Finally, after nearly a year, AtelierPontdarc complete season one of the brilliant Uncle from Another World. This past year has evidently been a major struggle for the team as covid forced them to delay episodes for weeks and weeks until weeks turned into months, thus what started out as a July 2022 summer seasonal anime ended up being finished in early spring March 2023, nearly a year on from when the first episode dropped.

It was a saddening situation all round and my heart goes out to them. If Netflix – who owned streaming rights to Uncle from Another World (Otherwise known as Isekai Ojisan in Japan) – ever get around to releasing season 1 on DVD, I will be sure to splurge out on both the normal and Blu-ray editions. The team deserve all the revenue for this low-key hidden gem they dropped last year.

Isekai Ojisan – adapted from Hotondo Shindeiru’s humble web comic - stars 34-year-old Uncle returning from his 17-years of exhausting Isekai-adventure in another world, hence the title. Hotondo-sensei made the ingenious decision to open the initial chapter from Uncle’s nephew’s perspective and thankfully, this was faithfully adapted in the anime. The episode opens up with Takafumi – Uncle's nephew who was only a baby when he left Japan 17 years ago – walking over a pedestrian crossing as truck-kun whizzled on by, seemingly inches close from ploughing him into another world. ^^
If you have even passing knowledge of Isekai anime, you wouldn’t have missed the joke here. The opening instantly hooks you, letting you know you’re in for a wild parodied ride of the Isekai genre.

Takafumi then narrates, “2017, Fall.” Walking up a flight of stairs to Uncle’s hospital room. “My Uncle was struck by a truck when he was 17. After 17 years of being in a coma, he awoke.” If that’s not an intriguing premise by itself, I then don’t know what is. In an ordinary Isekai, this would be about Uncle’s adventure in the fantasy world and maybe everything going wrong for him like was the case in Konosuba; Or In an reverse Isekai you would have the fantasy habitants coming to our world like in The Devil is a Part-Timer, for instance.
Rarely do you see a protagonist returning to his own world after completing his journey, regaling his tales of how he basically fucked up his Isekai life in increasingly ridiculous and often hilarious ways. This is the anti-Isekai even dethroning the previous seated king of anti-Isekai in Konosuba in this young lady's humble opinion.

I particularly adore Takafumi’s believable reaction to reuniting with Uncle. If you had a comatose relative who awoke from one day out of the blue and started speaking in an unknown language you’ve never heard of, you’d think they’re crazy, too. Heck, episode one perfectly misleads you into thinking Uncle’s lost his mind telling the scene from Takafumi’s POV as he awkwardly watches his Uncle attempt a spell.
Then the punchline is delivered as Uncle adjusts to being back in Japan and floats a vase up, painting Takafumi’s stark realization in such wonderful comiedic detail, flashing screens of RPG games behind him as he slowly rips up the separation papers he brought to cut Uncle off. My words can't do the scene justice enough so here’s a peek preview. link

We even get a brief insight into Uncle’s wonderful personality (see: link above) when he excitably asks his nephew if his beloved “Sega wa” has won the console wars, getting absolutely crushed when Takafumi gives him the bad news that it pulled out the console business a long time ago and promptly erased the answer from his mind for the second time in the episode, jogging it down for reference. ^^ This prompts Takafumi to finally asks what Icuras cuora is and he promptly explained its purpose of erasing his mind whenever things get too dire for him.

This serves to emphasis Uncle’s adorable love of Sega, ensuring he has a personality unlike most generic, blank-state Isekai protagonists and foreshadows the tribulations he endured in the other world, made clear when Takafumi glanced into his notebook and immediately broke down in tears, swiftly asking for his mind to be erased.

Knowing he could use his Uncle’s powers to make a bit of money off YouTube, Takafumi takes him home once he’s discharged from the hospital, thus begins their new life together.
To say any more would be to rob you of the brilliance of Isekai Ojisan’s comedic genius, so let’s talk a bit about the characters, starting with the main man Uncle.

