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Welcome to the N.H.K.
Twenty-two-year-old Satou, an unemployed, reclusive conspiracy theorist living in Tokyo, meets a mysterious girl who tries to cure him of his antisocial, or "hikikomori," ways.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 28, 2002
About the author
Tatsuhiko Takimoto
44 books83 followersTatsuhiko Takimoto (Japanese: 滝本 竜彦) is a Japanese author best known for his novel Welcome to the N.H.K.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 196 reviews
August 14, 2009
I really liked how this book led me on a journey through the main character Satou's despair, and his absolute wreck of a life inspired me to change my own. It's like... more subversive than Chuck Palahniuk, but less offensive than Mein Kampf, if you get what I mean. This book is pretty heavy stuff to deal with if you're ALREADY depressed, but it may help you realise there are good and VERY BAD ways to deal with one's melancholy and bleak circumstances.
I have a more philosophical treatment of the ending here:
http://aspergers.dasaku.net/?p=1249
This book is #2 on my list of "Books not to let your parents know you own", the #1 spot being taken up by the works of Anais Nin.
Five stars well deserved, but I would prefer to evaluate the merit of a book without an established merit system. Emotions can't be put on a scale.
I have a more philosophical treatment of the ending here:
http://aspergers.dasaku.net/?p=1249
This book is #2 on my list of "Books not to let your parents know you own", the #1 spot being taken up by the works of Anais Nin.
Five stars well deserved, but I would prefer to evaluate the merit of a book without an established merit system. Emotions can't be put on a scale.
September 15, 2019
4.8 🌟 for the Book and the Anime Series. But honestly I can't grade my true emotions and feelings.
Well how to review this ? I'll try giving my personal feelings.
I watched anime series a month ago. I got it recommend online searching for anime series related to depression and loneliness. After watching this I immediately started reading the book.
The story beautifully narrates the strangeness of human mind and thoughts, how our expectations & dreams, our past & the way society acts tends to form us.
The story characters show How many of us struggle and fail cope up with change and fall in our life (our expectations not matching with our reality), how it lead one into the spiral of continuous pessimism and why loneliness is so painful & can almost kill a person ?
The anime is almost similar to the book with few things different . But I liked both equally. Although book is little at few instances as things go in rash and absurd manner which I found a little hard to visualise and few references to Japanese society which I didn't knew.
This book and story one of a kind.
My words can't describe the beauty of the story (but it is really depressing with a hope for someone help and rescue).
Surely a normal and happy person with friends and work won't be able to relate directly to the characters and their suffering.
I am suffering from the same pain as Satou (the main character) and this review contains many things that I personally experienced but after watching the show it made me feel a little hopeful. I hope that I could find my own Yamazaki and Misaki.
The story ends on a little hopeful and optimistic note :
How much harder and meaningless the life gets, please don't quit because where there is life there is hope that you will found someone and something that you need the most and rediscover the joy of life. Please don't suicide.
And that's what I try to believe in.
I hope that I find mine soon. 🙂
You would definitely find this link worthy : https://youtu.be/NqtbgHfVrgA
Well how to review this ? I'll try giving my personal feelings.
I watched anime series a month ago. I got it recommend online searching for anime series related to depression and loneliness. After watching this I immediately started reading the book.
The story beautifully narrates the strangeness of human mind and thoughts, how our expectations & dreams, our past & the way society acts tends to form us.
The story characters show How many of us struggle and fail cope up with change and fall in our life (our expectations not matching with our reality), how it lead one into the spiral of continuous pessimism and why loneliness is so painful & can almost kill a person ?
The anime is almost similar to the book with few things different . But I liked both equally. Although book is little at few instances as things go in rash and absurd manner which I found a little hard to visualise and few references to Japanese society which I didn't knew.
This book and story one of a kind.
My words can't describe the beauty of the story (but it is really depressing with a hope for someone help and rescue).
Surely a normal and happy person with friends and work won't be able to relate directly to the characters and their suffering.
I am suffering from the same pain as Satou (the main character) and this review contains many things that I personally experienced but after watching the show it made me feel a little hopeful. I hope that I could find my own Yamazaki and Misaki.
The story ends on a little hopeful and optimistic note :
How much harder and meaningless the life gets, please don't quit because where there is life there is hope that you will found someone and something that you need the most and rediscover the joy of life. Please don't suicide.
And that's what I try to believe in.
I hope that I find mine soon. 🙂
You would definitely find this link worthy : https://youtu.be/NqtbgHfVrgA
October 1, 2018
3.5 Stars (That isn't a bad thing! It is still a very interesting read)
"No human beings, regardless of who they might be, want to look directly at their own shortcomings."
I watched the anime before reading this and it is quite different.
To start the tone of the anime was more a comedy with social issues of a hikikomori. But the Light Novel was just downright depressing, serious, and almost like a cry for help. (Especially reading his two afterwords.)
The only reason I couldn't give this five stars is just he lack of detail. I think the anime ruined that part for me. There were big development things left out but also it made the Light Novel feel more real.
Welcome to the N.H.K touched on lots of social issues, such as addiction (drugs and video games),
suicide, and the hikikomori. Big issues in Japan, and here too as well.
This is a novel about someone wanting to get help but not knowing how to get help and thinking no one can help them.
I think this is something that you need to read and watch yourself to fully experience the message of Satou and Tatsuniko Takimoto.
But honestly read the novel first, I think the anime did put a huge damper on my experience with the novel. I feel like the novel is super important because instead of focusing on the overall issues like the anime, the novel focus on Satou. His cry for help. I feel like each character, Misaki and Yamazaki, each represented an issue. Misaki represented suicide and depression, while Yamazaki represented the drug use and his want to not try.
Also - tagging this spoilers for the end of the anime and book.
*09/19/2018* - Loved the anime so much, can't wait to read this. My boyfriend said the light novel was much better than the anime.
"No human beings, regardless of who they might be, want to look directly at their own shortcomings."
I watched the anime before reading this and it is quite different.
To start the tone of the anime was more a comedy with social issues of a hikikomori. But the Light Novel was just downright depressing, serious, and almost like a cry for help. (Especially reading his two afterwords.)
The only reason I couldn't give this five stars is just he lack of detail. I think the anime ruined that part for me. There were big development things left out but also it made the Light Novel feel more real.
Welcome to the N.H.K touched on lots of social issues, such as addiction (drugs and video games),
suicide, and the hikikomori. Big issues in Japan, and here too as well.
This is a novel about someone wanting to get help but not knowing how to get help and thinking no one can help them.
I think this is something that you need to read and watch yourself to fully experience the message of Satou and Tatsuniko Takimoto.
But honestly read the novel first, I think the anime did put a huge damper on my experience with the novel. I feel like the novel is super important because instead of focusing on the overall issues like the anime, the novel focus on Satou. His cry for help. I feel like each character, Misaki and Yamazaki, each represented an issue. Misaki represented suicide and depression, while Yamazaki represented the drug use and his want to not try.
Also - tagging this spoilers for the end of the anime and book.
*09/19/2018* - Loved the anime so much, can't wait to read this. My boyfriend said the light novel was much better than the anime.
December 21, 2021
Ho cercato questo romanzo qualcosa come sei anni, a cominciare dall'indomani dell'ultimo episodio della serie a cui è ispirata. Sono contenta di essere riuscita a leggerlo. Tuttora non sappiamo con certezza chi sia Misaki, tanti eventi e personaggi sono pura invenzione cinematografica. Qui c'è la vita e i pensieri di un ex hikikomori prima di riprenderne in mano le redini e soprattutto di scriverla al computer suddivisa in undici capitoli. Non sono arrivata a quell'estremo, ma i suoi pensieri potrebbero essere tranquillamente anche i miei. Tre stelle e mezzo
April 17, 2024
¡Bienvenido a la NHK! es una novela que cuenta el desafío de un hikikomori - un joven japonés aislado del mundo - por reintegrarse a la sociedad.
La prosa es bastante ingenua lo que, aunque hace sentido para la voz, a ratos vuelve la narración sobre explicativa. Esta característica, en mi opinión, es propia de la literatura japonesa comercial, no tanto una flaqueza del estilo personal de Takimoto. En ese sentido, la novela no produce ni imágenes ni frases que valga la pena recordar.
Lo que NHK! carece formalmente, lo compensa con su contenido. En esta obra, que Takimoto confiesa en el prólogo tiene un fundamento autoficcional, la problemática de los hikikomori es tratada con una crudeza que no pudo reproducirse en sus adaptaciones al manga y animé. Los personajes abusan de drogas duras, planifican atentados terroristas e, incluso, reproducen y distribuyen pornografía infantil. La novela también navega por los temas del cristianismo y su exportación a Japón, las relaciones entre hombres y mujeres en el país y la soledad femenina.
Contrario a lo que este catálogo temático hace suponer, el relato es ligero y entretenido. El tratamiento de Takimoto por sus personajes es de suma ternura, lo que obliga al lector a empatizar con estos parias y reflexionar en qué aristas puede parecerse uno a estos individuos. Me hace muchísimo sentido el éxito comercial e institucional que ha tenido esta novela en su país de origen e imagino que también resonará con las juventudes hispanoparlantes.
Esta novela fue una lectura de mi taller Permanente de lectura crítica y escritura creativa. Es en línea así que pueden participar desde cualquier parte. Para más información, pregúntenme en Instagram: @comunidadmana.
La prosa es bastante ingenua lo que, aunque hace sentido para la voz, a ratos vuelve la narración sobre explicativa. Esta característica, en mi opinión, es propia de la literatura japonesa comercial, no tanto una flaqueza del estilo personal de Takimoto. En ese sentido, la novela no produce ni imágenes ni frases que valga la pena recordar.
Lo que NHK! carece formalmente, lo compensa con su contenido. En esta obra, que Takimoto confiesa en el prólogo tiene un fundamento autoficcional, la problemática de los hikikomori es tratada con una crudeza que no pudo reproducirse en sus adaptaciones al manga y animé. Los personajes abusan de drogas duras, planifican atentados terroristas e, incluso, reproducen y distribuyen pornografía infantil. La novela también navega por los temas del cristianismo y su exportación a Japón, las relaciones entre hombres y mujeres en el país y la soledad femenina.
Contrario a lo que este catálogo temático hace suponer, el relato es ligero y entretenido. El tratamiento de Takimoto por sus personajes es de suma ternura, lo que obliga al lector a empatizar con estos parias y reflexionar en qué aristas puede parecerse uno a estos individuos. Me hace muchísimo sentido el éxito comercial e institucional que ha tenido esta novela en su país de origen e imagino que también resonará con las juventudes hispanoparlantes.
Esta novela fue una lectura de mi taller Permanente de lectura crítica y escritura creativa. Es en línea así que pueden participar desde cualquier parte. Para más información, pregúntenme en Instagram: @comunidadmana.
July 9, 2021
Welcome to the N.H.K. is my favorite anime series. Indeed, it is one of the few anime series that I appreciate, for anime in general tends to consist mostly of childish and cliche-riddled escapism.
However, Welcome to the N.H.K. is different. It is, rather, quite the opposite of escapism, dealing with some very real issues, such as alienation, reclusion, depression and suicide, to name but a few, which many outcasts, such as me, can strongly relate to.
And . . . finally I managed to get hold of a copy of the out-of-print book that the anime is based on. I've been wanting to read it for almost ten years. And it did not disappoint. Although the book is missing some major parts that were present in the anime, such as Satou's fall into multi-level marketing, the island suicide pact, and his addiction to an MMORPG, all of which I greatly enjoyed, it is nonetheless perfect in its own way.
As others have stated, it is a little darker than the anime, which tended to be more humorous. It is also a little edgier, featuring drugs and child pornography, which weren't present in the series. Of course, partly due to its format, it is also much more believable than the anime, which I appreciate as I tend to like my books realistic.
