The Eminence in Shadow – 09 – Doing What They Must

It doesn’t take long for Sherry to tune the control unit, and she opens a hidden passage in a bookshelf to use the secret tunnels to get to where the artifact is so she can shut it down. She’s doing all of this for her father Ruslan, who took her in when her mother was brutally murdered.

She thanks Cid for all his help, and they go their separate ways. Once she reaches the balcony of the auditorium she finds out how bad things have gotten: the invaders are now simply picking off students for sport from above. Sherry wastes no time deactivating the anti-magic field, and when she does, Rose is ready.

Within seconds of getting her magic back, she slices the nearest invader to ribbons with a flourish of her drill-like ojou ringlets, and encourages everyone else to rise up and attack their captors; after all, they outnumber them. She tries to reach their armored boss man, whom even she isn’t sure she can defeat, but is soon surrounded and running low on magic.

Still, she fights on, confident others will fight if she dies, and eager to live up to the love Cid felt for her that led him to die for her. Things look dire until Shadow himself crashes through the ceiling and dispatches everyone around her. He’s not alone: his army of Shadows are with him, and mop up the invaders.

But the boss slips away, then hikes up the pressure of the oil lamps school-wide, causing an massive inferno. While I don’t hear a single cough from the ensuing smoke and flames, nor does anyone seem to be getting burnt by said flames … eh, whatever, maybe they’re special isekai flames.

The invader boss proceeds to start burning everything in Ruslan’s office, but Cid is there waiting for him, and knows who the boss is: Ruslan himself. Once he’d reached the absolute highest summit of swordsmanship, he became ill, and sought out a radical cure.

That’s how he ended up meeting Sherry’s mother. When she warned against using the artifact, Ruslan murdered her in a elaborate, grisly way, and while Sherry was present for that, it’s been established that she’s not very observant, and so never knew her adoptive father killed her mother.

Ruslan never gets into why he took the academy hostage, or why he set the academy on fire, but never mind, now that Cid’s there he’s not going to accomplish anything else. There’s a fun little fakeout when Cid lets Ruslan slash him right out the office window to his apparent death, only to reappear Batman-style in his Shadow form.

Ruslan fuses with the artifact in order to augment his power—as one does—but as you’d suspect, fighting him is still child’s play to Mr. Atomic, who doesn’t really have to break a sweat parrying his opponents’ lightning-fast fusillade of attacks.

When Cid has had enough, he ends Ruslan’s life in the exact same grisly way he ended Sherry’s mom’s … and just like that traumatic event, Sherry arrives just in time to witness a parent’s demise. Shadow departs as she screams out in anguish, not having the heart to tell her who Ruslan is and why he deserved this end. Knowing how much her dad meant to her, she most likely wouldn’t have believed him anyway.

While Ruslan was as two-dimensionally eeeevil as villains come (why else hire Oostsuka Houchuu to voice him?), he was never anything but a loving, supportive father to Sherry, and I was devastated watching her experience a repeat of her mother’s death. No one should have to face that. And now she’s an orphan again.

At the same time, I don’t blame Cid, because he did what he had to do. Even though Ruslan promised him that he arranged things so the real Shadow Garden would be framed for this entire terrorist attack, he shrugs that off. He never claimed he and his garden were walking the path of righteousness, but nor do they walk the path of evil.

Instead, they walk their own path. This comes as news to Alpha, who thought they were being righteous, but accepts Cid’s interpretation without hesitation, as does the rest of the organization. If Shadow is now the number one most hated and wanted fugitive in the kingdom, so be it—they’ll continue to do what they must.

As for poor Sherry, she and Cid share a muted farewell scene where she regrets not getting to know him better before heading abroad to a prestigious research institute. Before they part, perhaps forever, Cid asks her what she thinks she needs to do. A kaleidoscope of emotions fall over Sherry’s face as she’s momentarily unable to hide her emotions with a sad smile.

But she won’t tell Cid; it’s a secret. Does she, unlike so many others, know Cid and Shadow are the same person, and thus Cid is the one who killed her father? If that’s the case, is she going abroad in order to plan her revenge against him, or simply to start the next phase of her life as a researcher? It’s pretty ambiguous, and I like that.

The Eminence in Shadow – 08 – A Terribly Flawed Scenario

This week starts off by replaying the start of the invasion of the academy by Fake Shadow Garden (Shamdow Garden?) this time from Cid’s perspective, and man is he excited to be involved in a terrorist attack! The moment he realizes Rose is in serious trouble, he launches himself into the path of the baddie’s blade, as that’s the role of the background character. In doing so, he (posthumously) wins the heart of Rose, who remembers how hard he fought against her in the tournament and now sees his selfless sacrifice as proof that he loved her.

Rose and all the other students are rounded up in the auditorium, but Cid is left behind, as he’s just a corpse. Or IS he? After punching himself several times in the chest, Cid starts his heart back up, having successfully pulled off the risky “Ten-Minute Death—Heartbreak.” Considering what Cid did to himself to reach this other world, it’s no surprise he’d put his life on the line to best inhabit the role of Eminence in Shadow. Meanwhile, Sherry is researching away when one of the bad guys’ top lieutenants drops in.

She’s saved by one of the school’s elite swordsman who is still able to fight despite the lack of magic, but he falls to the bad guy’s blade soon enough. He only manages to buy a bit of time for Sherry to shuffle away in her flip-flops. After sniping several dozen of the enemy and plummeting dramatically off the school roof, Cid senses Sherry is being pursued and not doing a great job of being stealthy, so he serves as her protective shadow, killing anyone who gets close to her.

