Hikikomori: Difference between revisions

[[File:hikikomori_japan_8773.jpg|link=Axis Powers Hetalia|frame|[[Moe Anthropomorphism|Japan]], taking the art of being a hikikomori to the ''extreme''.]]

 

 

A psychological cultural disease, mainly present in Japanese culture, where a young person snaps [[Education Mama|under pressure]] and becomes socially and physically withdrawn into their household, often for years. Because of the social stigma and the assumption that [[There Are No Therapists|the person's family are the right people to handle the situation]], how many cases actually exist is uncertain.

* Jun from ''[[Rozen Maiden]]'', although he denies it, and we don't learn the reasons why he mysteriously isn't in school until much later in the story (at least in the anime).

** He does develop out of this role through the anime, and by the second season he has soundly resumed his studies. A similar development can be seen in the manga, and it is given a passing mentions when he meets the alternate version of himself in which he remained a hikikomori through most of junior high as he notes that he wasn't at all so optimistic back then.

** {{spoiler|Izumi}} is accused of this. Turns out she has [[No Sense of Direction|a good reason]] [[Up to Eleven|though]].

** However, instead of the social ineptitude characteristic of hikikomoris, Kiri shows symptoms of extreme agoraphobia; she quite happily interacts with her fellow students and teachers, but constantly shuts herself in tiny, cooped spaces, and is almost never seen without a quilt that she crouches under.

** The series seems to like playing with the idea of her never leaving the school. She shows up at Nozomu's home in season one on account of it being a school vacation, and it's later ret-conned that Nozomu lives on school property, so she wasn't actually leaving the school itself. Later in the series, Kiri shows up at a [[Beach Episode]], and Nami [[Lampshade Hanging|wonders if she should really be there]]. Then, it turns out that it's not a real beach, but was instead set-up at school. However, it's [[Double Subverted]], since it's at a different school than the usual one, and Nami isn't completely convinced by Kiri's rationalization that she's a "school hikikomori".

* Ken in ''[[Digimon Adventure 02]]'' appears to be one of these to [[Muggles]] for a time, but the reality is much worse (he's the [[Big Bad]] and it wouldn't do for his parents to see him go into his room, not be there, and mysteriously be absent for days, so he keeps the door locked.)

** Eventually, he doesn't even bother and decides to stay in the Digital World, effectively running away from home. {{spoiler|After his Digimon partner dies and he realizes it's not a game, Ken spends some days in an [[Heroic BSOD]] state inside his room... then he gets out, hugs his parents and starts working on his [[Heel Face Turn]].}}

* One ''[[Sakigake Cromartie Koukou|Cromartie High School]]'' episode involves a guy who's tough and violent in real life, but friendly on the internet. He starts losing patience when a troll directs a string of nasty posts at him -- ending with the deadly insult of calling him a hikikomori. (He then punches a guy out on the street for bumping into him, [[Dramatic Irony|unaware that it's the troll]].)

* Yuu Matsuura in ''[[Marmalade Boy]]'' was this close to become a hikikomori at age 12, {{spoiler|when he found a letter written by his grandmother, which hinted that the man he knew as his dad wasn't his biological father.}}

** {{spoiler|Watanuki}} also becomes one; not being able to leave {{spoiler|the shop}} except under very specific conditions is the price {{spoiler|he}} has to pay for {{spoiler|continued existence}}.

* Chiba Seiya from ''[[Flunk Punk Rumble]]'' became one three days into the school year because of a bunch of delinquents looking for him. The main characters managed to get him out of his room though, by beating the crap out of the said delinquents.

* In [[Detective Conan]], the novelist Hideomi Nagato became this after, as a teenager, he was horribly disfigured in a fire while trying to rescue a little girl trapped in there. {{spoiler|A fire that ''he'' and his friend Mitsuaki caused... and which killed the parents of the girl he saved, Miyuki Hyuuga.}}

** Another novelist {{spoiler|has hidden himself in the attic because he thought he committed murder--he continues to publish under his brother's name, who he is ghost-writing for}}.

* Yuki in ''[[Wandering Son]]'' became one of these in middle school and high school, after she dropped out. Saori became dangerously close to becoming one.

* Chisame in ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' apparently becomes one after high school for a few years, but later joins Negi's {{spoiler|Mars terraformation project}} as an adivsor. She already had something of the personality in the series, but wasn't as much of a recluse as these types usually are.

 

* The title character in ''Little Voice'' almost never leaves her room in her mother's apartment, spending all her time listening to her deceased father's vinyl records and perfectly imitating the singers' performances.

* ''[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976060/ Tokyo!]'' : the main theme of one of the three chapters, "Shaking Tokyo," is an exploration of hikikomori and its interference with the victim's need for love.

