Isekai Ojisan
Uncle from Another World

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Uncle From Another World is an interesting series, It’s a story of a guy who was a fish out of water in the Isekai world, now that is he back after 17 years is a fish out of water again. Having to navigate a modern day society and its technological advances with only his nephew by his side. What does he do to provide for himself you ask? Becomes a YouTuber of course to spread his love for Sega!


UFAW is a light hearted comedy similar in vein to Konosuba. Both MCs go on whacky adventures and have zany encounters with other people. The differences ... between the two really show themselves right away as UFAW has a fairly melancholic undertone to it. The MC (Uncle) was treated rather harshly by most of the denizens of Granbahamal (the Isekai world), that sometimes reflects upon the few people who try to forge bonds with him. Partly because of his denseness and the way he had been treated, he has developed a fear of persecution and a few insecurities. This will sometimes cause him to break potential friendships and possible romances without realizing it.


The Isekai story is told in an interesting way, we see his adventures in the past tense. He has magic that allows him to show his memories in a “YouTube” style interface with pausing, playing, and fast forwarding/skipping ahead. Overtime his Isekai adventures become a watch party where the nephew and friend watch/react to the antics Uncle gets into. This also allows for commentary that leads to revelations for things Uncle never thought of, specifically for his magic powers and situations involving people he meets there.


The art in this series starts off rather rough looking, it looked like sketches in a notebook for someone practicing drawing. I can say that the art has improved a lot as the series has progressed. Characters started looking more refined and the author looked as if they were perfecting their style as the story went on. In the later arcs the author even started incorporating some nicely done action heavy chapters. One of the things the author excels at is the wide range of expression he gives the characters. One scene may have a character with an adorable expression and the next scene a disturbingly funny one. However the author still has trouble when it comes to drawing backgrounds such as scenery and buildings. The authors strengths definitely lie with the character art itself.


I mentioned a melancholic undertone when talking about the comedy earlier. The story tends to be unclear when it pertains things that happened to him especially because of his memory wiping magic. Every so often it feels the story projects a sense of tragedy, usually when Uncle thinks back on some aspects of his life in Granbahamal and the people he left behind there. I guess we’ll have to see how the story unfolds to know for sure.


There seems to be a decent amount of depth and complexity to the story as well. Things Uncle has mentioned/shown as early as the beginning of the story have had some narrative payoffs 50 chapters in. Hints towards future events, slow gradual build up of the magic systems and how it works, things about Elven culture, stories about other transmigrators who came before Uncle, and even stuff about Uncle/Takafumis family life before Uncle was isekai’d. Paying attention to the story and what Uncle says is pretty interesting, one off statements from him about Granbahamal or his life in general may have future relevance. For a somewhat cringey comedy Isekai there seems to be a good amount thought put into the story so far.



UFAW does have some cons though.

Pacing: The pace of the story is a pretty slow one, I’m not sure if that’s because it’s a monthly series or if that’s just the way the story is structured. This is the type of series that feels better read in bulk after chapters have piled up.


Comedy: Some aspects of the humour can either be frustrating or repetitive. The jokes of Uncle being dense and being completely oblivious to feelings some characters develop for him. He wasn’t big into anime/manga (although did partake in some) and was mostly a gamer. He doesn’t know character archetypes like a Tsundere, with the joke being that he was isekai’d before Tsunderes were more mainstream/popular. Also the more Sega specific trivia jokes tend to go over my head. The repetitive humour has been toned down in the recent arcs but it’s still there. Comedy as they say is highly subjective so this may not be a bother to some.


Earth Stories: The Isekai portion of UFAW takes up a large part of the story. It would be interesting to see more of Uncle trying to navigate his way through modern day Japan. The overall mystery to the story is how Uncle came back to Earth so it’s understandable, but would still be nice to see more Earth related stories.


All in all I think this is a great Isekai series. It has an interesting story, fun characters, some great jokes, and a good ongoing mystery involving how he came back and what happened to the friends he left behind. UFAW may not be an objective masterpiece but it does a lot that make it very fun. I’m very interested to see how the series progresses in the future.

Isekai Ojisan is a classic gimmick story where the author thought of a good concept, ran with it and got some positive feedback, and decides to do the exact same thing forever. The main idea is that the MC got Isekaied into a typical harem fantasy, but whenever some girl show him affection, he couldn't catch them and just continued to do his own thing.

This is basically the whole manga. There is no development in character, story, or romance (except for a couple who has nothing to do with the isekai plot). The story is just the same said concept repeating, and the characters are ... just like your usual trash isekai characters.

The only gimmick story that I've seen work well is One Punch Man. However, that series was successful because it introduced a relatable cast with parallel themes to the protagonist and decreased the frequency of the gimmick. Isekai Ojisan, unfortunately, fails to achieve this, making it difficult to enjoy beyond the first few chapters.

6/10

You know how in some anime, they will have a recap episode? Where they just show bits of scenes that happened from the previous episode?

Now imagine you have a series, where a few characters watch a recap of what has happened previously. Except there is no "previous episode" where the scenes are taken from, so these bits of scenes are all we get. And the scenes are out of order. And this is the entirety of the series, just watching recap episodes.

This is Isekai Ojisan. This is all it is. The three characters, Ojisan, Takafumi, and Takafumi's childhood friend sit around a table watching these ... "recap episodes". The story never goes anywhere, because the story is literally just the Ojisan talking about things that previously happened, so it has nowhere to go.

The series is also interspersed with chapters that takes place entirely in the real world, but these aren't any better, because they typically just feel like filler and have no impact on the plot. Well that is sort of misleading, because that implies there is a plot in the first place, but you get the idea.

The humour is OK in the beginning, but it gets tiring hearing the same jokes over and over again. I like Sega as much as the next guy, but it already feels like the references have been run into the ground after a few volumes.

Everything that is interesting, all the best characters, only exist in these flashbacks. The story that you would want to actually read, happened before the story of the manga takes place. Honestly, the series would be 100 times better, if there was no real world stuff, and it started like any other isekai story, where the protagonist (Ojisan) gets transported to an isekai, and goes on adventures. And I'm saying that as a guy who has long been tired of trash isekai stories. The real world aspect is just so boring and serves no purpose.

It might sound like an interesting twist on the genre, but you actually have to do more with it. You can't just stop right there and keep doing the same thing over and over. No joke, you could read the first volume, then the most recent volume (7) and there would be almost no difference.

It's especially frustrating, because I think there is a decent manga somewhere in there, and it would be so easy to make more interesting. As an example, have the first couple volumes the same as they are, establish the characters and setting, have the Ojisan show some stuff that happened in the isekai. Cool. But then, how about some characters from the Isekai come into the real world, maybe chasing after Ojisan? Maybe similar to Hataraku Maou-sama? You good have some bad guys, or monsters or something come into the real world too, to create some antagonist or tension that the plot could use. You could instead maybe have a situation like that series GATE, where maybe the two worlds are connected or merge. You could even just have the girls come over and turn it into a romcom, and it would still be infinitely more interesting.
Or on the reverse, you could have Ojisan go back into the isekai, but maybe this time Takafumi goes with him. My point is, there are so many ways the manga could've been continued to create a much more enjoyable series.

In summary, this is a series that started with an interesting premise, but ultimately fails to do anything with it, leaving us with a boring story that goes nowhere, chapter after chapter. I do not recommend this series.
The elf girl is cute though.