Customer Reviews

Welcome to the N.H.K., Volume 1 (v. 1)

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WARNING:This manga deals with sensitive subjects concerning mental health, drug abuse, and sexuality. Most certainly, this is not a title for kids.

Welcome to the NHK tells the story of a Hikikomori, a japanese shut-in with no job, income, or prospects. At the beginning of the story, he is spending his time obsessing over his financial/social situation, getting high, and feeling persecuted... not only by his neighbor (who won't stop playing the same song over and over again, driving him insane... as if he weren't already), but by the dreaded japanese broadcasting company, NHK.

*conspiratorial whispering* See... what it is, is... they're demoralizing modern man by getting them hooked on anime, porn, and instant ramen */conspiratorial whispering*

Sato, the main character, is conspicuously a NEET (Not engaged in Employment, Education, or Training), an archetype on the rise in modern Japan (and the world). He's dropped out of college and his parents have stopped sending him money to support himself... it's at that last straw, where he's down to his last 69 yen (about 50 cents) that Misaki enters his life.

Misaki is a mysterious young girl who may or may not be apart of the NHK conspiracy. She can see right through all of Sato's lies and seems to want to help him overcome his NEET-ness. As a character, she is the catalyst that jump starts the series and gets Sato moving on some track... ANY track other than the one he was on in the initial chapters.

Once Misaki makes contact, new characters are introduced left and right... an old Kohai (junior student) is his annoying neighbor while an old Senpai (senior student) provides him with energy boosters to get him in gear. And so on...


Phew...

NHK is complex, despite the relatively small cast. It comes from the inherent roundness to each character. They are all extremely flawed in some manner... some more obviously than others (like in the case of Sato), some whose flaws are given to the reader to judge (such as with the pill popping Hitomi), and some whose problems are barely even hinted at (like with the mysteriously philanthropic Misaki). But, even despite their flaws (and believe me, there are many), they carry on and try to grow, try to meet their goals or recapture something that they have lost... The question becomes, can they?

The art sets the mood, more often than not, with facial expressions and use of tone being used effectively to relay emotion (and, more often than not, it's despair). It also sets a fairly surreal tone for the entire piece, as I imagine, it's hard for people to digest what it really means of have this mental/social disease... lending dark humor to make it more palatable.

The pacing can throw you off, here and there, since the story sometimes goes off into hallucinations without telling you until it's already over (another recent manga tile that does this as well is I"s), which can be confusing for the uninitiated.

The lolicon content is muted, thankfully. You know it's there, you know what it is (and it creeps you out, as it's supposed to), but it's presentation as an object in the manga is toned way down to avoid titillating. Still, I wouldn't want my kids reading it until they were older and could understand the context (just like I don't want them reading Jean Auel until they hit puberty).


All in all, I do enjoy this book... the story is painfully sad with only a sliver of hope (early on) for it's characters to change and become happy (and gainfully employed XD), so I can see where that would be a turn off for most people. I have a hard time watching the anime for just that reason (it began airing in Japan in July of 2006).

I recommend it, but only for fans of the Slice of Life or Otaku genre who don't need life to be shiny and happy. If you like Genshiken, you'll probably like this... it's just a HELLUVA lot darker, so be warned.

Since the success of Densha Otoko, Japan has experienced a bit of an "Otaku boom," where this once-marginalized segment of society is coming forward to tell their side of the story. "Welcome to the N.H.K." tackles one of the most controversial aspects of the otaku, that of the hikikomori. Hikikomori are a bizarre social disease unique to Japan, where the sufferers fully retreat from society, living in their rooms for years without any interaction with regular society, yet often maintaining a vivid fantasy life via the internet.

Author Tatsuhiko Takimoto was himself a hikikomori for four years, during which he published a few light novels usually using otaku culture as a background. One of these light novels, "Welcome to the N.H.K.," was then licensed for publication as a manga, with the story extensively expanded. Tatsuhiko Takimoto himself authored the expanded story.

