The last of the series from
the excellent last season that I picked up before it ended - and like *Magi,
one that I started watching because of advertisement I saw in Japan, as well as
an episode that aired as we happened to have the television on late one night -
I like most others I know found WataMote hilarious and deeply sad.
A strange little gag comic, it
has quite a pleasant success story, from being effectively a webcomic for Shounen Gangan's site to appearing in print in Gangan Joker, and then
finally becoming a short anime series, I'm sure it has gone further than
anybody involved in its making expected. And as a short, 12-episode gag series,
its limited premise is very watchable and difficult to dislike because it does
not outstay its welcome.
The bittersweet premise here
is that the short, plain fifteen-year-old Tomoko starts at her new high school
full of hopes of becoming popular and finding others like her, who love otome
games and enjoy her rather grim and often perverted sense of humour. However,
her contempt for popular girls, crippling social anxiety and somewhat creepy
appearance - with dark messy hair covering half of her face and heavy bags
under her eyes - mean that she is largely ignored or feared. She comes up with
a series of schemes to make herself more well-liked, but they are mostly either
based on anime and thus not applicable to her life - like being the
expressionless character - or utterly delusional, like when she thinks that she
is attractive and lucky because she has sprayed a can of Coke Zero on her face,
when in fact she just has ants crawling in her hair. Most of the humour comes
from just how far poor Tomoko falls, how much she ends up making us cringe,
like when she buys fancy panties to fit in, misplaces them, then ends up
thinking she is fanning herself with her handkerchief when in fact she is
waving her panties at her teacher.
Tomoko doesn't really interact
with others and is cripplingly shy around her peers. She has a little brother
who used to dote on her but now is a surly yet popular teen who is sadly only
driven further into a kind of dull horror by his sister's attempts to be affectionate.
She also has a best friend who attends another school, who has blossomed into a
pretty and popular young woman, exactly the sort that Tomoko wants to be, and
though their friendship remains strong, Tomoko's attempts to imitate her
usually end in disaster and humiliation for her. Even the little cousin who
used to dote on her, upon meeting her again, starts instead to understand her
lies and her affection turns, rather more tragically than if she had been
repulsed, to pity.
Of course, Tomoko's design
isn't that repulsive. She is cute in her way, and towards the end, random acts
of kindness by strangers towards her, especially the popular student council
member, are rather lovely moments. When she gets enough rest (thanks to the
sexual gratification of an otome game) she even looks cute for a while, much to
her own pleasure. It's no secret that this is an anime made for the male otaku
who see themselves in Tomoko and can fantasise about finding a girl like her,
with such similar intersts, and helping them with their self-esteem issues,
while finding their clutzy antics sweet and amusing. It's also part of the
increasing number of depictions of fujoshi culture in anime - which perhaps
started to boom with Lucky Star, through Chuunibyou and became dominant
in Genshiken Nidaime, a pleasant melding of affectionate mockery and
glorification that can appeal to male otaku and the subjects themselves.
The main criticism I've seen
of WataMote is that it's just too much. The poor girl has to suffer too much
humiliation, to the extent that it's painful to watch. For my money, though,
despite the fact that I admittedly watched slowly, there's a decent balance,
especially towards the end, between the abject misery of her existence and the
rays of light that come into her daily life thanks to others.
If there's another series, I
think I will watch, in hopes that things start to perk up for young Tomoko. I'd
like to see more of her attempts to date boys, even if she fails spectacularly,
and it would be good to see her open up to someone apart from her friend
Yuu-chan. Silver Link obviously had a lot of fun here in the same vein as their
work on Baka to Test, pitching their tone as something akin to a less
abrasive and frenetic Shaft, utilising the same shifts in art style, pastiche
and references to other anime, but with less obscurity, randomness and in-jokes
- something I find to be quite well-judged here.
Glad you enjoyed Watamote and we seem to feel the same about it in terms of that balance of comedy and tragedy it has going. I believe you read my review of it so I don't need to say much here...but yeah, I would definitely check out another season if it came about. It'll probably end up being one of my top favorite anime of the year (when I get around to making that list in the coming months).
ReplyDeleteHmm! Not sure if it will make any top-10 lists of mine...I liked it a lot and would watch more, but I wasn't sad that there wasn't another episode after it ended.
Delete