| “ | People who neglect to make efforts or who don't take any actions at all are always the ones who dream that someday they will suddenly become wildly successful. | „ |
| ~ Misaki Nakahara |
Misaki Nakahara is the deuteragonist of the novel, anime and manga series Welcome to the NHK. She is a mysterious girl who appears one day at the doorstep of Tatsuhiro Satou, and plans to cure him of his disease of being a hikkikomori (the Japanese term for shut-in). In order to help Satou, she successfully persuades him to meet her for nightly lectures. Despite taking on the role of mentor towards Satou, she herself also has a significantly warped world view which impedes her social interactions.
She is voiced by Yui Makino in the Japanese version of the anime, and by Stephanie Wittels in the English version of the anime.
Appearance[]
Misaki is an 18-year old girl going onto 19, and considered very attractive.
She is of average female height, being roughly 159 cm tall. She has short dark brown hair and brown eyes. She has two common outfits; a yellow shirt with black sleeves and a blue miniskirt, and a dark blue dress with a white collar. With the latter, she can often be seen carrying a pink umbrella. In the manga, she is also often seen wearing a a jacket with a scarf, a schoolgirl outfit, or pea coat with epaulets. In the winter, she also wears a hooded red jacket.
Personality[]
On the outside, Misaki seems to be a cheerful and kind girl around those she is comfortable with (albeit somewhat odd).
She is depicted as a kind-hearted girl due to her desire to help Satou escape his hikkikomori lifestyle, which she refers to as a disease. She is shown to know a lot about Satou, which is revealed to be because she lives on a nearby hill that gives her a perfect view of Satou's apartment, and later because her uncle is the landlord of his apartment building.
MIsaki is shown to be extremely persistent for Satou to take part in her project, and easily sees through his attempts to convince her that he's not a hikkikomori, which eventually convinces him to sign her contract. During their sessions, she tries reading him psychology books in order to give him advice on how to talk to others. Misaki is also a very enigmatic person; despite knowing a lot about Satou, she refuses to tell him anything about her, or at least not anything genuine or that she didn't make up on the spot.
However, Misaki is secretly a very shy girl; while she has no problem talking to a man like Satou, she gets extremely nervous when talking to someone she doesn't know very well, like Satou's mother Shizue, which plays a part in breaking the charade of her being Satou's girlfriend. She herself hinted at this part of her during one of her early conversations with Satou, when she told him that the best way to be confident when talking to someone is to view them as being beneath you.
Misaki likes cats, and can frequently be seen feeding and taking care of one in the park where she and Satou meet up for their sessions. She states that they always seem to be at peace, no matter where they are or who they're with. She doesn't care that the cat will forget about her once she stops giving it things and find someone else to take care of it, saying that they both get what they want as long as she keeps feeding it. It's implied that this is how she views Satou, and once he breaks off their contract, she becomes desperate to get him back and to keep him from committing suicide. When Satou becomes obsessed with an MMORPG, she's perfectly willing to dress herself in moe costumes as a way to snap him back into reality.
Eventually, Misaki is revealed to actually be a very traumatic and fragile girl; due to the abused suffered by her stepfather, and after lost her mother who commit suicide, she views herself as worthless and that she causes pain to the people around her. She is also very socially awkward, to the point that she was unable to adapt to school, which is why she goes on missionary outings with her aunt or works afternoons at a manga cafe. Her reason for helping Satou was out of a desire to feel needed, as she can only feel comfortable around people she views as even more worthless than her. After Satou finally overcomes his hikkikomori lifestyle, however, she decides that he doesn't need her anymore and is driven to attempt suicide twice.
Misaki's personality greatly differs between the manga and anime. In the manga, she is seen as a sadistic and manipulative girl, often times enjoying making a fool out of Satou and even lying about having an abusive mother and a cruel stepfather. In the anime, she is a innocent and well behaved girl, and her troubled backstory is real. Also, in the manga, it is proven that she is a very jealous girl, going to lengths to punish Satou psychologically when he engages with Hitomi romantically, though the two women are shown get along better than they do in the anime.
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