But one of them is definitely relief. From the start, it was always about the journey before the goal. It doesn't matter that there's nothing on top of the city, what matters is that they made it there. As I wrote earlier, I think that "relief in failure" is one of the important emotions to the story, and the ending perfectly encapsulates it, or maybe the ending portrays "relief in success," or maybe it's the same thing. And in the very end, I don't really think that it's all that sad. After all, "Living was the best, wasn't it?"

Well thanks for reading my clumsy review all the way to this point. I didn't plan it at all and wrote it based on what I've thought about it over the course of about a year since I first read it. I mostly just wrote it for myself, but if anyone's made it this far and has any feedback about my review then I might write more in the future. If you want to hear more about Girls' Last Tour then "Hiding in Public" on YouTube has great videos about the series, and you might also like Tsukumizu's other manga Shimeji Simulation which is currently being published.