08-07-2015, 07:06 PM | #1 |
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Himouto! Umaru-chan
"Himouto! Umaru-chan (干物妹!うまるちゃん) is a Japanese manga series by Sankaku Head. It began serialization in Shueisha's seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Jump from March 14, 2013. An anime television series adaptation by Doga Kobo began airing in Japan from July 9, 2015." - Wikipedia Kind, smart, and popular, Doma Umaru is a 16-year old girl admired by everyone in town. But when she returns to her older brother Taihei's apartment, Umaru turns into Umaru-chan: a hamster hood-wearing, manga-crazed, Internet-addicted, game-guzzling, TV-marathoning, junk food-devouring slob. ... How do I even begin to describe this show. When deoxys first introduced us to it, I responded that the plot premise sounded awfully similar to the '90s classic Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou, a.k.a. His and Her Circumstances or Kare Kano. But on inspection, Himouto! Umaru-chan soon revealed itself to be almost nothing at all like Kare Kano, despite the shared premise of a girl who is model high school student by day and lazy slob by night. As you can appreciate from the image above, perhaps the greatest difference of all between Umaru-chan and others in the genre is its energy level. Hoooooooly shit, its energy level. Umaru-chan is off-the-walls nonstop energy -- whether it's a little hamster girl bouncing off the walls, whether it's the many faces of Umaru-chan, or even whether it's just dialogue. The show is incredibly, incredibly spastic -- and I mean that in the best possible sense. Doma Umaru is what you would get if you took Yuuki Asuna, turned her into an imouto character, transplanted her to a comedy series, and gave her a hood-wearing chibi form. She can easily be enjoyed as a stand-alone character but taken as an imouto she is like a 10-tesla magnet for those who've got a soft spot for little sister types. By day, Umaru is graceful, elegant, like a modern-day princess. She feigns ignorance of manga and anime, displays her prowess on the piano, and trounces athletes in their respective sports with little effort. But by night, she becomes Umaru-chan, a hedonist if ever I saw one. While it's fun to wonder what will happen with the secret life Umaru is keeping hidden from society at large, there's much more fun to be had in simply enjoying Umaru-chan's antics. Her rude mouth, her gluttony, and many other negative character traits provide entertainment in their own right, without need for contrast against her more positive character traits. The contrast simply adds a layer of icing to an already delicious cake. Taihei is Umaru's older brother. It's his apartment that she moves into one year prior to the beginning of our story, and Taihei witnesses firsthand as his little sister devolves from an angel into a little imp. Worried for Umaru's future, Taihei determines to rectify Umaru's path in life. But it isn't so easy when Umaru, master manipulator that she is, uses a variety of tricks up her sleeves to force Taihei into giving her what she wants. 干物妹 Himouto is a portmanteau of 干物 himono and 妹 imouto. The latter of course means "little sister," but what of the former? 干物 can either mean "dried fish (or shellfish)", read himono, or it can mean "things dried in the sun (esp. clothes, dyed cloth, etc.)", read hoshimono. There is also a special phrase, 干物女 himono onna, which means "a woman who, while young, has abandoned love." So it would appear that the portmanteau is going for the 干物女 understanding while swapping out 女 woman for 妹 little sister, and that the phrase in turn derives its meaning from 干物's association with dried-out goods. I'm not sure how this title matches Umaru, though. From what I've seen so far, Umaru doesn't really seem to be "dried out" -- she's at peak energy levels -- nor does anything about her seem to indicate that she's given up on love -- on the contrary, she seems to have a moderate Onii-chan complex and indirectly engages the object of her affections in a variety of ways. Himouto is fun to say, and I wish the pun made more sense because then I'd be able to enjoy it all the more. Until I can figure out what the author was trying to go for, though, the kanji choice is going to nag at me. Himouto! Umaru-chan's all about the adorability. You've got the adorable girl with her adorable look in that adorable hamster hood. You've also got adorable animation. The way the characters are drawn feels very warm and friendly, very