Uncle from Another World #01 — Faces You Can Hear

July 6th, 2022

 

That's how you can tell it's a comedy.

Impressions:

It's certainly aiming for a couple specific styles. Rather than being Not-Dragon Quest, we're more focused on trying to win over the people nostalgic for Not-Ys, or at the very least, the more PC/Sega crowd, which feels to me like a weird shot to take. Those of us people who lived through the Nintendo/Sega rivalry and that era of early RPGs are not exactly spring chickens, and mixing that with a theoretical post-modern cheat power reincarnation parody seems like you're aiming a bit too broadly. But since the majority of the jokes are still just random screaming in response to some vaguely unexpected statement, such as "Sega doesn't make consoles anymore," I don't know that the writers have put too much thought into things. The animators sure didn't, which also seems a little odd, because the CGI OP did kind of nail that Ys/Phantasy Star style.

The artistic style is most of what it has going for it. The rest is the same recycled bits that literally all these cheat power things do, except it's through the lens of storytime. Dude looks scary and women assume he's going to rape them. Elf is tsundere. Dude accidentally is super overpowered and does 'outrageous' things without thinking that amaze all. There are a few okay slapstick gags here and there, trying to draw a sword out and slamming into a wall, but that's the height of the humor. Like so many of these, it's not so much satire as it is just doing the same thing that they all do and having someone yell "THAT WAS CRAZY!" every thirty or so seconds.

Posted in Uncle | 3 Comments »

3 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Fade says:

    I don’t like the art style. It’s drab, grayscale, unpleasant to lay eyes on. I get that they’re going for nostalgia but it’s still ugly. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei was also grayscale but at least it had camera movement to catch the eye, if my decade-old memories aren’t too rose-tinted.

    The premise isn’t bad and I’m used to the one-joke-per-five-minutes format, but the intentionally depressing visuals might be too much for me.

  • Frank says:

    oh my god why does he look so gross?

    • Diamondoid says:

      I gather that’s a plot point. The locals refer to him as an orc and comment on his ugliness.