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I think this is one of the best romance manga I've ever read. This is not an exaggeration, and I'm not saying that because it's girls love / the art is good / what have you. I'm saying that because this manga is willing to ask, truly, how to relationship, thorugh the highs and lows and everything in between. It made me think about my own relationships - familial, platonic, and romantic - and the emotional weight that comes with doing so makes this manga feel all the more real to me.

Miwa and Saeko are the center of the story and their character arcs feel ... particularly unique to me. Yes, it's girls love, and the manga does a great job of tackling that topic on its own, but they go so far beyond that. Their characters take on the whole range of emotion and each has their own share of struggles, both personal and societal. What's most important is that they are flawed, not in the "do things for no reason" sense, but in the "genuine human shortcomings" sense. Their relationship is exciting, saddening, messy, and frustrating, and that makes it all the more real. I know it's just a manga and there's nothing wrong with writing up a perfect relationship, but it's always a treat to read something so grounded.

Although the manga builds mostly upon Miwa and Saeko, the varied cast of side characters contribute their own little take on relationships in an attempt to answer the titular question. None of them feel unrealistic, and I could see a little bit of someone I know in every single one of them. Rarely did I question an interaction between two characters and it's clear the author took great care in building out the traits of each one. In particular, the theme of sexuality is frequently touched upon, and I think the author did an amazing job of looking at it from all angles through these characters without disparaging any of them.

The art perfectly suits the mood of the story and never does too much. It's cute, clean, and expressive, and I can't find any flaws with it. Characters are distinct without looking ridiculous and the author put a great deal of effort into their design from their clothes to their room decor.

If you want an idealized feel-good story, you shouldn't read this. If you want to read smut, you shouldn't read this. But if you want to go on a journey with all the good times and hard times, then this manga is a read. It won't answer how to relationship - nobody will ever truly answer that - but it will definitely bring you closer to an understanding, regardless of your orientation.

Shock value is considered by many to be a cheap trick or an easy way to get a rile out of someone without putting in much effort. To me, however, there's a sweet spot of shock value, an uncanny valley of sorts where the shock becomes comedy before it becomes outright disgust. This manga hits it dead on in the face, completely obliterating it and leaving nothing but a mess in the surrounding area.

It's clear from the first chapter that you're not here for a romcom with a decidedly more mature art style. You're here for the ride. Every character is pushed up to the ... max for the sake of driving everything up the wall, and as a result, we break through the roof into the stratosphere. Each chapter introduces a new baffling brazy batshit insane twist that you have no choice but to giggle at. To take this manga seriously is to fail yourself. There might be a sprinkle of real shit, a semblance of reasonable thematic elements, but in reality, we're just here to have fun, so don't be fooled.

If you want something grounded and logical, it's not going to be here. Yes, it's hard to turn off your brain completely and just enjoy the absurdity of it all, but life is absurd. At the end of it all you might wonder what you read all of it for. Sometimes you don't need a reason other than "cool as fuk yea", and that's fine.

There are many times in life where you'll be forced to make a decision that will change the course of your life. In the moment, you may not feel its consequences, but in the days, weeks, months, and years following it, you'll start to wonder if it was truly worth it - if you've made the right choice. The answer is not always what you want to hear. But what can you possibly do about it other than to move on and live with it?

But "live with it" can take on many different meanings based on what you define as "living". Every character in this ... show is "living with it", yet none of them take the same path. Everyone has troubles, and they deal with it differently. Since we aren't God, we do have to choose one character, so we'll go with the one most people can relate to in one way or another - the hikikomori. The manifestation of being fed up with life and wanting to do nothing but rot away. The plot of Welcome to the NHK consists of Tatsuo's attempts to unhikky himself, which basically will boil down to having motion. But motion is never easy, and life is actually hard.

The show itself is kind of hard to watch at first. After all, you can't expect a hikikomori to have perfect or even passable social skills, so the cringe factor might blow a hole through your wall. The usual overthinker hyperanalysis hallucinations don't help either. But as the show progresses, you are exposed to the entire range of human emotion, and with each character comes a hard truth about life that can't be avoided. By the end, I feel like I learned more about myself as the interactions of the characters can come to mirror many of the relationships I've had in my life that have come and gone.

Although the messages of this show apply to any year after the advent of the Internet, the 2006 energy really comes out in this show, but I find it charming in a way. Windows XP, the art style of the mid 2000s pre-Kyoto Animation, flip phones, etc. The animation isn't flawless, the soundtrack is simple but effective.

But none of that really matters. What matters is that after you've made a decision in life and walked the path a bit, you never come to the conclusion that you can't live with it. You always can live with it. Even if there's a conspiracy against you, even when the world's plotting on your downfall... You can always live with it. And you should. Since motion is right around the corner.

Make no mistake, it is inconceivable for this manga to have been created in earnest. This must be a joke. I cannot imagine a man of any degree of insanity to draw and write this modern classic.

Obviously, there is no realism to be felt in a manga that begins in a dog's POV, wasting no pen strokes in fulfilling the beastiality fetish that someone apparently has. From there, we are tugged along on a journey through fetishes, carried by a team of walking tropes, each of which possess a hot and steamy love for Pochita. There are many questions to answer, yet there are even ... more pantyshots to be drawn, so we must not tarry and continue to our original destination. Do not mind the MKUltra level experiment being conducted inside of this Japanese highschool, sleeper agents and everything. Do not mind Table-kun, or Recorder-kun, or the dakimakura.
Actually, do mind that one for it is you. Insert yourself onto this character who has somehow not been mega-ostracized for getting down on all fours and licking your lower regions as a result of his literal Pavlovian conditioning. You are surrounded by these women who have no other life than to observe you and you alone, thinking of you with each and every hasty breath outlined by several "Haa" sounds and a cute little heart.

Again, make no mistake, the story is undoubtedly nonsensical, and the characters are not in any way noteworthy to the annals or back-alleys of manga history. But I have derived more enjoyment from reading this ecchi-meets-epic in a single hour than I could in 500 hours of monotonous gaming. And for that alone, I slobber on my screen for another chapter of this ambrosia.