you’re a college drop-out and your life has been going downhill lately, you have no friends and you spend your days secluded in your room sleeping 16 hours daily, watching cheap tv shows relying on your parents for support. surely the blame isn’t yours, it must be a huge, well- orchestrated conspiracy!
welcome to our weekly (almost) anime review, today’s candidate: nhk ni yokoso (welcome to the nhk). the show follows the adventures of tatsuhiro sato, an unemployed college drop-out who lives like a hermit firmly convinced that a conspiracy is out to get him, while a mysterious girl and his otaku neighbor try to help him become a well adjusted member of the society (the most obvious way is of course to get him involved in a project to create a hentai game :p ). the show most closely resembles genshiken and also presents a glimpse into certain aspects of otaku culture (anime, h-games, maid cafés, mmorpgs, natsucomi and fuyucomi), but also, unlike genshiken, some of the more pressing problems of modern japan are also presented (unemployment, hikikomori lifestyle, suicide).
like genshiken, this show is a must see for any self-respecting otaku (endi, szilard take note) and also like genshiken you need to be at least slightly familiar with otaku culture to get all the in-jokes. btw, sato’s sempai from the literary club is voiced by sanae kobayashi, who is also the seiyu for kitagawa (genshiken) and madlax (madlax), nyu/lucy (elfen lied), daedalus (ergo proxy).
both the animation and the soundtrack are great and complement each other very well. the pacing is well done and the plot offers more than a few surprises. while there are several dramatic moments, the series is very humorous and i was rotfl the entire time. there are many instances which could be considered product placement had the brand names not been changed – sato smokes warlboro and uses mindows xx home edition :p
ps: szilard, put down the ps2 controller and go watch some anime.
