Jul 9, 2022
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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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