If I had to compare it to another book, I would say that it reminded me of No Longer Human, which I happen to adore. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that it is something akin to a No Longer Human for the 21st century. And I wish there were more like it. I really do. Us outcasts, after all, don't exactly have a lot of fiction to choose from which we can actually relate to. Which is unfortunate. Since we sure as hell cannot relate to the people around us.
However, Welcome to the N.H.K. is different. It is, rather, quite the opposite of escapism, dealing with some very real issues, such as alienation, reclusion, depression and suicide, to name but a few, which many outcasts, such as me, can strongly relate to.
And . . . finally I managed to get hold of a copy of the out-of-print book that the anime is based on. I've been wanting to read it for almost ten years. And it did not disappoint. Although the book is missing some major parts that were present in the anime, such as Satou's fall into multi-level marketing, the island suicide pact, and his addiction to an MMORPG, all of which I greatly enjoyed, it is nonetheless perfect in its own way.
As others have stated, it is a little darker than the anime, which tended to be more humorous. It is also a little edgier, featuring drugs and child pornography, which weren't present in the series. Of course, partly due to its format, it is also much more believable than the anime, which I appreciate as I tend to like my books realistic.
If I had to compare it to another book, I would say that it reminded me of No Longer Human, which I happen to adore. In fact, I might even go so far as to say that it is something akin to a No Longer Human for the 21st century. And I wish there were more like it. I really do. Us outcasts, after all, don't exactly have a lot of fiction to choose from which we can actually relate to. Which is unfortunate. Since we sure as hell cannot relate to the people around us.
April 17, 2018
3 stars for the novel, 5 stars for the story.
Saying so may sound weird but I watched the anime version first and was really disappointed with the book version. The book is written in the style of a light novel which to me is synonymous with underwritten, dry and boring. Light novels are talky but does not help your imagination to picture the events.
The story is an important one as it deals with a topic that is widespread in contemporary society. Though there might not be that much hikikomoris, the feeling of shame and powerlessness that our current society unlikely creates makes the story's themes resonant.
I recommend to watch the anime series for the best iteration of the story, it was both comedic and dramatic in all the right places and the additions to the novel seemed natural and not just mere filler.
Saying so may sound weird but I watched the anime version first and was really disappointed with the book version. The book is written in the style of a light novel which to me is synonymous with underwritten, dry and boring. Light novels are talky but does not help your imagination to picture the events.
The story is an important one as it deals with a topic that is widespread in contemporary society. Though there might not be that much hikikomoris, the feeling of shame and powerlessness that our current society unlikely creates makes the story's themes resonant.
I recommend to watch the anime series for the best iteration of the story, it was both comedic and dramatic in all the right places and the additions to the novel seemed natural and not just mere filler.
July 6, 2016
Đọc quyển này cảm giác như đọc một cuốn manga đầy chữ . Lần đầu đọc light-novel cũng không tệ . Tuy nhiên nội dung cuốn này lại quá nặng nề so với hình thức và cách thức truyền tải của nó . Chào mừng đến NHK mở ra mặt tối trong xã hội hiện đại Nhật . Hikkikomori, otaku , lolicon .... Cách đây mấy năm xem bản anime của Chào mừng đến NHK thấy sao mà nó hại não , sao mà nó điên rồ một cách kinh khủng đến vậy . Đến khhi đọc light-novel thì lại có một cảm giác nặng nề , sầu thảm bao trùm . Tự nhìn nhận lại cuộc sống của bản thân thấy cũng thảm không kém . Bài học rút ra ở đây là : Nếu cuộc sống của bạn tồi tệ thảm thương như một bãi shit thì đó là vì bạn chứ không vì bất cứ một ai khác cả , chẳng có một N.H.K nào đứng sau âm mưu phá hoại cuộc đời bạn , trừ chính bạn . :D
July 27, 2011
The collapse of the Japanese economy in the early '90s altered the employment situation in the country, particularly for young people trying to enter the workforce. In the wake of this, several related social phenomenon grew up -- freeters (people stuck in a permanent state of, usually itinerant, underemployment), NEETs (those Not in Employment, Education or Training), and the hikikomori (a more extreme form of NEETs who lock themselves in rooms and eschew human contact). As you can see, this is a subject with absolutely no bearing on modern America society, as we are in no danger of entering our own Lost Decade, and so this book, which is all about hikikomori life, is completely irrelevant to readers over here.
Indeed.
But while American parents would quickly grow tired of supporting a hikikomori and eventually force him to go out and get a job, even if only at 7-11, the Japanese view hikikomori like a Victorian would view a mentally ill relative who's locked away in a garret and nobody ever mentions. This perversely allows hikikomori to eke out an existence in tiny apartments. Our Hero, Satou, for example, lives in a single 6-tatami room, which is smaller than many college dorms.
Satou became a hikikomori after developing an acute and paranoid form of agoraphobia in college. Whenever he goes out in public, he feels as though everyone he sees is talkng about him, discussing what a useless pile of crap he is. For the past four years, he's only left his apartment on late-night runs to the convenience store for food. But he knows he can't maintain this lifestyle forever, and when the story opens he's trying to motivate himself to find a job, even if only to become a freeter.
Around this same time, he comes into contact with two actual humans. One is Yamazaki, and old high school buddy of his who has coincidentally moved into the apartment next door. The other is Misaki, a young woman living with her overly religious aunt.
Misaki recognizes Satou as the hikikomori he is and vows to help him. At first he rebuffs her, claiming that he's a self-employed creator, not a true hikikomori. When she presses him about what he creates, he bands with Yamazaki to create an eroge.
"Eroge" is the Japanese term for erotic video games. These often take the form of visual novels -- think of computerized versions of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books -- which makes them simple enough to design with pre-existing engines. You just need somebody to do the illustrations and someone to write the story. And the stories themselves don't take much -- Yamizaki gives an hilarious rundown of the genre, which consists of giving introverted young men safe and idealized female characters to lust after -- the childhood friend, the sexy maid, the robot. It should be a cinch for Satou and Yamazaki to come up with something -- if they succeed, they might even make some money on it and improve their lives.
Except that Yamizaki isn't just a fan of eroge -- he's a fan of lolicon eroge. Turns out he has a huge stash of cheesecake photos of young girls. It's around this point that Satou decides he'd be better off facing Misaki.
The story goes on from there a bit. The plot is rather episodic, but as we gradually learn more about Misaki the story does build towards a climax which is a bit too realistic to call satisfying, but more true to the characters than a satisfying ending would be.
Indeed.
But while American parents would quickly grow tired of supporting a hikikomori and eventually force him to go out and get a job, even if only at 7-11, the Japanese view hikikomori like a Victorian would view a mentally ill relative who's locked away in a garret and nobody ever mentions. This perversely allows hikikomori to eke out an existence in tiny apartments. Our Hero, Satou, for example, lives in a single 6-tatami room, which is smaller than many college dorms.
Satou became a hikikomori after developing an acute and paranoid form of agoraphobia in college. Whenever he goes out in public, he feels as though everyone he sees is talkng about him, discussing what a useless pile of crap he is. For the past four years, he's only left his apartment on late-night runs to the convenience store for food. But he knows he can't maintain this lifestyle forever, and when the story opens he's trying to motivate himself to find a job, even if only to become a freeter.
Around this same time, he comes into contact with two actual humans. One is Yamazaki, and old high school buddy of his who has coincidentally moved into the apartment next door. The other is Misaki, a young woman living with her overly religious aunt.
Misaki recognizes Satou as the hikikomori he is and vows to help him. At first he rebuffs her, claiming that he's a self-employed creator, not a true hikikomori. When she presses him about what he creates, he bands with Yamazaki to create an eroge.
"Eroge" is the Japanese term for erotic video games. These often take the form of visual novels -- think of computerized versions of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books -- which makes them simple enough to design with pre-existing engines. You just need somebody to do the illustrations and someone to write the story. And the stories themselves don't take much -- Yamizaki gives an hilarious rundown of the genre, which consists of giving introverted young men safe and idealized female characters to lust after -- the childhood friend, the sexy maid, the robot. It should be a cinch for Satou and Yamazaki to come up with something -- if they succeed, they might even make some money on it and improve their lives.
Except that Yamizaki isn't just a fan of eroge -- he's a fan of lolicon eroge. Turns out he has a huge stash of cheesecake photos of young girls. It's around this point that Satou decides he'd be better off facing Misaki.
The story goes on from there a bit. The plot is rather episodic, but as we gradually learn more about Misaki the story does build towards a climax which is a bit too realistic to call satisfying, but more true to the characters than a satisfying ending would be.
November 1, 2017
Intanto devo dire che mi ha sorpreso non poco lo scoprire che l’autore abbia scritto questo libro basandosi su un’esperienza di vita personale, essendo stato in passato uno hikikomori, per quanto riguarda la qualità del testo invece sono decisamente meno sorpreso e anzi abbastanza deluso.
Partiamo dai punti positivi: sono un appassionato di anime e manga, quindi mi ha fatto piacere ritrovare nella light novel quell’ironia tipica che riescono sempre ad attribuire anche in situazioni così problematiche, lo fanno da veri e propri artisti del mestiere. Mi ha fatto molta tenerezza la library addicted Misaki con le sue strambe idee e la vena malinconica in cui si crogiolano i nostri personaggi quando si ritrovano su una sorta di piano astrale distaccato dalla realtà – un posto in cui poter star male lontani dal resto del mondo.
Per contro: tanto l’NHK, la “malvagia organizzazione” che dà il titolo al libro, quanto ogni altra questione che compare all’interno dello stesso non viene mai portata veramente avanti. Restano semplicemente un mucchio di idee inconcluse, come i progetti esistenziali/lavorativi del protagonista, ogni volta che si arriva al limite fa lo stretto indispensabile per tirare avanti un altro po’ e nel frattempo concedersi dell’altro riposo. Non c’è un solo concetto che venga preso e sviluppato dall’inizio alla fine. Le vite dei personaggi soffrono di gravi gap temporali che ci portano da uno status a quello successivo saltando a piedi pari eventi che non esito a definire importanti, salvo poi tornarci sopra con qualche striminzita considerazione in uno degli innumerevoli monologhi interiori del nostro hikikomori.
È un libro con un incipit estremamente interessante ma sembra soffrire esattamente la stessa difficoltà del suo personaggio principale, ovvero arranca senza mai decidere risolutamente che direzione prendere per mettersi in gioco, preferendo trascinarsi così, senza andare a parare realmente da nessuna parte.
Semplice ma bella la cover ^^
Partiamo dai punti positivi: sono un appassionato di anime e manga, quindi mi ha fatto piacere ritrovare nella light novel quell’ironia tipica che riescono sempre ad attribuire anche in situazioni così problematiche, lo fanno da veri e propri artisti del mestiere. Mi ha fatto molta tenerezza la library addicted Misaki con le sue strambe idee e la vena malinconica in cui si crogiolano i nostri personaggi quando si ritrovano su una sorta di piano astrale distaccato dalla realtà – un posto in cui poter star male lontani dal resto del mondo.
Per contro: tanto l’NHK, la “malvagia organizzazione” che dà il titolo al libro, quanto ogni altra questione che compare all’interno dello stesso non viene mai portata veramente avanti. Restano semplicemente un mucchio di idee inconcluse, come i progetti esistenziali/lavorativi del protagonista, ogni volta che si arriva al limite fa lo stretto indispensabile per tirare avanti un altro po’ e nel frattempo concedersi dell’altro riposo. Non c’è un solo concetto che venga preso e sviluppato dall’inizio alla fine. Le vite dei personaggi soffrono di gravi gap temporali che ci portano da uno status a quello successivo saltando a piedi pari eventi che non esito a definire importanti, salvo poi tornarci sopra con qualche striminzita considerazione in uno degli innumerevoli monologhi interiori del nostro hikikomori.