Sherry’s refrain of “it’s just my imagination” is one of many comedic highlights, and when she finally trips and nearly falls down the stairs, Cid is there to catch both her and the artifact and recommend she stop thinking out loud, stop trying to decipher the artifact while moving, and ditches slippers. He escorts her to her father’s office, where she finds unpublished research of the artifact she’s been charged with, which is the control unit for the Eye of Avarice that’s created the anti-magic field.

But the Eye isn’t just neutralizing magic, it’s absorbing it. Given enough magic, it will eventually reach its full capacity and release in one huge explosion that will level the school. So it’s a magical bomb threat. Sherry is game to fine-tune her artifact so they can shut the Eye down, but to do that Cid has to head back to where Sherry was to fetch the tuning instruments. After righteously toying and fucking with the lieutenant guy, he encounters Nu, who finds her ex-betrothed dying in the room where Sherry was working.

Nu reports that the real Shadow Garden have arrived on the scene and are ready to go on Cid’s orders. The only downside to that is that Gamma, the clumsiest of the Seven Shadows, is in command. Cid then fills Nu in on what he and Sherry plan to do, and he describes the plan so nonchalantly it basically reinforces her belief that Cid is a mastermind of unsurpassed brilliance, when he’s actually just been wining it all along and doesn’t even believe any of this is real.

But of course, it is, and the lives of  the whole school are in his, Sherry’s, and Shadow Garden’s hands. Watching him cut through the bad guys and have tons of fun doing it was immensely entertaining; watching him and his allies save the day should prove the same or moreso.

The Eminence in Shadow – 07 – Making Friends

Ever since she received the gift of chocolates, Sherry’s head has been in the clouds. She’s moved to action when she tastes one of them, and finds it irresistibly sweet. Nu shows off her disguising abilities by posing as an academy student to give Cid her report; they couldn’t get anything out of the brainwashed “Child of Diabolos”.

A “Named” Child (one who has kept their personality through the cult conditioning) has been sent to the capital, surely to continue sullying the name of Shadow Garden. There’s a sad little moment when Nu briefly daydreams about a normal high school life of fun and dancing, only for it to turn into a nightmare.

Cid has a nightmare of his own on his hands: he’s been entered into a fencing tournament against his wishes. He makes lemonade from lemons when his opponent is Rose Oriana, Princess of the kingdom of art and culture and also the academy’s top swordsman.

Because Cid is Cid—pathelogically devoted to playing the nobody—he uses this opportunity to be defeated in the most embarrassing “bloody” ways imaginable, only to get back up and demand the fight continue. Rose slashes him and he goes flying every time, but she can sense his fire…and likes it.

When she finally admits she was underestimating him and takes the kid gloves off, the ref jumps between them before she can lay down a strike. Rose is technically the winner, but she feel like a loser because Cid never gave up in the battle of spirit.

Despite trying to come off as as pathetic a loser as possible (and has practiced 48 different ways to do so), Cid inadvertently gains the ungrudging respect of Rose, an unquestionably powerful “main character”—not exactly what Cid was going for!

In that same vein, Cid didn’t put any thought into whom he gave chocolates to, but by giving them to Sherry Barnett, he picked one of the rare girls at the academy who admired what she saw of him out there in the arena. Recognizing him through his (fake) bandages, she seeks him out and invites him to coffee.

There, Sherry presents him with a bag of homemade cookies as a thank you—even though Cid doesn’t remember giving her chocolates. When he casually agrees to her proposal that they “start out” as friends, and then learns whose daughter she is, Cid is immediately apprehensive; should a background character such as he really consort with such heavy hitters?

He has no idea how happy he made Sherry with his acceptance of her offer. But when she still can’t concentrate on the artifact research, she pays a visit to Alexia, and over an extremely sweet and milky cup of coffee (contrasted with Lexi’s black) asks if she and Cid are still dating. When she says they’re not, and never really were, Sherry can’t contain her elation, which gives Alexia quite a bit of pause!

After befriending Sherry, Cid uses his “injuries” to justify staying away from classes for five days. Upon his return, Rose (the student council president) and her apparent Veep pay his class a visit to talk about elections. But just then, Diabolos commences an invasion plan by cloaking the entire academy with a magic-dampening field.

Among his classmates, only Cid seems to notice the change, and even senses when danger is approaching before it does. When Rose draws her sword to challenge the invaders, she’s unaware of the field, and almost gets seriously hurt. Instead, Cid comes between her and her charging attacker…and gets badly slashed across the chest.

As Sherry takes her coffee with a heap of sugar, I’m inclined to take Cid’s injury with a grain of salt. His performance at the tournament showed that he can an elite dark knight and a stadium full of people into thinking he’s getting seriously hurt. This seems like another opportunity to show everyone how very good he’s gotten at looking so very bad.

The Eminence in Shadow – 03 – Background Boyfriend

On their own initiative, Cid’s Shadow Garden one day decided they needed to leave him and spread out to fight against the Cult of Diablos, but he suspects they grew out of playing along with him and set themselves free.

Whatever the truth is (and it sure seems like the cult is real and they’ve gone out to fight them in his name until he’s old enough to join them) he’s not that bothered by being alone; such is the life of one who strives to become … The Eminence in Shadow.

It also sure looks like he threw himself into Truck-kun while trying to will magic into being, so there’s that!

Cid ends up attending Midgar Academy for Dark Knights like his far more famous and popular sister, but blending in will do just fine for him. He even finds himself two perfect best mates for Background Student A: Skel and Po, and fits right between them in terms of both height and unattractiveness.

