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firefish5000
The high ratings and high praise make sense, are justified. Let me say a few things:
Remember when the anime came out and Kotaku wrote about it? How the writer got horrified that it was a "dark comedy" seeing that Tomoko was indeed suffering from the situations presented? That is one of the first reasons why this manga is "good".
Yes, Tomoko had problems, and yes she was really suffering. That was the point.
I know that it was hard to read, really, you would feel pain reading those chapters, it wasn't read to endure. But seeing how all those situations were being told like it wasn't just a joke, that got me interested, and I believe I'm not alone saying this.
Well, some say that this manga changed, but I disagree.
It didn't changed, it just evolved, with the time, naturally.
One thing that I like about this manga, if this helps explain to you, is that the monologues aren't like you see in other stories. The monologues don't feel like they're directed to you, to help you, the reader, to understand the characters and what the story is about. This is a consequence of other and bigger quality of Watemote.
It's subtle.
It's hard to explain and convince you of this without giving detailed examples, but believe in me, the narrative here is subtle, every frame counts. Every detail in every frame counts. Yesterday I wrote planty about a single detail in a single frame, because this manga allows this. In recent chapters we saw entire conflicts play out almost outside of the narrative, almost hidden inside a few frames through the chapters.
So, there's a lot of reasons.
The narrative is better than what it appears at first, even if the story is episodic and random.
The characters are well rounded.
Great character development.
It's a series that found its public and everyone that still reads feel recompensed.
It's just... good.
