Uncle From Another World

Episode 2

The first episode did a lot of heavy lifting: it introduced us to the premise, two different worlds, three main characters, and the series' core jokes. This episode spends its time bringing in the rest of the main cast, indulging in some solid tragicomedy humor along the way.

On the fantasy world side of things, we meet Mabel: an all-too-literal ice woman stereotype just waiting for the right man to come along and thaw her frozen heart. Unfortunately, she gets Uncle instead, and he can't be bothered to do something like that instead of just killing the dragon himself. Yet, as things go with the humor of this series, he manages to luck into saying the right things to save her, only to completely mess things up in the end. Rather than convincing her to believe in herself and who she can become—i.e., a hero—he tells her it's okay to stay the course of being a recluse and let the world burn. Then, just in case things weren't bad enough, he rejects the sword she tries to give him—the sword that is a literal manifestation of her heart. Oof.

Then, in the real world, we get our introduction to Fujimiya, Takafumi's childhood friend. Despite their many years apart, it's clear from the start she has a huge crush on him, to the point that she is willing to drop by his apartment alone to spend some “quality time” with him. This, in turn, leads to the other big joke of this episode: without the context that Uncle has magic powers, it really does look like he is exploiting his financially struggling nephew. It's a great comedic setup that I expect will continue to be mined for humor going forward.

All in all, while this is a strong episode, it doesn't quite hit the heights of the premiere. (Though, to be fair, that was pretty much a perfect episode.) The one-shot jokes are great, but Mabel doesn't seem quite as interesting as the Elf. And while Fujimiya's misunderstanding of Uncle and Takafumi's living situation is funny, it isn't something that can really support her character in the long-term. Still, now that we have been introduced to all the main players, I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• I mean, Uncle's not wrong—Guardian Heroes is a fantastic game and the fact that it's 197 in the reader poll makes me sad as well.

• I love that the first thing Fujimiya does in his apartment is to go to Takafumi's bed and verify whether he is single or not.

• It's actually scary how Uncle's go-to solution to problems is “mindwipe.” Something tells me he has erased some vital parts of his life—not only in his own mind but in others as well.

• Ah, so Uncle has seen Evangelion... he just didn't understand it at all beyond the most surface level—which makes sense considering how bad he is at reading the Elf and Mabel's obvious attraction towards him.

• I wonder why Uncle is able to detect Fujimiya's crush on Takafumi so easily. Maybe it's just because he's well-informed about the childhood friend cliché trope from all his gaming.

• On that note, I love the idea that Uncle isn't “genre savvy” per se—he's “wrong genre savvy.” He was trapped in a classic JRPG world but never played JRPGs. Thus, he treated his adventure like a straight-forward action game instead: find boss, kill boss.

Uncle From Another World is currently streaming on Netflix.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.