When Cid loses a bet to his two friends, he must confess to the most sought-after-girl in school: Second Princess Alexia Midgar (Hanazawa Kana), who has become famous for her curt yet brutal rejections of the most elite male suitors. But where they failed, Cid succeeds … quite by accident!

Cid puts on an act to appear as loathsome and pathetic, but little did he know Alexia was waiting for a guy like him to come around, and accepts his offer. She also learns that he’s into fencing, and uses her royal clout to get him into the elite Section One class … where Cid learns that her fencing style is well-studied and practiced, but bland and utterly unexceptional.

Did I mention that like Cid, Alexia’s older sister is far more accomplished and revered? That doesn’t come up, but it’s clear from their chemistry that these two are used to toiling in the shadows. That may sound strange considering Alexia is the most popular girl at school, but compared to the greatest dark knight in the kingdom, she’s totally in a shadow.

She’s also betrothed to their fencing instructor, Zenon-sensei, whom she hates. Hanazawa Kana brings an interesting dimensionality to Alexia. She is at times incredibly cynical and even has a sadistic side, making Cid into her dog—something Cid’s all too willing to do in exchange for that sweet sweet Eminence seed money.

Cid is handsomely compensated in exchange for being a bit of unremarkable eye candy Alexia can use to try to make Zenon give up on marrying her, but two weeks pass and not much progress is made. That said, he and Alexia grow a bit closer in spite of their dispassionate relationship of convenience. Alexia prefers the company of people with flaws like him (or like the person he’s posing as).

At the same time, I wonder if she can somehow sense that there’s a lot more to him beneath the surface Cid is showing her. While on a train at sundown, she is vexed by the fact she can’t take her eyes off his fencing style, even though it’s just as ordinary as hers.

It’s apparent Alexia hates her style, and possibly herself, so when Cid challenges her by saying he likes her fencing style, and would be pissed if anyone dissed the things he likes, she draws a sword on him. When he doesn’t flinch or take back his words, she alights from the train with a final-sounding sayonara.

The next day, Cid and his pals are surrounded by knights who inform him that Alexia never came home last night, kidnapping is suspected, and the last person reported to be with her before she vanished was Cid. Fate seems to be pushing Background Character A into the foreground, and the mystery of what happened to Alexia is an enticing one to ponder.

The Eminence in Shadow – 02 – Toiling in Obscurity

Kagenou Minoru is hit by Truck-kun, then resurrects as Cid, the infant son of a noble family, while maintaining all the intelligence and awareness of his 18-year-old self. When his parents are puzzled that he doesn’t cry, Cid simply fakes it. As the second-born, he plays second fiddle to his supremely talented sister Claire, but that’s the way he likes it.

In the day he’s content to be “Background Character A”, but at night, in the shadows, he practices his magic on the bandits and baddies of this world as a vigilante. He’s partial to using magical slime to create weapons and even disguises, and is a one-boy wrecking crew; even seasoned warriors can’t last more than a minute before being eviscerated.

While inspecting the bandits’ loot Cid hears sounds coming from a wagon and assumes it’s a slave, but it’s…well, it’s basically Mitty. He experiments thoroughly and exhaustively on the amorphous blob of overloaded magic, until one day he’s finally able to purify and stabilize it, resulting in the coalescence of a beautiful blonde elf girl.

Assuming she’s a tabula rasa he decides to try out his Eminence-in-Shadow act for the first time, ad-libbing tall tales about her origin as one of the original heroes and the identity of a great foe, the Cult of Diabolos. The girl buys it all, and in exchange for having saved her life, agrees to join Cid in his quest. He names her Alpha, and Shadow Garden is born.

Three years later, to Claire’s eyes Cid hasn’t improved as a dark knight at all, but she still spars with him—and beats him—every day. There’s a neat little moment when Cid sees all of the movements that would defeat Claire, but instead he takes her strike and ends up in the drink. Claire then touches her neck, where he had placed his blade for the tiniest fraction of a moment. I wonder if any part of her wonders if her little brother is holding back?

The day she’s supposed to start attending Midgar Academy for Dark Knights, Claire is kidnapped. Cid’s mom lashes out at his dad demanding to know what the plan is, but Cid and Shadow Garden—now seven Greek letters strong—is already on it. They’ve narrowed down the hideouts where Claire was taken, and a rescue op commences with all due haste.

Claire is the captive of a Viscount Grease, but isn’t that worried about it. Indeed, she breaks her magic bonds when Grease even mentions the possibility of harming her dear little brother. Just as the bandits in her home village were no match whatsoever for Cid’s magic, the seven members of Shadow Garden make quick work of Grease’s small fry. Grease himself has to take a strength-enhancing drug in order to keep up with Alpha.

But Alpha isn’t going all out; she doesn’t want to kill Grease, she wants him to talk. When he goes to ground, she’s not concerned, because he ends up right in Cid’s clutches. Grease takes more drugs, and tries to intimidate Cid with his talk of “the depths of true darkness”, but Cid just vows to dig deeper still.

There’s actually a measure of pathos in Grease’s depiction as we see how his own daughter suffered from a curse similar to Alpha’s before Cid saved her. But at the end of the day, Grease is no more than another bandit to Cid, who ends “playtime”, powers up, and kills Grease with a flashy coup-de-grace.

