WataMote: No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!

Watamote is full of comedy and has a unique introverted funny protagonist who is a girl and she wants to be popular, to be loved by everybody,she also wants a boyfriend .This slice of life and comedy based anime has a wonderful plot and a perfect storyline. You will not detest it. I guarantee it.

This anime was delightfully bitter. Something I truly never expected to find in this genre of all things.

Let's get the bad out of the way first: the claim that this anime is offensive. That's somewhat true. Sexual assault is trivialised with humour voiced by the female MC. There is also some fan service - a minuscule amount but totally ill-suited for the scenes they're in. Also the show gets very preachy, over using the "woman of loose morals" slur to make a point. This is hypocritical considering we're dealing with the nation that took objectification to an art form.

And now for all the good aspects. Regarding this anime as offensive towards people who suffer from social anxiety is actually a plus in my book. Not because it's actually true but because it proves the show pulled no punches when it came to how it dealt with the subject. The anguish, embarrassment and loneliness the heroine experiences were impactful for me. Tomoko's habit of conceiving plans to quickly rise to popularity at times got her comically humiliated. As a loner myself, this had the effect to thoroughly relate to her. Her witty inner monologue, sprinkled with anime and video game references, presents her as a reclusive nihilist. However she quickly morphs into a shy optimist every time one of her harebrained schemes to get accepted might have a chance to work.

And this is how the show tugged at my heartstrings... Tomoko transitions from resenting the happiness of others to briefly being hopeful for her own happiness and ultimately to deep sorrow, as things don't go her way. Stylised animation and the music score are sometimes used to emphasise these emotions. This unbearable sadness becomes bittersweet in the rare moments when Tomoko skips that whole emotional roller coaster and is sincerely acknowledging her pure need to be desired. When all of these pieces come together they make for one hell of a show.

As a final commendation for this anime all I can say is that I've never felt such a need to give a hug to a fictional character before. It absolutely deserved a more rewarding conclusion!

This show is somewhat difficult to rate and recommend, mostly because it has very specific and mature qualities, rather than being straight up exciting like some expect out of anime. It's about a bitter, socially awkward 15 year old girl that tries her hardest to fit in and become more sociable, but her fear and misunderstanding of people cause her to fail at it over and over again.

If you are the person that gets a lot of second hand embarrassment from witnessing awkward situations you are in for quite a ride. Feeling strongly related to the heroine, personally, this is what attracted me to the show so much. If it can make you feel things, than you know it is real, relevant, and it is refreshing to experience it from a third point of view. The people who made the show understand deeply what it means to be a shut-in.

If that sounded scary, don't worry! The whole show is done in a light comedy tone. If it wasn't, watching it would be downright unbearable. There are a ton of hilarious references to other popular anime.

I would strongly recommend it to people who experienced some degree of social anxiety while growing up, or people who want to understand it better.

Really the headline can describe Tomoko as a whole, she seems like a nice character I'd appreciate since I like a lot of cute and silly characters, though this show suffers from a lot of tropes anime commonly suffers from. I really want to like this show and several others like it, but it has a lot of unneeded pervertedness, several uses of the R word slur, and some odd content hinting at incest between Tomoko and her younger brother, all which is off-putting to me. If these weren't in the story I'd probably appreciate the show much more, even I could understand the pervertedness aspect of it if Tomoko wasn't literally 15 years old.

This show is very silly however, it has a good amount of enjoyable aspects to it and Tomoko has good character traits that make me enjoy her character design as the loser girlfailure she is. As much as I'd like to say Tomoko is one of my MANY favorite characters across media, the odd anime details I mentioned above keep me from doing so or recommending this show at all, stuff like this makes me embarrassed of shows by association, therefore I can't say I'm a fan of Watamote, I just wish Tomoko was in a better show, had changed aspects of her character design, etc.

I don't much recommend watching this unless you're like me and saw Tomoko, thought "Oh this character is cute, I want to watch the media she's from" and then can also bare the unneeded pervertedness and odd content featured in it. Otherwise I'd say don't touch this one unfortunately.

Thank you for reading.

I saw an article on Kotaku from a "writer" claiming this anime to be incredibly mean about people with social disorders. He went on and on about how these things shouldn't be made fun of, and that the creators are generally mean people. What he also mentioned, was that this show is a comedy. In true false humility, someone has taken it upon themselves to get uppity about jokes. Again. The problem isn't that these things could be considered offensive, it's that this isn't the type of comedy that appeals to some people. Now about the actual anime, and not why I enjoy the creators. I didn't find it very funny, the jokes were okay but never really stood out to me. The only reason I'd remember this is because of the kotaku article. The faces were funny, I've often taken screen shots and photoshoped them into inside jokes which I would distribute among my friends. Other than that, the show was surprisingly boring. In the end, I appreciate the idea more than the product.