[Categories: Anime Reviews]
Welcome to the NHK episode 7: Welcome to the Moratorium!
Things are looking decidedly bleak for Satou after the fiasco at college last week: he’s back to his reclusive ways more than ever, having nightmares and conversing with his fridge again. Not healthy behaviour, as I’m sure you’ll agree! On top of that, his mum wants to visit and see how he’s getting on.
Satou is, as Misaki points out at one point, a hopeless liar so he has to come up with some interesting ruses to fool his mum during her visit in the next episode: she’s under the impression he has a girlfriend and a job! He’s really backed himself up into a corner here, with painfully hilarious results: he does consider passing a cross-dressing Yamazaki off as his girlfriend before rejecting the idea - use your imagination there because I won’t inflict the visual reconstruction onto you! Suffice to say, this episode ups the weirdness factor with some brilliant mind’s eye headtrippery.
While Yamazaki can help Satou in pretending to be employed, Satou still has to find a pretend girlfriend to fool his mother. The first choice, his sempai from high school, is unavailable so Misaki steps in. The result of this is a really pleasant sequence in which Misaki and Satou have a practice-run ‘date’; or rather, a practice-run date is the reason she gives for taking him out. Even though it’s only a measure to get Satou out of a tight spot, I can’t help but feel that this experience has done him a lot of good. Admittedly, he can’t shake off the feelings he has for his sempai but Misaki’s company could really help the poor guy’s emotional wellbeing.
With some gleefully whacked-out dream sequences and the tenderness of Satou’s day out with Misaki, this was an enjoyable episode but the most interesting events will no doubt take place in the next outing. There’s a considerable amount of mystery surrounding Misaki (I’m not the only one to have suspicions either) and even Satou’s sempai too, so Welcome to the NHK promises to get even stranger and more interesting as time goes on.
As an aside, the op theme is starting to grow on me: it happens to be by the same artists (Nino and Round Table) who performed the op theme for Gunbuster 2.
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