Welcome to your worst nightmare; Welcome to true horror; Welcome to otaku hell. For anyone who's ever stayed inside most of a day watching anime, Welcome to the NHK can represent a familiar if extreme situation that may terrify some of us and disgust others (or both). And you know what? For a dark reflection of some of our worst traits... this is pretty damn funny.
Welcome to the N.H.K is equal parts character drama and blacker-than-black comedy revolving around Japanese subcultures and societal issues, though they're the kind of issues most of us are still familiar with. It revolves around Tatsuhiro Satou, who has been a hikikomori and a NEET for 4 years, ever since he dropped out of college. Hikikomori are an extreme form of social recluse that almost never leave their rooms, and NEET stands for "Not in Education, Employment or Training." Combine that with hallucination-driven conspiracy theories and rampant alcoholism, and Satou is a complete wretch who has basically given up on life.
Enter Misaki Nakahara. After showing up at Satou's door with her aunt doing church missionary work, she invites him to enter into her "project," which she claims can cure him of his hikikomori ways. He eventually decides to try it out, partaking in various counseling sessions and experiments while struggling with the countless problems in his life at the same time. The show then basically follows Satou on his journey to improve his life, though for the most part he slips up and drops even further more often than he succeeds.
Satou's not the only disturbed and just plain screwed up character in the show though - far from it, his life is full of them. There's his neighbor and former underclassman Kaoru Yamazaki, an "enthusiastic" otaku who is completely obsessed with gal games, or dating sims, and everything that goes with them. Another major character is his former upperclassman Hitomi Kashiwa, a conspiracy theorist whose stress has led her to drug use. Another classmate, Megumi Kobayashi, shows up later with her own issues, and Misaki is eventually revealed to have serious problems in her past as well.
The plot of this show is good enough, but it really thrives on the interactions between these messed up characters and their development as they struggle with their problems and eventually find a way to cope, even if things don't always get that much better. And this is one of the areas where the show really shines - these characters, while they may not necessarily be likable, are completely memorable, very interesting, and you really feel like you're getting a good look inside their heads to see what's caused them to end up where they are now.
The main other area this show shines in is the comedy, though your soul may need to be a bit twisted to laugh at some of this stuff. In my opinion, there are three main ways you can view the darker stuff in NHK. First, you can have the necessary mindset to laugh at these disturbing twists, which you'd need to be able to see this as a comedy. Second, you can see it as very depressing series of events and be completely disheartened by the whole series. Finally, you can see these complete wretches who consistently screw up their lives and just be disgusted. Or there can be a mix of any of the above. Basically, if you don't think you could laugh at someone's life being ruined in a hilarious way or death threats with comedic elements, don't watch this for comedy. I'd still recommend it for a unique experience with memorable characters, but you're not gonna get hilarity from it.
If you do have the right mindset, this show will be hilarious with the best of them. Satou's miserable life is painted in a really funny way, especially as he and Yamazaki get completely excited over some of the least exciting and outright sad things possible. Satou's mad conspiracy dreams are also hilarious, complete with ninjas, robots, and talking appliances. There are also several parody jokes, like the MMORPG Ultimate Fantasy and the magical girl show Puru Puru Pururin, both of which poke fun at the typical elements of these genres. There's also a decent amount of lighter-hearted jokes too, but in the end if you really want to laugh at this show, you need to be able to laugh at the dark stuff.
The music in this show is pretty good; it usually sets the mood well with either serious dramatic tunes or weird surrealistic melodies. There are several standout songs too, like the instrumental version of the ending in the final episode and the Pururin theme that you will never get out of your head. The opening is good in a humorously dissonant way - it's a bubbly theme with light colors and primarily happy imagery. The endings are delightfully weird and surreal and fit the show well. The dub is amazing as well, with special mention to Chris Patton for excelling as Satou, both for the serious moments and for the bombastic overacting.
The art is probably the show's biggest failing point. While in a lot of the scenes it's good enough and doesn't really detract from the show, there are frequent examples of flat out poor animation, like misshapen limbs and lack of detail on people who aren't the focus. There's not much to talk about for animation either. As a more character driven, real-life show, there's a lot of scenes with very little movement. The show is still great, but the art isn't doing much for that in a lot of the scenes. I do feel it's worth mentioning that some of the backgrounds, however, look quite good, with nice city skylines and snowy outdoors scenes.
So all in all, if you want a twisted look at the lives of a bunch of social misfits and have a laugh at their expense along the way, you should definitely check out Welcome to the N.H.K. Honestly, I recommend this show to any anime fan not turned off by its darker nature, as it's very unique and you'll probably connect with the characters on some level, whether that be pity, familiarity, or plain old interest.
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