This first volume of the series sets the stage and introduces the characters. Tatsuhiro Sato is a classic hikikomori, but one who is just on the verge of surrendering fully to the life of a recluse. His fantasy world is slowly taking over reality, and he has become convinced that the national broadcasting network N.H.K., similar to Britain's BBC, is purposely creating a nation of hikikomori for some sinister purpose. Enter Misaki Nakahara, a mysterious girl who wants to enlist Sato into her project, supposed studying the hikikomori phenomenon but with a different purpose in mind. Another friend, Kaoru Yamazaki, wants to drag Sato further into the otaku world, so that they can create the ultimate porno video game together and become rich.

This is hardly a straightforward comic, and the non-sequitor nature and dark subject matter can be a little discerning at first. There are definitely some things here to challenge the most liberal boundaries, such as Sato's obsession with Jr. models and his quest to photograph elementary school girls underwear. But if you hang in there, the story starts to unfold and makes it worth while.

It's been two years since 22 year-old Satou Tatsuhiro dropped out of college and 4 years since he's become a "Hikikomori". Hikikomori is a term used in Japan to describe the millions, mostly male, of people that shut themselves in their home and hardly even step out of their doors to interact with the outside world. In effect, they become hermits even though they might be living in a big city surrounded by hive-like apartments. Satou has been living this lifestyle but his parents have now threatened to cut off his money and make him return home, so Satou has to think fast about getting a job. But it's been so long since he's talked with other living human people that any social interaction will be pretty awkward. Plus, he thinks the Japanese Broadcasting Company, known as "NHK", is involved in a conspiracy to keep him trapped in his room as a Hikikomori. Just about this time, a Christian missionary comes knocking on his door, along with her beautiful young neice named Misaki. Misaki has been watching Satou for a long time and has decided to take it upon herself to cure Satou of being a Hikikomori. Of course, Satou is in denial and tells her that he doesn't leave his room that much because he is a software designer. But once he tells this lie, he realizes that he's going to have to at least go through the motions of designing a game. Fortunately, his next door neighbor, a former schoolmate named Yamazaki, warms to the idea of creating a computer game, but he wants it to be an "Ero" or porn game involving underage girls!

Some of the content in Welcome to the NHK is highly objectionable and borders on what I would call child pornagraphy. For example, when Satou begins researching Lolita pictures on the Internet, artistic representations, such as young underage girls are shown without shirts. Satou becomes so obssessed with these types of images that he even sneaks behind some hedges at a middle school to peep at young girls leaving school, hoping that a passing wind will blow up their skirts. This whole part of the book really turned my stomach and almost made me put down the book. Because I couldn't tell whether the writer was making fun of the otaku that have this particularly disturbing fetish or whether he was glorifying them. Honestly, it makes me wonder how this book got printed. If you can get past those moments in the book, the rest of the volume gets into some pretty deep, if somewhat dark, psychological territory along with its comedy. Not much is revealed about Satou and Misaki but there is enough to make you want to know more about their lives and how they have ended up in their respective situations. Satou's isolation and disconnect from society, Misaki's feeling that she has to atone for the trouble she has caused her family by helping others. A good read but may disturb some readers, especially if you have a very moral view of the world.

Unknown for me, at least.

I just started reading manga and graphic novels and this was the second book I picked up. I read a preview of it on the publisher's website and decided I'd give it a shot, which proved to be a great decision.

As I stated, I'm not too savvy on the whole manga thing yet, but this book gave me insight on the whole otaku culture in Japan. I know the characters aren't supposed to be true representations of true Japanese people, but more like ironic parodies, brilliantly done.

Dark, yet very enjoyable with witty writing and beautiful artwork. Highly recommended.

Note: This review covers the entire series and not just Vol. 1. Minor spoilers are included.

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After re-reading Vol. 1-6 before moving onto the final two volumes, I finally managed to finish reading the NHK manga just now. My feelings are pretty mixed about it... I enjoyed reading it a lot but, at the same time, I was often thinking that there was way too much needless content included - far more than in any other version of the NHK story. Because the huge amount of needless content, my enjoyment levels dropped quite a lot after the first two volumes. If only for the fantastic art I can't score it lower than 8/10, though.

