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

Watamote is an anime that tackles the POV of someone unpopular and honestly mentally ill. It tackles the mannerisms, behaviors, and thought processes of someone trying to be well liked but also scared of direct interaction and is frankly a bit of a loser. This leads to some interesting, quite relatable situations if you are that kind of person. It does it more effectively and honestly than others like it I see, like say Bocchi the Rock. Don't expect a happy go lucky story on this one. The thing about Watamote though is if you are an empathetic person, you want to see the main characterKuroko develop through and improve and at leas get a tiny bit better but this doesn't entirely happen. There are some powerful moments, ones where Kuroko does develop confidence to try something and change herself: only to backfire at herself completely and those moments can hit hard in realizing a bit of why she is the way she is. However, at other times it treats itself as a comedy where we are more or less laughing at the expense of Kuroko which can make its messaging unclear and is in part why I didn't fully enjoy the anime. In general, I'd say treat this like a dark comedy where we are in part laughing at the expense of someone elses situation.

Comedy taste is highly subjective and difficult to review, so I'll say it does a fair enough job. Depending on the person you are, you can laugh at the clueless absurdity of Kuroko or the relatability of Kuroko. She will go through all these schemes to try at gaining social interaction that is doomed to fail, and its interesting and somewhat humorous to chuckle at, especially if you feel you are prone to do the same thing. She'll insult normal people for having social interaction, she'll conjure up unrealistic delusions and act on them cluelessly. It's almost like a 'car crash fascination' kind of watching of seeing how her plans go wrong this time. It has a good level of variety in these approaches.

So, simply for its relatively realistic take on self-destructive and self-loathing behaviors do I recommend at least seeing it, but I wouldn't necessarily expect enjoyment depending on the kind of person you are: this show can be a bit bleak.