HIMOUTO! UMARU-CHAN, by Sankakuhead. First published in 2013, and first published in North America in 2018.
PLOT:
To the wider world, Umaru Doma is the perfect high school girl. Pretty, poised, brilliant, and talented at every task she sets herself to, she is the envy of every kid in her class. Once she gets home, though, she becomes Umaru-chan: a selfish, lazy otaku who pigs out on junk food, torments her brother, and manipulates him to get her way. The only thing that Umaru works harder at than being a pest is keeping others from discovering her true self, but a strange silent classmate might ruin all of her work in a moment.
STORY:
Umaru-Chan is one of those manga that has no middle ground. Either you will love it or you will hate it, and what side you take will depend a lot on how you respond to Umaru herself.
The jokes online about Umaru being like Japanese Garfield are not just based around her orange hamster hoodie. Like Garfield, she's lazy, snarky, gluttonous, and lives to torment her keeper. Also like Garfield, her comic is pretty repetitive. The details change, but the basic joke structure doesn't change for at least 3/4th of this book. Worse still, the joke is always at the expense of Umaru's put-upon older brother Taihei. Umaru never really get any comeuppance for her brattiness, and that's what kept me from enjoying what comedy this book had to offer.
It might have helped if they had introduced more of the supporting cast sooner and used them more. I kind of wanted to see more of Sylphy, Umaru's (mostly self-appointed) rival, who appears to be your classic comic princess-type of character. I wish we had seen less of Ebina, Umaru's best friend whose only defining trait is "nervous." It's hard to say much about the mystery classmate as she's introduced at the last minute, but she at least promises some sort of relief from the formula Umaru-Chan has settled into, even at this early point. Maybe this is one of those comedies that simply needs to grow into its premise to truly shine, because as it is it's kind of annoying and repetitive.
ART:
The big thing that Umaru-Chan has to offer visually is chibis, which is weirdly nostalgic for an older person like me. Sankakuhead visualizes Umaru's transformation by turning her into a squishy little chibi person in Umaru-chan mode, and it's the one bit of genius about this manga. It's not just good visual shorthand for Umaru's personality transformation, it gives the artist full reign to make her this rubbery, goofy little gremlin. If anything, the rest of his art could use a dose of similar inspiration as the rest of the cast, the backgrounds, and general composition are simply OK.
RATING:
Himouto! Umaru-Chan may not be to everyone's taste, but if you're down with Umaru's brand of brattiness then you'll likely enjoy this. As for me, maybe I'll give it another chance another 2 or 3 volumes to see if it ever balances its comedy formula out.
This series is published by Seven Seas. This series is complete in Japan with 12 volumes available. 3 volumes have been published and are currently in print.
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