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

I really like this anime. This was the anime that got me back into the whole world of it after a years-long hiatus. The story here is that after disconnecting from the medium some time in middle school for some ridiculous social reasons, I stumbled upon a clip from Watamote while I was scrolling aimlessly on my phone. I thought it was pretty funny, so I found an anime site and just started watching. I was pulled in, and before I knew it I had watched the whole thing, sun rising outside, and I thought to myself "Ok, so Ilove anime. I'm never going back." which kicked off the extent and intensity of my current passion for anime. In a way, Watamote itself motivated me to return, since so many of Tomoko's problems come from the fact she's so worried about being liked, about what other people think about her. Watamote is hard to watch for some people, and life-changing for others, because it holds a mirror up to your insecurities. The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung talked about coming to terms with and ultimately incorporating all the aspects of our personality into a cohesive whole in order to become a full person, even those parts we'd rather ignore, and I believe Watamote reminds the viewer of just what exactly that is for each of us. The story is a very simple, slice-of-life setup. It talks about an awkward girl with few friends and no romantic experience who is desperate to break out of her shell while also being terrified of what lies beyond it. This results in her constantly failing simple social interactions in a spectacular fashion, resulting in a fair dose of sympathy, comedy, and secondhand cringe.

The art and sound are very on-par with what one should expect from an anime, no more no less, though I will say it is very reminiscent of the 2010s in a warm and nostalgic kind of way. Tomoko's design is a stroke of genius, perfectly embodying her personality and conveying emotions and body language flawlessly, to the point that reaction images and profile pictures from the anime abound to this day.

It is her character that really gives this show its power, and that's because she is the most relatable character I have yet come across in an anime. That isn't to say that I think i'm completely like her, but rather that all her insecurities, all her shortcomings, all her fears and worries, are familiar in some way, and I completely understand her position because they are a part of everybody to some extent. That makes something special and beautiful out of this anime. Not a single one of us will fail to recognize at least one of her many anxieties, and as a result we all want to protect her, to guide her and tell her it's going to be OK, because we're telling ourselves through her. She's a spectacular character. I definitely recommend this anime, especially if you're feeling down about yourself, anxious about society or unsure of the future. Overall a fun, cute, sometimes hard to watch slice-of-life anime that captures the spirit of how a slice-of-life is supposed to interact with its audience, and an anime which is colossally important to me personally.