I guess it’s sort of fitting that it’s taken me this long to find time to finish Isekai Ojisan, because it certainly took it a long time to give me the chance.  After multiple production delays (one can make up their own mind about whether the reason given was the real one), it finally did finish a while back.  It was always a tweener series with me anyway – liked it but never loved it – which meant it always faced an uphill battle to carve out a chunk of my time when it wasn’t releasing on a regular schedule.

Still, as I said, I do like it.  And as cheap as it is, Isekai Ojisan does manage to do some clever things visually.  The animation is so minimal as to look period authentic to the games Ojisan loves (they should have gone for that in the first place), but the character designs and faces are top-notch.  This is one of the all-time great shows for reaction shots (most of them to the latest ridonkulous thing  Ojisan says or does), and while they were on perma-loop somehow I never grew tired of them.

These last two episodes find the cosmos finally calling all three of Ojisan’s stalkers together, which Takafumi and Fujimiya are over the moon to watch.  It starts with Mabel, who’s the “singing monster” Ojisan has taken the bounty to slay.  And slay her does, after a fashion – by praising her singing.  And indeed, Aoi Yuuki is quote a good singer (not as good as Tomatsu Haruka, but we don’t get the chance to hear her pipes in action).  Eventually Uncle convinces Mabel to croon some tunes from his home world, which turn out (unsurprisingly) to be game BGM tracks.  He promptly falls asleep on her lap, and that’s how Elf finds them.

Indeed, that’s quite a thing.  But she doesn’t kill the two of them immediately, and eventually she and Ojisan have it out – as usual he has no idea why she’s so upset – and the subject turns to names.  And we finally learn his – Shibazaki Yousuke.  We learn hers, too – or rather, we would if we had about a month to memorize it.  As it is “Sui” will have to do, though she makes him promise only to use it when it’s just the two of them (and she’ll do the same).  As tsunderes go, they don’t get much more pure than Sui.

Alicia finally completes the picture when she and her boys show up to take out the same singing monster Yousuke did.  That ship has obviously sailed, but Ojisan has released a much bigger threat in destroying the local shrine (and it turns out, he’s destroyed all three sacred shrines of this world without even realizing it).  When he falls under the control of the lump of pure magic he’s released, the three stalkers have to ally for the sake of survival – but as usual, Yousuke is thinking several moves ahead on the board.

As for the final episode, it’s mostly given over to the “great otherworld battle” Takafumi swears every red-blooded Japanese man loves.  And it’s fine for what it is, though truth be told it’s not great battles I tune into this series for.  Fortunately it was peppered with face-pulls, and some fine comic moments  –  especially from Mabel, who was kinda the star of these last couple of episodes.  She’s such a wreck that her whole persona gets more inherently comic the more stressful the situation.  As for Sui, she comes off as genuinely heroic here.  She puts on a brave face for the kiddies, and comes up with the plan to take down the blaze dragon Yousuke has released.

His ulterior motive is a good one.  If he can crank this thing up to where it’s powerful enough, he can pop through the hole it rips in the space-time continuum when he slays it and get back to Japan.  Elf doesn’t want that of course, and we don’t yet know if that’s how it actually happened.  But that’s a matter for a theoretical second season I suppose.  Despite its production fiasco the anime seems to have been quite popular, which is very understandable given all its insider humor and hall of fame waifu collection.  But the anime used about two-thirds of the manga, so despite heavily teasing a sequel in the epilogue (that lady at the crosswalk sure looked familiar), it’s going to be a good while before AtelierPontdarc could actually deliver one.

More than almost any series I can remember, Isekai Ojisan really traded on the brilliance of the cast.  They’re all really good, but it’s Tomatsu and Aoi who really soar above the crowd –  they’re among my favorites to begin with, but it’s so obvious they’re having a blast here.  And in the end that’s what this series was, really, a lot of fun.  Nothing brilliant or deep, but very clever.  I’m the right group to get some of the humor but not all of it, but I got enough to really enjoy the ride.  If there’s a second season down the line, you certainly won’t get any complaints from me.