Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dou Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui! (No Matter How I Look At It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Unpopular!), often shortened as WataMote, is a 2013 comedy anime produced by the studio Silver Link. Its director is Shin Oonuma, who also was responsable for Kokoro Connect and Baka to Test.
Kuroki Tomoko is an otaku that just began high school expecting to be popular. After a couple of months, she realizes she is not popular in any way, actually, she hasn't talked to anyone at school yet. This realization makes her even more fixated with popularity, which makes her able to go to any lengths to accomplish her objective.
WataMote is a comedy, but it does have a setting with a lot of potential to develop its characters. However, it is too focused on the comedy to make any kind of progress character or storywise. All of this results in a storyline that can simply be summarized in one sentence: Tomoko wants to be popular.Tomoko could have had a fairly strong development and multiple opportunities to do that arose during the course of the anime, sadly, they were completely wasted. Through the overwhelming part of the anime, she doesn't change or evolve in any way whatsoever, and when it finally does happen it is done in a post-credits scene with no real build up.
WataMote boasts of a fairly big supporting the cast, but they are hardly more than caricatures. However, all of them are fairly accurate representations of teenagers, albeit very exaggerated, and this includes Tomoko. These teenagers are all basically looking for one thing: friends, which for Tomoko means popularity.
As I already said, WataMote is a comedy, which means most of your attention should be directed to that aspect of the show.
Differently from most other anime, WataMote is a comedy about failure. Most of the comedy comes from how far she goes to become popular, such as trying to make herself prettier or deciding to start to work with cakes. But all of these situations are also horribly awkward and a bit depressing (to me), which made it very hard for me to laugh.
Another part of the comedy (the one I enjoyed more) comes from the metalinguistical references. Constantly, the protagonist speaks of other anime and their story in a more comical way. Also, it criticizes some genres of anime, for example: the anime made for the so-called "moe pigs".
WataMote truly above average aspects are technical, however.
It is insanely pretty and knows how to use colors to express motions. The use of color is masterful, as is the use of other effects. Most of the time Tomoko is at school, the setting becomes black-and-white to portrayal her disconnect to that world, which is a fairly interesting characteristic.
The voice acting is also masterful. Tomoko's gruff and assured internal voice makes her sound like a complete badass, but, whenever she speaks up, we are reminded of her exterior: that of a lonely and small girl. This duality is only made possible because of the work of her voice actress, Izumi Kitta.
WataMote's soundtrack and its usage is also top-notch. The tracks enhance the scenes in a fairly wonderful way and the usage of the OP is fairly interesting. The sound design as a whole is great, with some effects making the fails of Tomoko even more evident.
WataMote was, to me, a mixed bag. With wonderful visual sense and great soundtrack, its "literary" aspects were severely lacking in comparison. Relatable and "real-seeming" characters were actually just one-sided empty shells. The comedy didn't work for me, I never laughed out loud during any of its 12 episodes.
WataMote is a strange comedy that focuses on the awkwardness. My recommendation is that you give the first episode a try: if you find it funny, continue watching and, if you don't, stop with no regrets, the rest is more-or-less the same.