Cid doesn’t let Claire know who saved her, but simply withdraws from the Viscount’s castle, enabling her to escape on her own. It only takes her a day to recover from the ordeal, and then she’s off to academy, her little brother happily waiving goodbye. Cid himself is still two years away from Midgar, but he intends to make full use of those years honing his skills and sharpening the seven-pointed sword that is Shadow Garden.

But Alpha & Co. apparently have other plans, and suddenly tell Cid that it’s time to leave him. My first guess would be that they’re going off to hone their skills independently, possibly to make themselves more “worthy” of Cid’s leadership, but we’ll have to wait until next week to test that theory. Until then, for the first time in this new world, Cid is genuinely flummoxed.

Isekai Ojisan – 07 – Power Trip

We witness along with Takafumi and Fujimiya Ojisan’s continued misinterpreting of Elf’s words and actions (ironic considering his translation ability), accusing her of being a thief for insisting on keeping the hoodie she believe was gived to her as a gift.

That said, Elf did give Ojisan something in return: her sparkly green dress you can bet cost a lot more than the ratty hoodie. Ojisan lets Fujimiya try it on, and Takafumi admits she looks good in it. The trio are trying to determing how Ojisan’s “Wild Talker” translation is triggered, but Fujimiya is called away on an errand.

Takafumi and Ojisan keep watching, and come upon the first time Ojisan met Alicia (Toyosaki Aki) and her party-mates Raiga and Edgar, who came to fight a horde of goblins and assumed Ojisan was one of them due to his looks. The group then teams up to fight the actual goblin horde.

That said, Alicia’s party doesn’t get to do much but watch as Ojisan puts on an amazing display of magic. Ojisan claims that playing Golden Axe on Genesis prepared him for this fight while the opposite is true. That said, he prevails, and as the party heads to the village for their reward, Alicia takes Ojisan aside and tells him she witnessed him raising the barrier protecting Luvaldram.

Rather than trust her to keep the secret (and she says she will), he wipes her memory and those of Edgar and Raiga, ending their friendship before it could really take off. However, Ojisan soon encounters the three again, this time assuming he’s the beast they were sent to slay due to his appearance It’s not deja vu for them since all memory of him was wiped.

When they describe the beast as a prickly hedgehog that rolls up into a ball to attack, Ojisan’s mind naturally wanders to visions of Sonic. However, the actual beast turns out to be a biologically correct hedgehog, and thus unrecognizable to Ojisan. Worse, when he uses Wild Talker to converse, he learns the giant hedgehog is a sadistic monster, and incinerates him on the spot.

Suddenly a phone rings; Fujimiya’s phone, which she left at Takafumi’s. He enlists his uncle’s aid in flying him to Fujimiya’s college where they spot her being hassled by a skeevy looking dude. Ojisan leaves the handling of the situation to his nephew, lending him his powers for an hour, just in case.

But when Takafumi gets a better look at the red-haired menace who is all over Fujimiya, he suddenly recognizes him as her cute little brother, Chiaki…who is still in the fourth damn grade. Similarly, when Chiaki realizes it’s Takafumi, his twisted, grotesque face (a quality his older sister shared at that age) suddenly becomes flush and enthusiastic.

Chiaki looking like a skeevy twenty-year old while he’s actually Fujimiya’s fourth-grade brother is an amazing joke that had me rolling, especially due to the consistency with which young Fujimiyas are depicted as more orc (or goblin)-like than everyone in the other world regarded Ojisan. As a little kid, he has also never heard of most of the stuff Ojisan talks to him about, once he joins the group.

When Fujimiya asks what Takafumi would have done if Chiaki had been an adult guy flirting with her, he shows off his temporary uncle powers and makes the two of them invisible, creates two holographic decoys, then teleports them to Fujimiya’s lecture hall several stories up.

Fujimiya is impressed by how quickly Takafumi has managed to master Ojisan’s magic, and notes that this situation reminds her of when he stood up for her when she got shoved by three boys back in grade school. Takafumi decides to tap into her memories and project them as Ojisan does so they can take a look at what happened.

Naturally, things unfolded much differently than either party remembers. Fujimiya wasn’t shoved, she was the shover, and was probably going to do more had Takafumi not arrived to “rescue” her. But even though she was the instigator, Fujimiya was happy then, just as she’s happy now to know he’s got her back.

Takafumi then meets Sawa, Fujimiya’s friend since high school, who tells him Fujimiya has gotten quite popular with the guys since “becoming cuter” in the last six months. Takafumi, still drunk on Ojisan’s temporary power, demands to know the names and locations of said guys (so he can wipe all memory of Fujimiya from their heads).

This protectiveness/possessiveness and his blushing when Fujimiya leaned in to whisper to him suggest there’s something there, but she has a long way to go to get out of the Friendzone. Back at Takafumi’s, he and Fujimiya watch as Alicia reveals herself to be the Hero, AKA “Shining Crusader”, just as I suspected she would be. I look forward to her future interactions with Ojisan.

Isekai Ojisan – 06 – Skipping Karaage Night

Ojisan continues to show Takafumi and Fujimiya his torturous first days in another world, where his captors try to sell him but end up making forty times more bronze coins selling a used scoring pad, adding insult to injury. Ojisan is imprisoned for seven days, but thanks to his translation ability is able to communicate with the world’s spirit of light.

He reaches out to the beam of moonlight in his cell, and it becomes a solid sword in his hands. He uses that to break out of jail and release all the cute little creatures imprisoned there, but they turn out to be vicious monsters and he spends the rest of the night slaughtering them.

