[Anime] Rate The Last Anime You Watched

WataMote is a painful story. That's the easiest way to describe it. It's the painful story of a painfully anti-social girl's painful life. There are very large pros to having a story like this, but there are also huge cons that can come with it. WataMote is no exception, it's amazing but also majorly flawed. So why did I give it a 9? Because the flaws with stories like this is that they are completely hit or miss, there's no in between. For me it was a home run, but it's very understandable that it can be a strike out.



Baseball metaphors aside, let's get into why WataMote is good and why it's bad.



It's relatable. The strongest thing that painful stories have is that people who have felt similar pain can relate to the main character, when that occurs a person can easily fall in love with a story. If you're someone that is anti-social, socially awkward, shy, or can't express yourself well then you'll find Tomoko practically reading your mind at several points.



But what about people who aren't like that? What of you folks who can easily talk with people, have tons of friends and go out and have fun regularly? What you end up with is a gruelingly torturing story of a sad girl futilely attempting to make friends. When you see the things in the story that happen to Tomoko, you don't go "It's so true!" You go "Oh, my god that's so sad. Poor Tomoko."



Let's put it this way. While you watch you might think, "When is someone just gonna go up and try to become friends with her?" In a fluffy story about friendship that would happen. But this is a realistic story about a loner, that person who wants to become her friend doesn't exist, in the story or real life. If you're thinking "That's terrible." Then you probably won't like WataMote.



Looking at the story objectively also opens some flaws to you. There is almost no plot. The entire story is just the life of Tomoko, period. The pace is slow and and the progression is very lifelike, AKA nonexistent. There is a notable amount of repetition and things can eventually become stale. To a person who's experienced similar pain however, these issues are nearly invisible because of how close to life it is. But that doesn't excuse that the issues exist.



An interesting thing about WataMote is that the only true character is Tomoko. There are only two other notable characters and even they are very minor to things. When this show says it's about a girl with no friends it means it. The whole story revolves around Tomoko observing the world around her and making commentaries, trying to become popular, and then reverting back to her NEET state in recovery from the pain. Being that everything is about her and her alone, the story is very Me VS The World, which some can enjoy but a lot of people can easily find so much time spent with just one character suffocating.



No matter how you look at it however, Tomoko is a brilliant character. She is realistic at scary levels. She has no friends, but wants to make some. So then why does she spend all day cooped up in her room? Why does she watch what her classmates do in disgust? It's because that's how she has developed to survive. The only way to make it okay to not have friends subconsciously is to hate them, yet she consciously still wants friends. She wants to go out and have fun, but subconsciously she knows that only pain awaits outside her room. Tomoko is absurdly lifelike and likable.



A big part of her character is that no matter what happens. No matter how likable she is, she is never cute or moe in any way which is so important for this show to make her relatable. Several times I got absorbed into Tomoko's character that I started to fantasize about nice things happening to her, which is exactly what she does to get her spirits up. Your spirits get lowered to the same level as hers as she connects to you. I didn't want to refer to her as Tomoko as I watched, I wanted to call her Watashi(Me).



The sound of WataMote is excellent. Kitta Izumi does a brilliant job as Tomoko. Her voice is unique, fitting, and enjoyable. The opening is fantastic in my opinion. It takes a very different direction than typical openings by being a serious dramatization of Tomoko's desire to break out of her recluse nature.



(Sorry for the Spanish sub as I couldn't find an English sub version.)

The ending in contrast shows the representation of Tomoko's inner awareness that she can't break out of it.



The art is also notable. It's simple but also very expressive and erratic at many points. Tomoko is a NEET and she looks the part.



So with what I've said it might seem like WataMote is the a massively depressing story, that's not entirely wrong. The way that it manages to keep things lighthearted is by always trying to make the depressing let downs, failures, and truly pitiful successes comedic. It's a dark humor, it's funny how much Tomoko is beat down, not because I like watching girls in pain but because I understand her pain. And when they finally portray Tomoko's pain as pain instead of dark humor it really resonates with you. But only if you can stomach watching a really pitiful girl. The extreme darkness of the humor can easily turn a lot of people off.



The last thing I have to say about WataMote is that a lot of other people, including the show itself, claim that the story is a trivial one that eventually leads to nothing. Throughout the whole thing there is pain, pain, and more pain. Where's the payoff? There isn't any. The story is too realistic to offer something like payoff. However I don't believe at all that the Tomoko at the beginning of the story is the same one at the end of it. WataMote has one of those endings that when you first see it it seems like nothing, but if you give it another good hard look you can see that Tomoko changes a lot at the end. To me, the ending is the payoff of everything and it is a massive payoff. It's a great and very realistic ending. But it's not easy to see the payoff, only people who understand can probably see it, but it's there.



Should you watch WataMote? In most cases an anime scored with a 9 might be an "Absolutely". Not here. As a matter of fact, I think most people would probably not like WataMote. I think that only those quiet, anti-social, loners are the people who would praise WataMote the same way I do. But all of you sociables probably want to avoid this one. You might think you can sympathize with Tomoko, but sympathy won't carry you enough to ignore the flaws the same way relating to her can.