Just a reminder: The future of LiA is very much in doubt, and it’s up to you to decide what happens next.  Thank you for all your support!

That was kind of an odd episode.  There didn’t seem to be any narrative structure to it – it was just a bunch of semi-connected scenes stitched together.  In a way it was almost like an episode of Monty Python or Mr. Show With Bob and David – more sketch comedy than anime.  The fact that it worked as well as it did is testament to the fact that the sketches themselves were pretty good, I suppose.

I’ve noticed a trend with Isekai Ojisan, which is that I tend to enjoy the B-part of episodes more than the A-part.  That’s a good sign, generally speaking, because it means that the material has a way of drawing you in rather than pushing you away.  Maybe after a week it just takes those few minutes for me to get sucked into this weird hybrid of slice of life and isekai, but at heart that is a fairly interesting mix.  In effect, Uncle From Another World is something of a reverse isekai – at this point Uncle is more a creature of the other world than this one, and it’s really the story of what being yanked into this world is like for such a creature.

Really, all this was  – and it increasingly seems to be the main body of the series – was Ojisan, Takafumi, and Fujimiya watching scenes from his other life.  That usually means Elf and Mabel and we do get there, but it starts with the continuation of the freakshow bit teased last week.  Being sold for less than a scouring pad (by an order of magnitude) was such a traumatic event that Uncle used a memory erasure spell on himself for it.  And on Takafumi after he watched it.  Apparently when one of those erased memories is triggered the body gets a nosebleed as an early warning system (not the usual anime usage of that device).

At this point Fujimiya gives up her karaage to see what happened next after the freezing incident, and that turns out to be Uncle waking up in bed with Elf and Mabel huddling with him for warmth.  This is more of the same really – Elf being tsundere and Mabel striving to be a bum – but it’s such a pleasure to hear Aoi Yuuki and Tomatsu Haruka riffing off each other that I don’t mind.  These two are among the great comic addresses of anime (and no slouches at drama either), and one gets the impression that they’re having a lot of fun with this.

Who knew Wolfgunblood was a character in Alien Soldier (a Sega game, natch)?  Certainly not I, before today.  I can’t help but wonder if Elf or Mabel are ever going to make their way to Japan, because they don’t seem like the type to give up (hell, Elf even sneaks off to buy back the ring Ojisan gave her).  And it’s frankly hard to see Ojisan hooking up with any of the locals.  I guess it’s an open question whether this series is interested in developing the plot and characters in any sort of linear sense, or content with just being what it is now.  But if it does, it’s hard to see how it progresses without reuniting Uncle with those characters.