Welcome to the NHK! (NHK ni Youkoso!)

Well, I read up to ch. 32 of the manga. I don't really plan on continuing. Although at first it became very promising, the humor was extremely funny and the wackiness of the characters even better, it slowly became one of those mind trips reminiscent of Serial Experiments Lain or Evangelion where it becomes a dialogue of thoughts that go in one ear and out the other. It doesn't surprise me that Yoshitoshi Abe (of Lain, NieA, and Haibane) illustrated the light novel.

I read less and less humor as more and more drama crept in. True, the characters are all fucked up. That can be golden material for humor; instead the mankaga tapped into the depressing areas of themselves. The more I read, the less I became interested in their outcomes. I read it that the characters had absolutely no hope or aspiration for anything beyond their selfish desires, be it Misaki's dependence on looking down on others (such hypocrisy for a dropout), Tatsu's utter laziness to do anything productive, Hitomi's dependence on drugs, or Yamazaki's lolicon obsession. To me, they are all trainwrecks that are sinking further and further into despair and depression.

Anyway! Those are my two cents. The beginning was a blast, but the series so far is going into the depths of flashbacks, running in the darkness, thought dialogues, etc. that even the ecchi sequences have lost their humor.

How ya doing, buddy?