Umaru - The Most Hated Anime Girl

Warning! Course Language - I think you know what you are in for by now..

Umaru Dogma is the fictional character from Sankaku Head's anime and manga entitled Himouto! Umaru-chan. It follows a young high school student who appears to be perfect when it comes to all areas of school life however, when she returns home, she turns into the manga reading, cola drinking and anime playing alter ego. As a result, people seem to connect to her alter ego and empathise with her however, member of the shitposting community hate Umaru for encouraging laziness and misrepresenting the Otaku community.

A typical representation of Umaru

The manga debuted in the Japanese manga magazine Weekly Young Jump on March 13th 2013 and by late December of the next year, it was announced that it would be adapted into an anime. The first episode was released on July the 9th 2015 to much acclaim by general audiences and by August 2015 the manga series had sold 1.5 million copies. 

Umaru was first notably mentioned on July 8th 2015 when reddit user, Shadowflix submitted a threat to /r/anime to discuss the first episode. This thread gained over 360 points (with over 97% up voted) and 140 comments within a month. During the following month, fan art and GIFs of the show were being posted to subreddits including /r/awwnime and /r/animegifs. By August a wikia on the series had been created and the following day, a series subreddit had been established.

Meanwhile, on 4chan, Umaru had become a hot topic but for all of the wrong reasons. It had become a source of shitposting on the site. Boards /a/, /v/ and /r9k/ were using pictures of Umaru to inspire a hatebase for the anime character.

A popular example of the Umaru Hatebase

A number of other memes spawned due to the show's influence. These include the hamster hoodie, opening parodies of the show and WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING.  The hamster hoodie and opening parody memes have quite a few core basics in common. They both serve as a template that individuals alter and project their desired property onto. In the case of the hamster hoodie meme it is simply giving the property of choice a hamster hood and drawing them so that they match the chibi style of the show, almost as if that property itself had been from Himouto! Umaru-chan. The act of hamster hooding became so popular that, Young Jump - the original publishers of the anime release an Umaru maker that would 'hood' any character or object that is downloaded into the maker. The same goes for the opening parody memes as other characters once again edited to look chibi and re-enact key scenes from the opening song of the anime.

   An example of 'Hamster Hooding' a character. In this example, it is a character from Splatoon

 A John Cena Parody of the Himouto! Umaru-chan Opening

The final meme WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING, is actually a phrase made famous by the Umaru hatebase as a response to seeing the character for the first time or seeing her do something usual to her chibi persona. This is usually accompanied by a close-up image of Brain from the band Ninja Sex Party. Originating a post on /a/ in July 2015, this has become an inside joke of the Umaru fanbase.  

An image of Umaru and Ninja Brain together as a response to the "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING" meme

There's one more post on the horizon, so buckle in because we are about to go to 4chan!