Let’s take a minute to look back on a time long, long ago when we actually had some yuri anime to look forward to every week. Okay, so it wasn’t really that long ago, but given how bare the spring anime season is, it feels like it. 😛
Synopsis: One day, fifth-grader Hinata Hoshino brings her friend Hana Shirosaki to her house, and Hinata’s sister Miyako, a college student, falls in love with Hana at first sight. Miyako manages to get along with Hana somehow, but her clumsy behavior and shyness make Hana wary. Even so, Hana gradually opens up to Miyako, who wants to become closer to her.
I feel like we’ve talked about this many times before, but let’s address the elephant in the room right off the bat. WataTen follows the perplexing trend of an age gap romance between an adult and a child, and I suspect that for most people, that fact is bound to overshadow everything else about this anime. Because of that, it’s incredibly easy to lump this in with Happy Sugar Life and UzaMaid, yet compared to those two other shows, WataTen is a little more subdued and mild. That doesn’t magically make the situation okay, but over time, that relationship isn’t the sole focus of the show, so there are other things going on with the story.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about how surprisingly enjoyable it is to see Miyako have to deal with all of these feisty little girls. We rarely see Miyako away from the girls, and given how shy she normally is around others, I guess that’s understandable. The relationships between Miyako and the girls help give this anime a little bit of heart, so the everyday activities that the group does together sort of gives them a dysfunctional family vibe.
The fun and games the girls play are enjoyable enough, and I tend to like it when these types of shows do something a little different, and that’s what happens during the final episode when the girls perform a school play. It’s a really cute scene, and it goes to show that there’s more to this show than just “grown woman preys on child”, and if need be, it could survive without that just fine. So aside from the obvious set-up, this story more or less resembles your typical slice of life anime, and that’s enough for me.
Okay, now we that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk a little bit about the characters. To me, they’re probably the best thing about this anime.
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- Miyako
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- Hana
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- Kanon
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- Hinata
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- Noa
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- Koyori
Compared to her contemporaries (Tsubame and Satou), Miyako comes off as a lot more likable, and given how normal she is (besides that whole liking little girls part), it’s not that hard to see why. Miyako actually seems like a great sister, and at the very least, she’s a fun playmate for Hinata and the other girls. She isn’t the raging lolicon caricature that the other loli lovers are, and I like that about Miyako.
Of the three main little girls, Hinata has to be my least favorite, just because she doesn’t quite have the standout personality of Noa, and because the unfortunate position Hana finds herself in also puts an emphasis on her personality. I probably already spoiled it, but Noa has to be my favorite. Just like Karen Kujou and TOSHINO KYOUKO (although she isn’t as great as those two), Noa follows in the tradition of exuberant blonde girls, and as adorable as Hana and Hinata are, to me, Noa is undoubtedly the cutest.
Although I don’t think she’s the cutest, Hana also made a positive impression on me, mostly due to the fact that she doesn’t come across as a helpless victim kind of like Misha did in UzaMaid. Yeah, Miyako plays a part in that, but Hana definitely stands up to her… unless Miyako can entice her with sweets. Besides that, Hana usually seems surprisingly mature, and that’s a very welcome development.
Fortunately, Miyako x Hana isn’t the only ship WataTen has going for it. Midway through the season, we come to meet Kokou, Miyako’s stalker from high school. Now this is a relationship I can get behind. Besides each of them being very awkward in their own way, Miyako and Kouko are roughly the same age, so that’s already a major upgrade from Miyako x Hana. But, Miyako doesn’t even remember Kouko, so comedy is all we get from these two creepsters. *sigh*
Apart from those two, during the school play, Hana and Hinata’s characters fall in love, so that’s another not so subtle sign that this anime definitely embraces the gayness. Of course, there really isn’t anything between Hana and Hinata, but that was still fun. Speaking of fun, the little movie date between Hinata and Noa was also kind of fun. Not as fun as the movie date between Kyouko and Chinatsu in Yuru Yuri, but still fun nevertheless.
And then there’s Kanon and Koyori. They’re friends of the main trio, and even though they’re just as young, they sometimes resemble a couple themselves. Their handholding is adorable, and most of the time, they’re pretty much inseparable. So while Miyako and the girls can’t compete with some of the other casts from other slice of life anime, I have to say that I ended up liking them more than I thought I would, and they’re a fun little bunch.
