So today I’m gonna venture well off the beaten path and write about anime. Or, well, this specific one anyway. Now, I’m hardly an expert, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have thoughts and opinions, so here we go. I certainly don’t know the genre lingo and all that, not do I really care.
It’s actually quite rare for me to step outside the recommendations of my friends. I seldom have time to keep up with even that much. The series only got my attention because, quite frankly, some of the gifs I saw on discord were absolutely adorable and I wanted context. I figured it was as good a reason as any.
It seems on the surface to be a fairly standard school drama. The series focuses on Umaru, her brother, and each of their friend groups and lives. Umara herself serves as both the protagonist and antagonist a lot of the time, but it’s mostly just a silly sort of comedy. The conflict it felt like it was setting up early on, that Umaru has a public life as a perfect school girl with perfect grades and a private life as a super lazy slacker/gamer isn’t really addressed. It’s just kinda… there?
There are marked differences in art style and clothing for the three different personas she wears, though. The blonde sparkly schoolgirl, the chibi hoodie-wearing lazy little sister that I first encountered in the gifs, and skilled arcade gamer wearing a hat with only the initials UMR. There is a bit of overlap at times, but it’s actually rather uncommon.
On the whole I find the first series largely cute and endearing, but also just episodic and silly. There’s isn’t a lot of conflict or major plot threads with meaningful consequences. Just…. mildly amusing situations.
There are quite a lot of popular gaming and anime references for people who like that kind of thing. I don’t even remember most of them, but Umaru is often shown playing games on a PSP, something that looks vaguely like a PS3, and once or twice using a “vintage cartridge console” that I imagine was supposed to be an SNES.
I do find it a little disturbing at times, too. Umaru’s treatment of her brother and her friends can often feel shallow and outright abusive. It’s hard to overlook the inherent selfishness that the laziest of them embodies. Adorable, yes, but rarely considerate, thankful, or sweet. In that context, her nicer public personality strikes me as being mildly manipulative, especially when she mischaracterizes or outright lies about her brother’s dedication and behaviors.
Or maybe it’s just hitting too close to home for me and echoes all the wrong parts of my life. I relate well to many aspects of Umaru’s character, though, and I set my complaints and reservations aside enough to enjoy the first series, and I intend to watch the second at some point. Still don’t love it, though. A little character development would have gone a long way.
Anyway, cute, but not great. I’ve spent time in worse ways. I’m just intrigued enough to see if anything interesting comes of it in the second series. Wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone unless they felt like it was their thing.
Y’all take care! Be excellent to each other!
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