Review of WataMote: No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!
WATAMOTE is fundamentally a story about social anxiety and loneliness. For some viewers, this will be a frustrating show with almost no relatable elements. However, others will find this show resonates with their life experience and for a select few it might even be a revelatory insight into their own lives. The category that you fall into will determine how you feel about this show. People in the latter group will almost assuredly derive some pleasure (if only schadenfreude) from the show, but those in the former group may be put off by the frustration of what they are watching (some might find comedic valuein the show though).
WATAMOTE's biggest weakness for me was the plot/story. It takes until the very end of the final episode for Tomoko to come to any substantial revelation about herself. Maybe I had unrealistic expectations based on previous anime tropes and stories. I won't say more for fear of spoilers, but if you expect or need significant character and/or story arcs this won't be the show for you.
What WATAMOTE does right is the art and sound, which both perfectly fit the emotions and tone of the show. Both the art and sound help to reinforce Tomoko's personality and mood and add some much needed variety to each episode. Because explaining further would actually be spoilers to some of the best parts of the show, I'll leave it at that. Needless to say, you should enjoy the art and sound, I found them very polished as you would expect from a major studio.
Overall, I gave this a 7/10 because the story was weak (and the show left me wanting), but the rest was very well executed. I enjoyed the series and was able to relate to Tomoko, but I really wanted to see something significant happen to her. If I had been thrown a bone and Tomoko had actually changed in some significant way, this show would easily have been an 8 or 9. Even so, I still recommend this show to fans of slice of life series. It's still an enjoyable ride.