NHK ni Youkoso! – 02

Summary:
Misaki gives Satou a contract for helping him escape his hikikomori ways. Satou denies that he’s a hikikomori, gives the contract back to her, and starts walking away. Chasing after him, Misaki gives him the contract again and says that they’ll meet again tomorrow at the same time. She wants him to sign the contract by then. Satou goes home and spends the next day sitting around his apartment. The appointment time comes, but he doesn’t go to the park. It’s not until he starts thinking about Misaki getting sexually harassed by a flasher and the subsequent media frenzy that he run out. He finds her sitting there on a bench, just fine. Satou once again denies that he’s a hikikomori, and this time, he goes as far as to say that he’s got a job at home. When Misaki presses the subject, Satou lies, saying that he’s a creator working on computer software. Not believing him, Misaki tells him to bring the contract tomorrow and then runs off.
Back at home, Satou starts to drink with the same anime music still playing in the background. He gets so fed up with it that he actually marches over and starts banging on his neighbor’s door. That door turns out to be unlocked, so Satou opens it and yells for quiet. Living in this apartment is a familiar face: Yamazaki Kaoru, a younger guy who went to the same high school as Satou. Yamazaki is the same person that Satou had tried to save from the bullies (but got beat up instead). His current apartment is filled from top to bottom with ero anime posters and figurines. Yamazaki thinks that Satou is still in college, and explains that he himself is going to a specialty school. The two start drinking and chatting together when Satou notices a particular text book. Yamazaki explains that he’s going to a designer school to be a game creator. Those words remind Satou of how he told Misaki that he was a creator.
Satou borrows the text book and brings it to Misaki at their next meeting to prove that he’s a game creator. She doesn’t believe him and wants him to prove it by showing her a game he’s created. He claims that what he’s working on is incomplete, so she asks to see his graduation work. Satou eventually promises to show her a game, but says that she’ll have to wait until next month before it’s ready. Misaki accepts this and leaves him for now. However, Yamazaki was eavesdropping and now the truth about Satou dropping out of school and being a hikikomori comes out. Yamazaki can’t lend Satou anything, but he does ask Satou if he wants to make a game. It’s not for the sake of Misaki, but for the sake of getting rid of Satou’s NEET status. Satou wants to do it, but he lacks any skills or motivation. Yamazaki gets pissed off at him, so Satou agrees to write the scenario. He makes Satou promise not to quit midway and then tells the eager Satou that they’re going to create an eroge.

The animation quality for this episode did drop a bit, though that may be me still getting used to the character designs. It had its ups and downs. The soundtrack, on the other hand, seems to be getting better and better with the guitar pieces.
It was almost unbearable to watch Satou kept digging himself deeper and deeper into the hole with his lies. I love how Misaki’s attitude is like she’s playing along, just waiting for all of this to implode on Satou. Whether it does or not depends now on if Satou and Yamazaki can create a game in a month, an eroge no less.
They’re really extending the manga to make this episode. Yamazaki’s introduction (which happened in the first chapter in the manga) got put in here along with everything leading up to the decision to make an eroge. But that covers maybe half of the second chapter, the rest of which was comprised of loli porn. I guess loli porn and Satou taking pictures of young girls wasn’t suitable for TV without an R-15 rating. Actually, that maybe next week’s episode (which would make sense), given that there was this shot in the preview.