This, to Ojisan, represents being “off to a good start.” Fujimiya gets a text from home; it’s fried chicken night, but she’s eager to learn more about how he saved Elf from the vemon dragon. She later regrets passing on the chicken as the dragon fight is over in five seconds. Ojisan makes the right first move by offering the half-naked Elf his hoodie, but she temporarily “glitches” from the sudden urge to kill the orc-looking man before him.

She checks herself and stows her dagger in the transdimensional inventory, but to Ojisan it looks like she’s stabbing herself, and lifts up the hoodie expecting to find a gaping wound. Needless to say, it’s not the best first impression to expose a girl’s nudity right after covering it, so in this instance Elf’s berating of Ojisan is justified. But he’d only ever interpret that verbal abuse as contempt, when really the opposite is true.

That’s proven to be the case when Ojisan fast-forwards to the night he was frozen by Mabel, as he wakes up with both Elf and Mabel sleeping on top of him, perhaps to hasten his thawing but also because at least in Elf’s case she has a thing for the guy despite herself (and his looks).

Elf’s monopoly on Ojisan is disrupted by Mabel, who talks in her sleep about not wanting to work. Ojisan suggests that after sleeping in a bit, they go out for breakfast. Mabel and Elf formally introduce themselves and their goals (Mabel wants to explore, Elf wants to find ancient relics, and Ojisan, AKA “Wolfgunblood”, wants to find a way home. “Wolf”, as Mabel starts calling him for short, plans to scout out a dungeon where the storied Hero known as the “Shining Crusader” apparently is.

For now, though, it’s late, and Fujimiya is starving from skipping dinner. Ojisan in his magnanimity offers to treat her and Takafumi to ramen. Even though Takafumi ends up being a few yen short and Fujimiya has to pay after all, the three slurp with great abandon, as watching Ojisan’s adventures clearly worked up an appetite.

I imagine next week will pick up on the part of Ojisan’s story where he currently has two ostensible party members and seems poised to gain a third. I bet the “Hero” mentioned is the third female character in the OP and promo art, voiced by Toyosaki Aki.

Considering what entertaining characters Elf and Mabel are, I’m looking forward to her introduction and seeing how she bounces off the others…not to mention how Takafumi and Fujimiya react and comment on her arrival in Ojisan’s life.

Isekai Ojisan – 05 – Another Region Code

It’s clearly become a daily habit for Fujimiya to come by Takafumi’s place where they watch video of Ojisan’s isekai adventures. They’re basically couch potatoes watching fantasy reality TV. But hey, if it’s entertaining, and there’s no other way Fujimiya knows of to hang out with the oblivious Takafumi, so be it!

The latest “episode” they tuck into is when Ojisan was “nearly assassinated” The identity of her assailant in the night is made plain by her ice sword and silvery blue bangs. It’s Mabel, whom Ojisan scorned by ignoring the hints she dropped and defeating the Blaze Dragon without the god-freezing sword.

No sooner does Ojisan express worry about whether Mabel is eating well does she pass out, and she wakes up in an inn. When he asks what happened to her life of leisure, she says the village cut down the tree she lived in and gave her an ultimatum: get a job, or become the village pet. She chose neither, and instead froze everyone from the hips down and dropped icy water down their backs before fleeing.

She now finds herself aimless, but Ojisan tells her she already has the means to live the life she chooses, not just with the ice sword, but with a Cosmite ring he slipped on her finger while she slept. When Mabel considers reforming her gloomy personality, Ojisan rejects the notion that being an introvert is a bad thing, and says her eyes are attractive.

Between the ring and the compliments, Mabel has the distinct feeling she’s being proposed to by Ojisan. She offers him the ring back, but her claim about having no romantic feelings is debunked by the fact the ice seal on the sword (and thus, her heart) is melting like gangbusters behind her.

When Ojisan insists she keep it and that they should turn in for the night, Mabel’s first instinct is to ask for change for the public bath. That’s when Ojisan breaks her misunderstanding by saying once she sells the ring she can get change for the bath and everything else for the remainder of her life. Realizing this was not a proposal, her heart and the sword freeze so violently Ojisan takes defensive action.

When Elf hears the commotion and comes in the room, she finds what looks like Ojisan magically tying Mabel down to have his way with her, so she snaps his chains and lets Mabel free to encase him in ice for the night. The two women find kinship in their mutual emotional suffering at the hands of Ojisan. Mind you, he isn’t doing this intentionally…his brain just has a different region code.

The idea of being able to translate body language, sarcasm, and innuendo is expanded as the story continues, with Mabel and Elf chatting while Ojisan stands frozen. Takafumi and Fujimiya are intrigued when they hear Mabel say the word “Japan”, and starts to tell a story of another traveler from Japan who came to their world and was greeted by a god who bestowed upon him a divine power.

Mabel creates beautiful visuals for her story with ice and tells the story well, but it’s a story Elf has already heard, and she harshly cuts her off, resulting in having to comfort her with hug when she breaks down into tears. Back in our world, meanwhile, Ojisan feels cheated: when he ended up in another world, he wasn’t greeted by a god or given any divine power.

That leads his audience of two to insist that he rewind his memories all the way back to 18 years ago when he was 17 (and actually young looking!) and first arrived in the other world. While rewinding, he passes by dozens of instances of him being hunted, captured, persecuted, and nearly executed in a number of different ways, underscoring how rough Uncle has had it and how amazing it is he’s as well-adjusted and untraumatized as he is.

