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

WataMote is one of the biggest surprises for me and I regret I did not watch it ten years ago when it came out. If you've been watching anime for any period of time, you have probably already heard about it. Our main character, Tomoko, had since long become a meme and a caricature of a female shut-in with her baggy eyes and disheveled hair that had never felt the touch of a brush. She plays otome games, she listens to Yandere BF ASMR, she fights with her family and she does not have any friends at school. "She's just like me" is what you're expectedto think.

What makes WataMote truly great is how gruesomely real it is. While the show frames itself as a lighthearted SOL comedy with many references to SOL titans such as Haruhi and K-On, in most cases Tomoko's blunders make you pity her, rather than laugh at her. Her social anxiety is made palpable through audiovisual hints, changes of art style for a moment, sudden changes in ambient noise from soundtrack to the hum of the street. She sweats and blushes and cannot speak loudly enough for most people to hear, forcing them to repeat their questions while she stumbles out a "Hai" that is not even picked up by the subtitles. In many of the less positive reviews I see people saying how uncomfortable they felt, a lot of the MC's feelings and situations painfully familiar to them. It is a testament to the incredibly realistic portrayal of what neurodivergent people struggle with in real life. And when Tomoko breaks down crying in her room once again, thinking to herself "I want to be normal", it is hard not to feel sympathetic to her.

This is a show that does not pretend to be a serious exploration of social anxiety, and yet it is. For something so whimsical to be so wonderfully grounded is mastery, and deserves all the praise that it got over the years.