Customer Reviews

Welcome to the NHK (Novel)

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Branching into novel translations was probably Tokyopop's greatest idea ever, and unlike DMP's forays into the field of narrative localization that I have read, Tokyopop has done a fantastically professional job. There was hardly a time when I felt the translation lacked or was awkward. It was practically seamless and really felt like I was reading an English novel, and not even one meant for a child's reading level (which it isn't). I am very satisfied and pay proper respect to Tokyopop for this endeavor.

That being said, Tatsuhiko Takimoto's novel, which inspired the manga and anime series, is a fantastic read and I highly recommend it, not only to fans of the manga and anime, but also to anyone interested in sophisticated storytelling and insights into the modern culture and sub-cultures of Japan.

If you are familiar with the manga and/or anime the story is similar and many of the characters are the same, but the plot is somewhat different. The humor and crazy antics are still there, but the novel seems to take on a more serious side as well. As you watch Satou make a fool of himself and go crazy and drug and try to kill himself you laugh, but you also feel a kind of connection of sympathy with the character at the same time. It's not an awkward feeling, either, like when you feel bad about laughing at someone else's pain. Takimoto has managed to create the kind of dark comedy that is not uncomfortable at the same time. It is something very hard to do and I would argue it makes the difference here from the book being good to the book being great.

If you are not familiar with the storyline already, the book chronicles the life of a young college drop-out turned hikikomori (shut-in sub-culture in Japan that has become a serious social problem among young people in recent years) named Satou who tries, often in vain, to break free of his agorophobia and fears about other people. He is drawn into his neighbor and former classmate's desire to create an erotic video game, has terrible luck with women in his one-sided crush on his former sempai, and is forced by a lonely girl who lives near the park he often visits alone to join her "program" to help him break from his hikikomori lifestyle. He tries drugs to control his anxieties and Takimoto's writing captures the hallucinogenic effects of these trips both humorously and insightfully.

In the end we are left with the picture of the life of a very human character in Satou, one through which we can come to understand a little better the pain and suffering people with these kinds of social anxieties live with. Takimoto reveals in his afterwards that much of what he is writing is drawn from his own experiences (though he denounces claims that the book is at all autobiographical), lending a greater sense of reality to the existence of people struggling like Satou struggles.

Perhaps it is a bit much to hope that an adult comedy novel like this could help bring awareness and aid to the issue of hikikomori in Japan (and even less so to the issues of similar people in America), but at the very least this book is an entertaining read and is suitable for a wide variety of tastes. It's a little mature at times, so I'd caution younger readers against it, but if you're wondering whether it is worth the money or time to give a try, I would say yes.

Even though the hikikomori culture in Japan is very, very dark and haunting, it still deserves an in-depth look. With "Welcome to the N.H.K.", author Tatsuhiko Takimoto created a complete masterpiece of a novel about hikikomori.

The main character, Satou, is a 22-year-old hikikomori, a person who is afraid to socialize with anyone outside of his room. He dropped out of college and is unemployed. His rent is due in a few months, and he only manages to pay by selling the appliances in his room. He lives next to an otaku who is also afraid of the outside world. In their drug-infested mania, they try to create the best hentai (porn) video game ever.

Although their situations are very depressing, Satou still manages to strike up a friendship with a 15-year-old missionary girl dropping off flyers at his apartment. She likes him, and wants to cure him of hikikomori. However, she has her own secrets--she has burn marks on her arms, covered up by her long-sleeved T-shirts. She doesn't think God exists, and she's depressed as well.

This is a love story between a girl and a hikikomori. Despite their flaws, they find far more things that they have in common. The ending is heart-wrenching, but perhaps it's more memorable, because they manage to maintain a very strong friendship.

Sadly, the author is still a NEET (a nicer way of referring to a Japanese person who stays cooped up in her/his room). However, even though he suffers such extreme depression, perhaps he found some relief from expressing these emotions in this powerful book.

Satou is a "NEET", a Japanese term for "Not Engaged in Education or Training." He has completely withdrawn from society and lives off of his parents' money, sleeping 16-hour days in a tiny, trash-littered apartment. His life is a constant downward spiral, propelled by hallucinogenic drugs, his child porn-addict neighbor, and a religious girl named Misaki who wants to reform him but is drowning in her own problems.

While this story is mainly about Satou, the cast is small enough that all of the characters are well-developed. Like Satou, all the characters feel suffocated by society and cope with it in self-destructive ways. There are no happy characters in this book, with unconvincing facades the only thing keeping people from seeing them as a shivering bundle of neuroses. It is very easy to sympathize with the characters, and I'm sure many will be able to identify with at least one.

