Webcomic / Omoriboy

i'm omori and i fap and play old games

all these old memories never really stop messing with us, do they?

Omoriboy, also known as Omori Hikikomori (omori ひきこもり), was a discontinued webcomic by Omocat about a depressed young man living in a Blank White Void. Omori spends his days surfing the internet, playing old games, drawing, interacting with his cat, and musing about his life. A companion blog from his cat's point of view, Omoricat, was updated sporadically but ended early into its run.

A short comic, Omori's Story, was released to the OMOCAT SHOP in 2012, along with a book of his drawings titled Omori's Sketchbook. Omocat initially wanted to expand on Omori's world through a graphic novel, but this comic was cancelled in favor of making a video game about him instead. The game, OMORI, was eventually released in 2020.

---

Omoriboy contains examples of:

• all lowercase letters: Omori's notes are written in lowercase, typically lacking punctuation.
• All of the Other Reindeer: According to Omori, his attempts to be open and kind to others when he was younger resulted in him getting bullied.
• Animal Eyes: Unlike his neighbors, Omori's eyes are drawn as oval and catlike. This helps emphasize his current solitary attitude.
• Blank White Void: The room Omori lives in is a completely white plane devoid of walls, where nothing else save his own belongings and his cat exists. A panel has him walk some considerable distance away from his usual spot, not knowing where he'll end up.
• Bowdlerize: Omori's introductory panel has him clearly watching porn on his laptop. A later version of the same panel, used for the game's Kickstarter, has the contents of his laptop obscured by a Snowy Screen of Death.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Omori explains to the audience what his name means (it's apparently short for Hikikomori), and calls out his author for giving him a similar name to her username.
  • Omori expresses gratefulness that he's only a character on a blog, because it means he doesn't have to pay rent on his room.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Omori implies he's been through stressful circumstances, though he never elaborates further.
  how hard do you think it is
  for a kid to grow up when it’s got no one to look up to?
• Daydream Surprise: In Omori's Story, Omori is invited by his neighbors to a day out. He has fun for the first time in a while, even cracking a smile, but as he reaches out for one of them, the world turns back into his room. He looks at the floor, only to see the drawings he made that day — all of which show the same places and things he encountered.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Omori and everything in his room is drawn in black and white. Even when he goes out with his neighbors in Omori's Story, he remains the only monochrome character.
• Driven to Suicide: 2012 begins with Omori going through a breakdown, culminating in him almost stabbing himself with his kitchen knife.
• Drowning My Sorrows: The New Years Day panel has Omori drinking sake, apparently as a toast to "not fucking this year up as bad as this last one".
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference:
  • Unlike his later design, Omori has the whites of his eyes drawn in. Due to being depicted as older, he's also much taller and skinnier than his game counterpart. An even earlier iteration of Omori drawn before the blog had him wearing a t-shirt instead of a tank top.
  • The characters that would become Aubrey, Kel, and Hero have slightly different designs: Aubrey's counterpart wears a shorter shirt, Kel's counterpart has shorter hair and a more detailed checkered tank top, and Hero's counterpart lacks his hair spikes.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Omori and his neighbors are drawn as teens/young adults, compared to the child ages of their game counterparts.
  • Unlike his game counterpart, Omori never leaves his room throughout the comic's run.
  • Within the comic itself, the early pages of the blog imply that Omori's room is just stylized for the viewer, and the colorful world the room's connected to is Omori's imagination. Later installments show that the void of his room is literal, and the colorful world is part of it.
  • Omori rarely uses his knife. When he attempts to stab himself, there's no indication that he can be brought back, as is the case in the game.
  • There is no indication about the existence of Sunny, Basil and Mari, all who are heavily important characters in OMORI. Omori's Story does have a flower crown-wearing recurring extra who would ultimately become part of the inspiration for Basil, but he holds no importance to Omori in the comic.
• A God Am I: As Omori draws, he proclaims himself the god of the world he creates.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Omori's writings occasionally have some Japanese phrases, such as Tako's name in his sketchbook, the title of the blog, or when Omori relates himself to other hikikomori. These phrases are typically written in hiragana.
• Hikikomori: The comic's premise centers around a shut-in that spends his days in a depressed haze, with nothing to do but play games, draw, and use his laptop. According to one of the posts, "Hikikomori" is also his actual name.
• Imaginary Friend: Omori has two: Tako(-chan), a faceless girl with octopus tentacles on her head and limbs, and Inko, a person in a fox mask.
• Interrupted Suicide: A sequence had Omori prepare to stab himself, only to suddenly stop in the last panel. Dragging the panel onto a dark background reveals his hand was stopped by Tako, one of his imaginary friends.
• Kiss Me, I'm Virtual: Omori is once shown kissing his laptop, muttering to himself about the "waifu" on the screen. One of his sketch pages also has the name of Tako surrounded by hearts.
• Living Is More than Surviving: Acknowledged, but defied. Omori believes that living means having to change himself for the better, but is unwilling to, so he's content with "just existing".
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Implied. The lonely and teenaged Omori keeps tissues nearby and almost always has his laptop set to a porn site, suggesting he uses them for this purpose offscreen.
• Muscle Angst: Combined with Weight Woe: Omori is concerned about his weight, but thinks it might be nice for himself to have abs.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: A page of Omori's sketches is covered in red and black, drawings of eyes, and pictures of knives and his own bloodied face.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The last page of the comic has Omori locked out of his laptop, which he had presumably been using to post on the blog.
• Minimalist Cast: The only recurring character throughout the comic is Omori himself, with others either being implied (like his mother) or only appearing in related stories (like his neighbors).
• Perspective Flip: Omoricat was made of panels that featured Omori and his cat together, except told from her point of view (bad grammar and all). It's through this blog that the cat's name, Mewo, was revealed.
• Shout-Out: Omori is once shown singing along to Coldplay's "Fix You". Another panel has him listening to a mini playlist, with the songs provided below the panel.
• Splash of Color: While Omori's room is Deliberately Monochrome, the outside and his neighbors are depicted with rapidly changing pastels.
• Therapy Is for the Weak: In one panel, Omori mentions his mom wanting him to seek help for his depression. Omori insists he's fine, and that everyone else thinks there's a problem with him.
• Wham Shot: After hoping next year will be better for him, the first post of 2012 shows Omori casually etching a picture into the floor with a kitchen knife he didn't have before. Several panels later, he uses it to attempt suicide.
• You Don't Look Like You: In one of Omori's sketches, Tako is drawn as a twintailed human girl surrounded by tentacles rather than a faceless humanoid with tentacle limbs.

---

if i stay here, i can be whatever i want to be
if i leave this place, i’ll have to accept my limitations as a human
and i just don’t think i’m ready to do that yet