NHK ni Youkoso! Episode 24 Discussion

Criscosandwich said:
Very, very dissatisfied with this ending.

I truly believe that Misaki and Sato need help from a professional source, as together they create a toxic co-dependence. I never bought a romantic relationship between them in the first place, as for the first five or so episodes Misaki refers to Sato as "more worthless than garbage". How is it, then, that if Sato does not want to admit he is pathetic, he manages to fall for someone who truly believes him to be worthless?
As for the Misaki side of this relationship, she is not set up with any sort of romantic inclinations towards Sato. Rather, she is set up as a character taking pity on Sato and believing that she is worthy of "helping" him "fix" his situation. The episode where Sato's mother visits feels extremely jarring because of this. She goes from nagging him about how worthless he is to wanting to KISS him??? I felt like I had whiplash watching that episode... I vehemently disagree with Sato and Misaki's relationship.

Criscosandwich said:
Very, very dissatisfied with this ending.

I truly believe that Misaki and Sato need help from a professional source, as together they create a toxic co-dependence. I never bought a romantic relationship between them in the first place, as for the first five or so episodes Misaki refers to Sato as "more worthless than garbage". How is it, then, that if Sato does not want to admit he is pathetic, he manages to fall for someone who truly believes him to be worthless?
As for the Misaki side of this relationship, she is not set up with any sort of romantic inclinations towards Sato. Rather, she is set up as a character taking pity on Sato and believing that she is worthy of "helping" him "fix" his situation. The episode where Sato's mother visits feels extremely jarring because of this. She goes from nagging him about how worthless he is to wanting to KISS him??? I felt like I had whiplash watching that episode.

The middle half of the show was extremely dull. I truly believe that the arc with Kobayashi/Class Rep was entirely pointless. Sato did not learn anything by seeing Kobayashi's brother. Rather, Sato continued to leech off of Misaki's "help", cling on to the hope that his video game would sell well, and rely on the money sent in by his parents. Nothing was gained from that arc aside from inflating the episode count of the show.

I have to call this one a miss for me. I enjoyed the show up until the aftermath of the OFF meeting, everything after that fell completely flat for me. Episodes 22 and 23 were also really interesting, but the payoff sure wasn't. If I were to rate the show at this point, it would be a 5/10 simply because I vehemently disagree with Sato and Misaki's relationship.

SquishyPies said:


holy shit THANK you. i'm completely dumbstruck by how many people were/are disappointed that these two didn't formally get together.

the show is practically SCREAMING at you in the last two episodes that Misaki is a super messed up, self-destructive, socially inept person. she thinks the only way she can justify her own existence is by playing god for someone else that she can look down on.

i just cannot believe that people saw the way Misaki reacted to Sato *recovering from his mental illness* and still wanted them to be together. Misaki literally tried to kill herself twice over when she saw Sato's life improving to the point where he could go out and have drinks/presumably have sex with his friend. She fully admitted that if Sato recovered to the point where he didn't need her "fixing" him with counseling, she would have no reason to live and would kill herself.

this is abuse. Misaki's relationship with Sato is abusive, even if they're not dating. i get that the vibe of the show is supposed to be "broken people helping each other survive," and that's how it felt in the first half really, but this ending ain't that.

it's funny, at the start of the show i kind of hated Sato and felt bad for Misaki, but now i feel totally the opposite. i think the ultimate happy end for Sato would've been if him and Misaki parted ways permanently, but he continued to fulfill himself at work, making new friends in coworkers and realizing that the battle against the NHK is lifelong but worth it. Misaki basically got her happy end, but at cost to Sato, which I think is pretty "Misaki" of her.

anyways, this anime's ending was actually a 10/10 because Best Boy Yamazaki is happy, and that's all that matters really

bedhead said:
I just finished watching this. Read the novel first over the course of last month, and, while I do have some hang-ups about the anime, I think it's a fantastic adaptation for the most part.
It's understandable why many of you have reservations about the anime's ending. There are a lot of factors in the anime that take away some of the ending's impact, especially when comparing it to the novel's ending. One major issue, in this regard, is the amount of spectacle that's actually in the anime. The novel is extremely reserved and down to earth, and there's really nothing in the way of cinematic drama up until the climax, which makes the cliff scene much more impactful. While the novel is mostly a string of minute situations, it builds up to the cliff scene over the course of the entire story. That scene really the only moment in the novel you could imagine being in a standard drama story, and Satou even comments at one point that his dialogue with Misaki is extremely Shoujo-esque.

