Watamote: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Watamote: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 27, 2014

Other than the rush of hormones which assaults youngsters as they move into puberty, there’s probably no more potent force that teenagers face than their longing to belong—to be popular. Few among us are slated to be the football quarterback or the head cheerleader, and live in a kind of permanent state of envy, however slight, even if our personal social situation isn’t completely horrible. But what about those outcasts, the kind of kid who never seems to have an acquaintance, let alone a friend? That’s the general set up of the insanely lengthily titled WataMote: No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular (which will be foreshortened to WataMote for the rest of this review), a really interesting if somewhat disturbing anime that focuses on an otome addict named Kuroki Tomoko. Tomoko, like a lot of gaming enthusiasts, has racked up considerable achievements with her online and handheld games and apps, but in real life, she’s something of a mess. She fantasizes about how everything is going to change now that she’s about to enter high school, but again like many if not most of us, her fantasies soon give way to the cold, bitter truth that not only is she not popular, she seems to be something of a social pariah. WataMote is just the latest in a string of anime which attempts to get beneath the skin of troubled adolescents or teenagers (Flowers of Evil: Complete Collection springs to mind, probably because I reviewed it recently, though there are many others). What sets this piece apart is its somewhat manic style both in terms of aggressively stylized animation and actual plot developments. There’s a fascinating dialectic here because Tomoko is by all accounts a pretty miserable, maladjusted character, one who repeatedly stumbles through potentially positive social interactions, but somehow she manages to be rather lovable as this interesting anime progresses through a series of sometimes comic, sometimes slightly tragic adventures in ineptitude.

Like a lot of kids her age, Tomoko spends quite a bit of her extracurricular time online or playing handheld dating sim games. That proclivity only intermittently pulls Tomoko away from her rather fanciful inner imaginative life, though, something that often blossoms without even the external stimuli of a virtual male wafting across her computer monitor. In fact, Tomoko tends to drift off into daydreams at virtually the drop of a hat, especially when she’s at school. There are several interesting and real feeling sequences (despite their highly stylized presentation) where Tomoko will see the Japanese equivalent of a Valley Girl flirting with a boy or giggling excitedly about some upcoming social activity, and for a moment—sometimes just an instant—she’ll fantasize that she’s part of it all. But then suddenly Tomoko’s darker angels will overtake her psyche (as evidenced by smoky black tendrils that start to emanate from her head), and she’ll just go off on an epic sized rants about the “sluts” and other losers with whom she’s forced to share air space on this planet.

WataMote is an interesting anime for any number of reasons, but one of the most interesting is how completely focal Tomoko is. While various other characters—her brother, a lone friend—float through the series, almost every scene with them is actually told resolutely from Tomoko’s point of view, and the rest of the series (which is by far the bulk of the show) is simply Tomoko on her own. There are a lot of first person “confessionals” (for want of a better term) and voice over, making this the anime equivalent of a solo outing quite a bit of the time. Despite this evident sameness, the series is surprisingly diverse, finding all sorts of nooks and crannies within Tomoko’s hyperactive psychology. This tendency is supported by the series’ really diverse animation style, one which shuns typical moe tropes in favor of more angular, sharp edged formulations that almost resemble older American shows like The Powerpuff Girls.

The series is almost deliberately ironic at times in its skewering of otaku weirdnesses, and it also doesn’t shirk from the fact that Tomoko is her own worst enemy. As can be seen by the episode titles (see screenshot 20), Tomoko ping pongs from strategy to strategy in her desperate quest to find some technique that will help her to overcome her “performance anxiety” in public as well as help her to at least blend in if not actually become popular. It’s probably no huge surprise to hear that none of these really works out as Tomoko wishes, but at least some of the time that’s due to the girl’s completely unreasonable expectations, something which only plunges her into new bouts of rage and despair.

The satire of WataMote may strike some as too mean spirited, especially since Tomoko, whatever her faults, seems to be a relatively decent young lady, albeit one with a lot of baggage. But that’s also part of the charm of the series—rabid anime fans, who may find more than a bit of Tomoko in themselves, will be able to laugh at their own foibles as presented through the prism of Tomoko’s misadventures simply because they recognize so much of themselves in the character. While the overall arc of this series may leave some fans frustrated, taken on an episode by episode basis, WataMote is undeniably dark and twisted, but it rather curiously turns out to be a lot of fun as well.

Watamote: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

WataMote: No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This recent vintage anime never totally pops in high definition, though I have to assume some of this is due to intentional stylistic decisions on the part of the creative staff, decisions which tend to tamp down the palette and even detail to express Tomoko's dissatisfaction with her life (pay attention to how often her schoolmates don't even have facial features, even in relative close-ups, for example). That lack is probably more than offset by the riotous variety of styles on display. While even relatively normal looking sequences tend to be angular in presentation (as mentioned above in the main body of the review), when this series starts to depict Tomoko's emotional upheavals with various stylistic tricks, no holds are barred and the series really erupts into something very interesting to watch. Speaking of watching, keep your eyes trained on Tomoko's own eyes and watch how playfully the animators change them to help us to understand what the girl is going through. These changes often approach pure graphical elements (see screenshot 3). Colors, while not overly vivid most of the time (some of Tomoko's daydreams are quite resplendent, again a no doubt intentional choice), are nicely saturated. Line detail is strong and sure. There are some intermittent issues with banding, and contrast seems just slightly inconsistent as well, but otherwise this is a strong, if unique, looking presentation.

Watamote: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

WataMote: No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular features lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks in both the original Japanese as well as an English dub. Even those who prefer not to read subtitles should at least check out the Japanese track, for it features a geniunely unforgettable piece of voice acting by Izumi Kitta as Tomoko. Monica Rial is just fine in the role in the English language version, but Kitta's inflections and changes in timbre are so compelling that her performance really stands out as the best on this disc. Otherwise, the mixes are largely interchangeable, and provide decent stereo separation. So much of this show is first person narration or voiceover that a surround mix would have probably been overkill. The two audio options here perfectly support the dialogue as well as the punked out music score (the theme is one of the more relentlessly aggressive in recent memory).

Watamote: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animations (Disc One) (1080p; 7:00)


• Clean Closing Animations (Disc Two) (1080p; 3:05)

Watamote: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Make no mistake about it, WataMote: No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular is often uncomfortable to watch, and there will be times when you might even feel a little guilty for laughing at Tomoko's predicaments. But this is actually one of the more realistic feeling examinations of isolation and (self-imposed?) rejection that have come down the pike recently, and anyone who has ever felt like an outcast (whether or not that feeling is based in external reality) will probably find some point of connection here. Technical merits are generally very strong, and WataMote comes Recommended.