At first glance Himouto! Umaru-Chan looks like a childish comedy short-skit show with a weak baseline of "I'm perfect on the outside, but I have a secret."I instantly fell in love with the humor of this show, and stayed till the end. I'm writing this post because I believe some people might overlook this show as being a simple comedy, than a show with fantastic characters that presents the audience with a valuable life lesson (or at least I think so).Be comfortable with yourself!Society establishes rules and conditions to follow and in the attempt to conform to those rules sometimes we as people create different personas that conflict with our inner selves, which can be destructive to us as humans. This show depicts how some people may suffer from these society produced inner conflicts, but resolves them either by themselves or with friendship.I'll break it down by characters:Taihei (Oni-Chan) - Taihei is basically Umaru's high school form. He performed well in school, was admired by others because of this, and because of this he is able to work for a big corporation using his brain power to crunch numbers. He even performs admirably to be acknowledged by his co-workers (sometimes the lacky because of his personality).However, this is not his true self. Taihei usually has two things on his mind, taking care of Umaru, and cooking. Changing careers to being a chef is risky, and would be looked down upon by society. Luckily, he has Umaru to bring him down to Earth constantly and cheer him up when he is exhausted from his salary-man life.Kanau - Kanau has been with Taihei and Bomber from high school, and is even their boss at their company. On the surface, she is the show's Tsundere, but this is her inner conflict and front to protect herself from society. she has risen to a higher position, but because she is a woman, she needs to have a stronger personality towards men who view her as a sex object, or lonely because she doesn't have a lover. At the end of the Christmas episode I can't tell if she was finally comfortable with not being with Taihei and admiring at a distance, or if she was going to start a collection of cropped photos of him, but either way she found her stability.Kirie - Kirie's is just hilarious. She constantly has low self-esteem, tries to be a tsundere, but has enough self-awareness to realize how foolish she's acting, which further embarrasses herself. This causes her to be a scared off by others, when in reality she just wants to be friends with people like Umaru. Her view on what is a normal girl has destroyed her self-esteem and developed violent behaviours interacting with people. When she meets Umaru's other form, she becomes more comfortable with herself, which in turn helps her develop better connections with people, including her brother.Motoba (Bomber) - There is no real internal conflict with bomber. He is happy with himself, loves his sister, dreads work, but has fun with it, and just in general knows how to have fun. The only comment I would mention would be his appearance is conflicting with the business world, but he has enough self-confidence to pull it off.Ebina - Ebina is my favorite character at the moment. Ebina's dialect is strange, her boobs are massive to distract attention from herself and viewed as an object, she basically draws attention everywhere she goes, but in a negative way. She admires Umaru because Umaru gains attention, but through positive manner. She forces herself to learn "proper" Japanese, hides her body when she feels she is being ogled at, and is hindered by her poor grades. Ebina tries to hide from the world beside of characteristics . However, she still has a great outlook on life. She approaches Umaru with kindness instead of loathing Umaru. Her inner conflicts deal a huge blow to her self-esteem because of how society views her, but she resolves them with her inner kindness and friendship. This is the main reason why I love her, she has the most involuntary traits, but she resolves them completely.Tachibana - Tachibana is a hard character to describe. Tachibana's conflicts are either her brother's view of her, or her competitive outbursts from being 2nd place. Either way, she is the opposite of Ebina where she craves attention from others. Tachibana enjoys gaming and anime, but is suppressed because of what her brother might think of her, so she loses a public identity in trying to compete with Umaru at everything possible. This is resolved by befriending UMR and embraces her gaming and anime loving side, which makes Tachibana comfortable in establishing her own identity.Umaru - Umaru is the embodiment of a critical society. She literally has two forms for the public and private. Umaru believes that society will not acknowledge her true lifestyle, so she suppresses it to the extreme, and relinquishes that identity the moment she steps into her house. Although, through the help of her friendships, (especially Tachibana, Kirie, and her brother) she starts to mold the personalities together, which can be seen in the last few episodes. This molding helps stabilize her, and at times realise that the two extremes are not necessary.A prime example would be at the manga cafe. This is her dream come true, she wants to live there, she splurges on everything the cafe has to offer. Towards the end however, she realises that her activities are fun, but spending time with her brother and friends become more important if left out of the equation. From this point on, she realises that there needs to be a balance, and sometimes being perfect in the eyes of society is not necessary.tl;dr: Characters show that hiding your true self is bad because it can be self-destructive, or cause unhappiness with yourself, so f$%k what society has to say, and be yourself. http://ift.tt/1OU2pGF
No comments:
Post a Comment