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A gloomy boy glances at his phone before crossing the street, unyielding to and unaware of the truck speeding towards him. Experience has led viewers to believe that the boy is fated to live on in another world, blessed with special powers and surrounded by sexy ladies. The scene cuts away, only to show the boy unharmed and the truck innocent. Alas, this story isn’t about the boy. It’s about his previously comatose uncle, who actually *did* get hit by a truck 17 years prior (and experienced all the aforementioned shit). That motherfucker is awake now. And oh boy does he have a story totell… What Isekai Ojisan does best is subverting the viewers’ expectations in a genuinely amusing way. Every few months, I hear something about an isekai that “breaks the mold”, only to usually see for myself that it relies on a cheap gimmick to set itself apart from its predecessors. Isekai Ojisan, in my opinion, is that rare isekai that actually does break the mold. Because its premise thrives on the retrospective of having “finished” the isekai part already, the show makes no explicit effort to avoid the usual tropes. It embraces them and cleverly uses them to set up its jokes. I’d be exaggerating if I said Isekai Ojisan is the funniest isekai I’ve ever seen, but I simply can’t get enough of its dry, meta humor. Paired with a relatively drab setting and a daffy soundtrack (complete with the goofy ukulele bend), the timing and delivery of the uncle’s lines are just awesome. He manages to look extremely incel-y but has the most dawg-esque personality you could ask for. Despite being infuriatingly dense, unintelligent, and kind of creepy, that man is certainly the star of this season. In fact, the livelihood of the show thrives on this fact, making use of the uncle’s utter stupidity and inability to read social cues to set up funny and interesting situations. Though the rest of the cast is relatively flat (even the uncle can’t be called dynamic), they’re all quirky and fun to watch. Considering that the main focus of the work is on its comedy, any and all lack of development is completely passable in my opinion. On a similar note, I would comment on how the “story” is lacking (with little of note having really happened), but considering that the aim of the work is to narrate a chill retrospective on the isekai shabang, I see no outstanding issues there. The art style is very attractive in its grainy feel, and it manages to capture the isekai action + slice of life comedy well in their respective parts. The animation itself is relatively conservative, saving sakuga for the punchlines, magic spells, and heavy action scenes in the show. While it’s unfortunate that the overall product’s visuals weren’t more fluid, I think that whatever we got is certainly up to par at the least. If you want to watch an isekai but you’re tired of the usual tropes (and… setting?), this show is perfect. While maintaining the same you-know-I-know feel that isekai demand in their setups, Isekai Ojisan breaks the mold in a mundane but fun manner.

KANLen09

Oh man, this might be the anime that is noteworthy of the worst production values of all time. Not the way that the anime was presented, but of the behind-the-scenes horror that's just as, if not even worse than some of the AniManga industry's corporations (i.e. Aniplex) with the outsourcing production mayhem and the "We blame China for COVID" PR disaster that had the show delayed numerous times. Plus, the fact that this was ONLY released on Netflix, and you can already tell that Isekai Ojisan, while undoubtedly a great show, is the pinnacle of unprecedented levels of a disaster in the making. The term "Isekai"has been around for more than a decade since the days when SAO made huge waves to make it known as the pioneer batch to kickstart the trend of adaptations that we'll come to see in forthcoming years, with a slew of similar shows like it that more often than not, are copy-paste iterations of one another with no creativity to them whatsoever, creating a drought of subpar mediocrity. It's the rare few that are the exception of their own thing, utilizing the well-known tropes and executing in a way that feels fresh, and these shows are why Isekai still has a chance to be discovered of new gems to come, such as the case of this anime right here: mangaka Hotondoshindeiru's Isekai Ojisan. Truck-kun, death that transports you to the other world, fantasy tropes with magic, Isekai Ojisan embraces these tropes to a degree. But it's the execution itself that makes this show special, because this is the case for 34-year-old Yousuke Shibazaki, otherwise better known as just