Welcome back everyone, to another week of Welcome to the NHK! We are covering 2 more episodes this week as we watch Sato be pulled further and further down the Hikikomori rabbit hole. Will he be able to find his way out? Or will he become a pitiful fool forever? Lets talk about that!
Starting off lets talk about the production, because NHK had some really cool shots this week. The standout to me being the White Whale/Captain Ahab sequence in episode 3 as Sato experiences Google image search for the first time. It was so creative, I absolutely loved the crosshatch shading, pink tint and full on sailor outfit. NHK may not be consistently animated but it is consistently creative, and it’s great. This wasn’t the only time in the episode I thought this either! Sato running out the door into a burst of light, or his slowly degrading visual health. NHK did a great job with the visual metaphors in these episodes. Really helping to sell what is happening more than any narration can. The only bad part, visually, was in episode 4. Though I will wait to talk about that until we get there. Now on to the episodes themselves!
First up we have episode 3, “Welcome to the Beautiful Girls!”. I thought this episode was bloody hilarious, in a sad, pitiful sort of way. Watching Sato fall further and further into Otaku/NEET culture because of Yamazaki’s games, which he is only playing to create a game to prove to Misaki that he isn’t a Hikikomori, is beautiful irony. I thought this was supposed to be a story about Sato fixing himself, and maybe it still will be. But clearly Sato still has a ways to fall, a new nadir to reach, before he truly starts that upward climb. And the presentation of that fall in this episode, watching him get worse and worse, learning about all of the tropes and degeneracy he had yet to experience, was very funny. At least in a gallows humor sort of way, which is my favorite kind of humor coincidentally.
I also wasn’t expecting Yamazaki of all people to become that kind of catalyst. I thought he would join Sato on his quest out of NEET-dom, that it would become a sort of buddy-cop routine. Instead he has not only introduced delusions of grandeur to Sato, he is actively reinforcing them with this crackpot scheme to become Triple-AAA game developers off of an eroge. Maybe this is supposed to illustrate just how hard it is to crawl out of being a Hikikomori. How easy it is to fall into new delusions, to makeup reasons that what you are doing is fine. Or maybe Yamazaki is a villain in the story and will end the series even worse off than Sato started. I don’t know! But it’s an absolute blast watching him and Sato pull each other further and further down the rabbit hole. Feeding off of each others insecurities.
As far as the games themselves go, these were definitely… odd. Let’s just come out and say it, that was a lot of porn that Sato surfed through. And while I could do without the titty, I’m not a big fan of fanservice, considering what he was doing and who was doing it, I think it made sense. I at least found it funny that Sato is just as bad at fake VN relationships as he is at real life ones. The guy took 3 tries to get a single girlfriend in game series dedicated to giving lonely guys girlfriends. NHK could not have found a better way to reinforce just how pitiful and terrible at human interaction Sato is than this. It’s honestly kind of brilliant how the series works these character traits into solo scenes where he isn’t even interacting with anyone.
And the rest of the episode basically falls into everything I’ve already talked about. Clever jokes, evocative scenery, engaging characterization. It’s all there! Which is why I want to take a moment to shout out Yoku Shioya for his sound design. The click-click-cliiiiick of the modem took me back to my childhood, the little swiff of pulling out a tissue for you-know-what, even the the wind and rustling of skirts as Sato gets caught trying to sneak candid shots of highschool panties! It all sounded great. Speaking of those candid shots by the way, my god has Sato fallen in just 2 episodes. I know he wanted a picture to show himself just how pitiful he had become, but fuck. And it’s going to get worse? I can’t wait.
That brings me to episode 4, “Welcome to the New World!”. Remember the visual issues I mentioned before? Well this is where those happened. The entire episode felt… sketchy? Like it was filled with low-detail designs that snapped between poses. This fits the almost manic energy of the episode sure, at least in the first half. And by the end I can’t say I was bothered by it to much. But the first half was definitely more difficult to get into than episode 3. So much so that I think this was probably, visually, the worst episode of NHK so far. Content wise though? Content wise it was still really good.
This episode we continue to watch Sato fall deeper and deeper down the NEET rabbit hole. Where as in episode 3 he discovered the degeneracy of the internet, in episode 4 Sato discovers… Otaku. Basically, he figures out that 2D girls can’t dump him and that he can buy as much merch/look up as many panties as he wants and they wont slap him. Now I’m all for some healthy fun, collect some figures for characters you like, nothing wrong with that. I have a collection myself! But it starts to get concerning when you no longer look at your finances. When you forgo meals to be able to afford it. When you buy a jar to put them in, for reasons I don’t need to explain. And the more I watch, the more I think that’s the road Sato is going down. Mostly because of Yamazaki, but still.
Speaking of Yamazaki, he has gone full incel this week. The whole spiel about hating women, how they look down on them, yada yada? About the idealized girls in the games, to escape reality, crafting them to fit their whims? You can see it too… right? The more I see of Yamazaki, the more I think he isn’t going to get a happy ending. I mean… maybe no one in NHK gets a happy ending, who knows. But Yamazaki especially is playing into all the worst tropes about 4channers and internet “That Guy” that you can think of. Now to give him a fair shake, maybe thats the point? Maybe NHK is spreading a large net with its cast to show that anyone can work their way out of it. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I feel pity for Sato, and disgust for Yamazaki.
That said, the trip with Yamazaki wasn’t without positives. Not only was he going outside, he was interacting with someone else on a regular basis. In a way, that’s progress! Maybe progress in the lateral direction, what with the whole Otaku thing, but still. It’s more than he had before. On top of that there were a lot of small bits that I thought were cool, though maybe I’m over thinking things. Like the way Sato bumped into a life-size doll and apologized to it, perhaps representing how much he is coming to view fake characters as real partners or friends. Alternatively it could just be showing how disconnected he is from everyone else around him. Either way I think it makes an interesting point, and the episode is full of stuff like that.
Finally I want to talk about something cool: Misaki. Early on in the episode, Sato comments how similar his life is to one of the eroge. How Misaki approached him, the MC, innocently and seemingly without ulterior motives or prompting. In a way he’s reducing her to an object, like the characters in his games. Yet funny enough… I did the exact same thing when talking about my concerns with her place in the story last week. So I have to wonder: Was this on purpose? Is NHK setting Misaki up as a trap for the audience? That if you do this to her, if you view her as or assume her to be like heroines in other series, you will get bit by the end? I’m really curious where NHK is going to go with this thread and I really hope I’m not thinking to deeply about it.
So yeah, all in all I think these were to very successful episodes of NHK. I definitely enjoyed them more than the first 2, and those weren’t even bad! I’m engaged with the characters and their overarching story while still having fun with their episode to episode antics. All the while those antics are progressing the wider character arc. It’s nice! And NHK even managed to introduce a second catalyst, a second inciting incident, into Sato’s life with the reappearance of his Senpai from highschool. Will she be the angel to Yamazaki’s devil? The push he needs to get out of the Otaku spiral? Or will her conspiracy theories pull him even deeper into being a Hikikomori? I don’t know, but I’m curious to find out. I hope you are to. See you next week!