È un libro con un incipit estremamente interessante ma sembra soffrire esattamente la stessa difficoltà del suo personaggio principale, ovvero arranca senza mai decidere risolutamente che direzione prendere per mettersi in gioco, preferendo trascinarsi così, senza andare a parare realmente da nessuna parte.
Semplice ma bella la cover ^^
September 30, 2014
I watched the anime a few years ago and liked it, but the novel doesn't bring much more.
Satou and Yamazaki are constantly thinking about how miserable their lives are and convincing each other of their respective theories. They are so comically desperate that it's nowhere near being believable. And Misaki isn't further explained... she's still the conviently beautiful and deeply hurt - yet supportive and honest - girl who just happens to be there and make the story move forward. I had hoped to get closer to the human side of the story by reading the novel, but it was mostly disappointing.
Satou and Yamazaki are constantly thinking about how miserable their lives are and convincing each other of their respective theories. They are so comically desperate that it's nowhere near being believable. And Misaki isn't further explained... she's still the conviently beautiful and deeply hurt - yet supportive and honest - girl who just happens to be there and make the story move forward. I had hoped to get closer to the human side of the story by reading the novel, but it was mostly disappointing.
March 18, 2012
This anime, story, and Manga are close to my heart. Being someone who has lived with social anxiety disorder my entire adult life I identify with the main character closely. The characters are people with sadness trying to get along, and it's very sad, touching, and great piece of work.
February 14, 2023
buddy read with mae !
i have not watched the anime that was created from this novel, and i definitely will not watch it now. this book is all about the hikikomori phenomenon in japan, where young men close themselves off from the rest of the world and are extremely antisocial. it also has a supposedly nice message that if you are suicidal, you should team up with another suicidal person, and make a pact not to die. sounds great, yeah? no.
there is no literary merit in this novel. none. while i can see the intent to create a story about young people, antisocial behavior under capitalism, and suicidal ideation, it falls flat for several reasons.
the first and most glaring issue is the pedophilia. there is a disgusting about of pedophilia in this novel that does not need to be there. you can talk about porn addiction without including the sexualization and abuse of children. the entire first half of this novel centers around hentai, erotic games, and porn involving children. at one point, the main character, satou, and his friend take secret photos of little girls at school. takimoto even references nabokov’s infamous pedophile humbert humbert as the title of a chapter. the difference between “lolita” and this novel, is that “welcome to the n.h.k.” has no literary value.
secondly, perhaps i should blame the translator, but it is written in such a corny, vile way. it’s trying to be deep, but it isn’t. did a teenage boy write this? this novel is all over the place with weak imagery and an annoying ass voice for a narrator.
yeah, no. horrible. disturbing in all the wrong ways. it definitely reads as if it was written to be turned into a c-list, terrible anime for lolicon pedophiles.
i have not watched the anime that was created from this novel, and i definitely will not watch it now. this book is all about the hikikomori phenomenon in japan, where young men close themselves off from the rest of the world and are extremely antisocial. it also has a supposedly nice message that if you are suicidal, you should team up with another suicidal person, and make a pact not to die. sounds great, yeah? no.
there is no literary merit in this novel. none. while i can see the intent to create a story about young people, antisocial behavior under capitalism, and suicidal ideation, it falls flat for several reasons.
the first and most glaring issue is the pedophilia. there is a disgusting about of pedophilia in this novel that does not need to be there. you can talk about porn addiction without including the sexualization and abuse of children. the entire first half of this novel centers around hentai, erotic games, and porn involving children. at one point, the main character, satou, and his friend take secret photos of little girls at school. takimoto even references nabokov’s infamous pedophile humbert humbert as the title of a chapter. the difference between “lolita” and this novel, is that “welcome to the n.h.k.” has no literary value.
secondly, perhaps i should blame the translator, but it is written in such a corny, vile way. it’s trying to be deep, but it isn’t. did a teenage boy write this? this novel is all over the place with weak imagery and an annoying ass voice for a narrator.
yeah, no. horrible. disturbing in all the wrong ways. it definitely reads as if it was written to be turned into a c-list, terrible anime for lolicon pedophiles.
June 13, 2015
One of my favorite books. The anime is also really well done. A word of caution to the reader, however. You'll get more out of this book if you avoid trying to attribute social withdrawal, lolicon, etc. to some kind of Japanese pathology (because they're not). Instead, look at it as a frank and darkly comedic portrayal of the way people choose to cope with fear and feelings of inadequacy in modern times.
April 8, 2023
Chào Mừng Đến Với N.H.K! - Lại là chuyện về những kẻ dưới đáy xã hội, nhưng không hề tấu hài
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(Điểm số không liên quan gì đến cách nhìn của mình về tác phẩm)
Thú thật là với tác phẩm này thì tôi có biết nhưng không có quen, hoặc ít nhất thì cái tên này chỉ nằm trong những hồi ức lờ mờ về thời cấp 3 khốn khó của tôi. Hồi cuốn sách được ra mắt bản dịch tiếng Việt cũng là lúc trào lưu light novel của Nhật nở rộ ở Việt Nam, mà lúc đó tôi đang là học sinh trung học, chẳng có tiền, mà cũng chả tha thiết gì với thể loại mới lạ và đắt tiền này nên đã bỏ bẵng đi đến gần chục năm. Chỉ cho đến một lần tôi vô ý gõ nhầm 3 chữ NHK trên Google và máy tính hiện kết quả đầu tiên là cái tên Chào Mừng Đến Với NHK, tôi mới nảy sinh tò mò.
Tôi còn nhớ, ấn tượng đập vào mắt tôi đầu tiên là gương mặt hốc hác bơ phờ của anh chàng Satou mà tôi đã tưởng là một con nghiện, tôi còn nghĩ rằng đây sẽ là một kiểu truyện phiêu lưu cai nghiện giống ông Vũ Bằng trong Phù Dung Ơi, Vĩnh Biệt mà tôi mới đọc xong. Nhưng ngược lại với mong đợi về một câu chuyện cười ra nước mắt, cuốn sách nhỏ này vậy mà đã khiến tuyến lệ tôi tuôn rơi suốt cả một đêm đó. Tôi chỉ muốn nói với bạn rằng, những người nào đã rơi vào hoàn cảnh của nhân vật cũng sẽ phản ứng như vậy khi đọc sách. Và khi đó việc bạn đang làm sẽ không gọi là đọc sách nữa, mà như đọc cuộc đời bạn được người khác viết hộ lên giấy.
Tiểu thuyết kể về Satou Tatsuhiro, một thanh niên hai mươi hai tuổi - một hikikomori chính hiệu, thất nghiệp, thảm hại, luôn chìm đắm trong thế giới ảo. Nhưng thay vì nghĩ cách khắc phục, Sato lại cho rằng bi kịch của cậu là do âm mưu của lũ N.H.K – Nippon Hikikomori Kyokai (Hiệp hội Hikikomori Nhật Bản). Cậu muốn lật đổ chúng hòng lấy lại cuộc đời, nhưng những chuyện cậu làm chỉ có thể là ngủ, dằn vặt, dùng thuốc để đánh lừa bản thân rằng mình vẫn ổn.
Cuộc đời của cậu chắc sẽ tiếp tục trôi qua vô định như thế nếu cô gái truyền đạo kì lạ Misaki không xuất hiện. Cô hứa giúp cậu thoát khỏi kiếp sống hikikomori và bắt cậu kí một hợp đồng. Cùng nhau, họ làm những điều tưởng như vô nghĩa, ví như mỗi tối ra công viên ngồi nghe cô thuyết giảng, ví như lang thang vào thành phố cả ngày trời chẳng làm được gì cả. Cho đến một ngày, Sato nhận ra Misaki không phải người không có nỗi đau, rằng không chỉ bản thân mình bất lực với cuộc đời...
“Nếu cuộc sống của bạn tồi tệ thảm thương như một bãi shit thì đó là vì bạn chứ không vì bất cứ một ai khác cả.”
Câu chuyện không chỉ xoay quanh mỗi Satou, mà nó còn được mở rộng hơn với những người xung quanh cậu - những hikikomori khác hoặc giống với hikikomori. Thông thường, định nghĩa về hikikomori đơn giản chỉ là những người hầu như cắt đứt với các mối quan hệ xã hội bên ngoài, chỉ sinh hoạt trong phòng, chỉ giữ mức giao tiếp tối thiểu qua một vài thành viên trong gia đình. Nhưng sự thật vốn không đơn giản như vậy, vì căn bệnh đó vốn đã bám rễ từ lâu và bất cứ ai cũng đều mắc phải.
Trong các phim tài liệu mà đài truyền hình Nhật chiếu trên ti vi, lý do đưa ra cho căn bệnh hikikomori có muôn hình vạn trạng, nhưng tựu trung lại, có thể kể đến hai lý do khá phổ biến ở người trẻ: bị bắt nạt ở trường học, bị trù dập hoặc mối quan hệ không tốt tại chỗ làm việc. Là học sinh hay người đi làm, một khi đã không hòa nhập với môi trường mà đáng lý ra họ thuộc về, là điều đầu tiên gây cho họ cảm giác bị bỏ rơi và bế tắc nếu tình trạng đó kéo dài không có khả năng giải quyết. Dần dà mọi thứ cứ như nước chảy vô tình trên một tấm kim loại lành lạnh, dứt khoát chẳng vấn vương như những nhân vật trong tiểu thuyết này.
Misaki, Sato, Yamazaki, những nhân vật trong sách đều có những khuyết điểm, những bí mật khó nói. Họ luôn cố gắng tự mình thoát ra nhưng không thể. Sato, nhạy cảm và yếu đuối, từ là người bị bắt nạt trở thành ncon thỏ đế hèn nhát đến một lời tỏ tình cũng không dám nói, chỉ để ôm hận mãi trong cái lốt hikikomori. Đàn em của anh, Yamazaki, cũng là một con nghiện nhốt mình trong thế giới ảo tưởng của loli và game ero, và cũng vì nỗi đau bị bắt nạt trong quá khứ. Misaki, một người luôn nghĩ mình thật vô dụng, chẳng giúp ích được gì cho xã hội thì cố đi tìm một kẻ vô dụng hơn mình, để rồi khi thấy người ấy thoát khỏi vỏ bọc hikikomori, cô lại thấy mặc cảm, mất phương hướng. Thật ra, Misaki muốn giúp đỡ Sato thật lòng hay là chỉ đang tìm cách cứu rỗi chính mình? Có phải Sato ngăn Misaki t.ự s.á.t là muốn cứu cô hay là muốn cứu cả linh hồn đang rệu rã vì yêu của mình? Đó đều là những câu hỏi mãi không có câu trả lời, và tùy thuộc vào cách nhìn nhận của mỗi người.
Với mỗi một hikikomori thì việc tái hòa nhập với xã hội là điều cực kì khó khăn. Họ vốn đã đứng mấp mé bên bờ vực thẳm, và cách tốt nhất chỉ có thể là tự cố gắng giúp đỡ cùng nhau sống tiếp trong thế giới này. Họ đại diện cho những số phận đã đắm chìm đến cùng cực của sự bế tắc chỉ khao khát có ai đó đến để bắt chuyện, hỏi han, đồng cảm dù chỉ trong chốc lát ngắn ngủi. Lắm khi, họ còn vờ như mình mắc một chứng bệnh hoang tưởng trầm trọng, luôn cười như kẻ điên, làm những hành động kì quặc chỉ để níu giữ chút hy vọng vào sự tồn tại của mình trong cõi đời này. Chính bởi vậy, Yamazaki không muốn viết cái kết cho bản game của mình, vì cậu nghĩ những người hikikomori như cậu cần phải chiến đấu, và tiếp tục đi tìm lý do để tồn tại và vượt lên cuộc sống khó khăn này. Satou cũng vậy, anh cũng phải đến lần thứ ba mới dám đối diện với Misaki đường hoàng chính chính, thừa nhận rằng thế giới này không chỉ độc một màu tối tiêu điều, và không phải cá nhân nào cũng hoàn hảo, cũng dễ dàng sống được là chính mình như anh từng ảo tưởng.