Uncle (Ojisan). The uncle of nephew Takafumi Takaoka, who went to visit him after he had woken up from a coma after 17 years, of which this time was spent delving to the fantasy world of Granbahamal. Having just woke up, all Uncle could mention was magic incantations to be used both during his time in the fantasy world and in real life freely. The downside however, is that Uncle has an unattractive appearance that barely changed since the time he transferred to the fantasy world, being frequently mistaken for an orc and treated extremely poorly by the other world's inhabitants, so far as such to the point where he had to continuously wipe his own memories to maintain his sanity. The most unique thing about him is that Uncle's a diehard SEGA fan, using every inch of his know-how of classic games on the Genesis/Mega Drive and Saturn consoles to use for strategical purposes, but also being devastated that Sony and Nintendo are the dominant forces in the modern day where SEGA is nothing but its former shell. Yet, everything that Uncle has going for him, the nephew Takafumi has been sacrificing his entire life waiting for his return, and when he does, he did the one thing that is quite the unexpected: open up a YouTube channel to log of Uncle's "Let's Playthrough" adventures of the fantasy world, and also through his magic ability. How uncanny is that, though I suppose this is to be expected for a college kid who has little to no funds, riding off of a rather nice apartment that has limitations because of bills he needs to pay to sustain his daily living, which Uncle is able to provide the source of easy revenue. Right from the get-go, Isekai Ojisan means business, and I mean, business...in the comedy sense. Uncle is such a comedic trope, embracing his autonomy and knowing how to act in the many situations he's been dealt with. But when it comes to romance, he has an aro (a.k.a aromantic) personality, which is an umbrella term used by people who don’t typically experience romantic attraction. If you consider the time that he was beset to another world, that will be 1997, at a time where Eva a.k.a Neon Genesis Evangelion just wrapped up its initial season, and with the influential anime containing the now well-known terms like tsundere, it's apt that Uncle isn't really in the know about things like love and romance, and this is trickled down to the people that he met in the fantasy world. Starting from Suzailgiererzegalnelvzegilreagranzelga Elga (or better known as Tsundere Elf), she is the princess of the elves, the first person whom Uncle rescued after saving her from a dragon, and immediately develops a crush on him. Though with the "tsundere" term not being well-known at the time, Uncle misinterprets this as basic harassment onto him and takes it upon himself to rectify her behaviour. Despite this, Tsundere Elf is kind, always seen defending Uncle against slander and blackmail, which causes close lovey-dovey moments between the two that the mutual love will never be realized. This is the same for Mabel Laybelle, the holder of the mythical Ice Sword capable of defeating the Flame Dragon. Remember that Uncle defeated a dragon to save Tsundere Elf from trouble? Yep, it's this same dragon that Mabel was supposed to defeat, taken down by Uncle with his magic powers. Since her only motivation was defeated by someone else that she didn't expect to see, she becomes a reclusive NEET, encouraged by Uncle to develop her inner desires. In the fantasy world, you can't forget about the Hero party trope, and this comes in the form of priestess Alicia Edelsia, swordsman Edgar and berserker Raiga, where Uncle once accidentally helped them to complete difficult quests, only to backtrack because he felt that it would tarnish the effort of cheating against the system and wants them to gain like they always should. Honestly, Uncle has no short of characters that exact tropes, but are also well-written for its comedic stance that knows no limits. And in the real world, this is brought to Takafumi having his own set of issues: coming off from a broken family, with parental divorce because of the dealings with their comatose Uncle for 17 years, only that once he comes back to life, it serves as his route of escapism. Though he may be very invested in the girls that pop across his Uncle's life, he has one going for him: the childhood friend Sumika Fujimiya, though he's oblivious that the reunion with her having a crush on him, obstinately forgetting the fact that the once bullied child was at the peril of her hands when they were young. I guess you could call this trait "like Uncle, like nephew" because though Takafumi isn't as dense as his Uncle and being