Vol. 8 was by far the most disappointing volume in the entire series. It all seemed so pointless and, in comparison to the earlier volumes, it was far less entertaining. There was lots of chatter included yet I never really cared about what was being said, or even followed a lot of it. The story just never went anywhere in the final volume, instead going around 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 was the difficult to follow conversations of not-so-sane people that were put in to extend the story to 40 chapters.

While I'm still covering the negatives, I'll also say that I wasn't best pleased with how the original story was changed in order for NHK to become an eight volume manga. There were lots of small (but important) changes that were made in the manga version, some of which seemed to have been made as the manga was on-going, an example of which being how Satou first said he wasn't 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, in the manga, Misaki only lied about having a bad childhood - it made her difficult to like character into an even more hard to like character. Too many changes were made in order to extend the length of a fairly short story.

On the flipside, I liked the first two chapters of volume 7 a lot. The events that took place in those chapters never occured 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 NHK 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 of the story...even if he later went back on what he said because he didn't have what it would've took for him to take his relationship with her onto the next level.

I don't like how open ended every aspect of the NHK story is, but I've always found the relationship between Satou and his senpai (Kashiwa) to be touching. I actually came close to crying during episode 14 of the anime simply because Satou let her go. The reader/viewer fully understands why Satou doesn't do what his heart tells him to with her, but it's always hard to watch when you know the two could've been happy together. If only Satou had had the balls to put his arm around her when she was crying way back when he wasn't a recluse and she wasn't a married woman - his future might have turned out slightly happier. What makes the whole thing even more agonizing 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 version of the story is the weakest of the three versions of the NHK story. It has some nice additions to the story but the majority of the new content doesn't actually add anything. We didn't 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 Satou spend some 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 don't feel bad about spending over £40 on the manga but I do feel I should've spent the money on buying the anime instead.

The manga is propaganda against a growing social epidemic in Japan. See there's scumbags called Hikkimori, useless bottom feeders who live off their parents, still live in their parents house, and never leave their rooms. They sit around in their own filth watching hentai all day. So this comic was partly made to make fun of them, but as you read it, it becomes apparent it's goal is to demonize and dehumanize the image of the Otaku (which is already a bad image to begin with anyway).

The only real redeeming quailty of it I find is the occasionally humor in the over the top characters, and the obstensivly cute design for the lead girl. She is one of the best drawn figures in manga, unfortantly only makes an appearence here.

If you are remotely curious about this series, you're better off downloading it from some site. It's just not worth it. The preachy message shadows the lame humor, and serves no purpose other than to make all manga fans look like Ted Bundy. One example of this is when the lead male is at one point hiding in the bushes taking snap shots of little school girls.

The manga is insulting, but at the same time rings a dark truth. Let the reader beware.

I got up to volume 4 of Welcome to the N.H.K and I just can't go on. Initially the cool style of the art appealed to me, but the story just has no point. It is so repetitive and doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Here we have Satou, an anime and porn obsessed shut in. Along comes a cute but strange girl to "cure" him...but she's not doing a very good job. Satou's character seems very one dimensional. He pretty much wants to screw every girl he comes in contact with. He hates himself and thinks he's useless to society. There's nothing about him that makes him a particularly likable character, other than the sympathy he gets from others by being so damn pathetic. I guess I just can't root for a character like this. He's really such a loser that I hope he doesn't have a happy ending.

This manga is definitely not for kids. There is a lot of sexual content in the manga and also suicide and drug references. The adult content doesn't bother me, but it doesn't seem to move the story along. After 4 volumes nothing has really happened! I can tell that the author himself didn't know the direction he was going when he wrote this. No event feels particularly important or relevant. Just a random series of events. Don't waste your time with buying this manga.

Pros: cool and unique art, edgy content

Cons: dumb story with no progress
stupid and unlikeable characters who are difficult to connect with
Very few truly funny parts for a "comedy"