howdy apologist

I made a joke this morning on socials about how “Kids don’t even know that it’s Hamtaro time anymore”, only to realize that, today the anime celebrated a 25th anniversary!

“What is a skeleton’s favorite snack? RIBS!”

February 18th, Happy Birthday Howdy!

Howdy is one of the main Ham-Hams, and he has quite a lot of screen time! He is known for being a jokester, although many of his jokes fall flat and the Ham-Hams don’t really appreciate them. Which becomes a gag on itself. Howdy’s fur sports a triangle upwards and his eyes are pretty squinty. 

Howdy is well-known for his continuous “dajare” or “puns”, but he is also a rather serious merchant, quite interested in money and giving the best experience to his customers. Hence his name in Japanese, “Maido-kun” which translates to “Hello” in Osakan dialect. But not any “hello”, but specifically the one you use when greeting a customer.

Howdy speaks in Osakan dialect, a Japanese dialect from the region of Osaka, as you may have guessed. This helps him with his puns, but also makes it quite harder to translate him to English. This makes that most of his puns, when translated to English, makes no sense, and the dubbers decided to make him say nonsense and make him look dumb instead. He was also given a Southern accent in the dub.

Howdy lives in a small convenience store, with a single mother and her son. They both have Osakan accent too, so it is safe to assume they came from that region of Japan to the current town where Hamtaro and friends live. It is unclear who is the owner: the mother Goldie or the son Zack. It is never really specified.

Relationships

Howdy has two hamsters on his life: Dexter and Pashmina. For Dexter, he is his life-time rival. They fight over, literally, everything. But, then again, they are always seen together and protecting each other when they’re scared. They both form the group “MM Booizu” or MM Boys, using their Japanese initials. Dexter is usually cutting him on his jokes, and even helps him deliver some sometimes. But the major focus of their rivalry is…

Pashmina. Howdy loves Pashmina, but she is not very interested. However, he keeps trying to win her over, if only to win over Dexter!

There is also another possible love interest for Howdy, and that would be his childhood friend Hannah. However, as she only appears in one single episode, it is difficult to know if that would have flourished.

Episodes

Episode 248 - We Are The Best of Friends!

This episode focuses on Dexter and Howdy relationship. When Dexter tells the Ham-Hams that he and his owner Curtis are moving away, the Ham-Hams get devastated, but especially Howdy. Will their last day together be enough to make them make amends?

There are plenty episodes that have Howdy as a prime character, but they either focus on the humans (Goldie and Zack have one of the most human screen time outside of Laura and Kana) or only have Howdy as a support character, so I won’t add them here.

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