Uncle – Commonly referred to as oji-san by Takafumi and his childhood friend, Uncle is unconventionally “ugly,” poking fun at the conventionally pretty boy protagonists of the Isekai genre. He still resembled a 30-year-old young man rather than the teenager that he was when he arrived in the other world, having an exact identical body formed into existence upon his arrival. This tragically and hilariously lands him in all kinds of hot water with the conventionally good-looking habitants of the Isekai world.

They mistook him for some kind of mythical creature referred to as an orc and promptly beat him in slapstick fashion. Unable to speak the language Uncle begged for a way to communicate with his assailants, thus his first skill of translation is born. Unfortunately, that only worsened matters as they just thought he was a rare kind of orc that could speak their language and promptly sold him off for chump change, setting the tone for the rest of Uncle’s twisted Isekai life. He even accidentally collects a diverse harem of girls hilariously giving off the wrong signals for ultra-comedic effect.

Seeing Uncle try and adapt to the times is both incredibly, charmingly infectious and hilarious, being so out of touch he didn't account for a delivery fee when he adorably ordered an old-fashioned spin phone and would've ended up paying the rough equvalent of about twelve dollars if he couldn't fly and retrieve it himself. He doesn't realize he shouldn't snap back at his YouTube viewers with defensive replies when they assumed his magic is "CGI". He even has his pride as a YouTuber shattered when his viewer numbers shot up only after transforming into his beautiful elf friend of his Isekai harem. He was honestly a joy to watch.
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Takafumi and Fujimiya__ – They’re essentially the audience surrogates. Their reactions to the absurdity Uncle brings is believable in the best ways possible. Fujimiya, a childhood friend of Takafumi that reconnected with him in the early episodes, initially couldn’t stand Uncle at first and thought he was just a jobless bum Takafumi needed to cut off. Hotondo-sensei uses her to hilariously flip the old childhood friend troupe. She saw their early friendship as something pure and sweet when the reality couldn’t be further from the sort as Uncle revealed using his magic.

Elf – Otherwise known as tsundere-san literally by Takafumi joins Uncle’s unconventional and unofficial harem first. Elf might be my favourite character, which says something because I don’t normally like tsunderes. A common mistake anime typically makes with tsundere characters is that it exaggerates the tsuntsun part of the tsundere’s personality and not enough on the deredere part resulting in them being really obnoxious. The bitch from the aforementioned The Devil is a Part-Timer is a perfect example of this. That isn’t the case with Elf as she has plenty of adorable deredere moments that are just so wholesome and precious. Elf's voice actress Tomatsu Haruka performed exquisitely, lending Elf an adorableness that was impossible not to love.

Uncle gave her a ring to pawn off, not realizing he was essentially proposing to her and even after the misunderstanding is cleared up and she sells the ring, she ends up buying it back after Uncle made the same mistake of giving another ring to another girl because she felt threatened. Her unwillingness to be true with her own feelings is always depicted so adorably.
The other two girls Uncle encounters and accidentally woos in the most “Uncle way” possible are also exceptionally written with their own distinct personalities (I particularly love Mabel’s hilarious ego and laziness) but Elf stands above them in my opinion. It really almost felt like she and Uncle had something special despite Uncle’s subpar looks. She fell for his personality, who he is as a person and I think that’s wonderful.
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Animation and artstyle__ – I absolutely love that the team took inspiration from Mob’s Psycho 100’s brilliant cartoonish artstyle, painting the episodes with a dim sheen that fits the comedic dark nature of the series. Less detail in the art also paved the way for some truly expressive animations, really bringing the characters to life. It’s all around superb.

Score - Perfectly encapsulates the comedic tone of the scenes and even has it triumphant and heartstring moments, too.

In conclusion: Isekai Ojisan is a beautifully ridiculous series cleverly dunking on the Isekai genre in ways that never fail to leave a smile on my face. I can't recommend enough it. I really hope it gets awarded a second season.

Final score - 100/100