12.15
Every year there is that one weird slice of life comedy show that becomes inexplicably popular for a half dozen or so weeks before being immediately discarded with yesterday’s trash. You know the kind. Series like Watamote, Sabage-bu, and the granddaddy of them all, Lucky Star. And in the summer of 2015, suddenly my twitter feed was filled with .gifs of a moe blob wearing a gerbil costume and drooling like a maniac. Himouto Umaru-Chan had arrived.
This is a show we actually skipped in the clusterfuck for that season. Just from the key promo art, I was easily reminded as to why. Both on a visual as well personal scale, Umaru is wholly detestable as a character. Yeah its a comedy (and a 4koma adaptation at that), but there’s nothing to get me interested in such a worthless, unlikeable brat with no development and no real arc. I have watched at least four episodes of the show including the premiere and finale and at no point is there any progression between the two. Its just a reset button all the way through. Umaru is annoying, oni-san is annoyed. Rince, repeat.
So why did people like this show? If I were to make a guess, its because of two things specifically. The Hamster suit itself which seemed premade for the nendoroid market (no surprise, they started selling like hotcakes) and the show’s knack for pandering to that half of fandom that obsesses over every Japanese video game franchise under the sun (if you haven’t gotten that from the opening title sequence already then something’s wrong with you).
This would probably also explain why I haven’t heard about Himouto in months. Silly costumes and cheap gamer cliches will only get you so far in anime. No, really! Look at Danmachi!