Câu chuyện này là một chuỗi việc làm điên rồ của những người sống khép kín, nhưng ẩn đằng sau đó, mỗi trò điên ấy lại là một mắt xích mà ở phần kết truyện kết nối với nhau, kéo những con người ấy đứng dậy.
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(Điểm số không liên quan gì đến cách nhìn của mình về tác phẩm)
Thú thật là với tác phẩm này thì tôi có biết nhưng không có quen, hoặc ít nhất thì cái tên này chỉ nằm trong những hồi ức lờ mờ về thời cấp 3 khốn khó của tôi. Hồi cuốn sách được ra mắt bản dịch tiếng Việt cũng là lúc trào lưu light novel của Nhật nở rộ ở Việt Nam, mà lúc đó tôi đang là học sinh trung học, chẳng có tiền, mà cũng chả tha thiết gì với thể loại mới lạ và đắt tiền này nên đã bỏ bẵng đi đến gần chục năm. Chỉ cho đến một lần tôi vô ý gõ nhầm 3 chữ NHK trên Google và máy tính hiện kết quả đầu tiên là cái tên Chào Mừng Đến Với NHK, tôi mới nảy sinh tò mò.
Tôi còn nhớ, ấn tượng đập vào mắt tôi đầu tiên là gương mặt hốc hác bơ phờ của anh chàng Satou mà tôi đã tưởng là một con nghiện, tôi còn nghĩ rằng đây sẽ là một kiểu truyện phiêu lưu cai nghiện giống ông Vũ Bằng trong Phù Dung Ơi, Vĩnh Biệt mà tôi mới đọc xong. Nhưng ngược lại với mong đợi về một câu chuyện cười ra nước mắt, cuốn sách nhỏ này vậy mà đã khiến tuyến lệ tôi tuôn rơi suốt cả một đêm đó. Tôi chỉ muốn nói với bạn rằng, những người nào đã rơi vào hoàn cảnh của nhân vật cũng sẽ phản ứng như vậy khi đọc sách. Và khi đó việc bạn đang làm sẽ không gọi là đọc sách nữa, mà như đọc cuộc đời bạn được người khác viết hộ lên giấy.
Tiểu thuyết kể về Satou Tatsuhiro, một thanh niên hai mươi hai tuổi - một hikikomori chính hiệu, thất nghiệp, thảm hại, luôn chìm đắm trong thế giới ảo. Nhưng thay vì nghĩ cách khắc phục, Sato lại cho rằng bi kịch của cậu là do âm mưu của lũ N.H.K – Nippon Hikikomori Kyokai (Hiệp hội Hikikomori Nhật Bản). Cậu muốn lật đổ chúng hòng lấy lại cuộc đời, nhưng những chuyện cậu làm chỉ có thể là ngủ, dằn vặt, dùng thuốc để đánh lừa bản thân rằng mình vẫn ổn.
Cuộc đời của cậu chắc sẽ tiếp tục trôi qua vô định như thế nếu cô gái truyền đạo kì lạ Misaki không xuất hiện. Cô hứa giúp cậu thoát khỏi kiếp sống hikikomori và bắt cậu kí một hợp đồng. Cùng nhau, họ làm những điều tưởng như vô nghĩa, ví như mỗi tối ra công viên ngồi nghe cô thuyết giảng, ví như lang thang vào thành phố cả ngày trời chẳng làm được gì cả. Cho đến một ngày, Sato nhận ra Misaki không phải người không có nỗi đau, rằng không chỉ bản thân mình bất lực với cuộc đời...
“Nếu cuộc sống của bạn tồi tệ thảm thương như một bãi shit thì đó là vì bạn chứ không vì bất cứ một ai khác cả.”
Câu chuyện không chỉ xoay quanh mỗi Satou, mà nó còn được mở rộng hơn với những người xung quanh cậu - những hikikomori khác hoặc giống với hikikomori. Thông thường, định nghĩa về hikikomori đơn giản chỉ là những người hầu như cắt đứt với các mối quan hệ xã hội bên ngoài, chỉ sinh hoạt trong phòng, chỉ giữ mức giao tiếp tối thiểu qua một vài thành viên trong gia đình. Nhưng sự thật vốn không đơn giản như vậy, vì căn bệnh đó vốn đã bám rễ từ lâu và bất cứ ai cũng đều mắc phải.
Trong các phim tài liệu mà đài truyền hình Nhật chiếu trên ti vi, lý do đưa ra cho căn bệnh hikikomori có muôn hình vạn trạng, nhưng tựu trung lại, có thể kể đến hai lý do khá phổ biến ở người trẻ: bị bắt nạt ở trường học, bị trù dập hoặc mối quan hệ không tốt tại chỗ làm việc. Là học sinh hay người đi làm, một khi đã không hòa nhập với môi trường mà đáng lý ra họ thuộc về, là điều đầu tiên gây cho họ cảm giác bị bỏ rơi và bế tắc nếu tình trạng đó kéo dài không có khả năng giải quyết. Dần dà mọi thứ cứ như nước chảy vô tình trên một tấm kim loại lành lạnh, dứt khoát chẳng vấn vương như những nhân vật trong tiểu thuyết này.
Misaki, Sato, Yamazaki, những nhân vật trong sách đều có những khuyết điểm, những bí mật khó nói. Họ luôn cố gắng tự mình thoát ra nhưng không thể. Sato, nhạy cảm và yếu đuối, từ là người bị bắt nạt trở thành ncon thỏ đế hèn nhát đến một lời tỏ tình cũng không dám nói, chỉ để ôm hận mãi trong cái lốt hikikomori. Đàn em của anh, Yamazaki, cũng là một con nghiện nhốt mình trong thế giới ảo tưởng của loli và game ero, và cũng vì nỗi đau bị bắt nạt trong quá khứ. Misaki, một người luôn nghĩ mình thật vô dụng, chẳng giúp ích được gì cho xã hội thì cố đi tìm một kẻ vô dụng hơn mình, để rồi khi thấy người ấy thoát khỏi vỏ bọc hikikomori, cô lại thấy mặc cảm, mất phương hướng. Thật ra, Misaki muốn giúp đỡ Sato thật lòng hay là chỉ đang tìm cách cứu rỗi chính mình? Có phải Sato ngăn Misaki t.ự s.á.t là muốn cứu cô hay là muốn cứu cả linh hồn đang rệu rã vì yêu của mình? Đó đều là những câu hỏi mãi không có câu trả lời, và tùy thuộc vào cách nhìn nhận của mỗi người.
Với mỗi một hikikomori thì việc tái hòa nhập với xã hội là điều cực kì khó khăn. Họ vốn đã đứng mấp mé bên bờ vực thẳm, và cách tốt nhất chỉ có thể là tự cố gắng giúp đỡ cùng nhau sống tiếp trong thế giới này. Họ đại diện cho những số phận đã đắm chìm đến cùng cực của sự bế tắc chỉ khao khát có ai đó đến để bắt chuyện, hỏi han, đồng cảm dù chỉ trong chốc lát ngắn ngủi. Lắm khi, họ còn vờ như mình mắc một chứng bệnh hoang tưởng trầm trọng, luôn cười như kẻ điên, làm những hành động kì quặc chỉ để níu giữ chút hy vọng vào sự tồn tại của mình trong cõi đời này. Chính bởi vậy, Yamazaki không muốn viết cái kết cho bản game của mình, vì cậu nghĩ những người hikikomori như cậu cần phải chiến đấu, và tiếp tục đi tìm lý do để tồn tại và vượt lên cuộc sống khó khăn này. Satou cũng vậy, anh cũng phải đến lần thứ ba mới dám đối diện với Misaki đường hoàng chính chính, thừa nhận rằng thế giới này không chỉ độc một màu tối tiêu điều, và không phải cá nhân nào cũng hoàn hảo, cũng dễ dàng sống được là chính mình như anh từng ảo tưởng.
Câu chuyện này là một chuỗi việc làm điên rồ của những người sống khép kín, nhưng ẩn đằng sau đó, mỗi trò điên ấy lại là một mắt xích mà ở phần kết truyện kết nối với nhau, kéo những con người ấy đứng dậy.
March 23, 2023
The ending was very touching. I was going to compare the light novel with the anime but I didn't finish it yet.
March 6, 2024
no entendí el final🤠
May 14, 2015
There are 2 kinds if people based on how they react toward other's despair of living: those who look down such people and those who sympathize. To me, who falls into the second kind, it's a depressing story covered with some humors.
A hikikomori--people who isolate themselves from society in a room for approximately 6 months or more--named Satou blames an evil power he calls N.H.K. for his current status as hikikomori. Then, he stumbled upon a mysterious girl named Misaki and they made a kind of contrcact for helping Satou escape from his hikikomori life. Everything seems less serious at first, but in the end you'll see it's a serious story that deals with serious problem. Things are getting sweeter and intense in the end.
This book only has 3 noticeable / worth noticing characters since the main character itself barely left his room. The main character, Satou suffered depression and social anxiety, he frequently used (legal) drugs to deal with them. I used to think Shinji Ikari from Evangelion franchise is Japanese equivalent of Holden Caulfield, but now I see Satou is the one. I love him for choosing not to die even though he wanted so. I don't care how worthless he was. I've got to say he's one of the most realistic characters in fictional worlds.
Speaking about Misaki will reveal (almost) the rest of the story as well, because she's the mystery. She's an interesting character. I can't tell the rest for your convenience.
Yamazaki is the most stable character among 3 of them. What I like about him is the way he didn't easily give up like Satou.
I'm afraid that I'm not capable to explain my emotional roller-coaster while read this book palpably. I had to stop reading several times only to think and feel eloquently--that's what I call enjoying a book. Sometimes I stopped because I was mentally tired, or 3 of them in a time. This book shook me mentally--well, it's not like that I'm depressed or something. Once, I cried because how true it was.
Overall, it's an interesting read. If you want to try to understand how it's like to be in depressed people's brain, take a moment to read this book.
A hikikomori--people who isolate themselves from society in a room for approximately 6 months or more--named Satou blames an evil power he calls N.H.K. for his current status as hikikomori. Then, he stumbled upon a mysterious girl named Misaki and they made a kind of contrcact for helping Satou escape from his hikikomori life. Everything seems less serious at first, but in the end you'll see it's a serious story that deals with serious problem. Things are getting sweeter and intense in the end.
This book only has 3 noticeable / worth noticing characters since the main character itself barely left his room. The main character, Satou suffered depression and social anxiety, he frequently used (legal) drugs to deal with them. I used to think Shinji Ikari from Evangelion franchise is Japanese equivalent of Holden Caulfield, but now I see Satou is the one. I love him for choosing not to die even though he wanted so. I don't care how worthless he was. I've got to say he's one of the most realistic characters in fictional worlds.
Speaking about Misaki will reveal (almost) the rest of the story as well, because she's the mystery. She's an interesting character. I can't tell the rest for your convenience.
Yamazaki is the most stable character among 3 of them. What I like about him is the way he didn't easily give up like Satou.
I'm afraid that I'm not capable to explain my emotional roller-coaster while read this book palpably. I had to stop reading several times only to think and feel eloquently--that's what I call enjoying a book. Sometimes I stopped because I was mentally tired, or 3 of them in a time. This book shook me mentally--well, it's not like that I'm depressed or something. Once, I cried because how true it was.
Overall, it's an interesting read. If you want to try to understand how it's like to be in depressed people's brain, take a moment to read this book.
September 16, 2019
Welcome to the NHK is an inside look at the hikikomori (shut-in) life, written by a man who lived it himself. It has a lot to say about human nature and how we cope with our surroundings: in the novel, characters escape reality, act irrationally and try to justify it, lie to themselves, and fake being OK. You could sum it up by saying that Welcome to the NHK is all about people avoiding their problems instead of solving them, with philosophy, religion, drugs and computer games providing means for characters to create false, simplified answers to complex problems.
