There's a few different things I feel about this show, and a few different way that I think you can enjoy it.
From one perspective, I think it's a great exercise in appreciating interesting and fun stories for the sake of themselves without being concerned with it "having something to say" or having a satisfying moral quandary tucked neatly inside its plot. You can have a good time letting yourself get wrapped up in Tomoko's dysfunction and watch her the way you'd watch a cat try to fight itself in a mirror. It's also just really good at being a slice of life and showing Tomoko going through the motions of being a horrifically anxious beast of nerves and social malfunction, and I also really like the segments of her interacting with her brother. It is silly and sweet and so much fun.
From the perspective of a person concerned with the well being of society, I think that everyone should watch this and understand how you can and should have basic compassion for people you find unsettling or gross, because you need to be able to recognize those people as full humans with all the same depth of humanity that you have. Tomoko is deeply troubled and embodies so many issues that you typically think of social outcasts as having; lashing out at people for not liking them, slipping further into maladaptive fantasy in response to rejection, clinging to fictional characters or celebrities as a source of comfort and a facade of companionship, she's really got it all and the narrative does not try and make those things themselves cute or charming, but it does make you have compassion for her. As much as I do simply enjoy watching her struggle with basic interaction, it's also nice to see her breakthrough moments of understanding, or feeling like she's finally being understood, and it honestly makes me feel incredibly seen.
As an autistic freak who often feels like I'm just doing a botched imitation of a person, I feel like this show accepts the parts of me that don't really know how to 'properly' be a person and interact with people, and it has compassion for that. It's not gonna sit here and say that it's fine to just be creepy to people, but it frames Tomoko in a way that seems to say that you're not an inherently bad person if you can't do that, and that you just need to spend time on it and hope that you can find people that'll be able to receive that part of you. It also understands that you might come off as creepy when you're genuinely trying not to, and it confronts some of the pain that comes with that. It is so, so painful to be told that you're committing the exact social crimes that you are trying so hard not to, and there are times when it feels like you'll never be able to understand how not to, and at times like that it feels good to be able to recede into being the kind of weird, creepy person that you are by nature. It's fun to indulge in being autistically weird about people or things that I think are cool, and it feels good to fully express myself in the way that feels most natural, and this show is incredibly cathartic in that way.
This show also has great visuals. The expressions are always excellent and the op alone is nuts, you can tell that a lot of time and skill went into making it looks exactly how it needed to be. It's certainly simple, but it's done so effectively and with a precision so that it never feels cheap or phoned in.
31 out of 33 users liked this review
