>>18001777/a/non here. Really enjoyed reading Watamote, a masterpiece of cringe, and I've been looking for an anime or manga like it ever since. I thought I would never be able to find another cringe anime that great again until I watched Pippa.
Watamote has 2 parts: Part 1 where Tomoko is a loner and Part 2 where Tomoko has so many friends that it's basically a lesbian harem. I liked the idea of an antisocial spastic suddenly getting a whole bunch of friends and not knowing how to deal with them but the execution was subpar because many of Tomoko's friends were one-dimensional.
Compare that to Pippa where every character she meets is a fully fledged individual. The premise of suddenly having to be friends with 6 other genmates to run your chuba business while still suffering from social anxiety is a brilliant setup where all sorts of awkward cringe interactions ensue. Look at 2 episodes ago during the multicompany collab. While her genmates socialized with the other chubas in an open field, Pippa built a boat and paddled as far away as she could This reaction is believable. This is something a socially awkward person would do irl. Watamote, on the other hand, tried too hard to push new characters into Tomoko so that she is always with them every chapter. It's jarring.
Another difference is that Tomoko has 1 big group of friends while Pippa has 2 groups of friends. Geek Social Fallacy 4: "Friendship Is Transitive" teaches us that different friend groups should be kept separate and have trouble mixing. Watamote's 1 big friend group is fully guilty of GSF4 and is unrealistic because people have multiple friend groups. Pippa takes the opposite approach by having 2 friend groups who clash violently and with unexpected results. (Think social violence with arguments rather than punches). While most people separate their friend groups. Pippa needs both to achieve a high level of success. This balancing act can make or break her and is a high level conflict the likes of which is usually seen in high politics like Romulus and the Sabines, the Israel-Palestine conflict, or Guru Nanak and the Sikhs trying to form peace between Muslims and Hindus.
I'm excited to see how this conflict will be resolved and I'm looking forward to the next episode of Pippanime. I would also like to see Pippa cosplay Tomoko like pic related because that would be really really meta.
