Welcome to the NHK! ep.3

July 30, 2006 | 6 Comments

This episode is hilarious. The part where Satou fails his first attempt at Eroge game was amusing. When I first saw it I thought "Oh, that's interesting, I didn't know there is a Casablanca ending in one of those games". But then I look closer at the screen and realised that in Casablanca, the two male characters don't grab each other's ass. In general, however, this episode has been toned down from the original manga. Misaki still calls Satou "Lolicon" when she catches him red handed about to photograph a bunch of high school girls. But the girls in the anime are not as young as the ones in the manga. It doesn't really matter in my opinion because when Satou looks at his own horrific reflection in the mirror, that scene perfectly captures the idea that Satou is at the lowest point of his life.

Satou is not excited at the prospect of making Erogo so Yamazaki tells him that he can call it galge (gal games) or moege (moe games), games where you have to strategically attract Bishoujo (pretty girls). Satou's real objection, however, lies with the fact that he believes Misato will look down on him if she finds out that he's making a galge. Yamazaki is angry to hear this and tells Satou that he said that because he never played these games before. He grabs as many games as he can find and tells Satou that all of those games were made by the same company and all of them were big hits. The company now has an office in an exclusive area in Roppongi with staff of over 100 people. They are also the undisputed leader in the game industry. Having said that, they had a humble beginning with just one doujin galge. Yamazaki believes that with galge, amateurs with no academic background nor connections within the industry can become a famous creator.

Yamazaki then paints a rather attractive imagination for Satou whereby they will make and sell galge on their own. At first they probably won't sell at all but soon their game will gain critical acclaim through word of mouth. When they can't fulfill order from convention booth any longer, they will create a company. The company will then expand and enter the business of anime and memorabilia production. Satou's imagination quickly spirals out of control and includes a vision where he becomes so famous that he can afford to give Misaki the boot. Satou immediately becomes excited with the idea of creating galge and because of this, Yamazaki asks Satou to take a look at a few select galge titles. Upon booting up the game, Satou is immediately charmed by the appearance of a young girl who calls him "Onii-chan" (older brother). Satou is even more pleased with the game when the game shows a rather naughty situation involving the girl in the game.

That night, Yamazaki is awaken by the sound of his mobile playing a catchy note of Puru Puru Pururin. When he picks up the phone, he finds out that Satou is the one who calls him. He's not happy because instead of getting the big ero scene, he instead gets a 'male friend' ending. On top of this, the only naughty scenes he got were just a panty shot and a changing scene. Yamazaki immediately guesses that Satou responded favourably to all of the girls and therefore he failed to win over any of them. Because of this he asks Satou to choose just one girl he wants to win over. Upon looking at the selection, Satou chooses a girl called "Misao" since she reminds him of Misaki. With this in mind, Satou restarts the game with the intention of winning over this animated girl. Unfortunately for Satou, he gets the 'male friend' ending again (with a dash of ass-grabbing). This time around he's only nice to "Misao-tan" and cold to every other girls in the game.

Yamazaki explains to Satou that he can't do that either so Satou decides to give the game a try for one more time. This time around, he gets the ero scene he was looking for and calls Yamazaki to inform the guy of his success. A few days later, Yamazaki visits Satou's room and finds the guy still playing with the galge. Satou, however, is now obssessed with the games, forcing Yamazaki to ask Satou if he still remembers his promise to make a game by the end of next month. Satou immediately gets cold sweats because he has forgotten all about it. Yamazaki decides to tell Satou that in galge, the most important part of the game are the girls and the scenarios that surround them. It is Satou's responsibility to come up/write these scenarios since Yamazaki have to take care of the programming, music, CG, and other miscellaneous works. That night, Satou thinks in his room about the fact that he only knows 2 girls in his life, Misaki and Kashiwa-sempai.

Satou remembers how back in high school, Kashiwa-sempai asked him if he'll be sad if she's dead. Back in the present day, Yamazaki comes over to Satou's room in order to give him CD containing images that he has collected from the internet. He decides to lend it to Satou so he can get ideas about the girls they want to include in their game. Satou is at first uninterested in the CD until he finds out that the girls have poses in various states of undress. Satou suddenly gets the idea of starting his own collections by surfing the web using 'Quoggle' search engine. Cue in Satou's fantasy world where he surfs the wide world web and obtains porn pictures after porn pictures. A few days later, Satou calls Yamazaki since he has a problem with his computer. As it turns out, Satou has deleted some 'unnecessary files' (read: system folder) because he needs additional space to store 'reference materials' that he has gathered off the net.

He, however, refuses to let Yamazaki to see the folders and claims that they contain information about his friends. Yamazaki reminds Satou that Satou has no friends and proceeds to open the folder, revealing porn pictures after porn pictures. Satou lamely explains that the material that Yamazaki lent him wasn't enough to 'inspire him' so he decided to get some from the internet. Yamazaki is angry to hear this. He can't understand how Satou can spend his days collecting 120GB worth of porn pics. Yamazaki tells Satou to look at himself since he's now an ugly, pathetic, and filthy pervert. Satou then remembers how when he was a kid, he wanted to become scientist and make contributions to humanity. Despite this, he instead turns into a loser. Upon hearing this, Yamazaki asks Satou to face reality but unfortunately Satou's idea of facing reality is to go out and take pictures of high school girls from behind the bush.

Satou asks Yamazaki if his action now fits his image as an ugly, pathetic, and filthy pervert. Satou sadly wonders how things turned this way since all he wanted was to live a normal life. Yamazaki, however, has run away because someone is coming. That someone turns out to be Misaki and she wants to know what Satou is doing right now. Without fully realising the identity of the person behind him, Satou once again claims that he's going to take pictures of little girls. He, however, quickly realises that the person behind him is no longer Yamazaki. Misaki then asks a horrified Satou if he's a lolicon. Satou denies this and tries to go home when a bunch of girls pass by and make fun of his appearance. When the wind blows the girls' skirt, however, Satou instinctively takes their pictures, proving Misaki's suspicion. Satou tries to deny it but Misaki tells him that he's perfect for her project. She, however, warns him not to do things that will land him in news.

Impression:

I think it's easy to look down on Satou for what he did in this episode. It's undeniable that he's pervert but it's hard not to feel sorry for the guy because he knows that he's gone far off the deep end. The thing is, Satou's situation didn't come out of nowhere. It builds up from seemingly harmless activities such as postponing things that one is supposed to do, or being afraid to take chances. Overtime these activities simply grow into inertia and eventually lead a person to do things he/she didn't actually want to do. The problem is, once an individual is caught in this kind of self-destructive cycle, it's hard to see a way out of it. Eventually, the person will believe that he/she is indeed the failure that everyone accuses the person to be. Although Misaki was a bit creepy in this episode, I think her presence was a good jolt to Satou's nervous system. Yamazaki also tried to do similar thing here but so far he's been rather unsuccessful in getting Satou out of the gutter.

© memento 2003