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

Some spoilers ahead Since we're in a pandemic, where I've spent well over a year holed up in my house, with my social interactions and skills at an all-time low, I figured watching WataMote, a show about an awkward shut-in, would be an interesting, if slightly different, perspective into what most people are currently going through. Unfortunately, I was really disappointed by this show. Story: 3/10 The premise of the show is one that I think actually had an insane amount of potential. Writing from the perspective of the main character Tomoko, who happens to be your stereotypical weeb, dealing with mental health issues and the growing emotionalpains of being an awkward teenager, is a refreshing change of pace from your usual anime series. Whereas most anime is, to varying degrees, escapism, WataMote is the exact opposite of that, and I think there is some merit to try and challenge that status quo by creating a story based around concepts that aren't explored too often, but are still greatly familiar to most viewers, as to not alienate them. In fact, there were moments in the show that I was able to relate to on an almost visceral level, things that I've experienced almost exactly like how they play out here, and that's coming from someone who's not particularly socially awkward, so I can imagine how uncomfortably close to home this show could hit for some people.
And that's the key word. Uncomfortable. WataMote is hard to watch. Watching Tomoko get into some really awkward situations. and then making them 10 times worse by being completely socially inept is played out for laughs like 95% of the time. However, if you're anything like me, you'll exclusively be anxiously laughing from the unbearable secondhand embarrassment rather than be genuinely amused by Tomoko's shortcomings. I can't properly enjoy a story when it's such a painfully real one that's constantly being painted into a lighthearted, comedic tone, when, in reality, someone who actually goes through these types of situations, and handles them the way Tomoko does, would be devastated to know that they've fucked up another social interaction by just being incredibly bad at them, and they'd feel like shit about it for weeks, kinda like Tomoko, but again, the show plays these situations and her reactions to them as a comedy. Personally, laughing at someone's expense just really isn't my thing, though I guess there is a crowd for that, so if that's you, then maybe give WataMote a shot.

Art: 6/10
The art style's not a whole lot to write home about, though I do have to mention that I really love the fact that Tomoko is made to look like an absolute mess, all the time. Her eyebags are dark and massive, her posture's terrible, she's quite skinny and pale, her head looks gigantic and disproportionate, and she's significantly shorter than damn near everyone around her, especially her classmates. The fact that they didn't draw Tomoko as a well put-together, attractive girl with giant tits, and instead went out of their way to make her look like she hasn't willingly touched grass or let sunlight hit her skin in years, is an aspect that I think grounds this series even deeper into reality. She's also drawn in a slightly chibi art style, which thankfully doesn't clash with the rest of the characters, who are all drawn in a pretty typical style. I also like the little art style change that happens occasionally near the end of episodes, when Tomoko's talking with her brother, it's pretty cute. The sudden still shots of Tomoko drawn in a cubist or surrealist art style that occur throughout the show are also fun, though they're quite out of place and the first couple times it happened, it was really jarring. The visuals on the OP and ED are decent, if a bit excessively edgy on the former's part. The animation itself is also fairly standard, though there's a few clunky moments, most notably in one episode where Tomoko is walking away from the camera's perspective, but instead just dawdles in place for like 10 seconds during what's supposed to be an emotional moment in the show.

