Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan is a 2021 anime adaptation of the Gaku Kuze manga featuring a gymnast with a less-than-rosy attitude about life. This is despite his public persona, in which he's seen as a shining beacon of light and positivity to others. The comedic series is meant to satirize the mundanities of life and Japanese television programming, but its one-note writing fails to do this particularly well.
While Uramichi definitely excels in the comedy department, thanks mostly to Uramichi's awful attitude, it hasn't really gone beyond that for most of its run so far. This turns the comedy of the anime into a sort of one-trick pony with nothing much to say besides how much one guy can't stand his job. Here's a closer look at how the show keeps running, hopping, jumping and joking in circles.
What Is Uramichi Oniisan?
The show adapts a Comic POOL manga by Gaku Kuze that has recently been brought to America via manga localizer Kodansha USA. It stars the eponymous Uramichi, a former professional gymnast who's now going for far less than the gold in his current job. The host of an exercise segment on a children's television program, Uramichi's cheery outward demeanor and success at his job belies his seething hatred and disdain for his career.
Uramichi Oniichan sees him engage in all of the uproarious endeavors seen on Japanese variety shows and children's programming, much of which involves cringe levels of ridiculousness. The dark comedy of course comes from how much Uramichi hates his job and how viewers can likely to relate to hating their own. It's how far the anime continuously runs with this gag that's its biggest hurdle, however.
Why Uramichi Oniisan Fails As a Satire
The series is meant to showcase an unseen side of hyperactive, happy-go-lucky Japanese shows, mainly by having the host be particularly unamused and annoyed by the antics he has to engage in. While it's certainly a funny show, it fails to truly satirize its source material by refusing to go deeper.
All of the jokes stem from Uramichi's disdain for his job and those around him, but others in his field aren't really portrayed as having these same negative feelings or having an explanation as why they feel that way. Likewise, there's never really a look behind the curtain as to why exactly these Japanese shows have so much pomp and circumstance, making the industry that the show is attempting to poke at go unexplained.
Uramichi ultimately likes the children he works with, but having him outright hate them would be a much more interesting way to play on expectations and reverse what the audience would think a celebrity of this sort would think and act like. But, instead, most punchlines focus on -- again -- how much Uramichi loathes his situation. There's also been original content and filler added to the anime, so there was even more time to flesh out the premise than the manga had, but it doesn't happen.
To be fair, more recent episodes have finally dove deeper into the characters, as well as introduce concepts like shady, overbearing directors who exist as more obvious commentary on the industry. Up to this point, however, the show has been spinning its wheels by simply having the same grump stuck in a job that he hates, endlessly fixated on his own frurstration.