Coming from Doga Kobo, it’s no surprise that WataTen looks so heckin’ adorable. You can say that about most slice of life anime, but WataTen takes it to the nth degree, and it’s absurd how cute these girls are. Given how simplistic the art style is, there isn’t much else for this anime to fall back on from a visual standpoint, yet I think that’s all you really need in an anime like this. Long story short, if you’re simply looking for cute girls doing cute things, you’re probably not going to find that many anime that are cuter than this, so you’re bound to like what you see, even if it is nothing fancy.
There was music in this anime? It didn’t make much of an impression on me at all, so if you’ve ever seen a cute girls doing cute things anime before, that’s what you’re in for, and that’s pretty much all there is to say about it. 😛
All in all, it’s easy to overlook how, if you can look past the child predator qualities, there’s actually a fairly entertaining slice of life anime to be found in WataTen. Thanks largely to UzaMaid and Happy Sugar Life my expectations for this anime were pretty low, but much to my surprise, this isn’t a bad anime, so fans of cute girls doing cute things have another decent anime to check out here. It certainly helps that WataTen has its fair share of yuri, and not just the illegal/morally questionable type, so it was more than adequate enough to warrant a watch from me.
YuriReviews and More 
Sorry, I tried to watch it, but it was just so…. creepy. Especially once we got to bribing Hana with sweets, it felt like she might as well go all in and get a white van. “Hey little girl, want a piece of cannnnnndy?” I rarely say this, but this anime shouldn’t exist. It makes me feel dirty just liking the genre it is associated with. It is a how to guide on grooming children. ugh.
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I wouldn’t go so far as to say it shouldn’t exist, but I didn’t like it, either. I only liked Happy Sugar Life so I could psychanalyze all the insane characters, and I did not/ do not approve of Satou and Shio together.
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I can totally understand that. These shows have been popping up lately, and even though this and UzaMaid play it off as a joke, they’re still romanticizing this stuff.
Hopefully the trend will soon pass… 😛
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I was hoping Miyako would “graduate” to Matsumoto when she showed up…. but no.
It was a cute enough show but yes – “don’t do this.”
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If ever there was a show that that applied to, this is it. And Happy Sugar Life. And UzaMaid.
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I think you are spot on about Koko Matsumoto. She is just what Miyako needs, and I too wish the story had gone in that direction. A pairing of (Koko X Miyako) would have done wonders in transforming Miyako.
What is also interesting in Wataten!, is Koko Matsumoto who
is the woman totally in love with Miyako. Actually if these were
real people, the pairing (Koko X Miyako) would help Miyako
overcome her condition because Koko would never let Miyako
withdraw into her shell, and just wear a tracksuit. Koko would
dress her up, and show her off to the world, and that is what
Miyako needs. Someone to push her out the door, and
keep her there.
“Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”
Solomon Burke, 1964
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Well I liked it since I also read the manga. Mya-nee (Hinata’s voice) mellows out quite a bit on her lolicon antics towards Hana as the show goes on. I also wished Miyako would gravitate towards Matsumoto but she doesn’t and the relationship between her and Hana only got “stronger”, for lack of a better word. Anyways, moving on from the lolicon side, the other girls are adorable and for me the best thing was watching Noa crush on Hinata (just a small crush it seems, for now) and watching Kanon and Koyori. The latter couple seems like the standard childhood friend’s past that we see in high school yuri manga and I felt like those two will 100% be a couple once in high school. IF they were in high school Kanon and Koyori would be the secret couple everyone suspects but no one confirming it, Noa would be the popular girl, Hinata would be the athletic, cool boyish one, Hana the ditzsy beauty, and Miyako the home ec. teacher still crushing hard on Hana (more acceptable for sure).
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Those descriptions seem spot on! 😀
I was definitely wanting more Kanon x Koyori. More of that and less (or no) Miyako x Hana would’ve been the way to go~
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Honestly, I’m able to enjoy the manga, but when I tried watching the anime I just couldn’t. I guess the more degrees of separation I am from the gross stuff, the easier it is to look past it, and the addition of sound, motion and color significantly reduced the degrees of separation.
