Welcome to the N.H.K. (manga)

The acronym "NHK" here does not stand for the famous Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (日本放送協会, Japan Broadcasting Corporation), but for Nippon Hikikomori Kyōkai (日本ひきこもり協会). "Hikikomori" refers to a group of teenagers and young adults who refuse to go to school or find a job. They don't like (some are even afraid) to interact with other people in real life; rather, they communicate through Internet and lock themselves in the house. Roughly consists of 1% of Japanese population, they are forming a potential social problem in Japan.

Yoshitoshi ABe, famous for Serial Experiments Lain, NieA_7, Haibane Renmei and Texhnolyze, is the illustrator of the original novel.

The real-life television company NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai), which is the source of the acronym that is parodied by the series, really does provide a support website for real-life hikikomori. It is not known if the existence of this website was related to the use of their acronym as a parody related to hikikomori. In the manga, a concrete link between the television company NHK and Satō's Nihon Hikikomori Kyokai is implied; in the anime, although the conspiracy is still named NHK, no such correspondence is drawn and it appears that the NHK does not even exist as a television company in the anime's version of Japan. (In the anime, Misaki has never heard of the acronym when Satō says it to her.) This may have been due to the fact that the anime was broadcast on TV on channels operated by other Japanese broadcasting companies, thus implying that it related to the real TV company could have been interpreted as slander against a competitor.