The novel deals with dark topics, such as depression, loneliness, substance abuse and suicide; and its greatest weakness is that it could have handled a lot of these with more care. Instead of showing that a character is lonely and wants to die, it'll be plainly stated, and a lot of the time the main ideas are spelled out either by narration or dialogue. The other big weakness is the shortage of character depth: there isn't a lot of time taken to develop the characters much beyond having them represent their respective conditions. The emotional climax would have hit harder and felt less heavy-handed if the characters felt more human.
It's a pity that these ideas weren't conveyed more gracefully, because they're relevant to the times we live in, and a great many will relate to Satou because of what he represents. This is a book worth reading, but I find it far easier to recommend the superior anime adaptation, which spells things out far less often, and uses its runtime to go further with its social commentary and develop its characters adequately.
The novel deals with dark topics, such as depression, loneliness, substance abuse and suicide; and its greatest weakness is that it could have handled a lot of these with more care. Instead of showing that a character is lonely and wants to die, it'll be plainly stated, and a lot of the time the main ideas are spelled out either by narration or dialogue. The other big weakness is the shortage of character depth: there isn't a lot of time taken to develop the characters much beyond having them represent their respective conditions. The emotional climax would have hit harder and felt less heavy-handed if the characters felt more human.
It's a pity that these ideas weren't conveyed more gracefully, because they're relevant to the times we live in, and a great many will relate to Satou because of what he represents. This is a book worth reading, but I find it far easier to recommend the superior anime adaptation, which spells things out far less often, and uses its runtime to go further with its social commentary and develop its characters adequately.
October 11, 2019
Four and a half stars.
This story, whether in its anime, manga or original novel format, has become a somewhat obscure cult classic that many of those familiar with other works don't even know, and many others, that haven't experienced to some degree the psychic pains the characters in this story have to live with, can't stomach it. When I read the manga (link to the first of its volumes I reviewed) I realized that the anime was a softer version of the manga version, and now that I've read the novel, which I'm currently reviewing, I realize that the manga was a much softer version of the original 2001 novel.
The story revolves around three main characters: Tatsuhiro Satou, a twenty two year old self professed hikikomori who was born with or developed early on some psychological peculiarities that caused him to spiral down since high school until he had to drop out of college during the first year, because his anxiety and paranoia had grown to the extent that he couldn't stand being near people. When we meet him he has spent his last four years holed up in a "six-mat one-room apartment", sustaining himself through the allowance his out of town parents send him. The second character is Misaki Nakahara, a mysterious eighteen year old girl that we meet through her Christian missionary job as she, along with her zealot aunt, happen to knock on Satou's door. The third character is Kaoru Yamazaki, a twenty one year old otaku with an extremely short fuse and a sexual predilection for elementary school girls.
In addition we have Satou's high school senpai Hitomi Kashiwa, whom he met through the literature club, where he spent a year playing cards with her and having weird conversations. Hitomi is portrayed as a model-like beauty but afflicted with something like a schizotypal personality disorder and self-destructive tendencies. Most conversations she had with Satou involved her going on about the conspiracies she detected in the world, and how disparate subjects were somehow connected. She was one of the most memorable elements of the manga and the anime, but I was surprised to discover that she barely had two fleshed out scenes in the original novel. That means that one of the best sequences of the anime/manga, where , is completely absent.
At its core this is a pitch-dark comedy, something like a less ambitious Japanese "Fight Club" (the movie came out just two years earlier), in which we follow outcasts who are unable, due to accidents of birth or casual circumstances, to find their place in society, and who constantly struggle to figure out how they are going to spend the rest of their lives, or if they are going to keep living at all.
The plot kicks in when Misaki, a mysterious missionary girl, pursues Satou into meeting each other regularly in a nearby park so he can participate in her project to rehabilitate hikikomori, a sort of people that the girl repeatedly refers to as the most worthless kind. Through Satou's efforts to adjust to this intrusion he experiences some progress. First he lies compulsively about his life to hide his pitiful state, something he does to some degree throughout the entire story, but watching his miserable life reflected on this girl, he . He realizes that his next door neighbor who blasts anime songs is none other than his high school pal Yamazaki, whom he met through attempting to save him from a beating that Yamazaki himself started. The guy wants to become an animator; .
Because Satou was trying to deceive Misaki into believing that he had a freelance job as a "creator", .
We go through several meetings between Satou and Misaki. They meet at night in a nearby park, and she shares passionately everything she has researched about self-help, psychological therapy and philosophy. Despite her earnestness, the author did a brilliant job depicting Misaki's at this point .
Satou and Yamazaki spend most of their time, and allowances, on drugs, mainly hallucinogens. This was completely absent in the anime probably because it would face a somewhat mainstream audience in television. The author goes on about the drugs they take with very technical details, and the believable and bizarre sequences in which both characters are drugged out of their minds suggest that the author was depicting his own experiences.
There are three sequences in the novel that are missing in the other versions of this story. All of them are risky, and likely were cut from the manga and anime because the editors involved in those industries are generally more touchy. In the first of those sequences, Satou, wanting to figure out once and for all if Misaki getting involved with him was just part of her missionary work, .
The second of those sequences involves Yamazaki .
In the third of these sequences, Satou and Yamazaki .
The story approaches enters its last stretch when Misaki .
By this point, Satou's parents hadn't been sending him allowance for a good while. Satou (big spoilers for the ending) .
Despite the events of the climax, .
The author's life didn't have a happy ending either. Although he's still alive, in his early forties, in an afterword to the novel he explains that he wrote it to get out of his hikikomori state, but five years later he still was one, living off royalties, and he hadn't found the strength to write anything else: whenever he attempted it he faced a terrible fear, as if he was going to commit himself to a mental institution, as if he had given himself some sort of PTSD through writing it. He hasn't written anything else in the close to fifteen years that have passed, which is a real tragedy.
I suspect the author of the masterful "Oyasumi Punpun" went through something similar, and, without comparing qualities, I experienced it as well after writing my last two books. The stories I'm most attracted to give you the sense that through them their authors had attempted to claw their way out of hell, and once they've gotten what they needed out of them, having "cured" themselves or not, attempting something similar again feels like torture.
I've exhausted the character limit for the review, but I might mention some other stuff in the comments.
This story, whether in its anime, manga or original novel format, has become a somewhat obscure cult classic that many of those familiar with other works don't even know, and many others, that haven't experienced to some degree the psychic pains the characters in this story have to live with, can't stomach it. When I read the manga (link to the first of its volumes I reviewed) I realized that the anime was a softer version of the manga version, and now that I've read the novel, which I'm currently reviewing, I realize that the manga was a much softer version of the original 2001 novel.
The story revolves around three main characters: Tatsuhiro Satou, a twenty two year old self professed hikikomori who was born with or developed early on some psychological peculiarities that caused him to spiral down since high school until he had to drop out of college during the first year, because his anxiety and paranoia had grown to the extent that he couldn't stand being near people. When we meet him he has spent his last four years holed up in a "six-mat one-room apartment", sustaining himself through the allowance his out of town parents send him. The second character is Misaki Nakahara, a mysterious eighteen year old girl that we meet through her Christian missionary job as she, along with her zealot aunt, happen to knock on Satou's door. The third character is Kaoru Yamazaki, a twenty one year old otaku with an extremely short fuse and a sexual predilection for elementary school girls.
In addition we have Satou's high school senpai Hitomi Kashiwa, whom he met through the literature club, where he spent a year playing cards with her and having weird conversations. Hitomi is portrayed as a model-like beauty but afflicted with something like a schizotypal personality disorder and self-destructive tendencies. Most conversations she had with Satou involved her going on about the conspiracies she detected in the world, and how disparate subjects were somehow connected. She was one of the most memorable elements of the manga and the anime, but I was surprised to discover that she barely had two fleshed out scenes in the original novel. That means that one of the best sequences of the anime/manga, where , is completely absent.
At its core this is a pitch-dark comedy, something like a less ambitious Japanese "Fight Club" (the movie came out just two years earlier), in which we follow outcasts who are unable, due to accidents of birth or casual circumstances, to find their place in society, and who constantly struggle to figure out how they are going to spend the rest of their lives, or if they are going to keep living at all.
The plot kicks in when Misaki, a mysterious missionary girl, pursues Satou into meeting each other regularly in a nearby park so he can participate in her project to rehabilitate hikikomori, a sort of people that the girl repeatedly refers to as the most worthless kind. Through Satou's efforts to adjust to this intrusion he experiences some progress. First he lies compulsively about his life to hide his pitiful state, something he does to some degree throughout the entire story, but watching his miserable life reflected on this girl, he . He realizes that his next door neighbor who blasts anime songs is none other than his high school pal Yamazaki, whom he met through attempting to save him from a beating that Yamazaki himself started. The guy wants to become an animator; .
Because Satou was trying to deceive Misaki into believing that he had a freelance job as a "creator", .
We go through several meetings between Satou and Misaki. They meet at night in a nearby park, and she shares passionately everything she has researched about self-help, psychological therapy and philosophy. Despite her earnestness, the author did a brilliant job depicting Misaki's at this point .
Satou and Yamazaki spend most of their time, and allowances, on drugs, mainly hallucinogens. This was completely absent in the anime probably because it would face a somewhat mainstream audience in television. The author goes on about the drugs they take with very technical details, and the believable and bizarre sequences in which both characters are drugged out of their minds suggest that the author was depicting his own experiences.
There are three sequences in the novel that are missing in the other versions of this story. All of them are risky, and likely were cut from the manga and anime because the editors involved in those industries are generally more touchy. In the first of those sequences, Satou, wanting to figure out once and for all if Misaki getting involved with him was just part of her missionary work, .
The second of those sequences involves Yamazaki .
In the third of these sequences, Satou and Yamazaki .
The story approaches enters its last stretch when Misaki .
By this point, Satou's parents hadn't been sending him allowance for a good while. Satou (big spoilers for the ending) .
Despite the events of the climax, .
The author's life didn't have a happy ending either. Although he's still alive, in his early forties, in an afterword to the novel he explains that he wrote it to get out of his hikikomori state, but five years later he still was one, living off royalties, and he hadn't found the strength to write anything else: whenever he attempted it he faced a terrible fear, as if he was going to commit himself to a mental institution, as if he had given himself some sort of PTSD through writing it. He hasn't written anything else in the close to fifteen years that have passed, which is a real tragedy.
I suspect the author of the masterful "Oyasumi Punpun" went through something similar, and, without comparing qualities, I experienced it as well after writing my last two books. The stories I'm most attracted to give you the sense that through them their authors had attempted to claw their way out of hell, and once they've gotten what they needed out of them, having "cured" themselves or not, attempting something similar again feels like torture.
I've exhausted the character limit for the review, but I might mention some other stuff in the comments.
December 11, 2020
"'I'm greedier than anyone. I don't want some half-assed happiness. I don't need some partial warmth. I want a happiness that goes on forever. That's impossible, though! I don't know why it is, but in this world, some interference is sure to come. Important things break right away. I've been alive for twenty-two years, and I know at least this much. It doesn't matter what the thing is, but it will break. That's why, from the beginning, it's better not to need anything.'" (192)
I first read this novel in 2012, when I was 18, and thus younger than Satou himself. I never really had any aspirations of besting Satou in my own life, as if it's ever reasonable to compete against a fictional character, and I guess I can say with misaimed pride that fallen lower than him, even if maybe that isn't true (for one, I graduated college, but, in fairness, I did kinda want to drop out; I didn't know you could just stop attending, and thought there were hoops you needed jumping through in order to officially drop out...). The funniest thing today is that I am now 26, eight years older than when I first read the book, and four years older than Satou. Funnier still is that I'm somewhat legitimately a hikikomori, as I've been furloughed from my job for reasons relating to the COVID-19 hullabaloo, and have opted to waste my life with so-called "reemployment assistance" rather than waste my life with a temporary job while awaiting my return to my real job. Less funny, perhaps, is the ease with which it seems any Japanese can just pick up random, odd part-time jobs, which seems way more fun than what I'm (not) doing right now, and ultimately I would prefer to just dick about with various different micro-jobs than pretend to give a shit about a "career,"... but I digress.
