I want to talk about an anime that I watched for the first time when I was about seventeen, and that has stayed with me ever since. It’s called Welcome to the NHK (NHK ni Youkoso!), and it’s one of the most honest, uncomfortable, and ultimately beautiful stories I’ve ever experienced.

This is going to be a personal post. Fair warning (´・ω・`)

What is NHK about?

On the surface, Welcome to the NHK is a dark comedy about Satou Tatsuhiro, a 22-year-old college dropout who has become a hikikomori — someone who has withdrawn from society and barely leaves their apartment. He spends his days sleeping, watching late-night anime, and constructing elaborate conspiracy theories about why his life turned out the way it did.

One day, a mysterious girl named Misaki appears at his door and claims she can cure him of his hikikomori lifestyle through a secret “project.” What follows is a story that oscillates wildly between absurd comedy and genuinely heartbreaking drama.

Satou tries to become a game developer (and fails). He gets pulled into a multi-level marketing scheme (and fails). He develops an unhealthy obsession with a MMORPG (and… you see the pattern). Every arc is about Satou grasping at something that might give his life meaning, and watching it slip through his fingers.

It sounds depressing. And it is, sometimes. But it’s also incredibly funny, weirdly hopeful, and disarmingly honest about what it feels like to be stuck.

Why it hit so hard (╥_╥)

When I first watched NHK, I was in a weird place. I was a teenager who spent most of his time in front of a computer. I had friends, I went to school, I wasn’t a hikikomori by any stretch. But there was something in Satou’s inner monologue that resonated with me in a way no other fictional character had before.

The anxiety. The overthinking. The feeling that everyone else had figured out how to be a person, and you were somehow faking it. The way he would build up the courage to do something normal — like going to a convenience store — and then feel completely drained afterward.

I recognized those feelings. Not at his extreme level, but the seed was there. And seeing them depicted so honestly, without glamorization or easy answers, made me feel… seen? Is that too dramatic? Maybe. But at seventeen, feeling understood by a piece of media can feel life-changing (｡•́︿•̀｡)

The lesson that stuck with me

NHK doesn’t offer a clean resolution. Satou doesn’t “get cured.” He doesn’t suddenly become confident and successful. The ending is messy and imperfect, much like real life.

But there’s a moment near the end that I think about often. Without spoiling too much: Satou eventually realizes that there is no grand conspiracy keeping him trapped. There’s no NHK (Nihon Hikikomori Kyokai) pulling the strings. The only thing keeping him in his apartment is… himself.

And the solution isn’t some dramatic revelation or motivational speech. It’s much simpler and more painful:

You just have to keep going. One small step at a time. Even when it’s hard. Even when you don’t want to. Even when you feel like it doesn’t matter.

That sounds like a cliché, but NHK earns it by spending 24 episodes showing you just how difficult “one small step” can be for someone who’s struggling. It doesn’t minimize the difficulty. It acknowledges it, and then says: do it anyway.

What I took from it ⊂(◉‿◉)つ

Watching NHK at seventeen planted a few ideas in my head that I carry with me to this day:

It’s okay to struggle. Not in a toxic positivity way. More like: struggling doesn’t make you broken. It makes you human. Satou is a mess, and the show loves him anyway.

Isolation is comfortable but dangerous. The comfort of staying in your room, avoiding social contact, retreating into games and anime and the Internet — NHK shows how that comfort slowly turns into a prison. I recognized early on that I had tendencies toward isolation, and being aware of it helped me fight it.

Connection saves you. For all the show’s cynicism, its core message is about human connection. Satou’s relationship with Misaki is complicated and sometimes unhealthy, but it’s the thread that keeps pulling him back into the world. We need other people, even when we convince ourselves we don’t.

Small actions matter. Going outside. Cooking a meal. Replying to a message. Writing a line of code. These tiny acts of participation in life might seem insignificant, but they compound. NHK taught me that progress doesn’t need to be dramatic to be real.

Rewatching it as an adult

I rewatched Welcome to the NHK last year, in my mid-twenties, and it hit differently. As a teenager, I related to the anxiety and the feeling of being lost. As an adult, I related to the exhaustion.

Satou’s struggle to find meaning in work, to maintain relationships, to resist the pull of easy escapism — these are things I deal with in much milder forms every day. The difference is that now I have tools to cope: a job I care about, projects that give me purpose (like Vellum), friendships I actively maintain, and the awareness that staying connected to the world requires effort.

NHK didn’t “fix” me. But it made me aware of patterns in my own behavior that I might not have recognized otherwise. And that awareness, over the years, has been genuinely transformative.

Watch it. Seriously.

If you’ve never seen Welcome to the NHK, I recommend it with one caveat: it deals with heavy themes including depression, social anxiety, substance use, and suicidal ideation. It’s not always easy to watch.

But if you’ve ever felt stuck — really stuck, in a way that’s hard to explain to people who haven’t experienced it — this show will speak to you. It will make you laugh, it will make you uncomfortable, and it might make you cry.

And when it’s over, you might feel just a little bit lighter. That’s what it did for me, anyway ♡

“No human being is ever a complete lost cause.”

— Biagio