Review for Himouto! Umaru-chan R Collection

Introduction

How long are you willing to wait for a subsequent season of a show? Of course there are those situations where you have to wait for the studio to actually make a new season. There was a gap of almost 20 years between season 9 and season 10 of The X-Files. Even in anime there can be big gaps, 11 years between Slayers Try and Slayers Revolution, 12 years between Trigun, and Trigun: Badlands Rumble. But when it came to Himouto Umaru-chan, there were just two years between the release of Season 1 is 2015, and Season 2, Umaru-chan-R in 2017. The first season was released in the UK on Blu-ray and DVD by Animatsu, the short lived label that escaped from Manga Entertainment in 2017.


By the time the second season was up for licensing, the UK anime distributor landscape had changed, and MVM announced that they had Himouto Umaru-chan-R... in 2019. It was just a matter of waiting for the show to be localised into English. Sentai Filmworks, who have the licence in the US, and who usually do all the localising work, dubs and subs and the like, only got around to Himouto Umaru-chan-R back in 2023, and we now, finally get the sequel here in the UK in 2024. That’s seven years waiting for a show that was released just two years apart in Japan. The downside of all of this is that if you try Himouto Umaru-chan-R and enjoy it, and decide to go looking for the first season, you’re not going to find it easily in the UK now. Thankfully, it’s a pretty simple premise, adapted from a short form gag manga, and it’s easy to get into the flow of things, and season 1 is probably streaming somewhere. But it would be cool if MVM could get the license for Season 1 at this juncture and give it a re-release.


Umaru Doma is the perfect young girl. She’s beautiful, elegant, poised, intelligent and athletic. She comes top of all the school tests, and she’s great at sports. On top of that, she’s got a great personality, likeable, friendly and enthusiastic. That’s outside. Back home in the apartment that she shares with her older brother Taihei, as soon as she walks through the door, she transforms into a lazy otaku slob, literally. The poised elegance becomes annoying cuteness as she sheds her school uniform, dons a hamster hood, and slobs out in front of the TV, watching anime, playing games, reading manga, and eating unhealthy snacks, annoyingly whining her reliance on her brother to take care of all other things in life. The second season continues the story of Umaru and her friends, Kirie, Sylphin, and Ebina.


12 episodes are presented across 2 Blu-rays from MVM.

Disc 1
1. The Himouto Returns
2. Umaru and Alex
3. Umaru and Friends
4. A Party with the Whole Gang
5. Big Brother Departs
6. Umaru and Dreams
7. Umaru and Amusement Parks
8. Umaru and Hikari
9. Umaru and Memories

Disc 2
10. First Time For Everyone
11. Umaru and the Starry Sky
12. Everyone and Umaru

Picture

The show gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer on these discs, at 1080p resolution. The image is clear and sharp, and as you might expect from a comedy anime, replete with bright, vivid colours, and lacking the dramatic nuance in shade of more serious fare. The upside of this is that you aren’t going to see any digital banding, or indeed aliasing or compression. The show features the detailed and referential world design that suits a show about an otaku, while the character designs are warm and appealing. Most notable is that of Umaru herself, who in the ‘real’ world is a pretty, elegant high school girl, but when she returns home to her brother’s apartment, transforms into a cute mascot sized character, low on defining features and heavy on the childlike cuteness.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese with player locked subtitles and a signs only track. I went with the Japanese audio and was happy with the actor performances, and while it is a dialogue focussed, comedy piece, the few moments of action and sound design came across well. The dialogue is clear throughout, and the subtitles are timed accurately and free of typos.

Extras

The discs present their content with static menus, and each episode is followed by a translated English credit reel.

Season 1 may have splurged on extras features, but here all you’ll find on Disc 2 are the textless credits.

Conclusion

I know that I did say that Himouto Umaru-chan-R is based on a short form, gag manga, and each of these little sketches do work to tell their particular gags, with little or no continuity between them. But having now watched the sequel, I’m even more of the opinion that it would serve UK fandom well if MVM were to go back and license the first season as well. There are plenty of running gags in the show, relationship shenanigans that are established in the first season, which would be useful to be familiar with to get the most out of this second season. Having said all that, Umaru-chan-R does offer more of the same gentle slice-of-life comedy, and I had a comforting time watching these episodes.


So you might wonder why Kirie, who is crushing on Umaru at school, sees hamster-mode Umaru as a different person, and treats her like a martial-arts style master. You might wonder why Umaru puts on a Zorro-style mask, calling herself UMR to hang out with Sylphin. You might wonder why Ebina often has steam coming off the top of her head... You can get into the show without knowing the back-story, but familiarity with Season 1 would help. And while there is a familiar sense of comfort watching these episodes, the focus of this second season is subtly different. The first season spent a bit of time establishing this world and developing the characters and the relationships between them, all centring on the class princess Umaru, who transforms into a stereotypical geeky otaku when she gets home.


The second season has more of a focus on family. It turns out that everyone has a sibling here. Umaru obviously lives with her hard-working big brother Taihei, and we’ve already established Taihei’s workplace and the people he works with. We also already know that Kirie’s big brother Bonba is Taihei’s best friend from school who also works with him. Here we also see that Sylphynford “Sylphin” Tachibana’s big brother Alex also works with Taihei, and he’s as much of an otaku as Umaru. In this season, we also learn that Ebina has an older brother that she rarely sees, which explains in some way why she latches onto Taihei the way she does.


There is also the introduction of a new character in the story at this point, the stereotypical, taciturn grey-haired girl, in this case a little girl named Hikari who also gloms onto Taihei, calling him ‘big brother’ and invoking much annoyance in Umaru. It doesn’t help that it seems that Hikari and Taihei do have a past to warrant the relationship. And as per the theme of this second season, it turns out that Hikari’s big sister Kanau is Taihei’s boss at work, and just as with Bonba, the two have a past in high school too.


It all plays out in the short-form skits, elaborate gag and punch-lines that follow the characters about the trivialities of their everyday lives. Over the course of the series, petty differences are worked through, and relationships deepen. Like the majority of anime comedies that I watch, Himouto Umaru-chan-R is not laugh-out-loud funny all the way through. There are chuckles to be had, but overall this is very much a feel-good show. The shift to the family focus is a positive, as the comedy value of a hamster-mode Umaru is limited, and was stretching things by the end of the first season.

Himouto Umaru-chan-R is available direct from MVM’s webstore at Anime on Line, from Anime Limited, and from mainstream retailers.