WataMote fanfiction: SOLO

Introduction

The Importance of Being Tomoko

My exposure to Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dō Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui! is actually fairly recent, but I have already come to know Tomoko Kuroki as one of the great comic characters this side of the millenium.

There is some debate even among fans whetherWataMote (the short version of the title) is in fact comedy, because Tomoko's never-ending failures cause sympathetic viewers to cringe with embarrassment. Others cite Tomoko's lack of redeeming features, or her mental instability, as grounds to deny her the comedy laurels she deserves. We shouldn't laugh at her, they say, because she's damaged.

To the contrary, Tomoko is without a doubt a great comic character. Like all great comic characters, she does not represent the heroic and near-perfect among us, nor does she lay claim to a higher moral purpose than the rest of us. She is, instead, just like us, the us we like to pretend isn't so, the us that lies and cheats and makes excuses.

The traditional separation of tragedy and comedy is that the tragic character is a mostly pure hero who is nonetheless brought crashing down to earth by his one great fault, such as loving too much, or being too mule-headed about something he should just let go. We, the audience, rarely identify directly with the hero. The hero resides on Mount Olympus. We might like to daydream that we're the hero, but we're not. The comic character, by contrast, is the scoundrel or fake who gets away with murder. You know — you, when you're at work.

Sometimes merely surviving is all the reward the comic character can expect, which is a far sight better than the tragic character's fate, death, betrayal, and bloodshed.

Let's look at some examples.

Basil Fawlty: a colossal prick who harbors mostly contempt for his paying customers, maltreats his employees, and insults his wife. John Cleese famously based the character on an actual innkeeper who exhibited all these traits in public.

Father Ted: a Catholic priest of questionable faith who is known for "resting" church funds in his own bank account. Often comports himself as a complete hypocrite, believing himself to be a man of God while brushing off the concerns of others in favor of his own self-gratification.

Pseudolus: the scheming slave taken from the comedy of Ancient Rome, who lies and cheats in an almost pathological fashion.

W.C. Fields: his various screen characters shared many unpleasant traits, including a tendency to cheat "suckers" and take revenge on those who cross him. He lies, exaggerates, cheats, and drinks to wretched excess.

Woody Allen: his earlier comic characters were schizophrenic, guilt-ridden messes, often with unpleasant obsessions and questionable goals.

Other great comic characters may not be quite so flawed and unlikeable, but will make up for it by being unreasonably dense. Laurel and Hardy, for instance, played colossal fools who often caused the disasters that befell them. We laugh at their misfortunes despite the fact that they do not seem like particularly bad men; but they are certainly not wholly admirable, either. In one of their famous shorts, they agree to help a disreputable captain shanghai an entire crew. To be clear, that means that they helped a villain kidnap a large number of innocent men, and put them to sea, so that they would essentially be forced into involuntary servitude in some of the most brutal working conditions imaginable.

These are arguably great comic characters. Minor comic characters will tend to be softer and less memorable, but more palatable to a broader range of audience. Often this is because the featured actor is overly concerned with his popularity, the production company is focused on box office and wants to avoid risk, or the writer simply does not have the balls to push a comic character to its limit. American sitcoms will probably provide the most familiar examples of this type. Mayberry's Sheriff Taylor, head comedy writer Rob Petrie, and any number of bumbling TV dads. Often these characters require less admirable stooges to pick up the comedy slack, such as the pompous and incompetent Deputy Barney Fife.