But the elegantly set up joke is that a “god” did in fact speak to him when he first arrived…he was just too busy being beaten up by adventurers who thought he was an orc to hear. Also, the “god” in question was simply a recording in Mandarin, which when Takafumi translates with his phone, reveals that when Ojisan was being beaten, he wished to be able to understand the language of his attackers, and that wish came true.

While we know from his misadventures over the next eighteen years that this didn’t make life in this new world much easier, it did make it possible, such that when he did come upon a couple of souls like Elf and Mabel who were willing to see him as more than just a hideous orc variant, he gained companions.

Of course, with Ojisan’s brain region coded as it was, simply speaking the language wasn’t enough. He missed the nuance and context of their words and actions and almost always completely misinterpreted them. One wonders if Elf and Mabel themselves were bestowed with divine patience to endure his infuriating conduct without murdering him!

Isekai Ojisan – 04 – A Pinch Is a Chance

In one of Takafumi’s memories from grade school, he’s bullied by some boys for reading an innocent fantasy LN, only to be bailed out by Fujimiya, who may still looks like a demon to lil’ Takafumi’s eyes, but he’s genuinely moved by her support. Present-day Fujimiya remains mortified that this is how Takafumi viewed her, especially as she became more girly in middle school.

But that was then and this is now, and Fujimiya has high hopes for her newly-rekindled relationship with Takafumi. When she learns he got cash from Ojisan for his birthday which he spent on a coffee grinder and some fancy beans, she decides to send him a “gift” of her own.

This comes in the form of a photo of her in a swimsuit from middle school, which while cute, even she realizes in hindsight might’ve been a questionable choice. But hey, watching your crush’s childhood memories in which you’re a loathsome devil spawn does weird things to the mind!

That said, Takafumi couldn’t be more tactless when his first instinct is to ask Siri how to delete the photo from SM, and then he gets an alert about a sale on coffee beans and once again leaves Fujimiya with his uncle. When he almost spills his coffee, he casts an ice spell that freezes her, then melts her with flame.

The result of all this is that Fujimiya is soaked and needs to take a shower to warm up. Ojisan leaves the apartment to give her her privacy, but Takafumi enters when she’s wearing one of his shirts and nothing else. Again, after watching a younger Takafumi portray her as a monster, seeing him react to seeing her inspires her to uses this “pinch” as a “chance”, in Ojisan’s words.

Unfortunately, Takafumi proves as dense about Fujimiya’s feelings and intentions as Ojisan is about Elf. He considers it shameful that he should feel this way about looking at a “good friend”, and when Ojisan arrives on full battle alert (due to Takafumi using the wrong flag signal) Takafumi asks him to delete his memories of seeing Fujimiya. Of course, Fujimiya stops the spell, and warns Takafumi she’ll dress like this again if he wipes his memory.

When Fujimiya turns twenty, she and Takafumi and Ojisan have a modest but warm celebration drinking their preferred choice of canned alcoholic beverages and watching more of Ojisan’s misromantic adventures with Elf. Elf is astonished he was able to restore the city barrier, and also recalls when Ojisan (or “Orc Face” as she calls him) saved her from a venom dragon.

After a bit more of their usual repartee, Uncle suddenly takes her by the hand and draws her to his side as they walk through the town market. Elf is shocked by this sudden bout of lovey-dovey behavior, but she can’t hide her enjoyment of it either. When it looks like he’s ready to take her up to his room, it isn’t until he gets his door open that it’s revealed he only needed someone to lean on.

He slams the door in her face, locks said door, and falls immediately asleep. The next morning Elf shows signs she cried herself to sleep. In short, Ojisan’s an unintentional villain, and Fujimiya must do everything in her power to keep Takafumi from turning out the same way.

In the present, Ojisan demonstrates how he can in no way hold his liquor, and then offers to take Fujimiya home via flight. Ojisan, Fujimiya, and Takafumi end up flying through the air upside down, with Ojisan merging the fantasy of the game he was playing with reality, and his nephew and his friend are simply along for the ride.

The end credits are cut short by an extra segment in which Ojisan once again gives Elf the wrong idea by sucking out poison that turns out to have aphrodisiac effects on Elf. When his doting closeness gets to be too much for her, she merely socks him in the face with a swift kick. Fujimiya asks Ojisan if he still has some of that poison so she might be able to use it on Takafumi…because a pinch is a chance!

Isekai Ojisan – 03 – The Things We Do for Views

Takafumi returns home to find Fujimiya and what looks like Elf from the other world where his Uncle lived. It’s definitely an effective hook, and then the episode rewinds an hour and change to a stark reality of YouTubers in February 2018: if you didn’t meet a certain subscriber and view quota, you’d be cut off from what had been a nice little revenue stream.

Takafumi discovers that one reason their channel is struggling is Ojisan’s tendency to type elaborate but ultimately awful replies to each and every commenter, many of whom are then put off and unsubscribe. This current dilemma reminds Ojisan of when the barrier of the Sealed City fell and 1,000 beasts arrived at the walls.

Naturally, his nephew wants to see and hear about this, so Ojisan switches on the ol’ memory recorder and plays back the events of those days. Notable is how pretty much everything Elf says to him could come across as verbal harassment (rather than the tsundere flirting it is).

When Ojisan nonchalantly shatters the barrier and the beasts arrive, Elf is resolved to fight them all herself while he runs—she likes him that much. But after a serously badass weapon unsheathing sequence and blasting herself towards the walls like a missile, she ends up splatting on the newly-formed barrier, the result of Ojisan asking the spirits to repair it.

No matter; Elf doesn’t tell any of the townsfolk that he dropped the barrier to begin with, and in exchange simply asks him to buy her dinner. But Ojisan, who always interprets her words and body language the wrong way, instead leaves the city without her.