The book is very well translated, and while there are tons of Japanese terms, the glossary does a very good job of explaining, even for the unitiated. The book is also a very quick read. One can finish it in 2 good sessions, perfect for standing in a long line.

There's no fairy tale happy ending here, but the ending is satisfying. If you like introspective novels, character development-heavy plots, and rainy days, pick up this book and enjoy.

*
Tatsuhiko Takimoto's Welcome to the NHK is a lot of things: dark, dreary, hopeless, depressing, deviously humorous, shocking, and disturbingly amusing. It is also a fascinating read, one that delves into a largely misunderstood social problem and backs it up with a solid, albeit strange, "love" story.

In a "tiny, six-mat, one-room apartment," Satou Tatsuhiro has holed himself up for four years straight, stepping outside his walls of solitude only as necessary to obtain food. He has no job, no girlfriend, and no life. He is a hikkikimori, a social recluse who is absolutely terrified of all social contact. Out of the blue, a missionary knocks on his door, and with her is a beautiful girl. Misaki Nakahara, as she soon reveals herself to be, wishes to enlist Satou to join her special project, a project through which she hopes to rid Satou of his reclusive ways. Eventually, Satou stumbles upon his next-door neighbor Yamazaki, an otaku who has made sexy hentai games his primary ambition in life. In order to impress Misaki, Satou desperately tries to develop a hentai game to show her in order to prove that he is not a useless hikkikimori. As the story progresses, Misaki's darker side emerges, and Satou begins to find a bit of hope.

What makes this book so interesting is Takimoto's ability to make something so ugly into something absolutely beautiful. He turns his own experience of being a hikkikimori, or NEET, into a brilliant "downer" novel, a sad yet overall charming look at what a fear of social situations can do to a person. I constantly found myself identifying with Satou, even if his dramatic failures were merely severe magnifications that people like you and I face every day. Misaki, no perfect character herself, is made all the more appealing in how she wants to help Satou work his way out of his miserable existence.

Now that you know that at least I thoroughly enjoyed the content of the story, I must help you to decide whether or not to shell out what could be over a hundred dollars to buy one of the few remaining copies of this printing of the book. In order for you to know whether this purchase is right for you or not, you need to understand what you're getting and how this representation of Tatsuhiro Takimoto's vision compares with the anime and manga versions of the same name.

For your hard-earned cash, you get a Tokyopop paperback, 230-some pages of novelization, two afterwords by the author which are well worth reading despite their short length, and a glossary detailing some of the terms that may be difficult for the prototypical Westerner to understand. I am lucky enough to have a well-maintained copy of the book, but considering the quantity of this title left available on the Internet, the condition should not factor too much into your decision on whether or not to buy a "reasonably" priced listing.

Compared to the anime and manga, the novel is less fleshed out in terms of character development and far shorter. You could read through this in a short two hours if you're a quick reader but, after all, it IS a "light" novel. However, the novel maintains the author's original and authentically gritty account of hikkikimori life, with all the drug references and Lolicon intact. The manga is far more comedically grounded, and the anime serves as a middle ground between the two printed mediums. Thus, one should only get the novel if they either a.) Loved the anime, b.) Adored the manga, c.) is extremely interested in the subject matter, or d.) is simply addicted to reading Japanese light novels.

Overall, despite the inflated prices online, what you see is what you get- a book. But, if you enter into it with an open mind and a willingness to understand the plight of a young man so like and so unlike ourselves, you will thoroughly enjoy it. Although rough around the edges, it shines on the inside like the potential Misaki sees in Satou. Welcome to the NHK is not a flawless work, but if taken for what it is- a truly original, modern-day pioneer on an important issue that provides a frankly beautiful love story to boot- it succeeds dramatically.

I had watched the anime adaptation of "Welcome to the N.H.K." before, so I was eager to buy the novel as soon as I heard it was translated to English. I enjoyed reading it every bit as much as I enjoyed watching the anime (and after comparing, I'd say Gonzo did a good job with the anime).

This novel is a wonderful insight into the life of a social outcast - a Japanese term for this is "hikikomori" - who suffers from extreme social anxiety, and doesn't work nor study.

A college dropout named Satou - the main character of the book - spends his days shut in his tiny apartment, sleeping for 16 hours a day and surviving from the little money his mother sends him every month. To explain his extremely unfortunate life, Satou starts believing that all bad things that happened to him are actually a part of a huge conspiracy against Japanese youth. That's how the twisted and fascinating adventure starts.

While "Welcome to the N.H.K." is a pretty depressing book, it has a lot of dark humor and it is far from being all negative. It involves things like otaku, anime, erotic video games, religion, and drugs. The underlying theme is the social pressure that the characters are feeling, and their inability to cope with it.

There's also a friendship and love story between the main character and a girl who wants to help him. Just don't expect sweet romance, because you won't find it here.

