Headscratchers / Himouto! Umaru-chan

• How is Kirie okay with Sylphin getting befriended, considering Kirie once held a grudge against Ebina for being closer to Umaru than her? Considering their personalities don't seem to mesh all that well and Sylphin has a pretty blatant crush on Umaru as well, Kirie seems way too cool about it.
  • Probably because Sylphin associates herself as "The Rival" more than friend most of the time.
• Why does Umaru even feel the need to keep her home life and hobbies a secret? I know that Japanese society is more about conformity than in the west, but Umaru doesn't seem at all ashamed about her interests. She doesn't seem to particularly relish the admiration she gets at school, either. So why does she even bother?
  • Because otaku has a loser connotation that is very undesirable. The other reason, probably, is she's an Attention Whore.
  • Umaru doesn't really come across as much of an Attention Whore, though. There are a few points where she actually finds her "perfect girl" act tiresome to keep up, and like I said above, she doesn't seem to really take much pleasure in the compliments she gets (unlike, say, Yukino from His and Her Circumstances). And I'm well aware of the loser connotations of being an otaku, but there are plenty of other series where otaku characters are more open about their interests and don't care at all if other people think they're losers.
    • Except Umaru very much cares about her self-image and reputation, even if she finds it tiring to maintain. She is very much an Attention Whore, with a downplayed mix of Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
    • Actually, Umaru only developed her indoor persona a year after moving in with Taihei. The manga hints that she wasn't raised by her mother, and since her father is the head of a conglomarate, she probably had a rather strict childhood. Moving in with her brother let her relax and act spoiled, but only because of the trust she has in him. She still needs to act as the daughter of a CEO in real life. Note that she only acts bratty with Taihei, and has never been mean to any of her friends, including the ones that know about her indoor persona.
• Why does Umaru live with Taihei, anyway? She's still in high school, so why doesn't she live with her parents?
  • Their father is never shown in the series, and the claim that Umaru's father is a CEO could be just gossip made up by her classmates, like her spending time by reading in her mansion's library. Their mother only shows up in Taihei's memories. It is also shown that Umaru moved in with Taihei only a year before the series' events, after having not seen him for a decade. An early memory Umaru has of Taihei shows them as kids in a vastly better apartment than what they have now. Neither of their parents shows up at the parent-teacher conference for which Ebina's mother comes to from a different province - Taihei goes instead. Taken together, all these might imply that Taihei is Umaru's only surviving relative and legal caretaker, taking her in after a long time apart due to some unspecified factor such as their parents having a divorce, or perhaps simply him moving away to study.