Omamori Himari

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Typically when you have too much of one thing, you tend to get tired of it; but what about when you have too many difference things? Well Omamori Himari happens to be a Shounen, Supernatural, Action, Harem, Ecchi, Romantic, Comedy, Drama *breathe* yeah… that's quite a mouthful. And with all these different genres meshed together, it’s all bound to feel somewhat diluted. Although there are plenty of great things to be found in this unoriginal yet refreshing manga.

Set in modern-day Japan, an average teenage boy named Yuuto Amakawa, is taken care of by his childhood friend Rinko Kuzaki, ever since he lost his parents. Now ... where have I heard this set-up before? Well after turning 16 years old, a strange girl named Himari Noihara appears before him and she later claims to be a demon cat (fully equipped with nekomimi) who has to protect him from demons and such. The reason why it’s occurring now is because Yuuto happens to be a descendant of a line of demon slayers and more plot & stuff.

From that description alone it is easy to tell that this will be a rather straightforward story, dabbling both high school antics and demon slaying action. Though apart from some annoyances, like Yuuto constantly falling face first into misunderstandings and given the Keitaro treatment (Love Hina), there’s a good amount of story & character development that brings it a notch above your typical Harem. The story goes from Yuuto’s lofty goal, whereby he wishes to get Humans and Demons to somehow co-exist, to that of defeating the big bad. Neither plot-point being original on their own, but within a Harem manga it’s refreshing to see some actual plot from time to time and I’m not referring to that other kind of “plot”.

But what’s not as refreshing are the characters, with the females simply being a collection of “deres”. We have the classic Tsundere, the Kuudere, the Himedere, the Mayadere, the Deredere, and some Lolis thrown in there for good measure. Sure fans of the genre tend to enjoy these character traits, but when characters like Rinko become nothing more than their character trait, their very existence within the narrative begins to feel forced and pointless. At least strong female characters like Himari & Kuesu help pick up the slack, bringing with them some striking dialogue and seductive moments. Then there’s our protagonist, Yuuto who is the typical spineless young adolescent male you'd find with a harem. Well at least that’s how he is in the beginning. He actually does develop throughout the story’s progression, growing a backbone when needed, but at heart he's too generic to be appealing for me.

I guess that’s a problem of me having read too many manga, as I can have a gripe about anything; take the artwork for example. The artwork happens to be quite nice and clean, with a lot of effort put into every panel. And sure the character designs look rather generic, you can tell that without doubt the mangaka can draw his generically cute girls. The same cannot be said about the action sequences, as they simply pale in comparison to what you'd find in your typical shounen battle manga.

All in all Omamori Himari is an all round good read, even though it doesn’t really excel at anything. The harem is entertaining but rather cliché, with little to feel invested in until the very end. The supernatural side of things does add some depth and intrigue to the story but the stale action sequences do not do it any justice. It tries to force its Love Hina level of physical comedy, which becomes tiresome rather quickly. So you just have to think to yourself whether you would enjoy something with; multifaceted connections between demons & demon slayers and some tits?

tl;dr: A manga with a good cast and good art that was clearly forced to drag on for longer than it should have but still manages to do a decent job overall.

This manga started off pretty interesting. The beginning introduces a good main cast of characters that are set up with decent personalities and backgrounds with what feels like the beginning of decent character arcs. The comedy is solid. The plot basically just amounts to introductions to the main characters, but these are pretty good and work well with the characters they focus on so it's all around pretty enjoyable to read.

In volume 4 it ... reaches what is to be its overarching story and the start to this is decently interesting. However, then this story is essentially put on pause. It does a bit with pushing characters arcs for a bit which it does pretty well, but it feels like it runs out of things to do with them in volume 6. After that it enters a phase where it feels completely directionless. The plot doesn't really move forward at all. There's essentially no progress with the main cast, rather it feels at times that characters are being inconsistent for the sake of dragging out their character arcs. This is especially annoying with Yuuto, because it felt like he was finally progressing as a character but then he continues being useless. New side characters are introduced and side characters out of focus are focused more on, but outside of a couple it feels like they're completely insignificant, and the ones that do matter aren't all that great or well developed. The comedy is still decent, but it does start getting repetitive at this point. It basically feels like filler. In the afterwards the magaka essentially states that this was supposed to be a much shorter series that was pulled into being longer to benefit sales wise from the anime, and it really shows.

Things pick back up in volume 9, where the overarching arc that was introduced what seems ages ago finally starts making serious progress and there's a pretty intense arc that's tonally quite a bit more intense than previous arcs which also results in good character and relationship development. This arc comes to a good conclusion that builds into the next arc, the final arc. This final arc is also done pretty well, and wraps up Yuuto and Himari's character arcs and relationship arc quite well. Though it also felt rushed in that it didn't do as good a job with anyone else, or rather it did kind of do a good job, but it skipped the most interesting part completely rather than fleshing it out which made it feel like a throw away scene rather than one that matters which is disappointing. The epilogue also felt too quick.

In terms of overall thoughts, the action is decent, although generally pretty simple, but generally looks good at the minimum. The art is also fantastic with good style and good framing. And as a random note, it felt kind of weird though how much Yuuto's character design differs from the anime.

Story: 3/10

This is a very, very, overused, unoriginal, and tired harem story. Harem story is one term, because harem stories can be very interesting and cool. However, this is one that you could get from anywhere else. There isn't anything new, even with this sort of supernatural-twist that comes with every harem series that has no originality to it.

Art: 4/10

Even as a person who doesn't really mind moe, there is moe prevalent throughout all the character designs. But I still wouldn't mind that. In fact, the girls in this series are quite cute. No, what makes this moe different is...nothing. This is art and ... character design that is indistinguishable from a lot of other series with bishoujo in them. The manga-ka is a former hentai artist, which makes this the least explicit thing that he's done.

Speaking of which, the reason this is decent is because the eye candy is quite good, expected from someone with the manga-ka's credentials.

The fight scenes are poorly constructed; I can barely tell what's going on in one panel or another. Plus, you won't even be interested in the fight scenes because the story is so boring.

Character: 2/10

I can safely say that Yuuto is the first harem protagonist I've seen that I didn't like not because he was a major fucking douchebag (Rin from SHUFFLE! and Makoto from School Days). No, it's just that he's JUST a nice guy. That's it; he doesn't have a lot of personality outside of that. And the density of the character isn't really examined, expanded upon, or played with. Ichika Orimura may be a moron, but his density is massive enough to make him at least passably interesting. That's right; Yuuto is boring enough to reflect poorly on Ichika Orimura, who I have mixed feelings about.

Really, those are the points I have to cover. This series is boring, and you should avoid it if you don't want to be bored. As it is an ecchi harem and moe series, you'll enjoy it even less if you don't like that. In fact, in that case you'll probably hate this series.