Umaru Doma has it all. At only sixteen shes one of the most beautiful and popular girls in school. Shes super smart super athletic and perfectly wellmannered and kind. Shes idolized wherever she goes except for one place... Her brothers apartment where she is living in order to attend school. You see Umaru has a secret... A dark terrible secret that would tear her life asunder should anyone discover it. For you see Umaru Doma... Is a gremlin. She maintains her facade in public but behind closed doors she drops the mask pulls out the snacks and lies around all day playing video games and taking liberal advantage of her brothers saintly kindness. This hedonistic paradise might not last long forever as her developing social circle brings her two lives closer and closer together and it would be all too easy for the complex web of lies shes built her life on to give way and collapse. Will Umaru be able to maintain the status quo or will she find out that her daily routine as a gremlin was just too good to last? It always surprises me when I write a review that introduces me to a new anime studio... Most of the time I dont know who animated a series until Im just sitting down to start writing and Himouto Umaruchan is only the latest in the trend. Ive never heard of Studio Doga Kobo before but they have done a few anime that Ive seen... Even if most of them were shows that I liked just fine but ultimately found kind of forgettable like Love Lab Luck and Logic Majestic Prince Yuru Yuri. There are two titles in their resume that managed to leave a long term impression on me and one of them was my subject today. With the exception of Majestic Prince which looked like it was animated on a budget of hopes dreams and spare change fished out of the machines at the laundromat their output tends to look pretty damn good with smooth animation key frames used only where they wont be noticed and framed as inconspicuous as possible. Their work never looks particularly expensive but they clearly did have a comfortable budget to work with at least in almost every one of their projects that Ive seen. Theyve rarely never let me down with anything and Im not exaggerating when I say that Himouto Umaruchan is probably one of the best looking shows Ive seen from them. Crisp visuals a bright and vibrant color palette and a spectacularly managed budget that employs just as much movement as is needed at any given time saving money on key frames whenever possible without ever going too far with it. Much like most of Doga Kobos work the character designs tend towards anatomical integrity with only slightly cartoony faces that are normal enough to feel human yet exaggerated enough to be thoroughly expressive. Theres also a level of inspiration in the characters hairstyles almost none of which feel cliched or tropey and every characters individual design informs a great deal about who they are. Also in line with the best of Doga Kobos work the backgrounds are downright gorgeous. Theyre full of intricate details and since this is kind of a show about otakus thats kind of an important note to strike. Most anime dealing with this kind of subject will either fill out the background with obvious media parodies or the most generic garbage they can think of but Himouto goes for something in the middle and it makes the world of the story feel that much more immersive. I only really have one complaint with the visuals but Ill get into that later. I wasnt a huge fan of the opening but thats really a matter of personal taste... I like how it alternates between two drastically different tones going hyper and fast to represent Umarus Dork Side and going slower and more fancy to represent her public persona. Its a pretty smart approach but for me personally I found the hyper parts to be kind of annoying. I liked the closing theme a lot more as its a really fun tune that involved the four main female voice actors of the series and while Im betting they all probably recorded their parts separately it still sounds like theyre all having fun singing together. The best thing about this anime however by far and away by country mile is the English dub. Every single actor smashed it out of the park from Adam Nobles supportive yet strict long suffering Taihei to Jason Douglass disturbingly good impression of Andrew Love from Christina Kellys melodramatic overtures to Sara Ornelas goofy take on an awkward country bumpkin trying to hide an accent everyone brings their A game... But there is one particular performance in this dub that I personally count among the legends. Emily Neves didnt have the greatest start to her anime career... She started off as some failed American Idol contestant who sounded a bit awkward in Angel Beats... But she improved frighteningly fast becoming one of the most indemand names in the industry before shed even been active for a decade. She has range she has voice control thats second only to Brittney Karbowski and unlike a lot of the most prolific voice actresses in anime her voice actually has a chameleonic quality to it where you cant immediately tell its her every time you hear her. Umaru presented Emily Neves with the same opportunity that Akira from Lucky Star once gave to Stephanie Sheh... The opportunity to flex her skills by playing a duplicitous character who had two distinctly unique sides to their personality and yet both sides still had to sound like the same person... Two sides of the same coin if you will. Her public voice is soft inviting and dignified but without any sort of pretentious edge to it. Her gremlin voice is high pitched childlike and extremely charming in the ways she mispronounces certain words. Im not kidding the first time I heard this show in English I almost fell in love with the character just based on the way she said the phrase PoTAYto chips and COLAAAA Again I dont want to take