Himouto! Umaru-chan Episode 5 Review

Rating: 4/5 happy clouds

Initially I was surprised that the series didn’t follow a four-koma style and simply go off of gags concerning Umaru’s everyday double life. however, now that I’ve read through the manga and seen how the anime strings together similarly themed events, I feel that the story works much better with a general manga panel structure. The regular flow of the panels is much less restricting than four-koma set-ups and gives the mangaka a wide landscape to extend the story in spontaneous or experimental directions.

While it is difficult to believe off the get go, we do see Umaru develop closer relationships with other characters she previously had no contact with. In the series thus far, we’ve been introduced to three of Umaru’s classmates, two of which have had contact with Umaru outside of her perfect school persona. Tachibana sees Umaru only as UMR, a hardcore gamer and rival while Kirie thinks the indoor hamster-chibi Umaru is actually pretty Umaru’s younger sister. Kirie is a total sucker for cute things and hasn’t pieced together that she’s obsessing over the same person while Tachibana has no idea she’s caught in a similar situation. I’d like to know why Kirie is so shy and why Tachibana is so competitive. We got a general idea from Tachibana in last week’s episode regarding her brother but Kirie is way too awkward to reveal any telltale signs of her personality to the audience.

Cutest moment ever- Indoor Umaru falling asleep with Kirie.

I swear, if Kirie knew that the gorgeous Umaru from her class is also the adorably cute Umaru she plays with after school, her entire world would shatter.

I quite enjoyed the latter half of the episode where Taihei gives Umaru money to go shopping with her friends over summer vacation. Initially, Umaru intends to buy a pretty expensive dress but once she realizes there is a new game out, she stocks up on generic sale clothes to save the rest of her money for her personal purchase. I am impressed that Umaru tries to encourage Kirie and Ebina to be close friends. She’s a good person even though she has such a childish and lazy side to her and her socially sensitive perceptions of people’s personalities along with the ways in which she interacts with them makes her endearing. At first I thought she was only being fake but she is a sincerely sweet person, she just happens to have obsessive hobbies and she realizes it’s conducive to herself to balance a school and (somewhat of a) social life despite her tendencies to otaku-out in the dark for hours on end at home.