Oct 3, 2015
I don't even remember why I started watching this anime.
It's not my usual genre. In fact, thinking hard on it now, I think I picked it up because I heard /a/ was torn between loving and hating Umaru for being The Perfect Girl Who Is Secretly An Otaku, and that was all the reason I needed in the end.
So I tried episode one. And I am immediately hit with the surprisingly catchy and fun theme song; I am a particular fan of the Hamsters + Umaru stampede scenes, which warm my black heart considerably, and the elegant bridge in the middle is a very
...
nice touch for what is to come.
From that moment forward, I watched Umaru transform to the radiant, unattainable, and awe-inspiring high schooler to hideous moeblob of spite, manipulation, selfishness, and laziness, and then back again. And I should have hated her, for all intents and purposes. Umaru is a garbage princess borne from a trash dumpster. Umaru is unquestionably a horrible little girl who has no qualms with using others for her own material gains -- especially poor Taihei onii-chan -- but instead, I found myself (horrifyingly) loving her for how much I identified with her. While I am arguably not nearly as evil as she is and I do not steal my loved one's credit cards, I was startled by how overjoyed I was to get a heroine who maintained a flawless outer persona in personality and character, but tossed on her comfy clothes and immersed herself in snack food and weeb garbage when she got home without a care in the world.
Importantly, though, is that despite Umaru's myriad of shortcomings, there is the very real existence of her guilt when she overdoes it or something goes terribly wrong, and while the hoops she made her brother jump through frequently bordered on cruel, it was always apparent by the end that they honestly loved each other.
It is that last point is what actually makes this series work for me. Personally, I cannot stand the trash characters who are heinous to everyone without any redeeming morals or scenes. Umaru avoids this narrowly with moments of empathy and mutually heartfelt love. Plus, it doesn't hurt that Taihei gets a little revenge every now and then. The lapses in comedy are punctuated by these more real and honest moments, highlighting her more wordly thoughts and feelings, as well as focusing on the family aspect of the show. When Umaru isn't raising hell, we find her worrying about her brother and him worrying about her. We see Taihei go out of the way to buy her favourite food even after a long and tiresome day at work, and him becoming completely lost when she's not bothering him. We see Umaru, in her bedtime walk through town, basking in the quiet solace of the night, reveling in her private moment. Even the side characters are afforded this luxury, as the series has a running theme of brother and sister relationships -- the scene of Tachibana's brother grabbing her after her freak out in the middle of a tournament is strange and out of nowhere, it seems, but when it sinks in you can't help be left with warmth.
Now, on the other hand, my greatest qualm with the series is that I am always disappointed and pretty disgusted to see young girls tossed into sexualizing scenes that are meant to make it more marketable. Umaru is not exempt from this highly unfortunate trope. While I am relieved that these scenes are kept to a minimum, especially compared to other shows, they are not non-existent, they make me uncomfortable, and they truly add nothing of any real and meaningful substance to the narrative or characters involved. Additionally, the other reasons for giving this an 8/10 are just that while Himouto! Umaru-chan is really funny, it's not above and beyond funny; and while it does have its underlying moments of depth that step away from the pure comedy, they're not quite profound enough to really hit home.
In the end, Himouto! Umaru-chan is something I truly enjoyed keeping up with, and something I cried at when it was over. She will forever hold a special place in my heart as my favorite brand of little hellion. Because she is a hellion.
Umaru is a hellion, and I love her for it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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