Welcome to the NHK or NHK ni Yokoso is definitely one weird manga. Weird indeed. However so, it gives you the feeling of happiness and satisfaction after reading it. Personally I've just read all 40 chapters of the mangas online and I'm definitely satisfied. I'm not really sure what gave me this satisfaction, perhaps it was seeing that all of the characters in the series are all so pitiable in a sense compared to myself, or perhaps the story isn't as predictable as I've first thought and expected. Everything may go upside down at the very last minute, just because everyone's telling lies - big fat lies that everyone so helplessly fall into even though it's very obvious. Maybe that's what human beings are in the first place.Welcome to the NHK tells the story of a 22-years-old (he turned 23 in the series) fateful fellow, Satou Tatsuhiro, who happened to suffer from a major Japanese society mental sickness - being a hikikomori (the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare defines hikikomori as individuals who refuse to leave their parents' house, and isolate themselves away from society in their homes for a period exceeding six months). Well, at least he tried to hide the fact from an old lady who visited him at his apartment with her daughter one day to do a survey about hikikomoris. Due to the fact that he'd shut himself in the apartment for a few months without speaking to anyone throughout the period, he did badly in the survey and scared the old lady away. Her daughter looked at him briefly, smiled, and then went away with her mother. Little did Satou knew that this particular little lady who's holding a parasol was going to be an important person in his life, well at least for the year to come. And that's how the story of this NHK thing started. Like myself, I've always thought of NHK as a television broadcasting channel in Japan. Yes that's right, there's nothing wrong about it. In this story, Satou had blamed the TV station for causing him to become a hikki due to all the animes they're broadcast. Then why the "welcome"? Well, as for the title "Welcome to the NHK", NHK in here stands for Nippon Hikikomori Kyokai (The Japanese Hikikomori Association). It's actually more of like the title of the last chapter in the original novel where Satou had signed an agreement, therefore officially forming the association. It wasn't like that in the mangas, though, so I'm particularly confused, but nevermind. I have not watched the anime yet and one day if I find them selling in KK here, I might as well buy it and watch.Welcome to the NHK, like I said, is one weird story, and seriously, I couldn't think of a genre for it. Wikipedia and ANN says that it's seinen or shonen but I have to disagree with it. Personally if I'm a girl I would have enjoy the story as well, seeing that Satou gets tortured by this Misaki girl, the girl with a parasol I'd mentioned earlier. But sure, it's definitely more appealing to late teenage males who's having the same condition as Satou.Talking about Misaki, she's one weird girl. She has the looks, yes. She's very cute and charming that even I believe that I myself have fallen for her, quite badly too (I've always had a soft spot for short-haired girls). She's smooth on the outside and gives the impression that she's a strong person in the inside, someone with a stable background and is reliable during needy times. She acted like one to Satou who's heading towards a dead end without a job and was still relying on his parents' allowance to continue living. She came to him after he ran away from his attempt to find a job in an interview in a manga café - Misaki was the receptionist and he couldn't help but run away from her. She handed him a contract, asking him accept it. In return, she'll give him all the attention and counseling he needed to return to being a productive person.Things didn't work out too smoothly. There are times where Misaki had managed to convince Satou to sit down quietly and listen to her counseling, but towards the end, he found out that Misaki had been using weird sources (like A Brainwashing Manual) and felt that she had been making fun of him all the while. Becoming mad as a cow, he'd run off to look for someone else.Who else can he find? There's Yamazaki who's lives next door. Yamazaki is the kouhai (the opposite of senpai) of Satou in middle school and is an otaku. Unlike Satou, Yamazaki is someone capable of living on his own without the help of his parents and lives off creating Hentai games and selling it off at conventions. Now if I can do that...Other than Yamazaki, there's Hitomi who was Satou's senpai in middle school. She's a bit different from Misaki and she's actually heading towards a marriage. She had tried to kill herself by attending an offline suicide party, bringing Satou along with her, not knowing that Satou agreed to follow her because he thought he was going to go on a holiday. Due to stress, she had been dependent on drugs. Even after getting married, she wasn't happy with her husband and confessed that she married someone she didn't love. But that didn't stop her from having a happy family. In the novels, she even had a child!Welcome to the NHK is definitely one of the best stories, reality-wise. It brings you back to reality unlike other fantasy or science fiction story which even brings you to the other universe which is too far away, compared to what is really awaiting us in our near future. The moral of the story, quoting wikipedia, "hardships of life and how people must deal with them in their own way." Well, have fun, and stop calling yourself a hikikomori already! You're NOT one, unless you have isolated yourselves away from society in your homes for a period exceeding six months, depending solely on your parents! It's a shame to have a hikikomori in your family, you know!
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