LogFAQs > #969596177

16. Watamote: No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular!
https://myanimelist.net/anime/16742/Watashi_ga_Motenai_no_wa_Dou_Kangaetemo_Omaera_ga_Warui
Summer 2013 (12 episodes)
My Score: 9/10, MAL Score: 7.00/10
Best Character: Kuroki Tomoko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZYq7rat9d4

My Tomoko figure: https://imgur.com/CqGpzhF

Premise: After playing countless visual novels and dating sims, Kuroki Tomoko thought she was ready for her inevitable popularity in high school. Instead, to her surprise, no one has interacted with her at all.

The Good: Watamote is a cringe comedy about Tomoko, a girl who is a crazy otaku on the inside but has paralyzing social anxiety on the outside. Most of the jokes are about just how bonkers her thoughts can get, or how awkward her actions are. Early on, Tomoko finally psyches herself up to go to a fast food restaurant alone. Then, uh oh, some of her classmates come in too and sit near the door. Tomoko can't leave now, because if they see her eating here alone her reputation will be ruined! Tomoko has to sneak into the washroom and alter her appearance into an elaborate disguise before she can escape. It's hilarious seeing just how far off the deep end she can go during normal everyday situations that don't matter to anyone except for her.

However, the cringe comedy isn't why I love Watamote. My favorite thing is just how much I related to Tomoko's social anxiety. Her internal self is obviously taken to hilarious extremes. She regularly wishes death on people with friends, thinks girls who talk to boys are bitchy sluts, and so on. Tomoko also dreams of having friends and being popular with boys, so it's clear this is just her lashing out due to jealousy. I love how all of her mean-spirited insanity is confined to her thoughts. From the outside, Tomoko is the perfect representation of social anxiety. There are lots of anime with a shy main character, but none of them struck me as realistic. Komi from Komi Can't Communicate is incapable of speaking, yet everyone loves and worships her. Bocchi from Hitoribocchi is awkward, but she quickly makes three best friends who accept her strangeness. I also grew up with social anxiety, and Tomoko is the closest to my experience with it. Even though she's constantly terrified that everyone is judging her, most people don't even realize she exists.

The Bad: Some of the cringe comedy can get a little too cringe for my tastes. This was my number one favorite anime for a lot of years, but most of that love was due to how relatable Tomoko was. When I rewatched Watamote, I was sad to see that some of the situations just made me uncomfortable. I still loved a lot of the humor, just not enough to justify a top ten, never mind the coveted number one spot.

Overall: Watamote, in my mind, has two halves. My favorite thing was examining Tomoko's character. It was interesting to see how she viewed the world, as well as how other people viewed her (or, more commonly, how they never even noticed her at all). The other half is a cringe comedy. I loved a lot of those jokes, but some went too far for my tastes. Watamote used to be my favorite anime of all time, and it slipped down a bit after a rewatch. I still love Tomoko, though, because she really does embody my experience with social anxiety. It isn't cute like in Hitoribocchi or mysterious like in Komi Can't Communicate. It's just sad, awkward, and lonely, and Tomoko knows all of those feelings well.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/6/2/AAcDcBAAD6Iy.jpg

CHARACTER: Kuroki Tomoko (Watamote)
https://myanimelist.net/character/50057/Tomoko_Kuroki
Voiced by: Kitta Izumi
TOP 100 RANK: 4th

SPOILERS FOR WATAMOTE

VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4srPBTz1XQ

I absolutely love that video of Tomoko ordering food at a WcDonalds. It's the perfect example of how she appears to the rest of the world. We, as the viewers, get to see into Tomoko's insane thoughts. We get to see her during her private time where she's fantasizing about sadistic boys or coming up with zany schemes to become popular. All of that is invisible to everyone else. To that fast food worker, Tomoko is just quiet and awkward, and she'll be forgotten about entirely in a few minutes. As someone else who grew up with social anxiety, I relate to that side of Tomoko a lot. The best way I can describe social anxiety is the constant, crippling fear that everyone is judging you at all times. It's impossible to have a conversation because 90% of your focus is devoted to trying to imagine how they're seeing you. Of course, the truth is, no one cares about other people that much, and especially not about the quiet kid who never calls attention to themself.

It's amazing just how many little things Tomoko did that I could personally relate to. One subplot was about her finding a quiet corner of the school to eat her lunch. I did that too! For all of high school, I sat in a corner of the second floor western hallway. Even when I finally did make a few friends, I was never brave enough to eat with them. Tomoko had an awkward friend from middle school who turned hot and popular in high school. Even though Yuu is still friendly and genuine, it hurts Tomoko to see her success. I related with that feeling of being left behind. I also empathized with how Tomoko could latch onto the tiniest interactions and become obsessed with them. She meets one guy a few times, he's just nice and normal, but she starts fantasizing about how he likes her. For a lot of people, all of this is part of the cringe comedy. For me, it was like my teen years were being faithfully reenacted by a cute anime girl.

Towards the end of the anime, Tomoko begins to wonder what her classmates are saying about her when she's not in the room. She sets up a recording device in order to find out. She's hoping for praise after her recent heroism when she killed a cockroach. The viewer is probably expecting disgust, because a lot of people were really grossed out when she killed that cockroach. The sad reality is that no one is talking about Tomoko at all. It took a lot of growth and maturity before I realized the truth. No one cared as much as I always thought they did. Poor Tomoko will probably realize that someday too, but for now she gave me a lot of laughs and discomfort by being so realistically awkward.