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Yeah, when I seen Miyako swoon over Hana in the anime it just felt like a whole nother level of wrong than the manga.
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For me, I didn’t read the manga, so I had nothing to compare it to. 😛
And even if I didn’t want to, I kind of had to watch it anyway, for review purposes… 😀
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So here’s where i see the difference between uzamaid and this, tsubame feels like she is liable to cross the line between pedophilia and pederasty at some point if not constrained by being in a show that can’t show that, while Miyako, if nothing happens negatively between them, will not really try anything sexual until hana is at least close to an adult, since she didn’t seem too sexual a person to begin with. i’d even wager that if hana swings that way she might be the one to initiate it, given that in general miyako seems rather insecure/shy in social interactions, that don’t involve cosplay. Part of why I believe this is because at one point miyako states that she would like hana no matter her age, at least i remember there being a scene like that in a park.
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I can see it like that. Like how Miyako was able to sleep in the same bed as Hana, but she still managed to act like a normal adult. In the same situation, it’s hard to imagine Tsubame keeping it together like that… 😛
But even Miyako’s somewhat innocent (at least compared to Tsubame) affection towards Hana is still going to be too much for a lot of people, and I can’t argue with them if they decide to boycott the show.
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I agree with you and with Rock The Vogt. Excellent comments. If you saw “Eromanga Sensei”, the girl Sagiri Izumi suffers from a peculiar affect which is an identified psychiatric condition in Japan called Hikikomori, acute social withdrawal!
“According to [the Japanese] government figures released in 2010,
there are 700,000 individuals living as hikikomori with an average age of 31.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
In Wataten!, Miyako Hoshino suffers not from pedophilia but rather from
Hikikomori and she exhibits all the symptoms if you read up on this.
I had never heard of this before until I came across it in anime and it
seems to be peculiar to Japan.
Never at any time is the character of Miyako shown as being capable of harming
Hana in any way. One cannot say that about Tsubame or the woman in Happy Sugar Life(she kidnaps a young girl!!!)
Wataten! is different from Uzamaid or Sugar. The entire series is Kawaii which is usually translated as “cute” in English, but that is like saying the Sun at 10,000 degrees is hot, well, yeah it is that but its quite a bit more than my 41 degree C day.
Kawaii is a level of cuteness beyond which none greater can be thought. There is no appropriate English word for Kawaii. And Wataten! is putting Kawaii on full display.
Just go back to Wataten! and rewatch the stage play musical that the girls put on! Gag me with a spoon and OD on sugar big time.
What is also interesting in Wataten!, is Koko Matsumoto who is the woman totally in love with Miyako. Actually if these were real people, the pairing
(Koko X Miyako) would help Miyako overcome her condition because Koko would never let Miyako withdraw into her shell, and just wear a tracksuit.
Koko would dress her up, and show her off to the world, and that is what Miyako needs. Someone to push her out the door, and keep her there.
“Everybody Needs Somebody to Love”
Solomon Burke, 1964
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Look at you dropping the knowledge! I’m impressed. 😀
Honestly, I didn’t end up giving any of those three shows much thought beyond just what’s on the surface. I had heard a little bit about hikikomori, but aside from super obvious cases, I never thought to wonder if that might apply to certain characters. So I don’t know enough about it to say with any degree of certainty, but you do make some good points~
And well said about Miyako and Koko! I think you’re absolutely spot-on, so there’s nothing I can really add to it. 😛
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Granted, her target of affection is hardly ideal. Especially in the beginning of the show her behavior is, pardon the term, problematic. But as another commenter pointed out she does seem to suffer from a rather potent social condition, worst in the beginning, so some of her inappropriate behavior could be attributed to that. Though on a aesthetic level she does have some pedophilic tendencies. If those extend to a sexual level is not shown, though that could be due to nature of the show. My guess she is liable to prefer a younger female partner in a relationship, in part due to the maternal personality she developed through her own sister.
On the subject of Koko, she is still a stalker, which has its own problems. She would have to work on her obsessive personality, before entering into a relationship with Miyako, otherwise I don’t think the relationship will be healthy. Though I agree that agewise it is infinitely better. Though personality wise an adult Hana, might be alright as well, being a counterweight to her eccentricities. I fear Koko’s obsessive nature might reinforce similar tendencies in miyako, though that could be something they can share and work on together. Shame one can’t combine Koko and Hana into a single person, oh well.
