Wotakoi: Life is hard for Otaku

 So, after the bloody Vinland Saga, the next letter in the challenge, the W, is of lighter tone.

And one that is well respected within the anime world it seems, so let's jump in for this comedy.

Narumi Momose finds herself rushing to work on the first day of her new job, having missed all her alarm clocks.  She decides though on the way to keep her dark secret for herself at work: that she is an otaku and a fujoshi, and this immediatly fails as she runs into her middle school friend Hirotaka Nifuji.  Asking her collegues out for drinks, she accidentally asks if he goes to Summer Comiket, blowing her cover, but luckily the other two present are otaku as well.

She finds out that her cool and reserved collegue miss Koyanagi, with whoms boobs she is obsessed, is actually famous cosplayer Ms Hana.  But then Momose and Nifuji decide to start dating as he promises to support her, and help her farm rare drops in Monster Hunter.  And so an awkward datinglife on the workfloor begins.  Including where his collegues must teach him how he must wink... while they are visiting Animate to do shopping.

 

 

The four co-workers go to Comiket, where Momose sells her own manga.  Afterwards, Nijufi has the others invited for a sleepover at his place.  She finds out Nijufi saved the cards and games he traded with her when they where in middle school.  Nifuji cosplays for Momose, resulting in Koyanagi wanting to have her boyfriend Kabakaru do it as well.

 

She meets Nao in the local coffeebar, making Koyanagi and Kabakura suspicious.  When Nijufi arrives, it turns out this is his younger brother.   He stays over with his brother, but isn`t an otaku, making the others trying to "lure him in".  But Kabakura isn't convinced, flat out telling Nao not to make any moves.  When told she dates his older brother, he starts crying of hapiness as he always hope they would get together.  

With christmas coming to the city, they get into the spirit of the festivities.  When playing an MMO, Nijufi isn`t present, resulting in Nao joining in at first until his elder brother returns and quickly defeats the boss.  As the four keep evolving in both their relationships, they also learn more about each other and how they share their otaku worlds with each other.  They go out on a real date to an amusement park, deciding to make it an otaku off-limits date.   To enforce this, they must pay a penalty to a savingsbank every time they stray of that path.  They accidentally run into the other two during a ghosthouse ride.  The realisation that she grew up in life while he was levelling causes him to suddenly doubt if she likes him, which she rebutes as she bought matching earring sets for the both of them.

 

 

Nao seems to develop more intrest into the otaku world and gaming in particular, even making his own character and befriending a gamer girl called Kou. 

This was a great fun series, and one very relatable.  An anime otaku, a gamer otaku, a cosplay otaku and a manga reading otaku living their lives together... I can only hope personally that Noshi picks her habits up again.  The fact this is about adults and every day life while being otaku's make it way cooler then a high school based series to get the "feel" if you catch my drift.