anything away from the rest of the cast I dont think there was a single sour note to be found but this is nothing short of a starmaking performance for Neves. What makes it even more impressive is that she was pulling off a top tier performance definitely one of my favorite individual performances of all time while playing a character I absolutely despise. I realize how ironic this is going to sound but just like my favorite thing about the show pretty much everything I hate about it draws back somehow to Umaru herself. As the title character she does not make a good first impression and thats for two reasons. First off shes a parasite. For the first few episodes shes presented to us as this selfish entitled manipulative little troll who is just gleefully and shamelessly taking advantage of her brother eating up his time and money with only the barest minimum of lipservice gratitude and no self awareness whatsoever. There were interactions between them that made me physically cringe and while I dont think it was ever clarified what happened to their parentsAre they dead or did they just send her off to live with him for school? I cant imagine any decent parents would tolerate her acting like such a spoiled brat. I realize shes technically a child and her brother is a legal adult but just because youre in a position where you wouldnt reasonably be expected to take care of yourself or pay rent that doesnt mean you HAVE to be a freeloader. The weird thing is characters like her CAN work it has been done. Haruhi Suzumiya is arguably just as difficult of a person but there are a few key differences. Rather than hiding her true nature thus acknowledging that she knows damn well how to behave Haruhi is just herself 24/7. Rather than being effortlessly popular she is so outcast that it takes her mood swings threatening life on Earth as we know it for half a dozen people to hang out with her. She also has much more intriguing interests as well as a backstory that explains them perfectly while giving her some much needed depth while Umaru is just a gremlin whos obsessed with consuming entertainment and junk food. Unlike Umarus weakwilled enabler of a brother Haruhi has a foil with some degree of sarcastic wit who isnt afraid to put his foot down. While I genuinely do like her as a character even I felt immensely satisfied when she took a step too far in the second season and Kyon snapped and tried to brain her over it. I would love to see Taihei try and do the same at least once. Im not a fan of real life domestic violence but a character like Umaru CAN be balanced out by some good slapstick. On top of that lazy characters only work if they struggle in some way as a result... In Naruto Shikamaru has to stay vigilant to avoid being hassled. In My Heavenly Hockey Club Hana worked her ass off to get into a school that was slightly closer to her house so she could get sixty extra seconds of sleep in the morning. In Lucky Star Konata only applies herself when shes bribed. In Saga of Tanya the Evil Tanyas efforts to live a peaceful life away from the front lines always backfire and drag her deeper and deeper into the war. Umaru doesnt struggle at all. Shes naturally smart so she doesnt have to study shes able to gorge on junk food without working out and shes magically able to not only stay thin which a high metabolism COULD explain but shes also athletic somehow. She doesnt have to worry about being exposed because her friends are all jawdroppingly stupid. Following this characters journey is like listening to The Lazy Song... Yeah you might enjoy it at first but halfway through you really just want to punch the subject in the face. Hell its never even proven in the show that anybody at her school would give a shit about her Dork Side Yeah I know Japanese schools have a reputation for being conformist but the actual potential consequences of this are never communicated to the audience Who would fucking care if they found out she had gasp hobbies and interests? That might make her slightly interesting? Im sorry but how does she never get lonely over the fact that she has nobody to share her interests with who doesnt think shes a toddler? My other problem is the sheer amount of cliches that were used to construct Umaru as a character. Ive seen quite a few anime where there was a female character who was idolized by the entire school and it never felt right to me... I may be asexual but I understand aesthetic attraction enough to know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and no matter how attractive you look to one person theres someone out there who find you average looking at best or even downright ugly. To me personally Umaru looks relatively prettyat least by high school standards but just like the twins from Kiss X Sis and the protagonist from Good Luck Girl I do not understand why the entire student body is obsessed with her. The character design issue I mentioned earlier is that while shes worshipped in the show she doesnt really look like a main character... Or even the main characters best friend who youd expect to be more tomboyish. No in the average femalelead anime I would picture a character like her as that third friend who tags along is probably rich and owns a summer house for the beach episode. Another cliche she embodies is that whole secret life trope which has been around at least as far back as His and Her Circumstances. You know the drill theres a pretty and popular girl at school whos good at everything and loved by everyone but is secretly either an otaku or a former chuuni or just a middle class girl who works her ass off to appear naturally perfect. What makes it especially weird is that this cliche is usually used as a shortcut to forming a bond between the girl and her love interest who finds out about her secret and is thus drawn directly into her life. Im not