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We’re getting deep! When I was watching the show, I didn’t really expect that things would turn out this way. 😀
With Happy Sugar Life, it’s unavoidable, and no amount of arguing can change the obvious. With this show, it seems there’s a lot more gray area, and the intricacies of the situation open themselves up to some intrepretation. Who says anime is for kids? 😛
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“Who says anime is for kids? 😛”! That last statement really hit home. Been a long time anime and manga fan, and when I have mentioned to family or friends, or even the general public, that I like anime, I usually get back a quizzical look, and something like “You mean you like cartoons for kids?” and forget even mentioning Yuri, that wouldn’t even register. For me, Anime and Manga is high art, some of the best and most beautiful art current today, and its a form of art that, when at its best, can really touch the heart. Pure emotional enjoyment!
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Yup. Totally been there. 😀
People are going to judge regardless, so I don’t even try to explain or justify things. Part of me kind of wants to sit them down and show them something that might change their minds, but I just don’t care enough about their opinions to do that. 😀
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To Isus,
For me, Miyako is never shown to have any dangerous or harmful intentions. She is never shown to even have a generalized interest in children, beyond what most people have (children are cute (sometimes)). Falling in Love is not a rational process, but is rather more like insanity, a form of altered behavior. Some cultures have attempted to eliminate it by arranging marriages because it is dangerous. People fall in love with just about anyone or anything, serial killers, murderers on death row, rock stars, Idols, movie stars, fictional characters in anime, waifus, favorite dogs or horses or cats, even a woman’s bright red velvet pair of high heel shoes with straps (has to be with straps). Falling is a good description of what happens. Miyako is shown to have fallen in love with a person named Hana, who happens to be a child and that is compared and contrasted with Koko having fallen in love with Miyako. I just finished “After the Rain”, where a 17 year old High School girl falls in love with a 45 year old, divorced father of one. I find nothing creepy there (beautiful story), and I find nothing in the least bit creepy in Watatan!. I certainly see creepy in Sugar and Uzamaid! Falling in Love is not under conscious control. It can happen anytime, anywhere, with anyone. You might have a BFF, and a very standard relationship, when one night, you suddenly Fall in Love with your BFF. This is a very common trope in Yuri. In Rain, the same sex BFF of both the girl and the man are shown to have fallen in love with their best friend, and its those loves which is actually the subject plot of the story and which provides the salvific core of the redemption of the MCs.
A certain amount of grace and space should always be granted to someone in fiction or in real life, who has fallen in love, no matter how bizarre, provided that certain lines are never crossed, and no injury is inflicted on self or other. Koko and Hana can be combined as ( (Koko X Miyako) X (Miyako X Hana) ) once Miyako has an ah-ha experience and sees it
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I.E. Koko needs to do a Touko on Miyako
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I wasn’t saying she necessarily has any such intentions, she seems rather new to infatuation and seems to not be all that sexually minded.
I was just saying that the person she is infatuated with is not ideal and that some of her early behavior was inappropriate and clearly made Hana uncomfortable. Also the fact that she uses Hana’s sweet tooth to manipulate her into doing things she is also not comfortable with is not good. For that reason, I believe that, even inadvertently, she might do Hana harm in a developmental way, say inadvertently grooming her. Especially since she is often an authority figure to the girls in some sense, at least as far as Hana’s mother is concerned. My point is she needs to be real careful how she handles her relationship with Hana until Hana can be considered an adult. However she shows that she is capable of learning rather quickly what is acceptable and even sees how her earlier behavior was, pardon the term, problematic, when faced with similar behavior by Koko. I think I mentioned it before, but the fact the towards the end of the series she expresses that her feelings would be unaffected by Hana’s age is reassuring.
I am not familiar with the character of Uzamaid’s progression, the first episode was too openly pedophilic for my stomach, but at least from the first episode it is clearly a sexual preference for a very specific group, young girls with certain physical attributes.
There is a worlds of difference between a approx. 12 year old and a 17 year old, especially in a cognitive sense. Speaking of age wasn’t the child character in Uzamaid even younger then Hana, while the main character quite a bit older then Miyako, who I think I once calculated to be around 18-19.
