AKA: アラフォー男の異世界通販 (Arafō Otoko no Isekai Tsūhan)

Genre: Isekai fantasy

Length: Television series, 13 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently available streaming on crunchyroll.

Content Rating: PG-13 (Violence, fanservice.)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill

Notes: Based on the light novel series written by Hifumi Asakura and illustrated by Yamakawa. The novel was originally published on Shōsetsuka ni Narō, and then later aquired by SB Creative and published under Tugikuru Books. There's also a manga adaptation, illustrated by Umiharu and serialized in Square Enix's Monthly GFantasy magazine.

Rating:

The Daily Life of a Middle-Aged Online Shopper in Another World

Synopsis

Kenichi Hamada, a 40 year old man (give or take a few), somehow finds himself in a world not his own. Being tired of the city, he takes this opportunity to seek his slow-paced dream life, funding it through working in trading thanks to his ability to access Shangri-La, some kind of online store that works in this world. Of course, it doesn't take long before his items starts getting noticed by the world's residents.

Review

It is a little sad to think about the fact that I have to go back to the original Utawarerumono to find an adult protagonist who acts like an adult on top of his age. It has become more common to have older protagonists in shows, sure, but it's one thing to have a character who looks old, and an entirely different one where they also act their age. When push comes to shove, Middle-Aged Online Shopper's Kenichi falls a little short there.

That is not anything new. Chillin' in my 30's lead, Dariel, did carry most of the patience and considerations of older age, but he never really put his foot down when he was pursued by a woman half his age. Campfire Cooking in Another World is probably one of the better ones so far that has a lead who has passed into his 30's at the very least. At the core, these are all fantasies that, with older protagonists, tend to be more about escaping an untenable workplace exploitation culture.

In that respect, Middle-Aged Online Shopper doesn't really start out too awfully. Kenichi doesn't automatically know the answer to everything right off the bat, but he is at least clever enough to make use of the opportunities presented to him. The start is also where Middle-Aged Online Shopper makes the most sense, as his desire to cash in on knives or jewelry had to make way for clothespins. It's a curiously pragmatic outlook, and it's why I ended up having some hopes for this show starting out.

Middle-Aged Online Shopper also ended up being a bit of a harem. As the show hits the ground running, our first two candidates are the daughter of the Mallow family, Primula, but he also quickly makes aquaintances of some of the local beast people, primarily the cat woman Myaley. (More beast people to follow, of course, including another cat woman.) And even before that, Kenichi catches the interest of local tavern owner Azalea, as in addition to him hiring a room in her tavern starting out, he also hires her to teach him to write this world's language. It is rather heavily implied that he sleeps with her too on her urging, mostly because he gifted her a box of sweets plus a drawn portrait. I do appreciate that our man Kenichi isn't completely freaking out over the concept of sex, but the show is almost too casual about his escapades there, which later ties into the most aggravating aspect of the comedy offered here, the constant jealous squabbling between his female aquaintances.

Which is not to say all the comedy is terrible. The show is at its best when Kenichi bolsters his repertoire of tools with stuff he buys on Shangri-La, like chainsaws or excavators, or, later on, modern bows or other equipment for his allies. I actually chuckled a bit as we get an overview of the town edge, where the guards ponders the noise coming from the forest nearby, but just shrugs it off without even going to investigate. Those moments are far too rare, unfortunately, but credit where credit is due and all that. There are also occasionally the sweet moments, like when Anemone makes a friend out of a girl from the second town they move to, or brief scenes of the girls who had been held under bandit captivity being reunited with their families. It's not often, but the show has its moments.

And Middle-Aged Online Shopper can get surprisingly grim too. Already in the first episode, Kenichi is warned not to try to mess around with the local trade monopoly consortium over spices, and we also get some short glimpses of future cast member Anemone being sold into slavery, right before said slave cart gets raided by bandits. The show is chock full of the kind of backstabby politics lead by the world's social elites, where the spice trade is just the countryside variant as Middle-Aged Online Shopper tries to find its footing. Also, apparently, the best way to claim the credit and reward for taking out bandits is to bring their heads to the guild, which... well, is what Kenichi and friends do a bit into the show. With a few heads past 50, to the horror and surprise of the guild clerks.

It rings a bit hollow too, at times. From a historical standpoint, having younger women marry older men wouldn't be entirely unheard of, even if the concept is iffy at best. But as much as Kenichi complains and recommends that Primula should stop chasing old guys, that still doesn't stop her for pursuing him. This only intensifies later when Kenichi, with the help of the beastpeople he helped earlier as well as a wizard, rescues Primula from the local bandit tribes.