There's always been this weird meme or something on 4chan's /a/ where posters would lament the lack of a girl like Misaki to swoop in and save them from their hikikomori ways. As if these posters didn't finish reading the novel or the manga or watching the anime. I might support some inappropriate idealization of a Misaki, but not for her hikikomori rehabilitation facade. If anything, it would be for her second contract, but even this would be a bit dishonest, as I might wax lyrically about being dissatisfied in life, but I always consider myself far superior psychically than anybody else ever, and so cannot in good conscience lie about being inferior to a theoretic Misaki-type. In the most rudimentary sense, it feels often (from a distance) "easier" to deal with people like Misaki than to wear my Totally Normal Human Being mask too tight in the company of "regular" folk. Basically, I stopped thinking too much about anything "important" when I was like 14 so I mostly just flop into whatever requires the least amount of effort. One needn't try with a Misaki-type, as crude as it is to say. In one sense, one needn't "try" to be a good person, but more significantly one needn't "try" to be adequately "human" at all. Really works well if one suffers the particular fantasies prone to frequent Dazai readers (bonus points: this novel subtly references ol' Osamu's magnum opus), in the backward sense of willfully disqualifying oneself from humanity versus the alleged imposition thrust upon Dazai's Yozo. I guess, having tired myself wanking through the above semi-misanthropic sentences, the superior of Misaki's contract is truly her third, the joint "hostage" pact, but maybe mostly because I recently finished watching FX's You're the Worst which ends kinda similarly. It does no one any good to compare himself to Satou, but to divorce myself from the text wouldn't erase many of my idiosyncrasies, and at the end of the day it's plainly true that I will forever be too much of a fuckin' edgelord to lapse into more "traditional" partnerships, maybe. I don't know, I think I'm just having fun writing dickish things right now....
The truth about this novel is kinda hard to say: it's not really that well-written, and I basically only enjoy it because unhappy things happen. It's been so long since I've first read it that I simply cannot remember my original thoughts on the prose. I recall I read this book around the time I first read H. Murakami's Norwegian Wood, but that doesn't really mean anything because I don't remember which I preferred between the two, or even if I ever compared them at all. Re-reading it more recently, it just feels like a straight-up "light novel," but I don't know if it truly is, or if it's meant to be a "real" novel (it's ultimately better-written than most LNs, but also mostly because it's not just puerile genre fiction). The biggest issue were the frequent exclamation points in Satou's italicized inner thoughts, which felt maybe juvenile. General description lacked prosaic Beauty, but I was once again "moved" by certain passages near the novel's end, during which Satou flexes his sad-boner (see: the passage quoted above). To get extremely reductive, as well as self-deprecative, I might be amused enough by an incredibly short story that simply goes: "The man considered being dead, but changed his mind." Such a thing is a bit of a catch-all "log line" applicable to many books I enjoy, for better or worse. The same could be used as summary for this novel. I like this novel. Perhaps I am easily amused by many things that equate to the same central premise. To pre-emptively combat any accusations, I think there's not so much truthfully a deeper meaning to this interest, so much as it's just that it appears it is easier to make unhappy Art than to make happy Art (a lot of things I like that aren't woefully depressing are actual capital-R Romanticism, though, in fairness, I like e.g. William Wordsworth because his poetic description of idyllic England is infinitely more lovely than shithole contemporary America, and all my love of post-Romantic Hermann Hesse novels is because his pre-War Germany seems nicer than hideous post-War urbanization in the New World...). I'm maybe getting ahead of myself drawing parenthetical comparison between NHK and "real" literature, but I feel I have good reasons, which, if not clear in this text, are at least somewhat clear within my skull.
Anyway, a curious point about the novel versus its anime and manga adaptations is that the novel has rather explicit drug use that really sets it apart from most Japanese media. I feel the original novel is otherwise a little lacking compared to its adaptations, simply because it runs by too fast and Yamazaki and Satou's high-school senpai feel underutilized. The senpai basically exists just to loosely foreshadow Misaki's own suicidal tendencies, as well as to provide some sense of foil in her ability to forge something resembling a "normal" life. Yamazaki basically exists to keep the visual-novel analogy alive so Satou can reference "flags" and their game's ending in the story's climax - nothing wrong with this per se, just the novel probably could have worked without it all, and maybe have felt less like a light-novel with fewer anime/game references, if Takimoto so chose. I miss the suicide island from the anime adaptation, as well as the senpai's hikikomori brother who acts as better foil for Satou and Yamazaki alike by at the very least being way uglier than either man. Accordingly, I think the adaptations are a bit nicer for having Yamazaki fly too close to the sun when dating the girl from his college. The jump to his arranged marriage in the novel's end just feels like all Yamazaki's problems were solved with pussy, which is kinda stupid to me, but I guess it's realistic enough since it's been true for other people. Having said all this, I did feel compelled to increase playback speed for a few episodes near the anime's end when I first watched it because it felt like so much "filler." I'm thus more excited to re-read the manga, which I remember enjoying the most out of all three takes on the story, despite feeling like it had even more content than the anime (I recall, at least, that the manga dipped into a lower nadir for its principal cast's emotional states, whereas the anime felt like it didn't want to get too "dark" until adapting the novel's climax).
A fun point about my personal history with this novel is that I paid like $60 for it in 2012 because it was out of print, only to find new copies on Right Stuf some years later for like $18. In the meantime, TokyoPop revived itself, so I will choose to believe the book was comi out of print in 2012 and only went back in production later on. To justify my purchase. Disregarding that I used Right Stuf in like 2017 or '18 to buy the few missing volumes of the manga adaptation.
I still feel like an asshole that I couldn't see the cover illustration as Yoshitoshi ABe until Wikipedia pointed it out to me some years back.
I first read this novel in 2012, when I was 18, and thus younger than Satou himself. I never really had any aspirations of besting Satou in my own life, as if it's ever reasonable to compete against a fictional character, and I guess I can say with misaimed pride that fallen lower than him, even if maybe that isn't true (for one, I graduated college, but, in fairness, I did kinda want to drop out; I didn't know you could just stop attending, and thought there were hoops you needed jumping through in order to officially drop out...). The funniest thing today is that I am now 26, eight years older than when I first read the book, and four years older than Satou. Funnier still is that I'm somewhat legitimately a hikikomori, as I've been furloughed from my job for reasons relating to the COVID-19 hullabaloo, and have opted to waste my life with so-called "reemployment assistance" rather than waste my life with a temporary job while awaiting my return to my real job. Less funny, perhaps, is the ease with which it seems any Japanese can just pick up random, odd part-time jobs, which seems way more fun than what I'm (not) doing right now, and ultimately I would prefer to just dick about with various different micro-jobs than pretend to give a shit about a "career,"... but I digress.
There's always been this weird meme or something on 4chan's /a/ where posters would lament the lack of a girl like Misaki to swoop in and save them from their hikikomori ways. As if these posters didn't finish reading the novel or the manga or watching the anime. I might support some inappropriate idealization of a Misaki, but not for her hikikomori rehabilitation facade. If anything, it would be for her second contract, but even this would be a bit dishonest, as I might wax lyrically about being dissatisfied in life, but I always consider myself far superior psychically than anybody else ever, and so cannot in good conscience lie about being inferior to a theoretic Misaki-type. In the most rudimentary sense, it feels often (from a distance) "easier" to deal with people like Misaki than to wear my Totally Normal Human Being mask too tight in the company of "regular" folk. Basically, I stopped thinking too much about anything "important" when I was like 14 so I mostly just flop into whatever requires the least amount of effort. One needn't try with a Misaki-type, as crude as it is to say. In one sense, one needn't "try" to be a good person, but more significantly one needn't "try" to be adequately "human" at all. Really works well if one suffers the particular fantasies prone to frequent Dazai readers (bonus points: this novel subtly references ol' Osamu's magnum opus), in the backward sense of willfully disqualifying oneself from humanity versus the alleged imposition thrust upon Dazai's Yozo. I guess, having tired myself wanking through the above semi-misanthropic sentences, the superior of Misaki's contract is truly her third, the joint "hostage" pact, but maybe mostly because I recently finished watching FX's You're the Worst which ends kinda similarly. It does no one any good to compare himself to Satou, but to divorce myself from the text wouldn't erase many of my idiosyncrasies, and at the end of the day it's plainly true that I will forever be too much of a fuckin' edgelord to lapse into more "traditional" partnerships, maybe. I don't know, I think I'm just having fun writing dickish things right now....
The truth about this novel is kinda hard to say: it's not really that well-written, and I basically only enjoy it because unhappy things happen. It's been so long since I've first read it that I simply cannot remember my original thoughts on the prose. I recall I read this book around the time I first read H. Murakami's Norwegian Wood, but that doesn't really mean anything because I don't remember which I preferred between the two, or even if I ever compared them at all. Re-reading it more recently, it just feels like a straight-up "light novel," but I don't know if it truly is, or if it's meant to be a "real" novel (it's ultimately better-written than most LNs, but also mostly because it's not just puerile genre fiction). The biggest issue were the frequent exclamation points in Satou's italicized inner thoughts, which felt maybe juvenile. General description lacked prosaic Beauty, but I was once again "moved" by certain passages near the novel's end, during which Satou flexes his sad-boner (see: the passage quoted above). To get extremely reductive, as well as self-deprecative, I might be amused enough by an incredibly short story that simply goes: "The man considered being dead, but changed his mind." Such a thing is a bit of a catch-all "log line" applicable to many books I enjoy, for better or worse. The same could be used as summary for this novel. I like this novel. Perhaps I am easily amused by many things that equate to the same central premise. To pre-emptively combat any accusations, I think there's not so much truthfully a deeper meaning to this interest, so much as it's just that it appears it is easier to make unhappy Art than to make happy Art (a lot of things I like that aren't woefully depressing are actual capital-R Romanticism, though, in fairness, I like e.g. William Wordsworth because his poetic description of idyllic England is infinitely more lovely than shithole contemporary America, and all my love of post-Romantic Hermann Hesse novels is because his pre-War Germany seems nicer than hideous post-War urbanization in the New World...). I'm maybe getting ahead of myself drawing parenthetical comparison between NHK and "real" literature, but I feel I have good reasons, which, if not clear in this text, are at least somewhat clear within my skull.
Anyway, a curious point about the novel versus its anime and manga adaptations is that the novel has rather explicit drug use that really sets it apart from most Japanese media. I feel the original novel is otherwise a little lacking compared to its adaptations, simply because it runs by too fast and Yamazaki and Satou's high-school senpai feel underutilized. The senpai basically exists just to loosely foreshadow Misaki's own suicidal tendencies, as well as to provide some sense of foil in her ability to forge something resembling a "normal" life. Yamazaki basically exists to keep the visual-novel analogy alive so Satou can reference "flags" and their game's ending in the story's climax - nothing wrong with this per se, just the novel probably could have worked without it all, and maybe have felt less like a light-novel with fewer anime/game references, if Takimoto so chose. I miss the suicide island from the anime adaptation, as well as the senpai's hikikomori brother who acts as better foil for Satou and Yamazaki alike by at the very least being way uglier than either man. Accordingly, I think the adaptations are a bit nicer for having Yamazaki fly too close to the sun when dating the girl from his college. The jump to his arranged marriage in the novel's end just feels like all Yamazaki's problems were solved with pussy, which is kinda stupid to me, but I guess it's realistic enough since it's been true for other people. Having said all this, I did feel compelled to increase playback speed for a few episodes near the anime's end when I first watched it because it felt like so much "filler." I'm thus more excited to re-read the manga, which I remember enjoying the most out of all three takes on the story, despite feeling like it had even more content than the anime (I recall, at least, that the manga dipped into a lower nadir for its principal cast's emotional states, whereas the anime felt like it didn't want to get too "dark" until adapting the novel's climax).