inviting, but also very simple and cute. You'll be going "Aww! " about as often as you'll be laughing. It's also all about the many faces of Umaru-chan. I mean that quite literally: Umaru-chan has dozens of different facial animations in just the first episode alone, and nearly every last one of them will capture your attention. Her face is like a lava lamp: always evolving, an absolute pleasure to watch for hours on end. I'd bet hundreds that Umaru's animators are having a blast with this show. She has to be an absolute delight to draw. Umaru puts the "imouto" in Himouto!. From the first episode alone, it seems clear to me that while Umaru is intended as bait for lovers of little sister characters, in universe she herself harbors an Onii-chan complex towards her older brother Taihei. After all, what reason could a model student have for moving in with her older brother in the big city who lives in a cramped apartment? While Umaru often bickers with her older brother, she also frequently betrays desires to spend more time with him, to share her enjoyments with him. I think that Umaru's Onii-chan complex is itself further bait for imoutokons. In this sense, it kinda puts me off since it's distracting in its heavy-handedness. But taken less cynically as a simple character trait of Umaru's, I'd say I find it endearing. Whether Taihei deserves the love remains to be seen, but at least for now it's kinda cute that the one person who doesn't treat Umaru like an angel is her very own. This post is somewhat untraditional for me. It blurs the line between an unbiased thread OP post that I normally shoot for when making new threads and a biased, more review-ey post that I tend to aim for when reviewing individual episodes. I tend to try my best to leave spoilers out of thread OP posts, whereas spoilers in an episode review post are hidden inside of UPN's spoiler tag. This post has a handful of small Episode 01 spoilers sprinkled throughout it, and I apologize if I've upset anyone for doing that. But Umaru-chan's a weird beast to write an OP post for. Too little review-ey thoughts and it probably would've ended after the paragraph about the title's etymology, while too many more spoilers and I would've probably preferred to spin the second half of this post out into its own Ep01 review post. In the end, I've opted to burden you with my biases, Dear Reader , and create a thread OP post that provides my take on a few things like the animation and the themes. Hopefully I don't bias you or give away too much, and you can enjoy this series to your fullest. |
08-07-2015, 07:31 PM | #2 |
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So in other news ...
There's an Umaru-chan Nendoroid going on sale this September for Ľ4444 plus tax. That's about $35.77 in US dollars, plus tax. I wish Nendos weren't so expensive. ^^; They're cute, and I wouldn't mind having a couple to decorate my bookcase, but $50 is a lot to ask of me for an ornamental figurine. This Umaru-chan Nendoroid, though, is the real deal. While many Nendoroids come with at least two different faces, the Umaru-chan Nendoroid comes with a whopping five. Three's the most I'm used to seeing, and I don't think I've ever seen a Nendoroid with as many as five faces before. Then there's the bonus items. Lots and lots of Nendoroids have only one bonus item, be it some rolled-up paper to hold in their hand or a stuffed teddy bear. The Pokémon trainer Red one came with a number of bonus items, but that was mostly Pokémon -- and it made sense, anyway! Well, Umaru's make sense too, but man if the count's still not impressive. She comes with a bottle of Coca-Cola (with removable cap!), a bag of potato chips, a box of Takenoko no Sato cookies, a vacuum-sealed bag of squid, a thing of cheese strips, and a frickin' PS Vita to top it all off! Unbelievable. Basically the arsenal of items she had in the Ep01 sketch where she dimmed the lights and had an anime-watching session plus a PS Vita for good measure. Considering that many Nendoroids with this much customizability retail for $80 or higher, the Umaru-chan Nendo is quite the steal.
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08-07-2015, 11:23 PM | #3 |
seems theres a case aclaw
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Surprised there wasn't a thread on this sooner tbh
I'd read the manga for a bit, and when I heard, or rather read, that this was coming out this summer I was pretty happy. As for the episodes, I've yet to watch 5, but so far it's been charming.