...which is my cue to go more into the animation quality you're subjected to in Middle-Aged Online Shopper. It is... not good. I've seen my share of shows that simply doesn't have any animation chops, but wow, I'm almost grateful to Middle-Aged Online Shopper for letting me know how wretched animation can actually get. Up to episode 4, it has been depressingly basic, but that episode had whichever animation studio that was outsourced to handle the animation show really step up to the plate and show the world how absolutely catastrophically terrible it could make battle sequences look. I have not seen animation this bad since I synchroed Sailor Moon Crystal with Tim, or the time we watched Nanoha StrikerS. I don't remember what the show was called anymore, but there was also this legendary car chase from a show I recall watching the first episode of, which was known for being the absolute nadir in animation quality. Middle-Aged Online Shopper can now stand proudly among the absolute worst. You'll guffaw. You'll stare in disbelief. And for those of you who has been there, you'll remember this moment.

If you watched this, I want you to know that your pain was also my pain. This was where I paused the episode and went to my bathroom to wash my hands as a weird way to process what the hell I just watched. It was just one of those moments where I had to take a break for my own sanity. The animation, the direction, the fight choreography; it was all just... wrong. And it was not getting any better as the show went through its many dances. And the damnedest is; the background work is usually pretty decent, some of the overhead views you get look nice. However, that doesn't change the fact that the character designs are kinda dull, and everything just feels off model most of the time. The damnedest thing is, the vehicles made with 3D graphics is better-looking than the characters.

And finally, this show is incredibly boring. It's a harem show first and foremost, but none of the characters in it have much in the way of personal charm. Primula is more or less Chillin's Marika without the spunk and no-nonsense attitude. Her whole shtick, aside from obviously having a love-boner for Kenichi, is that she thinks like a merchant 24/7. She eventually asks Kenichi to "make her a woman", which he does. Kenichi doesn't do everything, but he spends most of his time solving everyone's problems while keeping that "cool" attitude. Which brings us to the type of comedy Middle-Aged Online Shopper applies the most.

I said Middle-Aged Online Shopper is a harem, and that means that most of the women Kenichi meets takes an interest in him in one way or the other. I already mentioned Primula and Azalea being close enough to him to sleep with him, but we also have Myaley who the show kinda implies got her turn outside in the wild. But even before that, she isn't above crawling underneath his blanket to sleep on his chest. She is later joined by Nyamena, another cat woman hired by Primula, and who also takes an interest in him. And if I thought Anemone would consider herself Kenichi's adoptive daughter, the show set out to prove me wrong there too, in a rather distasteful way. During the last couple of episodes, Anemone experiences her first menstruation cycle, and if you thought the show was gonna celebrate that milestone in a commendable manner, Middle-Aged Online Shopper just had to prove us wrong by having her reaction to that realization being "Yay! That means I can have your babies." The menagerie of haremites sans Azalea eventually end up in the same household, which is where the bickering start. They all (again, sans Azalea) do the "MOOOOU" poutyfaced jealousy fits whenever one of the girls lavish Kenichi with their attention. Officially, he takes Primula as his fiancee (despite his earlier protests about her going for older dudes), but that doesn't stop the others. Kenichi helps a noble family to finish a waterway within a deadline, which prompts the lady of the house to offer herself to Kenichi as well, and she is offended... OFFENDED, I SAY... that he has the nerve to decline. The last two episodes is centered around the royal family, and I was genuinely worried that the young Princess in said family would also wanna jump them Kenichi bones. Can you blame me? Her name is Lilith, after all. But nope. It turned out that it was the Queen who offered herself to the almighty Kenichi. More or less in front of everyone else too, including their husbands. I can't even...

It's difficult to recommend this even for a solid MST'ing. Sure, frying your brain with how amazingly bad the animation is can be fun, but you have to take that with everything else, and that is what is going to hurt the most. This is one basic-ass isekai.

Uninspiring, dull and annoying. Its best aspect is its terrible animation, which is sometimes good for a laugh. And isn't that the most backhanded of compliments? — Stig Høgset

Recommended Audience: Both the violence and the blatantly, albeit offscreen, sexual content does put it out of the range of young 'uns. Our heroes arrives at the guild with 50++ decapitated heads to get the reward for taking out the whole bandit tribe. I'm honestly a little surprised that this show was ranked PG-13. The rest is basically general fanservice, mostly boobs being semi-uncovered.