Overall "Welcome to the N.H.K." is a wonderful book, and I recommend it to anyone who likes dark humor, is into manga or anime, or just wants to get a unique insight into Japanese culture.

I watched the anime version before this one, and it became one of my all-time favorites.
When I found out that it was based on a NOVEL, not a manga(though it later was...), I just HAD to buy it!

I wasn't disappointed, but things were of course altered to make it novel worthy, like cutting out character time, and eliminating encounters altogether.

It's a good and a bad thing, Good; since it can focus more on the mind/psyche scenes as well as focus on the main character relationships, and Bad; since those many encounters he faced in the anime helped him face the "NHK".

All in all, NHK is a story about people who have nothing but bad luck, bad experiences, and shattered dreams. It's funny, invoking, often depressing, but a unique story. There is some grahic text in here so watch it. If you like this book, check out the anime, since THAT version is something everyone can appreciate!

Since I was a kid, I've always read stuff that other kids my age weren't into yet. At twelve, I read Goldberg's "Lord of the Flies"; at thirteen,
Nabokov's "Lolita." Now at age sixteen, I've read quite a bit more due to my enrollment in a school for the first time (I was unschooled up
until a year or so ago.) And even though the spectrum of novels which I read has increased by a great amount, nothing to this very day has had
such a profound impact on my life and development as a human being than Tatsuhiko Takimoto's "Welcome to the NHK."

The novel follows the tale of a lone hikikomori (shut-in) named Satou Tatsuhiro, who leeches off his parents for income and wallows in his own
self-pity and hallucinations inside of his small, trash-filled apartment. He's a true example of a worthless human being, not having even the
most remote of halfway decent qualities. His life seems to lack any purpose, until one day a solicitor for a radical religious group knocks on
his door. With the solicitor is a young girl named Misaki, who almost instantly catches Satou's eye. From there, a series of events occur throughout
the course of which Satou begins to gain a slow but steady grasp on reality and come out of his miserable shell.

Satou is not alone in his neuroses, however; each character in this novel has some kind of problem which effects their behavior and ultimately hinders
them. His next door neighbor, who becomes a dubious "friend" early on, is hentai-addicted nerd with a chronic hatred of women; Misaki, who makes it
her goal to cure Satou of his hikikomori-ism (if that's a word), has severe signs of a borderline personality disorder; and to top it all off, his
teenage crush whom he comes into contact again with later on in the story is a prescription pill addict with an inferiority complex. Almost nobody
in this novel is undamaged, and it's for this reason that it's such a compelling read.

In the hands of a lesser writer, this story could've gone the route of blatant exploitation, looking at these sad people
through superiority-tinted glasses. But the realistic dialogue and true-to-life situations make the reader commiserate
with the characters instead of pity them. It's not an exercise in just showing us what fractured human beings are like; it's an
experiment in trying to see what makes them tick. And it's an experiment which succeeds in the most brilliant way possible.

By the time you finish this novel, you will not look at the world, nor yourself, the same way. The same effect that
Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" had on many a young adult is one which I experienced upon reading the final words of Takimoto's opus of human experience. These characters come alive within the span of the book, and once it's over, you feel as if you're saying a last
good-bye to friends you've only just met. This feat is one which many writers fail to achieve, but "Welcome to the NHK" pulls off without much effort.

A fine piece of fiction which can be enjoyed by just about anybody, this book is one which cannot be missed.


NOTE: The only hindrance between you and this book, however, is the current price. I was lucky to snag the book when
it first came out, but it has since been out of print, used copies even running sixty dollars or more, and new copies
running into the couple hundreds. Either buy it used, or wait for a reprint (which I've heard murmurings of as of late,
so if you're patient, you may be able to get this for the original price.)

I read this book in 3 days for maybe 3-5 hours a day. Had me hooked, had a lot of laughs and was entertained the whole time. The way the story is told kept me glued to the book once a reading session started. I loved it and would recommend it to anyone who is into manga and anime. The story is pretty crazy and I can't imagine any human being would lower itself into the lifestyle of the main character.

Welcome to the NHK is a story about a hikikomori and his journey to recovery. A Hikikomori is someone who locks himself in his room all day and avoids going outside and interacting with other people. Because of the author's background (he was a hikikomori himself), the characters are pretty realistic. It was interesting to read about the thoughts of main character and his experience. I would recommend this book for anyone curious about the hikikomori lifestyle.

I first became aware of this book when i saw the trailer for the anime. I was very surpersed by the subjest matter. The sm is mental illness and about people who have little to no social contact. While the book is fiction, there were times it got a bit too real for me. A few people have asked to borrow it. there are footnotes regarding unfamilair cultural referances.