Just finished reading this divinely awesome dark humour manga series! Really, read it!

 

 

 

READ IT!

I promise, I really do, if you miss out on this one, if you decide not to read this godawesome manga, you'll regret it for the rest of your existence!

It's heavy, it's dark, it's cute, it's funny, it's hilarious, it's WTF, it's intense, it's surreal, it's weird, it's moving, it's sad, it's... everything you could ever imagine from an epic piece of work!

So I'll say it one more, final time...

READ IT!

Welcome to the NHK (or in Japanese - NHK ni Youkoso) <br />
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The plot centres around a so-called Hikikomori, or a sociophobic recluse, named Satou Tatsuhiro who lives completely isolated from the rest of society in his little flat out of fear from humans.<br />
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It tells the story of Satou, who suffers from sociophobia, misanthropy and probably also burnout and who more or less lives in a fantasy world, as well as the two other main characters: his friend Yamazaki Kaoru, who is a megalomanic porn-game geek who more or less shares Satou's hate for society but also more or less despises women; and Nakahara Misaki, a strange girl who suddenly pops into his life intent on curing him from his reclusiveness, but actually suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder and terribly low self-esteem and who seeks somebody to look down upon.<br />
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Other issues in the story taken up are unemployment, drug and medicine abuse, poor hygiene, pyramid scheme frauds, MMORPG addiction, society's norms and expectations from the bottom view, shame, suicide, transsexuality and so on.<br />
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Nearly all of the meaningful characters suffer from varying degrees of depression, ranging from mild to extreme. It's a story about the bizarre side of Japanese society: the fearful, the unsuccesful, the "lowest dregs of society" and their difficult and insanely complicated relationships. It tells about the darker aspects of man (and I don't mean the criminal world) and manages to deliver a strong, heavy story the succeed in painting our world in a depressing dark pattern of gray, white and black and portraying our society as a dystopia.<br />
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It's delivers a perfect yet realistic darkness in a tale about possibly the most hopeless souls in a world we can relate to: the modern developed country. It does so however, in a stunning show of social critique and with a perfect comedic style that keeps this otherwise deprecating tale from getting to far into your minde and depressing you, providing for a well and oft needed comic relief that never fails to make you laugh your guts out.<br />
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You'll sit and read this story completely transfixed on the characters and their fates. It's a story that you can't wait to know how it'll end while you at the same time wish that it'll go on forever. Unlike western stories, the ending here isn't as spectacular as the story itself, giving a perfect example of the taoist mindset that what's greatest with a journey from start to end is not reaching the goal, but experienceing the road inbetween. This story is a must read for everybody and I cannot do anything more but understate that this manga is one of the most underrated literary works in all of human history.<br />
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In short: it's a masterpiece that which if you don't read, you'll regret it for the rest of your existence.<br />
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Cheers!