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08-12-2015, 07:57 PM | #4 | |
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While Talon already gave a shortened definition of 干物女 himono onna, it doesn't really explain what a "himono onna" really is. Here's an article that explains it a bit more intact, and if you don't really feel like reading, here's Urban Dictionary's defintion:
Quote:
So with this the portmanteau makes a lot more sense, as Umaru most certainly displays all the traits of a himono onna, except she's still a young high school girl. Episode 6 just came out, so I'm going to go ahead and watch that and then I'll report back with thoughts. Also, this I wouldn't be caught dead wearing this thing |
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08-13-2015, 02:15 AM | #7 |
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08-13-2015, 11:30 AM | #8 |
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This show's a thing, eh? I originally passed it over because it looked like a 3 minute short, but file size says otherwise. I guess I'll add this to my shows to watch.
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08-13-2015, 11:34 PM | #9 |
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I'll watch some of this just because of this thread ;o
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08-17-2015, 01:05 AM | #11 |
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Caught up on this. It's better than I thought it would be. Nothing super special awesome, but I still enjoyed it well enough. I was afraid this would be like Ore no Imouto, but thank god it isn't. Sure, main girl isn't exactly a great person, but she's still infinitely better than fucking Kirino.
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09-22-2015, 10:09 PM | #12 |
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Huh. I figured a cool kid's anime thread would have been more active. Oh well. I'm keeping up with the show and I'm enjoying it. It has a pleasant warmth to it. Not super funny or anything, but it has enough diabeetus to make that not matter.
I think Doppel should watch episode 11. He would fucking love it. (episode 11 spoilers Spoiler: show The show is interesting enough to make me want to read the manga, which I'm reading alongside Cromartie! It updates often enough to hopefully not make waiting for updates painful. I just hope the manga doesn't end up doing nothing for 100+ chapters like Ika Musume ended up doing. EDIT Spoiler: show Last edited by big bad birtha; 09-23-2015 at 12:00 AM. |
09-23-2015, 05:00 AM | #13 |
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Wanted to write Talon!post for Episode 02. Got busy. Show got Ilya 2wei'd. orz
Will try to catch up before 2016. ^^;;
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10-04-2015, 03:13 PM | #14 |
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Finished both the anime and what is translated of the manga. For the anime, nothing really changed as far as my general thoughts go. Anyway, the Umaru anime deserves a 7. One thing that surprised me is just how sweet of a character Sylphin is. They make her out to be annoying, but she's just so damn charming. Even if her eyes and mouth are weird!
Compared to the manga, it's surprisingly less abridged. There's more "filler" content, but some of the scenes are also more satisfying. Most especially the Christmas episode. Each chapter of the manga is only 9 pages long, which doesn't leave much room for anything to happen. Though one good thing is that my fears were alleviated. Most chapters have some kind of development or make progress in some way, so we're not treated to 100+ chapters of nothing happening. The development after the show ends starts to get alot better, so I'm hoping we get a second, possibly third season. |
10-12-2015, 11:54 AM | #15 |
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So who is tastier, Umaru, Umasou, or our very own Umaikeiki?
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10-12-2015, 04:56 PM | #16 |
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Depends which way you swing. Do you like himoutos, ankylosaurs, or übermenschen?
Still sad that no one afaik ever subbed that movie for you guys. It's a pretty solid kids film with grown-up appeal. And tears.
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04-25-2016, 01:18 PM | #17 | |
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Quote:
Episode 02: Spoiler: show Episode 03: Spoiler: show
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05-04-2016, 03:56 PM | #19 |
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Through Episode 05. The show is cute fun. Nothing too great. I enjoy the cultural references (like The Prince of Tennis one in Episode 04 or the Pokémon ones in Episodes 04 and 05), but the show is ultimately like a thin glaze: sweet and without substance.
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05-04-2016, 07:24 PM | #20 |
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Episode 06 was cute. I ship Umaru crushing on Onii-chan but not the reverse. Would still say my OTP in this show is Ebina x Onii-chan. I appreciate Kirie but I can't say I share your ship, Deo. ^^;
Spoiler: show
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05-04-2016, 08:17 PM | #21 |
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05-05-2016, 10:30 AM | #22 |
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