Conversely, the anime fills a big portion of its runtime with cinematic storylines like the suicide pact in Episode 12 / 13 (which is arguably more tense than the finale), the festival in Episode 9, and the five-episode RMT arc. I enjoyed all of these, but their inclusion, coupled with numerous other changes in the anime, left a lack of buildup for the cliff scene. The revolution bomb subplot as a whole isn't present in the anime, despite being the biggest source of foreshadowing towards the ending in the novel.

Additionally, I found the cliff scene to go by too quickly in the anime. It's understandable why this is, as they only have so much time to dedicate to it before getting to the epilogue, but, in shortening this scene, they take away from some really important Misaki character development, along with a large portion of Satou's reasoning towards his decision to dive off the cliff. The scene could've benefitted hugely from being longer.
Despite these criticisms, though, I think the music / animation / voice acting were on point, and that the studio did the best the could given what they had to work with. Shame they couldn't fit that box cutter / bottle cut parallel in, though.

The epilogue itself is controversial, and for good reason. Had the anime just adapted the novel 1:1, it probably wouldn't have needed to be longer than 12 episodes. By going a different route and developing everything differently over the course of 24 episodes, however, the viewer is given much more time to get invested into certain characters. Misaki and Satou's relationship in particular is much more developed in the anime than in the novel, and their romance, which was pretty minimal in the novel, is far more played up in the adaptation. It's hard not to root for them getting together, even if you think their relationship is unhealthy.
Because of this, the lack of a solid "and they lived happily ever after..." ending in the anime comes as a disappointment to many, and understandably so. Personally, even though I loved the novel's ending, which is far vaguer and less conclusive than the anime's, I still found myself wishing the anime had something more to its epilogue. It's not that I wanted them to PDA on screen (though seeing them kiss would've been really heartwarming); it's more-so that their relationship in the end feels superficial.
While the novel's epilogue lingers very little on Misaki and Satou's relationship, the manner in which it ends gives much more focus to the question of "How will life continue from here?". The anime keeps some of that message, but by spending the greater part of the runtime indulging heavily in developing Misaki and Satou as a pair, the final thought for many fans, including myself, seems to have shifted to "How will Misaki and Satou's life continue from here?". Because of this, I highly doubt anything short of fully cataloguing the rest of their lives would've been satisfying for any viewer who found themselves seriously invested in the pairing.

Though the anime wrapped up in a nice and neat way, and the need for a closing hug / kiss was unnecessary, there's simply too much hunger for more scenes of them together to realistically end the series in a satisfying way. If the studio had simply chosen to copy the novel's ending, then there would've undoubtedly been more outrage, because the focal points between the two stories are different. The novel focuses on the topic of adjusting to life, and its ending, while not conclusive, leaves blanks that you can fill in whatever way you choose without yearning to know more. This part of the story takes a backseat in its adaptation.
The anime adaptation spends much more time than the novel does on developing interpersonal relationships, its focal point then becomes the most major relationship in the story, and the blanks that the ending leaves come off as unsatisfying because most viewers want to see more from the main character's relationship.
Whether this is a testament to how fantastically their relationship is developed, or an example of how over-focus on a pairing can lead many viewers to missing the point of the story, is a matter of opinion. And it is my opinion that "Welcome to the NHK" is a beautiful story, both the novel and the anime, and that the anime's ending, for all its faults, is still a great way to cap off the series.

My final wish is that the novel get re-released with a better translation, because the one I read had an insane number of typos and it came off as very amateur.