WATAMOTE ~No Matter How I Look at It, It’s You Guys Fault I’m Not Popular!~ - Episode 9

The summer break is nearly over but hey, at least Tomoko has a day out at the movies with Yuu to look forward to..

...at least, she did until Yuu cancelled those plans.  It turns out that Tomoko's sole friend has been roped into helping out at her uncle's cafe, which gives Tomoko something else to do as she's invited along to spend a little time there as a customer while Yuu works.  Our protagonist is both impressed and intimidated by the posh nature of the establishment, its food and clientele, and thus decides that she should work in a cake shop or something for the final days of her break.  Tomoko's mum duly obliges and finds a place for her thanks to a friend, but it's an experience that's very different from Tomoko's fantasies.  Welcome to the world of work!

Quitting this work in a cake factory after just one day, Tomoko is again left with nothing to do but lounge around the house - until her mum interrupts this inert bliss by requesting that her daughter help out with some of the cleaning around the house.  It isn't too long before Tomoko has had enough of this, trying to foist it upon her brother to no avail before being told to forget about it and focus on just cleaning up her own stuff - a mini-adventure which brings forth some interesting memories.  That evening, Tomoko heads out to watch a meteor shower as she reflects on her loneliness and wishes for a boy to watch the stars with.  Wishes can come true sometimes, albeit not quite in the way she intended.

Compared to some of its fare, this week's WATAMOTE played things with a pretty straight bat in terms of its story and comedy - it had some amusing (but admittedly quite lazy) anime and related references to throw into the mix in the name of humour, but its wider plot points were all pretty obvious and didn't really tell us anything we don't already know about Tomoko's character.  If you're heavily invested in the series as a whole then all of this would be more than enough to keep your interest, but for someone who has largely dipped in and out of the show in terms of my enjoyment of what it offers it was a little too unremarkable for its own good, Evangelion mobile phone theme or not.