One day, a girl appears in his life and promises him that she will make it her project to turn him back into a normal person, resulting in a series of crazy, hilarious and sexually-charged incidents.

So, NHK episode 1 has finally aired. I had been looking forward to the series and now that here are my thoughts after watching the first episode.

I loved the manga, so I’ll mainly be comparing the anime to the manga.

It seems like GONZO is trying to do something different with the series and I’m not sure if I like it. Satou’s hallucinations, which took like… one page in the manga, took up almost half the first episode. Because GONZO is trying so hard to depict the psychological events taking place in Satou’s mind, there wasn’t really any part in the first episode that was really funny. I thought that the opening scene was totally unnecessary.

The pace of the show is significantly slower than that of the manga, giving it a more serious tone. This may or may not be a bad thing, but I personally prefer the crazy pacing of the manga. The timeline of the story has also been slightly altered, such that Satou’s meeting with Misaki in the park fits into the first episode. Again, I’m not sure if this means anything for the rest of the story.

GONZO has also added some gimmicks (like that weird purple thingy) into the show, similar to how the Genshiken anime places more emphasis on Kujibiki Unbalance than its manga. I can’t say for sure, but so far it doesn’t seem to be doing much for the series. I just don’t see any 2chan cults forming around that little purple thing anytime soon.

Well I guess the main complaint I have with the series is that it feels so different from the manga. Genshiken anime was not exactly the same as the manga either, but the two had the same feel. It’s hard to describe, but I think it has something to do with the fact that GONZO is placing so much emphasis on Satou’s weird psychedelic fantasies and not enough on the story.

That said, I don’t completely dislike the first episode. I like the second half of it and the voice for Misaki-chan is, contary to my expectations, not bad. I just hope that the series will pick up its pace soon.

The story is about Tatsuhiro Satou, a hikikomori, and the girl who makes it her “project” to turn him back into a normal man, Misaki Nakahara. In Japan, there’s a segment of the population known as the hikikomori (引き篭り). They are unemployed people who are afraid of or do not like coming into contact with others, or to put it simply people who suffer from acute social withdrawal. These cases are usually school dropouts and they are often associated with addiction to manga, anime and games.

Of course, although it uses a real social issue as its theme, this is a comedy after all. Gags poke fun at the stereotypical akiba-kei and yet often involve in-jokes about anime and ero-games (逃げちゃダメ逃げちゃダメ逃げちゃダメ), which means that akiba-kei are probably the ones who can appreciate them best. Delicious.

And as for the title… NHK, or Nippon Hikikomori Kyoukai is an organization that Tatsuhiro imagines to be the one responsible for turning him into a hikikomori. He also believes that the NHK (you know, the TV station) is a secret front for this conspiracy against him.