able to identify the traits of romance throughout the fantasy world's journey, towards Fujimiya ironically, he isn't treating her like one. For sure, this journey between Uncle and nephew is anything but conventional, and hell, it makes for an interesting Isekai that stands out amongst the pack of the generic and trashiness of copy-paste works. This goes the same for the choice of the studio, which is a relatively new face in the AniManga industry: AtelierPontdarc. For reference, the manga has a very distinctive art style, that to replicate it onto the small screen proving a challenging feat at best, and the decision to go for new-and-unproven staff would result to be both a blessing and a curse for the entire anime as a whole. If you were to criticize the animation, just even a teensy bit, yes, I agree it looks like a PowerPoint slide show, but that is where the charm of the show lies: its simplicity, backed by such strong visuals that at the very least, does the manga some justice. But if you are to criticize the anime overall, you need not look further than the production staff team. Such as is with director Shigeki Kawai, this is his first full-on directorial role after being episode directors for A-1 Pictures produced shows like SAO, Darling in the FranXX and Blend S to name a few, and bear in mind that it was a full drought of nearly 4 years since his episode directorial on SAO: Alicization. Kenta Ihara being scriptwriter-cum-series composer at least sets the bar of being relevant in the times of how the anime should be paced, and for that, it's a decent job. Kazuhiro Oota is the character design-cum-animation director veteran, so anything he touches turns into gold (as is the case for the recents like Re:Zero Season 2 and Dororo). Last but not least, I need not mention the brillance of Kenichiro Suehiro being the music composer, he has been absolutely killing shows with some of the best OST music in recent times a.k.a. Golden Kamuy, to the most recent Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute!. But, paying close to director Shigeki Kawai, that is where the anime drops its balls hard, citing COVID complications to hide the fact that Isekai Ojisan was to an extreme extent, incomplete even before the episodes were given the green light to be aired on TV. Whether the episodes were outsourced or done in-house, this is definitely a blueprint and a warning advice to producers working around the clock to rush and get deadlines done within the eleventh hour. It definitely set the tone for us the audience, that to experience a unique show like this and follow it weekly, would not take a mere seasonal 3 months, but drag it out for thrice the time allowed: 9 months. That to me, is just lackadaisical commitment to think that anime production, at least to the production staff, is mere child's play, or is it that they REALLY faced unforeseeable circumstances, which likely wasn't the case. The music is rather decent, I would say, with Mayu Maeshima and Yuka Iguchi's OP and ED put together. But where it shines is how the credits are portrayed: the OP is a call-back to the Sega Saturn console, from the start-up boot sequence to the games included and shown, which speaks volumes about the Saturn's large and well-thought-out game library in Japan (as opposed to the North America and Europe counterparts), while the ED is just a mesmerizing scene of a night view with stars in the sky. Most people, millennials and older, would definitely recognize that the SFX used were all sound chimes used in the Saturn's home splash screen, which adds to the sense of Uncle's nostalgia of the time that SEGA regained a foothold on the console wars against Nintendo, NEC (with its PC Engine / Turbografx-16) and Sony at the time where the Mega Drive was D.O.A, and the Saturn reigned supreme until the PlayStation rolled around. Nevertheless, this is a cool touch that makes Isekai Ojisan really stand out for its jab at the Isekai and fantasy themes quite well. But still, at the end of it all, I still have to chime this fact home: if a show's basically unfinished, even to the point where episodes are literally chased to completion days before their actual TV airing, might as well delay the shows to give more breathing space towards the people who are working their damnedest to bring them to the small screen. But that's the bread-and-butter of the AniManga industry, and it's sad that there's no changing this exploitative industry of its shortcomings. With that said, despite its limited release on Netflix, please give Isekai Ojisan a try. It's great Isekai/fantasy fuel for comedic entertainment, only beheaded at the expense of absurdly poor mismanagement.