 

 

== Literature ==

* The self-proclaimed otaku in ''[[World War Z]]'' was one, and spent all his time on [[Image Boards]] discussing trivia and obscure facts. When [[The Outbreak]] starts, he spends his time dedicating himself to researching how to defend yourself from zombies, zombie information, and what Japan would do to protect himself, going so far as to hack into doctors studying the infection for e-fame. He gets so obsessed that it's a long time before he realizes the entire city has been infected.

* [[House of Leaves]]: Johnny Truant, after working on The Navidson Record for a while.

* Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, the protagonist of [[Oblomov|the eponymous novel]] by Ivan Goncharov, goes in a self-imposed exile from public life, not leaving his [[Tsarist Russia|Saint Petersburg]] apartment for 'years'. The novel was published in 1859, making this trope [[Older Than Radio]]. What's most interesting here is that such behavior wasn't seen as something really extraordinary for a wealthy Russian landlord -- a class that had such high proportion of oddballs and weirdos that you might seem out of the line if you didn't ''have'' any eccentricities.

* The main character of [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]]'s ''Notes From Underground.''

* Except to purchase food (and the next copy of Misery's romantic escapades, of course), Annie from [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Misery]]'' rarely if ever leaves her secluded cabin.

* In the short comic "The Forever Box" by Sarah Mesinga (anthologized in ''Flight''), the main character shuts herself in a magical time machine box with her books, laptop, and DVD's after the death of her brothers.

** And her [[Real Life]] counterpart, Eliza Emily Donnithorne.

* The Millenium saga, by Stieg Larrson, has a recurring secondary hikikomori character with the class-A hacker Plague, who suffers from social seclusion at a point that he is officially recognised as "socially incompetent" by the State and given a disability allowance.

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

* {{spoiler|Tsuyoshi}} in ''[[Sh15uya]]'' is revealed to have been one prior to having been put into the virtual Shibuya.

* Curtis from the Canadian series ''Twitch City'' can be interpreted as a Western example. He's an agoraphobic Canadian TV [[Otaku]] who never leaves his Toronto apartment if he can possibly help it.

** Later on it's revealed that his brother Ambrose has the same condition, though Ambrose hasn't gotten over his. {{spoiler|He's eventually forced outside by Monk because his house was on fire.}}

* ''[[Psych]]'' had a one-shot hikikomori character who only went out on Thursdays to the convenience store and to buy video games. Once-a-day/week/month trips to a convenience store an ''extremely'' common hikikomori trait (as is only going out to buy games/anime/manga/etc).

* Wataru Kurenai, the titular [[Kamen Rider Kiva]], starts off the series like this. The first time we see him, he's covered from head to toe, including a stocking cap, protective goggles, and a face mask because he thinks he's "allergic to the world" and communicates mostly using a notebook full of pre-written responses. He drops the worse stuff pretty quickly, but he's still extremely shy and introverted for most of the series. [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]] when he suffers a [[Heroic BSOD]] following {{spoiler|Mio's death}}, but he comes back from it a true [[Badass]].

* In one episode of ''[[Nowhere Man]]'', Tom encounters an orphan who has not left his house since his parents' death, living off delivery items he is able to pay for with the money he got by writing a brilliant piece of software for a venture capital firm.

* In ''[[K 9]]'', Professor Gryffen becomes this after having accidentally {{spoiler|killed his wife and children in a science experiment. He manages to overcome this in ''Eclipse of the Korven'' at the end of season one.}}

* [[Played for Laughs]] in ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'' episode ""The Cruciferous Vegetable Amplification." Sheldon becomes obsessed with extending his life expectancy. Deciding that the outside world is too dangerous, he shuts himself in his room and builds a remote-controlled "Mobile Virtual Presence Device," equipped with a monitor, camera and speakers so that he can interact with others.

* Stephen Kepler in ''[[Dollhouse]]'' is this, {{spoiler|or so it would seem...}}

* Dorothy has a run-in with one in an episode of [[The Golden Girls]] when she's helping Sophia with Meals on Wheels. Martin Mull plays a hikikomori who hasn't left his apartment since the '60s because it's "just too hard out there".

 

 

* The [[Simon and Garfunkel]] song "I Am A Rock" is basically the Hikikomori ''theme song.''

* [[Nerd Core]] artist Ultraklystron has [http://ultraklystron.bandcamp.com/track/hikikomori a single devoted to this].

* The song ''Flowers On The Wall'' is apparently about someone who is afraid to come out of his room.

* Alison Moyet - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t9wWgDOmek "Invisible"], [[Reclusive Artist|which reflected her real life situation for many years]].