A fun point about my personal history with this novel is that I paid like $60 for it in 2012 because it was out of print, only to find new copies on Right Stuf some years later for like $18. In the meantime, TokyoPop revived itself, so I will choose to believe the book was comi out of print in 2012 and only went back in production later on. To justify my purchase. Disregarding that I used Right Stuf in like 2017 or '18 to buy the few missing volumes of the manga adaptation.
I still feel like an asshole that I couldn't see the cover illustration as Yoshitoshi ABe until Wikipedia pointed it out to me some years back.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 12, 2019
Hikikomori: A japán egészségügyi minisztérium hivatalosan is definiálta a fogalmat; minden olyan személy, aki elzárkózik otthonába, és több mint 6 hónapig fenntartja ezt az állapotot. Az emberektől, emberi kontaktustól, az esetleges negatív reakcióktól való félelem helyett a biztonságérzetet, a külvilág kizárását választják.
A másik ember kockázatot jelent. Megnyílni bárkinek, aki nem én vagyok, a világ legveszedelmesebb feladata. Mert mi van ha… BÁNT? Maszkot kell húzni. Vagy ami még jobb: el kell bújni.
Be kell csukni az ajtót. Be kell húzni a függönyt. Zenét kell betenni, szóljon valami, ne legyen csönd! A rajzfilmek, a sorozatok, a vámpíros-romantikus könyvek sokkal jobbak, mint a valódi élet! Ha megteremtem az ideális világot, ott senki sem bánthat! A saját világomban nem eshet bajom!
Csak ne kellene folyton gondolkodni…
Gyermekként oly' egyszerű minden. A szeretet magától értetődik, nem kell küzdeni érte. A világ egyszerű, a kertkaputól a mászókáig terjed, a legnagyobb fájdalom pedig az, ha lehorzsoljuk a térdünket.
A világ azonban mintegy húsz év után kinyílik, és ha nem vigyázunk, belebámulhatunk valódi arcába.
Nem hogy nem mi vagyunk a középpontja, de egyenesen érdektelenek vagyunk a szemében. Porszemnél is apróbb teremtmények, pontok a nyüzsgésben, egy a hétmilliárdból.
És nem járnak dolgok csak azért, mert.
Satou, a regény főhőse a hat-tatamis, egyszobás albérletében reszket már negyedik éve. Életét az animék, az internet, a virtuális valóság tölti ki. Hetente egyszer jár ki, az éjszaka közepén, akkor is csak kajáért és cigiért a sarki boltba. Úgy hiszi magáról, hogy megtalálta a megoldást. Végső soron mindenki egyedül van: Nem jobb ez akkor így?
Csakhogy, mint sokakat, őt is gyötrik a kérdések.
Miért? Miért vagyok csóró? Miért nincs barátnőm? Miért szar az életem? Kinek a hibája ez az egész?
Talán az enyém? Nem… az nem lehet, ÉN semmiben nem vagyok hibás! ÉN mindent jól csinálok! Biztos… biztos… van egy gonosz összeesküvés, sötét háttérhatalmak szövetkeztek ELLENEM, miattuk nem találom a boldogságot, miattuk nem élhetem úgy az életemet, ahogy akarom! Ezért meg kell fizetniük!
És megszületik a katona, akinek egyetlen célja: Legyőzni az NHK-t, a gonosz szervezetet, ami ugyan a japán közszolgálati műsorelosztónak álcázza magát, de Satou tudja, hogy valójában az egyetlen célja; tönkretenni a fiatalok életét.
A regény a mániákus depresszió és az eszkapizmus legmocskosabb mélységeibe kalauzol, ahol dizájnerdrogok, keményvonalas nőgyülölet, lolicon erogémü és egy huszonegyedik századi Humbert Humbert vár…
Remek regény a felelősségvállalásról, a problémákkal való szembenézésről, és a véget nem érő, ám legalább tünetileg kezelhető szenvedésről, amit egyesek úgy is neveznek: élet.
Kemény, mint a k*rvaélet…
Mondtam már, hogy nagyszerű?
A másik ember kockázatot jelent. Megnyílni bárkinek, aki nem én vagyok, a világ legveszedelmesebb feladata. Mert mi van ha… BÁNT? Maszkot kell húzni. Vagy ami még jobb: el kell bújni.
Be kell csukni az ajtót. Be kell húzni a függönyt. Zenét kell betenni, szóljon valami, ne legyen csönd! A rajzfilmek, a sorozatok, a vámpíros-romantikus könyvek sokkal jobbak, mint a valódi élet! Ha megteremtem az ideális világot, ott senki sem bánthat! A saját világomban nem eshet bajom!
Csak ne kellene folyton gondolkodni…
Gyermekként oly' egyszerű minden. A szeretet magától értetődik, nem kell küzdeni érte. A világ egyszerű, a kertkaputól a mászókáig terjed, a legnagyobb fájdalom pedig az, ha lehorzsoljuk a térdünket.
A világ azonban mintegy húsz év után kinyílik, és ha nem vigyázunk, belebámulhatunk valódi arcába.
Nem hogy nem mi vagyunk a középpontja, de egyenesen érdektelenek vagyunk a szemében. Porszemnél is apróbb teremtmények, pontok a nyüzsgésben, egy a hétmilliárdból.
És nem járnak dolgok csak azért, mert.
Satou, a regény főhőse a hat-tatamis, egyszobás albérletében reszket már negyedik éve. Életét az animék, az internet, a virtuális valóság tölti ki. Hetente egyszer jár ki, az éjszaka közepén, akkor is csak kajáért és cigiért a sarki boltba. Úgy hiszi magáról, hogy megtalálta a megoldást. Végső soron mindenki egyedül van: Nem jobb ez akkor így?
Csakhogy, mint sokakat, őt is gyötrik a kérdések.
Miért? Miért vagyok csóró? Miért nincs barátnőm? Miért szar az életem? Kinek a hibája ez az egész?
Talán az enyém? Nem… az nem lehet, ÉN semmiben nem vagyok hibás! ÉN mindent jól csinálok! Biztos… biztos… van egy gonosz összeesküvés, sötét háttérhatalmak szövetkeztek ELLENEM, miattuk nem találom a boldogságot, miattuk nem élhetem úgy az életemet, ahogy akarom! Ezért meg kell fizetniük!
És megszületik a katona, akinek egyetlen célja: Legyőzni az NHK-t, a gonosz szervezetet, ami ugyan a japán közszolgálati műsorelosztónak álcázza magát, de Satou tudja, hogy valójában az egyetlen célja; tönkretenni a fiatalok életét.
A regény a mániákus depresszió és az eszkapizmus legmocskosabb mélységeibe kalauzol, ahol dizájnerdrogok, keményvonalas nőgyülölet, lolicon erogémü és egy huszonegyedik századi Humbert Humbert vár…
Remek regény a felelősségvállalásról, a problémákkal való szembenézésről, és a véget nem érő, ám legalább tünetileg kezelhető szenvedésről, amit egyesek úgy is neveznek: élet.
Kemény, mint a k*rvaélet…
Mondtam már, hogy nagyszerű?
September 23, 2024
Me gustó, me gustó. Esperaba más comedia al inicio la verdad, me reí harto igual, pero la temática es mucho más profunda. Te describe muy bien lo que vive la juventud en l sociedad de esa época y en la describe hoy en día un poco igual. La importancia de tener algo claro sí o sí, de saber qué de quiere en la vida y todo eso. Cosas que hoy en día importan, pero no son tan cuestionadas y está claro que provocan mucha ansiedad, depresión y más cosas.
Siento que los personajes están muy bien armados. Me gustó caleta que se viera sumergido en todo lo que le mostraban porque que wea más real.
La temática lolicon está durísima, pero yo creo que en parte choca porque realmente se escucha mucho.
Siento que los personajes están muy bien armados. Me gustó caleta que se viera sumergido en todo lo que le mostraban porque que wea más real.
La temática lolicon está durísima, pero yo creo que en parte choca porque realmente se escucha mucho.
November 24, 2024
Genuinely a lot funnier in novel form than I expected
February 25, 2014
For a second, she raised her parasol and looked directly into my face. She was smiling brightly. It was an adorable, mocking smile. And I wanted to die.
In this world, conspiracies exist.
The most powerful one, concocted by the NHK, drives ordinary people to shut themselves off from society, destined to live in six-mat, one room apartments forever.
Having initially watched and thoroughly enjoyed the anime, I knew what I was getting into when I started reading Welcome to the NHK. I wondered to myself whether the book could reach the same level of sheer greatness the anime reached and, I am happy to say, it did.
There’s a certain biting humour to the novel which I really enjoyed. As we follow twenty-two (or twenty?) year old Satou through his journey as a hikikomori, we get a rare inside look into just how shut-ins from Japan (and ones the world over) live, and what exactly that’s like.
As a writer myself, I have hikikomori tendencies just like Satou, and really felt empathetic for him right from the get go. That biting humour mentioned above is used to great effect here and helps to not make the book deeply depressive in nature. But, understandably and thankfully, there’s enough heart here to really make one think at large about topics such as loneliness and death, and the suffering all humans feel essentially all the time.
There were many moments during my read through where I had to stop and take a moment, not out of sadness or such, but because of how stunning – literally – some pieces of the story and how it was written were.
With that said, this is a translation from Japanese, and though for the most part it’s pulled off amazingly well, here and there the fact this is a translation does make itself apparent.
But, seriously, some incredibly stunning and affecting pieces of writing here. Not to mention, I found myself eager to keep reading, and managed to clock this off within two days. It’s a page-turner for sure, one I’ll no doubt go back to for the memorable characters, truthful story and laugh-out-loud humour.
But I can’t extract from my mind the memorable characters in Welcome to the NHK. They’re memorable in the anime, but just as much here in the novel. Lolicon and Otaku, Yamazaki, is one of my favourites, and there’s some really great moments like the drug-trip he and Satou go on (not in the anime) that I thought were really well done.
The two attempt to create an erotic game (or ‘gal game’) and while not as prominent in the novel and slightly different to the anime, is also intriguing and definitely humour-striking. The end level to the gal game that Satou plays – where the only way to defeat the boss is through self-sacrifice – is surprisingly touching while tying in nicely to the ending with Misaki on the cliff.
I feel, that in this day and age, what with technology and how human beings live nowadays, that hikikomori are a lot more common than we as a society would like to think. The author, Tatsuhiko Takimoto blatantly states that he lives with this problem on a day-to-day basis, and it really shows throughout the novel.
Despite the truly funny humour present almost throughout, I couldn’t help feeling a pressing, looming sadness while reading Welcome to the NHK. It’s not so much tear-jerky sadness, as it is stunning-sadness as mentioned above. The type of sadness one can only convey after having been through an intense period of grief, one that – in Satou’s words – will be present until the dying day.
With a few bits of the translation aside, I found this to be an outstanding read. It has enough on its own merits to stand next to the anime. In fact, I would recommend watching/reading both, as there’s enough deviation and creativity in both to satisfy the eager NHK fan and casual reader alike.
Make no mistake, I am no Otaku whatsoever. I hadn’t even watched an anime or read a Japanese-translated novel before Welcome to the NHK, and I still found this story to be profound and affecting in a deep way. A truly incredible read for … really anyone interested in an interesting character-driven novel.
In this world, conspiracies exist.
The most powerful one, concocted by the NHK, drives ordinary people to shut themselves off from society, destined to live in six-mat, one room apartments forever.
Having initially watched and thoroughly enjoyed the anime, I knew what I was getting into when I started reading Welcome to the NHK. I wondered to myself whether the book could reach the same level of sheer greatness the anime reached and, I am happy to say, it did.
