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"Don't open it!"
A so-called psychological cultural disease, mainly present in Japanese culture, where a young person snaps under pressure and becomes socially and physically withdrawn into their household, often for years. Because of the social stigma and the assumption that the person's family are the right people to handle the situation, how many cases actually exist is uncertain.
Because many hikis vaguely cope by assuming an obsessive activity, many people assume they make up a sizable amount of the otaku community, which unfortunately is related to the moral panic that otaku are psychopaths. This came to a head in the late 1990s via several high-profile bizarre crimes, although some psychologists argued that hikkis are, by definition, not confident enough to actually hurt others, and are rather just pitiable unhealthy folk.
Some anime as a rule seems reluctant to reference it except as an implied trait of otaku lest it offend the audience, and most 'mainstream' non-otaku series have a decidedly negative portrayal.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- 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.
- Actually, in the manga it shows why he is the way he is.
- Nagi in Hayate The Combat Butler. This is not immediately obvious since she covers it up by being a cute girl and being 'homebound' involves her enormous family estate, but Hayate almost immediately observes that she's not very socialized and has an unusual obsession with video games and manga, and makes a point to get her out of her house.
- Izumi is accused of this. Turns out she has a good reason though.
- Built into the premise of Welcome To The NHK (where "NHK" means (the Japanese equivalent of "Japanese Hikikomori Association" instead of "Japan Broadcasting Corporation"), whose lead suffers from the condition. Much like the other characters, this is milked for both hilarious Black Humor and audience sympathy.
- Ah, Gosunkugi from Ranma 1/2. Hikaru Gosunkugi's character, in affect, is a total loser who gets his joy in life from stalking and secretly photographing Akane. In one manga chapter, the audience gets to see his parents, and they appear to be overjoyed at the concept of Gosunkugi actually having a friend.
- "He's the type of guy nobody notices."
- Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has its own hikikomori student, aptly named Kiri Komori. After being forced to leave her room at home, she secludes herself in various rooms at the school.
- 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 head of the Sohma family in Fruits Basket appears to be cultivating this in the rest of the family. This seems to be out of a desperate fear of being alone.
- Computer expert Seven in Loveless is heavily implied to be a Hikikomori, and is shown spending lots of time on her computer (including in an online RPG that serves as a communicator between characters in the series) and collecting anime figurines.
- Karin's family see a documentary about hikikomori and think Karin is one. They try an intervention, ignoring the fact that Karin was watching the documentary with them.
- 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 the 'rents to see him go into his room, not be there, and mysteriously be absent for days, so he keeps the door locked.)
- Endrance in .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.
- A serious example, taken to extremes, is Takumi, the protagonist of Chaos;Head. He lives in a shipping crate surrounded by anime figures, is deluded enough to see anime girls talking to him, and is paranoid to the extreme. The effects of his personality and lifestyle on the characters and situations he (reluctantly) encounters are the major part of the story.
- In the live-action Jigoku Shoujo series, one of Ai's clients is a hikikomori whose father has been murdered. The episode takes an unflinching look at his self-inflicted isolation and the pain it causes both him and his father. It's a Tear Jerker that conveys the tragedy of such a lifestyle better than any simple denunciation of slackers could.
- In the first anime series, there's a female hikikomori whose school teacher tries to reach out to her. At the same time she is communicating with what appears to be another student online. That person is actually her teacher (who isn't aware that the person he's talking to online and the student he's trying to help are the same person). He encourages her to send her teacher to Hell.
- One 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, unaware that it's the troll.)
- In the soccer manga Meister, one of the Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits in the school's soccer team is Koori Taira, an admitted hikikomori who seems dually based on L from Death Note and Gosunkugi from Ranma ½. He's antisocial, confrontational, self-centered, and seems to think he has hypnotic powers. But he's also the core of the team's defense and a generally unstoppable engine on the field.