* The video to Kim Wilde's ''Kids in America'' is about an agoraphobe, despite the song's lyrics.

* Patchouli Knowledge, a recurring character in the ''[[Touhou]]'' series, has apparently not left the library of Scarlet Devil Mansion for over a century, making her an extreme example of the trope. In keeping with the stereotype, her obsessive studies have rendered her one of the strongest magic users in canon, but a combination of anemia, asthma, and lack of Vitamin A leave her incapable of fully utilizing them most of the time.

** It's worth noting that her popularity has kept having her return as a playable character in ''Immaterial and Missing Power'' and ''Scarlet Weather Rhapsody'' and as a partner in ''Subterranean Animism'', not to mention being in a great many [[Doujinshi]], so it should be said that her Hikikomori status was rather suddenly ended by the events of ''Embodiment of Scarlet Devil''.

* In the fourth ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' game, Vera Misham has spent over seven years living alone with her father in an art studio. Their only contact with the outside world is through a mailbox. When Vera is forced to leave, she is extremely quiet and shy: when the protagonist tries to meet her, she hides out of his sight for a half hour before he realizes she's there.

* Geo Stelar in ''[[Mega Man Star Force]]'', though only for the first game.

* Henry Townshend of ''[[Silent Hill 4]]'' was [[The Quiet One]] even before he woke up one morning and found himself literally locked in his own apartment. While his shut-in-ness is supernaturally enforced by a malevolent spirit, none of his neighbors show much concern that they haven't seen him for days.

* Endrance in ''[[.hack|.hack//G.U.]]''. As Haseo converses more with him through email, he reveals information about how buys everything online, doesn't go out to eat (his mother cooks his meals), and lives with his parents even at age 20. Combined with the fact that he's almost constantly logged in to The World (he only goes offline to eat and sleep) and that he's borderline underweight make him a pitiable hiki indeed. He's at least willing to change; he says he'd leave his home to meet with Haseo, for instance.

* The Pokémon Sewaddle (Japanese Name: Kurumiru) evolves into Swadloon (Kurumaryu), the appearance of which is based on the Hikikomori archtype (specifically, of the "Hikikomori hiding under a blanket" stereotype). Swadloon specifically eats fallen leaves, much like the "fed by slices of food slid under the door" stereotype of severe Hikikomoris. Furthering/cementing the comparison, it evolves into Leavanny ('''Haha'''komori) via ''happiness'', which is one of this generation's [[Cute Monster Girl]] Pokémon (much like Lopunny is in Generation IV).

* The Nintendo DS version of ''[[Tokimeki Memorial]] Girl's Side 2'' adds, as one of its bonus characters, [[Meaningful Name|Komori]] Taku. Playing his route requires the heroine to draw him out of his shell and convince him to start coming to school.

* People with Apathy Syndrome in Persona3 seem to become this from the normal people's point of view, although there are some who can be seen in streets.

* [[Badass Adorable|Merrill]] of ''[[Dragon Age II]]'' becomes one in Act III of the game as she becomes more and more obsessed with the Eluvian; she only leaves the house to buy food, and one of her friends even starts having groceries delivered to her to make sure she actually eats.

 

* {{spoiler|Nessiah}} is a borderline case in ''[[Dept Heaven Apocrypha]]''. He wasn't originally anywhere near this bad, but let's just say [[Trauma Conga Line|various things happened]]. He ''has'' been known to venture out of his room every now and again, but this is usually for necessity's sake, and someone is almost always with him.

* In the "Okkusenman" video, During a scene where the protagonist wonders about his childhood friends, one of them is shown as having become one.

* In [[The Guild]], Codex starts off with no job, friends or life outside of the MMORPG she plays, and she stays indoors for weeks at a time. Part of the reason she gets the titular guild to meet in person is to try and meet people in real life.

 

* Stoop Kid from ''[[Hey Arnold]]''. He gets better.

* Marge from ''[[The Simpsons]]'' becomes a hikki following an encounter with a thief with a gun in the episode "Strong Arms of the Ma".

* In ''[[Angela Anaconda]]'', Josephine's mother is Agorophobic and never leaves the house. Angela pretends to develop Agorophobia but then starts to get [[Cabin Fever]]. [[Hilarity Ensues]].

** She is invited to a birthday party, which Spike intended to attend, but she nervously backs out of it. Given the reactions of the ponies who invited her after she dodges the invite, it's likely that these were just her classmates trying to get her out of the library and have some fun.

** In "[[My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (Animation)/Recap/S2 E19 Putting Your Hoof Down|Putting Your Hoof Down]]", [[Shrinking Violet|Fluttershy]] becomes one once she realises that she took her newfound assertiveness too far.