Takafumi hugs himself in despair, and this is what Fujimiya sees when she arrives, trying to make a habit of being around her old friend. The thing is, Takafumi remains disturbingly oblivious to her affections, and even leaves her alone in his apartment to take care of some random errand.

Ojisan may not have much real-world romantic experience, but he can tell Fujimiya’s a good girl and she wants to be closer to his nephew. Unfortunately, Fujimiya does not want to talk to some frumpy uncle about this, so Ojisan borrows Elf’s appearance and voice and insists he’s Takafumi’s “aunt” so they can engage in girl talk. That brings us back to the cold open.

In order to get to the bottom of why Takafumi stubbornly only thinks of Fujimiya as a friend, he taps into his memories and then visualizes them. in them, a cretinous child mercilessly beats upon a helpless young Takafumi. Fujimiya asks where she is…and then it dawns on her: she’s the cretin. Form her perspective back then they enjoyed a “bittersweet” relationship, but just like Ojisan with Elf, Takafumi saw it more as bullying and abuse.

Elf!Ojisan marvels at how his nephew even managed to recognize a grown-up Fujimiya on the street, but Takafumi says he’d never forget her, and holds up a fist for her to bump while blushing profusely. Takafumi then decides that he and Ojisan should record a video of “her” playing Guardian Heroes.

Ojisan is naturally psyched…until he sees the final product: the video doesn’t show any of the actual gameplay—just Ojisan in the form of a sexy elf girl in a long hoodie playing off-screen video games. Ojisan is shocked and appalled, but the video goes viral, with 200,000 views and counting. Takafumi celebrates the great success of his hunch, while Ojisan reverts to his normal appearance before a terrified Fujimiya. I could honestly watch this offbeat, eccentric dynamic packed with amazing reaction faces all day!

Isekai Ojisan – 02 – Neon Genesis Osananajimi

Ojisan’s Youtube views are dropping, so he institutes austerity measures in the home budget—though only after he orders a copy of a video game magazine listing the final results of Sega Saturn reader’s choice. He learns that one of his favorite games, Guardian Heroes, was only ranked 197th. I never played that, but I did play the heck out of a Genesis game by Treasure called Gunstar Heroes, which was immensely fun.

After summoning lighting to sufficiently punctuate his moment of shock despair, Takafumi gets him to stop talking about video games and show him another recorded memory from his time in the isekai. When the village elder shows him to the Frost Clan member Mabel, who goes ahead and tells Ojisan what’s needed to unfreeze her heart, only for Ojisan to ignore all that and defeat the dragon without her Frost Sword.

First Takafumi’s uncle misinterpreted elf’s tsundere behavior as shit-talking, then he totally circumvents the other world’s “quest”. Those blunders aside, Takafumi still thinks enough of his uncle to give him a Sega Saturn for his birthday, which they play to ring in the year 2018.

Ojisan also shows Takafumi how the other world celebrated the new year, only for him to simply eat some chicken by himself and retire to his room. When he mentions Mabel visited in his room later that night, Takafumi switches off the Saturn and demands to hear more.

Turns out Ojisan convinced Mabel that her ennui and reclusive behavior were simply living her truth, and that there was nothing wrong with that, and she should go on doing it if that’s what she wanted. It is, and she does, which even Takafumi can tell is both teaching and learning the wrong lesson!

When Fujimiya Sumika first encounters Ojisan, she assumes he’s a rambling old weirdo and commits to walking a different route. However, it’s thanks to this route that she’s unexpectedly reunited with her childhood friend Takafumi, who has since grown taller than her. Sumika, who we see was once very attached to Takafumi when they were kids, is clearly jazzed to see him again.

She accepts his invitation to stop by his house, which she does after dropping off her groceries, only for the same weird old man she saw in the park to come in through the balcony sliding door. Ojisan initially treats Sumika as an enemy and tries to wipe her memory, but Takafumi intervenes, resulting in quite a bit of physical contact.

Sumika shakes off the attempted assault, but immediately takes the stand that Takafumi shouldn’t be letting his old uncle mooch off of him. When Takafumi confirms that his Ojisan actually does have magic powers he gained in another world, Sumika says what we’d all say: “So show me.”

It doesn’t take long even for someone like Ojisan to pick up on Sumika’s attraction to Takafumi, though she may deny it, leading him to bring up Evangelion, in which Asuka was a famous early example of the tsundere archetype (something Oji has yet to catch on to when it comes to Elf).

Sumika is actually moved by Ojisan’s sad tale that is actually ripped directly from the Saturn game Alien Soldier, at which point Sumika is fed up with having her emotions toyed with. Then Ojisan reads her mind, revealing she showered and changed before coming to Takafumi’s, and was disappointed to learn he had a roommate.

But while she’s disappointed, she also seems to still like Takafumi enough that she’s not going to stand by and do nothing while Takafumi is leeched on by a layabout charlatan. As with Elf and Mabel, I love Sumika’s dynamic character design. She’s cute, but still the tough kid she was when she first fell for Takafumi. It’s a shame Takafumi is 100% oblivious to her long-standing crush, but she and Mabel are fine additions to this colorful cast.

Isekai Ojisan – 01 (First Impressions) – SEGAwakening

Isekai Ojisan (Uncle from Another World) starts off efficiently and confidently. Takafumi’s uncle suddenly wakes up after 17 years in a coma. At first his nephew things he’s gone insane because he’s speaking in a bizarre language. But then Ojisan switches to Japanese, and demonstrates that he can do magic. Takafumi, who was about to basically kick his uncle to the curb, decides to rip up that paperwork and welcome him into his modest but too-large-for-one apartment.