- Japan from Axis Powers Hetalia refers to himself as a hikikomori in the strip alluding to Comodore Perry's arrival to Japan. Meeting the Americans after 200 years of isolation terrifies him so much that he almost has an Heroic BSOD at the mere idea of speaking to them.
- Yuu Matsuura in Marmalade Boy was this close to become a hikikomori when he was 12 years old, when he found a letter written by his grandmother, which hinted that the man he knew as his dad wasn't his biological father.
- In xxxHolic, Yuko essentially forces one of her clients to become one when the price of the wish is that she never allow her image to be captured on film (It Makes Sense In Context).
- 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.
- Eden Of The East has Itazu Yutaka. Called Panties, because he became a recluse after losing his only pair of pants.
- Leopard of Sora Wo Kakeru Shoujo has the distinction of being anime's first hikikomori AI.
- Sahoko from Pieta is a recovering hiki.
- Chrona from Soul Eater seems to display symptoms of this, as he/she has a distinct trouble interacting with people due to an abusive upbringing. Prefers to stay in his/her room in Mister Corner, often for several days at a time.
- Tomohiko Yamada of Satou Kashi No Dangan Wa Uchinukenai hasn't left his house in three years, and rarely leaves the comfort of his statue, book, and video filled room. Even his mother recognizes that he fits this trope: "Tomohiko has that rather popular condition, right? What is it? Hi... hi... hiki-..."
Film
- This seems to be the allegorical premise of the movie Kairo (later remade into Pulse), wherein people who find a haunted website withdraw from society and eventually disappear altogether.
- Ima, boku, wa
 (review) is about a hikikomori who is forced to deal with the outside world when his mother finds him a job. Then she dies.
Literature
- The self-proclaimed otaku in World War Z spent all his time on Image Boards discussing various things. 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, until the city is suddenly overrun overnight by zombies.
- The city wasn't suddenly overrun; he had just been so wrapped up in his research that he didn't notice that they were infecting everybody around him.
- Boo Radley in To Kill A Mockingbird.
- Johnny Truant, after working on The Navidson Record for a while.
- A non-anime example would be Eri Asai, from Haruki Murakami's novel After Dark. After being deprived of a normal childhood because of her hectic modeling career, she abruptly locked herself in her room and went into deep periods of sleep, awakening only to eat and use the bathroom.
- Sherlock Holmes' smarter brother, Mycroft, is a shut in who rarely leaves his rooms except to go to his nearby club. Isaac Asimov's Wendell Urth exhibits similar characteristics. Both act as armchair detectives, solving distant crimes related to them by third parties.
- There's also Nero Wolfe, from the mystery novels by Rex Stout, who only leaves the comfort of his home in the most dire circumstances - say the overseas murder of an old friend. Normal clients may visit him at home, or find another detective.
- Ilya Ilyich Oblomov, the protagonist of the eponymous novel by Ivan Goncharov, goes in a self-imposed exile from public life, not leaving his Saint Petersburg apartment for 'years'. The novel was published in 1859, making this trope Older Than Radio.
Live Action TV
- Mary Camden's behavior in Season 5 of Seventh Heaven resembles this, except instead of hiding in her room, she hides at the movie theater all day every day for weeks.
- 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.
- Ambrose Monk on Monk
- 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). Makes one wonder who on the writing staff actually knows about hikikomori.
- House once had a hikikomori as a Patient Of The Week.
- 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 gets worse when he suffers a Heroic BSOD following Mio's death, but he comes back from it a true Bad Ass.
Theatre
Video Games
- The protagonist of Yume Nikki.
- 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 Subterrainian 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.
- Also Kaguya Houraisan, who hid in and never left the Eientei, which leads her to be called a NEET. The 4koma doujin "Life of Maid" (see Fan Fic Recommendations) has Patchy getting along rather famously with her during the beach vacation arc.
- 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.
- Well actually, Luna Platz was able to get him to open up.
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