Reviews

Jul 20, 2022
Preliminary (3/13 eps)
Reddit Ojisan.

Konosuba is an ensemble-based sitcom set in an isekai universe. Its humor is built around a “gang” of amusing jerks suffering farcical, ridiculous, and improbable disasters that they get into by way of their own character flaws. It also doubles as an excellent straightforward isekai, providing a compelling wish-fulfillment story about leading a fun, non-mundane life with a group of trusted friends, plus interesting world-building, plus hype high-stakes boss battles.

Isekai Ojisan is a fish-out-of-water cringe comedy set in 2017 Japan. Its humor is built around an otaku stereotype that woke up from a 17-year-long coma reacting to the modern otaku culture, plus pointing out that isekai tropes exist (the so-called referential “jokes” which are not actually jokes, just references), plus SEGA shilling. It’s also not an isekai in any shape or form.

As you can see, these two series have nothing in common. Yet seemingly every weeb on the internet calls this show the next Konosuba, which is what led me to check it out in the first place. Not because I actually believed that label for a single microsecond, but because shows like that have only a 99.99% chance of being trash, and checking them out on the 0.01% chance they happen to be decent is worth it considering how little effort it takes to check out a new seasonal. Well, I checked it out and am happy to report that it’s a joyless, mind-numbing, irredeemable trash.

A pedantic reader might object that the series does share something in common with Konosuba - reaction faces. You know who else has reaction faces? JoJo. You’ve heard it here first - Isekai Ojisan is the next JoJo. You can go post this revelation on Reddit, over 9000 upvotes guaranteed.
(See what I did there? A contrived reference to a dead horse meme, this is another type of “joke” Isekai Ojisan does, I’m so meta, lol.)

You know what types of jokes this series doesn’t do? The types that are funny and don’t make people consider taking anti-depressants. The show is about as funny as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a sense that - no, no it isn’t. I wish I could say I didn’t laugh once when watching it, but technically that wouldn’t be true. I laughed all the time at how painfully unfunny it was. I was rolling on the floor over how horribly it botches the delivery of every joke, and the way it fails to understand the concept of comedic timing had me in stitches. I almost busted my gut laughing over the fact that some people (?) actually find this trash funny - until I realized something and got scared instead, more on that later. Before that, I ought to explain what exactly makes this series fail as a comedy, so I’ll dissect an early joke as an example:

The premise of the joke is that some isekai female companion of the uncle was tsundere towards him, but he thought she’s just a bitch because the concept of tsundere wasn’t invented until 2004 so he had no way of knowing it (who said “Asuka from Evangelion?” Downvoted).
Here’s how I, a person allowed to vote and sign documents, would do this joke:
The uncle tells his nephew that the girl was a bitch -> cut to the close-up of that girl blushing and going all “don’t misunderstand me!” and stuff -> cut to the nephew reacting with “Uncle…” There, easy-peasy.
What the show actually does:
The uncle *himself* narrates all the “don’t misunderstand me!” phrases that the girl said to him -> a ten-second pause because the show works on the assumption the audience is slow -> the nephew imagines the girl saying the same exact phrases (repetition for the slow audience), the girl’s face isn’t even in the frame, her voice is emotionless monotone -> the nephew doesn’t react, goes into expository narration that tsundere wasn’t invented until 2004, making a point to elaborate that it’s 4 years after his uncle went into a coma, a fact that already had been made clear just a few minutes ago (again, spoonfeeding and repetition for the slow audience). This is the opposite of how you comedy, and the opposite of good writing/direction in general.
And the cherry on top of this pineapple pizza - as hinted by the length of the previous paragraph, this joke drags on for exactly 52 seconds. Fifty fucking two seconds. The sound-in-mind version I suggested above would probably take 7 seconds tops. You know what this stretched-out infodump masquerading as a joke reminds me of? Strange Planet, a webcomic about aliens overexplaining everyday human life in absurdly lengthy and clinical ways. Except this one is doing it unironically. Isekai Ojisan isn’t for a slow audience, it’s for literal aliens that have no concept of the human comedy. Those who laugh at it are alien bodysnatchers, if you see any, report them to the FBI asap. I’m scared that they seem to have infiltrated everywhere already.

Anyway, 2/10 for “I watched this shlock so you don’t have to.”

P.S. The official first tsundere in history is Lum from Urusei Yatsura (1978), an incredibly famous and iconic character. Maybe the author is a zoomer and has no concept of life before 2000 existing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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