There’s a certain biting humour to the novel which I really enjoyed. As we follow twenty-two (or twenty?) year old Satou through his journey as a hikikomori, we get a rare inside look into just how shut-ins from Japan (and ones the world over) live, and what exactly that’s like.
As a writer myself, I have hikikomori tendencies just like Satou, and really felt empathetic for him right from the get go. That biting humour mentioned above is used to great effect here and helps to not make the book deeply depressive in nature. But, understandably and thankfully, there’s enough heart here to really make one think at large about topics such as loneliness and death, and the suffering all humans feel essentially all the time.
There were many moments during my read through where I had to stop and take a moment, not out of sadness or such, but because of how stunning – literally – some pieces of the story and how it was written were.
With that said, this is a translation from Japanese, and though for the most part it’s pulled off amazingly well, here and there the fact this is a translation does make itself apparent.
But, seriously, some incredibly stunning and affecting pieces of writing here. Not to mention, I found myself eager to keep reading, and managed to clock this off within two days. It’s a page-turner for sure, one I’ll no doubt go back to for the memorable characters, truthful story and laugh-out-loud humour.
But I can’t extract from my mind the memorable characters in Welcome to the NHK. They’re memorable in the anime, but just as much here in the novel. Lolicon and Otaku, Yamazaki, is one of my favourites, and there’s some really great moments like the drug-trip he and Satou go on (not in the anime) that I thought were really well done.
The two attempt to create an erotic game (or ‘gal game’) and while not as prominent in the novel and slightly different to the anime, is also intriguing and definitely humour-striking. The end level to the gal game that Satou plays – where the only way to defeat the boss is through self-sacrifice – is surprisingly touching while tying in nicely to the ending with Misaki on the cliff.
I feel, that in this day and age, what with technology and how human beings live nowadays, that hikikomori are a lot more common than we as a society would like to think. The author, Tatsuhiko Takimoto blatantly states that he lives with this problem on a day-to-day basis, and it really shows throughout the novel.
Despite the truly funny humour present almost throughout, I couldn’t help feeling a pressing, looming sadness while reading Welcome to the NHK. It’s not so much tear-jerky sadness, as it is stunning-sadness as mentioned above. The type of sadness one can only convey after having been through an intense period of grief, one that – in Satou’s words – will be present until the dying day.
With a few bits of the translation aside, I found this to be an outstanding read. It has enough on its own merits to stand next to the anime. In fact, I would recommend watching/reading both, as there’s enough deviation and creativity in both to satisfy the eager NHK fan and casual reader alike.
Make no mistake, I am no Otaku whatsoever. I hadn’t even watched an anime or read a Japanese-translated novel before Welcome to the NHK, and I still found this story to be profound and affecting in a deep way. A truly incredible read for … really anyone interested in an interesting character-driven novel.
May 19, 2008
So what makes a college student drop out and shut himself away from the rest of society? According to Satou, it’s because of a conspiracy perpetrated by the Japanese TV broadcast company N.H.K.
Satou becomes one of the growing number of hikikomori — agoraphobes — after his persecution complex kicks into high gear. He sits alone in his tiny one-room apartment, rarely venturing into the outside world. He really does want to overcome his status as a worthless, noncontributing member of society, but “they” won’t allow him to. So he drinks, consumes cocktails of (legal) drugs and curses his neighbor for blaring anime theme songs day and night.
Turns out, though, that the neighbor is a former schoolmate with a creepy obsession for lolita-hentai games. But at least now he has someone to get wasted with.
Misaki, a pretty girl used as a lure by her Bible-thumping aunt, wants to help Satou overcome his hikikomori ways — except she couldn’t care less about her aunt’s religion. She makes Satou her special project.
The fact that “Welcome to the N.H.K.” was written by an actual hikikomori lends the manic, paranoid musings credibility. First-person is the perfect perspective for the inner uncoilings of Satou’s mind. His despair, self-loathing and desperation somehow teeter the line of dark humor and tragedy. Even though it’s fiction, it comes off as an unfiltered look inside the mind of a mentally ill person trying to break out of his psychological prison.
It’s an absorbing story, and fans of the manga and anime, which spawned from the novel, absolutely must give it a read.
Satou becomes one of the growing number of hikikomori — agoraphobes — after his persecution complex kicks into high gear. He sits alone in his tiny one-room apartment, rarely venturing into the outside world. He really does want to overcome his status as a worthless, noncontributing member of society, but “they” won’t allow him to. So he drinks, consumes cocktails of (legal) drugs and curses his neighbor for blaring anime theme songs day and night.
Turns out, though, that the neighbor is a former schoolmate with a creepy obsession for lolita-hentai games. But at least now he has someone to get wasted with.
Misaki, a pretty girl used as a lure by her Bible-thumping aunt, wants to help Satou overcome his hikikomori ways — except she couldn’t care less about her aunt’s religion. She makes Satou her special project.
The fact that “Welcome to the N.H.K.” was written by an actual hikikomori lends the manic, paranoid musings credibility. First-person is the perfect perspective for the inner uncoilings of Satou’s mind. His despair, self-loathing and desperation somehow teeter the line of dark humor and tragedy. Even though it’s fiction, it comes off as an unfiltered look inside the mind of a mentally ill person trying to break out of his psychological prison.
It’s an absorbing story, and fans of the manga and anime, which spawned from the novel, absolutely must give it a read.
March 3, 2014
"We're people, so it's painful."
The subjects of this book weren’t really joyful, still I wouldn’t say the atmosphere was gloomy, so it wasn’t one of those books you shouldn’t be reading if you’re depressed because it could make you even more depressed. In fact, it could even give you some insight on your situation (or rather, on life in general).
"Who in the world are we, anyway? If I could answer that question, maybe our destination would change."
I don’t think the characters really come to terms with that question, they seem more interested in how to survive it, which is what makes them look more real than ever: their feelings are raw and sharp, when they’re suffering, they’re stuck and there’s nowhere else to go.
At first, the ending left me somewhat unsatisfied, and I realized it would have been interesting to read Misaki’s POV, but I know now that this wasn’t the point of the book. The point was: how on earth, among all the suffering and the despair, can you make the word “hope” not look so empty? Well, you can dwell in drug-induced epiphanies, you can obsess over the creation of an erotic RPG, or you can find relief in another person. But what if that other person is hurting more than you? Well, I guess that when you’re lost, even their despair would look like a good enough anchor. So if you don’t know where you’re going, at least now you know where to start.
The subjects of this book weren’t really joyful, still I wouldn’t say the atmosphere was gloomy, so it wasn’t one of those books you shouldn’t be reading if you’re depressed because it could make you even more depressed. In fact, it could even give you some insight on your situation (or rather, on life in general).
"Who in the world are we, anyway? If I could answer that question, maybe our destination would change."
I don’t think the characters really come to terms with that question, they seem more interested in how to survive it, which is what makes them look more real than ever: their feelings are raw and sharp, when they’re suffering, they’re stuck and there’s nowhere else to go.
At first, the ending left me somewhat unsatisfied, and I realized it would have been interesting to read Misaki’s POV, but I know now that this wasn’t the point of the book. The point was: how on earth, among all the suffering and the despair, can you make the word “hope” not look so empty? Well, you can dwell in drug-induced epiphanies, you can obsess over the creation of an erotic RPG, or you can find relief in another person. But what if that other person is hurting more than you? Well, I guess that when you’re lost, even their despair would look like a good enough anchor. So if you don’t know where you’re going, at least now you know where to start.
December 5, 2017
"I'm greedier than anyone. I don't want some half-assed happiness I
don't need some partial warmth. I want a happiness that goes on forever.
That's impossible, though! I don't know why it is, but in this world,
some interference is sure to come. Important things break right away.
I've been alive for twenty-two years, and I know at least this much. It
doesn't matter what the thing is, but it will break. That's why, from the
beginning, it's better not to need anything."
November 13, 2024
La contradicción fundamental de la que da cuenta esta novela, es la soledad en la que caen las personas a pesar de (o a propósito de ) vivir en una megalópolis de millones de habitantes como lo es Tokio. Este fenómeno -el de los hikikomori- está en el centro de este relato plagado de humor negro, de excesos y decadencia, pero también de profunda tristeza y desesperanza, presentados como una consecuencia poco clara de una estructura social y familiar que se presenta como una dialéctica constante a una sociedad hipermoderna y que produce estragos en aquellas personas que no logran encajar del todo en este, en apariencia, mecanismo perfecto y aceitado.
La sociedad japonesa, alta en contrastes, a veces puede parecernos una distopía, pero para muchos de sus habitantes resulta, más bien, el día a día.
Nota aparte resulta la espectacular edición, cuidada en los detalles y con una traducción realmente maravillosa, sin que llame la atención con estructuras extrañas o traduciendo palabras o conceptos que, a fin de cuentas, mejor explicar con una elegante nota al pie de página.
La sociedad japonesa, alta en contrastes, a veces puede parecernos una distopía, pero para muchos de sus habitantes resulta, más bien, el día a día.
Nota aparte resulta la espectacular edición, cuidada en los detalles y con una traducción realmente maravillosa, sin que llame la atención con estructuras extrañas o traduciendo palabras o conceptos que, a fin de cuentas, mejor explicar con una elegante nota al pie de página.
July 2, 2020
This novel is peculiar in alienated individual literature because the main character is completely worthless. He doesn't have a good reason (e.g., traumatic past, physical or mental disability) to be as hopeless as he is, and nor does he have the inclination to share his perversity with others (e.g., drugs-dealers, prostitutes, or other degenerates). He is supremely alienated ; he has only the bare minimum social connections. (His two friends are more like parts of his superego than real people. Various media are surrogate connections.)
From what I can tell the original text needs a general edit, and the translation could have done with one too – lots of typos. The plot jumps around a few times when the main character's senior from high-school appears; it's hard not to compare and confuse the book with the animated adaptation, especially when it comes to this character: she's much more present in the adaptation; in the book she doesn't even have any direct speech. The biggest problem with this book though is the character of the mysterious girl that decides to befriend the main character. She enters his life in an unbelievable way. The author does draw some attention to this in the story, and tries to complicate matters by making the girl as troubled as the main character but in the end she is a wish fulfilled for him. People do try to help others, or escape themselves in someone else, but they never do it so deliberately or systematically, and never with a stranger. And yet this plot device of a character - and she's not much more important than the other devices - the drug-use and conspiracy theory - adds an energy without which the story would be as lethargic as Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human. This type of character is standard in these type of books in japan called light novels, but this book should be judged on the surprising extent to which is rises above this genre. And the plot that the devices are moving along is good: a shut-in trying to better himself, and musing and raving profoundly on life's contradictions. Like No Longer Human it's real because autobiographical, but it has more humor than that book and it's more hopeful. Compare the fates of the two authors.
From what I can tell the original text needs a general edit, and the translation could have done with one too – lots of typos. The plot jumps around a few times when the main character's senior from high-school appears; it's hard not to compare and confuse the book with the animated adaptation, especially when it comes to this character: she's much more present in the adaptation; in the book she doesn't even have any direct speech. The biggest problem with this book though is the character of the mysterious girl that decides to befriend the main character. She enters his life in an unbelievable way. The author does draw some attention to this in the story, and tries to complicate matters by making the girl as troubled as the main character but in the end she is a wish fulfilled for him. People do try to help others, or escape themselves in someone else, but they never do it so deliberately or systematically, and never with a stranger. And yet this plot device of a character - and she's not much more important than the other devices - the drug-use and conspiracy theory - adds an energy without which the story would be as lethargic as Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human. This type of character is standard in these type of books in japan called light novels, but this book should be judged on the surprising extent to which is rises above this genre. And the plot that the devices are moving along is good: a shut-in trying to better himself, and musing and raving profoundly on life's contradictions. Like No Longer Human it's real because autobiographical, but it has more humor than that book and it's more hopeful. Compare the fates of the two authors.
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