Hikkikomori no Anime

A "hikkikomori" in Japanese is one who secludes him/herself from society, staying in an apartment or a single room all day and night. This is a growing phenomenon in Japan. Sometimes it's in a family house, sometimes in an apartment. They usually don't have jobs, relying on parental allowance.

I'm in the middle of a series called "Welcome to the NHK." "NHK" is the name of the big channel in Japan, like our NBC. The main character of the anime comes to believe that "NHK" stands for Nihon Hikkikomori Kyokai (Japan Hikkikomori Association), and that they are the creators of a conspiracy to keep him isolated and alone. This being an anime, there's a sweet girl who takes an interest in him and tries to get him to change his behavior.

Watching this anime, alone, in my room, after a weekend of studying alone, in my room, made me feel very hikkikomori-like. Even when the character's lifestyle inspired revulsion, as in his madcap flipouts in the outside world, or as in his obsessions with erotic dating games or, later, a WoW-based online game, it felt like I was the target audience of this strange program. Then I began to think it was all a conspiracy. The makers of this anime knew what kind of people were in their audience and geared it exactly to them.

This is part of a movement I have noticed. Otaku things have become anti-otaku. My only other example is a Nintendo DS game I picked up, called "The World Ends with You."

The World Ends with You's protagonist is someone who distrusts everyone, has no friends, and walks around with headphones on so he doesn't have to interact with anyone. The game forces you, through the character, to interact with other players. A prominent feature of the game is working together with your partner, simultaneously controlling both the main character and the secondary. Working together is the only way to survive and beat the enemies. Another feature of the game is looking into other people's minds and reading their thoughts. This "gets you into other people's heads." The gameplay incentivizes putting the game down; you earn points by only playing a certain amount any day. Finally, an interesting feature is that, when you are near someone else with a DS, there is an incentive to interact with that other person: you ask them to turn on their wireless signal, you turn on your game and sense the incoming signal, and you get points/items that you otherwise would never have gotten.

So the game is designed to wean you off of the game world and inject you into the real world.

Hikkikomoris are a growing problem in Japan, and these kinds of anime and games are interesting ways to address the problem. Too bad they do not speak to the source of the problem at all. Japan is in many ways a terrible place to live; societal pressures are just too much for some people. Change the society, and fewer hikkikomoris will appear. Simple as that.