Sound: 5/10
I honestly can't remember any music or sound effects that played during the episodes, other than the edgily iconic OP, which I somewhat enjoy even if I skipped it after the first three episodes, and the ED, which is cute and kinda funny, but the shouty, childish vocals got annoying very quickly. I ended up skipping it on all but two episodes. There's also a beautiful song that makes for a great emotional moment during the only episode of the show I truly enjoyed, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Character: 3/10
Since there's not a lot of important recurring characters, I'll mostly focus on Tomoko herself. Like I mentioned previously, she's your stereotypical weeb: a total shut-in, has no friends, is in desperate need for a normal social interaction that she cannot for the life of her insert herself into because of how socially inept she is, spends all her time watching anime, porn or playing videogames, and is absolutely terrified at the thought of having to do anything else other than those things, occasionally even lashing out when being forced to do them. She spends her every waking moment imagining situations in which she's not a social reject, she imagines herself as the main character of a shoujo/shounen series, whether it's her being a quiet, mysterious girl all the students in her class are desperate to know more about, or a bubbly and voluptuous girl, it seems like she wants to be everyone but herself. Tomoko's self hatred runs so deep that she's constantly insulting and putting down (obviously not out loud since she can't even look at people in the eye without losing her mind) the very girls she wants to imitate, calling them whores and sluts, wishing for them to die violent deaths. She even refers to her only friend in the world, Yuu, as a slut and gets irrationally angry and envious when she notices Yuu's breasts had grown quite a bit since the last time they had seen each other. Tomoko's lonely as fuck, she's got a lot of internalized misogyny, an insane amount of insecurities, an absurd understanding of how the world works (since her only sources of entretainment, friendship and news is the internet and anime) and clearly a lot of serious mental health issues including depression (which, again, are almost always played out for laughs).
Throughout the show, Tomoko tries various things to try and get out of her comfort zone, always with a goal in mind, whether it's getting the attention of or seducing some guy, being integrated into a friend group, joining a club, participating in class activities, being noticed by her classmates, etc. She always has a plan, though none of them make a whole lot of sense, they're not very well thought out and they never succeed, but hey, at least she's trying, right? Unfortunately, since none of her schemes work out nor does she learn anything from them, her character development is practically nonexistent. She never grows out of her horrible behaviors, she never learns to be true to herself, she doesn't think she's doing anything wrong and keeps blaming everybody but herself for her own problems (for reference, read the show's translated name), and she never gets better. In fact, I think by the final episode, she's even worse than she was initially, as she accidentally sees an upperclassmate's panties when a gust of wind lifts up her skirt, and Tomoko reacts by running away from the school all the way to her house without stopping, crying and screaming the whole way, even ignoring Yuu, who runs after her, calling out her name. Yeah. Sometimes, Tomoko makes the kids in school who'd Naruto run through the hallways and energy charge when they were mad seem well-adjusted.
I mentioned earlier that Tomoko's depression and loneliness are ALMOST always played out for laughs. There is one exception to that constant array of comedy at our protagonist's expense. Episode 10 is the only time we get a good look at Tomoko's mental state, how she copes with her issues, her usual daydreaming from a more realistic point of view, how desperately she just needs someone she can rely on, how she grasps at whatever gives her a slight serotonin boost and hangs on to it for dear life, how quickly she gets discouraged by small things, and her genuine reaction when something that makes her happy is taken away. It's a beautiful and emotional episode with very few, but tasteful and well-timed comedic moments. It all climaxes into a gorgeous ending song. It almost made me cry from how genuine her feelings seemed and how good of a representation of depression this episode is. I thought that this would be the turning point for Tomoko, where she finally realizes that she needs to change and that there's no way she can do it unless she gets real help and accepts it, I thought the show was about to get serious near the end, but nah, the next episode begins with Tomoko aggressively wishing that her classmates, who are literally just standing there, are reincarnated as poop in their next life.
Tomoko is a really interesting and unique character that, under serious writing, could become a very compelling protagonist with some fantastic character development, but unfortunately, WataMote treats her more like a laughingstock than anything else.
As for other characters, her brother Tomoki, is one that gets no character development at all, but his relationship with Tomoko and their interactions are pretty realistic, and there's even some heartwarming moments that come from it. I wish we had seen more of the brother, as well as a better exploration of Tomoko's relationship with all her family, since it seems that both her dad and her mom are used to seeing her be an absolute freak.

Enjoyment: 3/10
I just couldn't get much enjoyment out of something that's constantly making me feel uncomfortable. And I don't mean uncomfortable in a challenging, question-everything-you-know type of way, but more in like a throwing-garbage-at-a-stray-puppy-that's-missing-a-leg-and-laughing-and-pointing-at-it type of way. It's not particularly fun for me. Though there were some elements I enjoyed and there's even some comedic moments I thought were funny, but most of them are interactions that Tomoko has with her family (like the vibrator scene or the voice acting scene), so again, I just wish her home life was explored more deeply, though I guess there's no need for that when all you want to do is make your main character suffer constantly by trying to interact with strangers in the outside world. I tried to sometimes imagine Tomoko through a neurodivergent perspective to try and understand her a bit more, but the constant bombarding of trying to make the audience laugh just completely ruined that for me, also I just know that that's not what the creators were going for at all, either, so whatever. I really only enjoyed two episodes, episode 10 and episode 13, the latter of which is a 27-minute monster, and it tells a cringy and childish situation from the perspective of Tomoko, as well as this other pretentious kid who probably watched Death Note once and then based his whole personality off Light Yagami. It's the only episode where I enjoy the comedic take on Tomoko's klutziness and inability to have a normal human interaction.

Overall, WataMote is a show that I struggled to get through and only finished it because I hate dropping series. It had one good moment near the end, but it picked me up only to put me down almost inmediately after. The show just can't stand to take itself seriously, even though the topic that it chose to base its main character off of is quite serious. The comedy is only halfway decent at best, the show itself throws in a lot of moments that stick out like a sore thumb (episodes 10 and 13, multiple sexual assault scenarios, etc etc etc) for god knows what reason, considering that a majority of those don't serve much of a purpose or aren't particularly comedic, most of the aspects of the show that still resound in my head after finishing it are all pretty negative, it honestly just pissed me off and made me want to stop watching most of the times. I guess if you're fine with this type of comedy at the expense of someone else, you might find WataMote really entretaining, but for me, this was just torturous and I don't plan on watching it ever again.

3/10