There, Takafumi supplements his part-time job (or possibly replaces it) by making YouTube videos where Ojisan demonstrates his magic powers. They get decent views but also a fair share of haters, which disturb Ojisan. Since he hasn’t been in this world since 2000, for a Segaholic like him the Dreamcast was the pinnacle of gaming…and life.

Takafumi discovers that all phones are boring touchscreens now, and is crestfallen that Sega is no longer a console superpower. But Ojisan’s superpowers enable him to fly to the locations of Amazon and Ebay purchases so they don’t have to pay exorbitant shipping fees. He can also show his nephew his memories as if recorded with a 360-degree camera.

This is how Takafumi first sees the elf woman who apparently followed his uncle around for years and berated him. Little does the obviously romantically-stunted Ojisan know that Elf is of the type that would by 2004 be clearly classified as tsundere (though Asuka Langley Soryu was around three years before he was sent to another world).

There’s a running gag that his somewhat homely looks made most everyone in the other world—who is handsome, hot, beautiful, etc.—believe he was some kind of orc mutant. There’s a memory he plays (without audio) of rescuing three siblings from a real orc, and then they’re so horrified by his appearance the eldest bravely sacrifices herself, thinking he’ll kill her.

Visually speaking, the drab and de-saturated palette was a little concerning at first, but when we went into the other world where he lived, everything is bright and lacks the same rough texture—it’s a great contrast that also accentuates the heightened beauty of the other world and its inhabitants.

Overall it’s a great-looking show with a simple fish-out-of-water premise that’s easy to get on board with and enjoy the ride. The comedy hits, the faces are tremendous, and the cute tsundere elf girl is cute and tsundere. While it’s unfortunate the show is experiencing delays due to Covid, that affords me time to catch up.

The World’s Finest Assassin – 12 (Fin) – Gungnir Big or Gae Bolg Home

We know it’s going to be a different kind of episode when we begin with the Robo-Goddess in her realm, which has taken on the stark monochromatic aesthetic of the OP (which remains my favorite of the Fall). It seems the World’s Finest Assassin is her latest and possibly last best hope against the Hero ending the world.

Back on that world, her champion Lugh is ready to burn Dia’s house down and whisk her away with the story that she committed suicide so that none of the sides in the war could have her. There’s just one problem: Setanta MacNess has arrived with Gae Bolg, and partially demolishes the castle before Lugh can implement his plan.

Lugh deflects Gae Bolg’s attack with one of his “grenades”, then launches the biggest cannon attack he has. Setanta survives the blast with some superficial wounds that soon heal, but the knight is amazed at having finally seen and tasted his own blood, goes into Berserk mode while maintaining his sense, and challenges Lugh to a duel.

Suspecting Setanta is indeed the Hero as Maha’s intelligence suggested, Lugh makes it clear to Dia that he can’t run from Setanta’s challenge, nor can he have a hope of winning a duel against him. That said, Lugh also reminds Dia he’s neither knight nor hero, but an assassin. Assassinating’s all he can do, and it’s all he will do against Setanta.

After a little trash talking and negotiating of the terms of the duel, Lugh gets Setanta to agree that the duel will begin when a coin he flips into the air hits the ground. This essentially locks Setanta’s gaze on the coin, so he doesn’t look up when a solid tungsten missile comes crashing down on top of him, causing an enormous explosion and shock wave.

That solid tungsten missle was initially casually launched into orbit while Lugh was still in Dia’s castle, but is the culmination of months of careful preparation and collaboration. He and Dia designed the spells to launch it, and he and Tarte scouted the island Maha found to test it. It even employes the same shielding Tarte used to help Lugh conserve his energy on the way to Dia. The name of the spell is Gungnir, which is fitting as Odin’s spear is believed to be the prototype of Cúchulainn’s Gae Bolg.

Lugh’s extremely aerospace-y and not necessarily assassin-y or knightly gambit pays off. He takes a considerable lick himself, but soon awakens to a concerned Dia, whom he’s so relieved is okay he kisses her just as the sun rises over the mountains. When Dia asks why he agreed to take on a non-Tuatha Dé matter, Lugh tells her he never forgot his promise to always come running.

As he promised Tarte, Lugh arrives home having failed his first assassination job ever yet still triumphant, because he brought Dia with him. Cian decides its best for now for Dia’s identity to be concealed; she’s to live with them in Tuatha Dé as Lugh’s younger sister, with her shared bloodlines with Esri making it a believable lie.

With that settled, Cian brings up another order of business: the Hero has apparently arrived in the Alvan Kingdom. Lugh’s confused by that, since he assumed Setanta was the Hero. Alas, he apparently wasn’t; the actual Hero, whose presence closely precedes the certain arrival of the Demon Lord, is one Lord Epona Rhiannon, and the close-up on his alternate-Lugh like visage is the last image we see in The World’s Finest Assassin.

Despite the fact there’s no immediate news of a second season, I can’t believe we won’t be getting one sometime down the road. There’s a lot of story left to tell and a lot of cute moments between Lugh/Dia, Lugh/Tarte, Lugh/Maha, or any other combinations therein. Not to mention…what if this Epona lad is just like Lugh: originally from another world?

That’s one of dozens of questions I’m hoping a sequel would explore. Until then, this was a bold ending to a thoroughly enjoyable and engrossing isekai series.