Forced/Arranged marriage are often used as a tool for the family interests and less out of concern for the people involved, though I agree that some parents see it as a way to ensure their child is a relationship that they see as beneficial, however misguided that might be.
I suppose a polyamorous relationship is plausible, especially since Miyako would be the common partner and not Hana, which would definitely be too unbalanced in terms of power dynamics. Especially if Miyako develops sexual urges, being with Koko could prevent accidental overreaches with Hana until the latter is ready for that kind of a relationships with adults on a relatively equal footing. Not to mention an open relationship might allow Hana to explore her sexuality with people closer in age to her, while having Miyako and Koko in a more older sister capacity, with whom she might be comfortable discussing this topic with.
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To Ius,
Thank you for your very kind comments. I think that we are
basically in agreement on most points in Wataten! Where we
differ are rather minor, and obscure, except for one.
We do have a major difference with regard to how we read the
relationship of Miyako to Hana.
From your comments, you read an infatuation, a crush where
I read a “falling in love”!
There is no POV which is right or wrong here. There is
no truth possible between one reading of a work of art
is just as valid as another reading.
That is why arguments about art and what art means can
be so tedious where one person attempts to “prove” his/her
POV as some absolute. This is nonsense.
One objective truth in an observation of real human behavior
is that infatuations, crushes are not the same form of behavior
as “falling in love”. They are very different human experiences.
Crushes tend to be transient, and trivial, they come and go
from the very beginnings of life to its end.
A lost crush usually does not entail grief as one just moves
on to another crush which follows close behind. In a jaded
but humorous observation of us, is that a human life is just
one, long series of crushes interjected by a few periods of
other work. The Human animal is the love animal.
“Falling in love” happens rarely, and the experience can be
extreme and non-trivial. A loss of this kind of love can be
catastrophic, and grief is mandatory in coming out of a failed
love affair. Some people have even taken their own lives
because of a failure here, and in other cases, some give up
on life and love, and take the attitude of “I don’t care what
happens to me now. Everything is over.” This loss takes a very
long time to heal, and the pain can be horrific.
There is no objective truth as to whether Miyako is cushing
on Hana, or Miyako has fallen in love with Hana.
It all depends upon how one reads the story.
So your reading is just a valid as is mine. I respect you
and the full validity of your feels, and I am making this
final comment to ensure that there are no feelings of
hostility in our exchange of views.
Good day, and we will probably run into each other on
this blog again.
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Fair enough, I suppose some of it comes from my own perspective on love, among other things the fact that it takes my feelings a rather long time before I am comfortable with calling them love.
However, in some way it might be that what I meant with infatuation was different to the way you interpreted it.
So to make my view more clear. In the beginning of the show her feelings towards Hana are clearly in “crush” territory, but as the story progresses it’s clear that her feelings are becoming more complicated, so I can see how that can be described as “falling in love”. I generally don’t liken infatuation to crushes, but more as the phase before “being in love”. In other words, I see infatuation more in the way of “falling in love”, starting from the initial crush to the full realization and perhaps even until the open disclosure to the target of affection.
So, I feel that our opinions may be closer to each other on this then it might have seemed, due to a difference in the way we use certain words.
Well, perhaps I might post on here again, given, that I might use it to find shows to watch. Speaking of, i might have to visit the entry on: Yagate Kimi ni Naru, which might be my favorite show in the genre.
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Yes, I also think so. Are not most human arguments semantic anyway!. Silly to get
bent out of shape because of subtle usages
of words. But we are certainly in agreement with regard to Bloom into You. Fell in love with that series and its characters, and have seen it 5 times now. Do check out the blog entry for Bloom here on yurireviews.com. It is quite good. And pray to heaven we get a
S2.
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Many are, but there are some fundamental difference between large segments of the species, that derive from the weird tightrope we walk between curiosity and caution. Anyway i’ll stop there or i’m going into politics, especially after watching 40 mins about politics and anime, i looked into “bloom into you” reviews and ,well ,found zeria.
Yeah apparently i forgot i had actually read that review, btw if you didn’t guess, i made a wordpress account to like there, but “isus” was taken. Read it again anyway, then headed to the comments.
Well not sure about praying, but I will hope for a second season, i need to see what happens with the play. Also I so hope sayaka’s lot improves.
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