saying this CANT work between two sibling characters but the only other example I can think of is Oreimo and thats not a good sign. No dont get me wrong theres nothing incestuous about this anime dont go putting THOSE words in my mouth but it was still a questionable choice to use that cliche in a story about two siblings. Other cliches include Umaru having a pathetic selfproclaimed rival as well as her brother having the same two friends every fucking male character has... An outgoing male friend whos more overtly horny than he is and a female childhood friend whos hopelessly in love with him. Because effort is overrated I guess. I dont usually outright hate these cliches but the problem is that Umaruchan does absolutely nothing new with any of them. The only cliche the series really uses in an unexpected way is one of the oldest cliches in anime history chibi humor. Now normally chibi humor is used for the sake of artistic expression... Your characters go superdeformed to sell a joke a little better and its pretty much a staple of the medium but theres a catch Chibi humor can not cross into the text of the story. Yes a character can shrink for a shot or two but when he uses his small size to fit into a spot he couldnt have fit into before it stops being a sight gag and becomes a canonical super power. Im sorry this probably sounds like extreme nitpicking from me but if I wasnt willing to let Yuri on Ice get away with having Yuris fat gut magically disappear when he needed to dance then Im going fucking to say something when Umaru shrinks and pretends to be her own made up little sister. Again you could just chalk this up to her friends being jawdroppingly stupid... Bomber doesnt recognize the face or voice of his own little sister when shes right fucking in front of him... But I digress. This all wouldnt be such a big deal to me if the show was funny but at least for me it really isnt. I mean I laughed a couple times at the rival character who had a well placed joke here or there but other than that I dont think the people who wrote this show really knew how to tell a joke in a story. Most of the humor is either too predictable too stupid or just missing a punch line entirely. Right in the first episode the rival starts bragging to Umaru about getting a 99 on her test and Im not going to tell you what the punchline is because you already know what it is its literally the most obvious punchline you could possibly write for that joke. When Umaru is pestering Taihei to buy her a new game he invites her friend along on their shopping trip to keep her in line and when she snaps and goes chibi anyway the friend misses this because for several seconds she was trying to hold back her natural accent from bursting out and that apparently rendered her blind and deaf. Then we learn Taihei caved and bought her the game but we never learn how she overcame his advantage over her which could have been a funny punchline but no the whole joke was just She won somehow dur hur. Thats almost as funny as the time her friend gave Taihei burnt cookies by accident which I refuse to laugh at until someone explains why the fuck she bagged the burnt cookies in the first place You could make the argument that things get better as the show goes on at least in terms of the relationship between Umaru and Taihei and that is technically true but it doesnt feel earned. Umaru never learns anything she never receives any comeuppance or suffers any consequences and shes never forced to confront the consequences of her behavior. Some characters become better friends but nobody ever changes or grows by the end of the season. The writers just work around all that by giving you less frustrating material but just dialing back their focus on Umarus entitled bullshit and showing us that she can actually get along with her brother once in a while doesnt actually redeem her. We get more calm pleasant moments that almost seem like theyre going for some kind of poignancy but they all wind up feeling kind of meaningless. My favorite segment in the entire series is when Umaru makes a trip to the convenience store in the middle of the night for the first time not because anything funny or deep happens but because all the little emotions she goes through on that trip felt honest and relatable... Its the peak of the fucking show and it still pales in comparison to similar scenes in Toradora and Azumanga Daioh. That about sums it up right there. Himouto Umaruchan is available from Sentai Filmworks. I havent seen the sequel yet but its available from the same company. Several manga series have been produced and while two of them are available from Seven Seas Entertainment it looks like the other ones... Alongside a Playstation Vita game... Were never picked up. There is a lot to love about Himouto Umaruchan... By which I mean the animation and the dub. Emily Neves does a LOT of heavy lifting to carry this show which was otherwise kind of a chore to get through. It was really frustrating at the start watching an insanely unlikeable main character constantly get her way with no consequences and while it may have stopped being infuriating at a certain point it mostly just wound up becoming boring afterwards with its peak coming in moments that werent exactly entertaining but were at least kind of vaguely pleasant. It used a ton of tired derivative cliches that it didnt even bother presenting in any sort of unique or creative way with the only exception being Umarus chibi form which is used in the dumbest way possible. I dont know why this show is as popular as it is... Im assuming people just find Umaru cute and enjoy her selfish antics on that basis alone... But I cant see her as anything other than a terribly written character and considering the fact that the show is based around her thats saying something. I give Himouto Umaruchan a 4/10.