this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
26 points (100.0% liked)

Anime

2429 readers
249 users here now

This community is the place to discuss and ask questions about anime, anime news, and related topics.

Currently airing show discussion threads are created by our resident bot, [email protected]. If it doesn't make a thread for an episode that you want to discuss, see the user guide on the wiki for instructions on how to ask rikka to make a thread for you to use.

Check out our wiki to find:

Rules

More complete rules on the wiki.

Related General Communities

rikka

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Cross-posted from "What's up with the isekai genre? Are there any good isekais out there?" by @[email protected] in [email protected]


It seems like every manga or anime adaption nowadays are isekais with absurdly long titles. As someone who hasn't read that much manga for the past few years but just started again, it's kinda crazy to see all these pop up. Are there actually any good ones out there? Or are most of them just "guilty pleasures"? The only one I've been reading is Ascendance of a Bookworm which is kinda interesting.

top 20 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

Konasuba. Since it's a parody of the genre. I've avoided everything else in the genre.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Sword Art Online taught publishers that people really want bland wish-fulfillment stuff where the hero just steamrolls any problems that shows up and then gets all the girls. Of course SAO had other things going for it, like good animation and a great soundtrack, but that isn't what they can easily copy.

Shield Hero taught publishers that people want that but also with the main character owning slaves for some reason.

Anyways, due to these two things isekai has been almost universally weird af lately. That said, it's not all bad. I liked The Eminence in Shadow, but I recommend the manga adaptation over the anime. The mangaka just has a really good sense of comedic timing. I've also heard good things about Shangri-la Frontier. There are a few more good isekai if you look at the pre-SAO era. Vision of Escaflowne was really good, as long as you come in with the expectation that this is a shoujo mech isekai so it'll have a somewhat different feel to it.

Of course, that's if you're stuck on wanting to watch/read isekai. There's been tons of great stuff coming out every year that has nothing to do with isekai. My favorites from the last 5 years have been:

  • 2020 - Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! - A team of high school girls form a club and set out to make whatever anime they can with their limited resources
  • 2021 - Vivy -Fluorite Eye's Song- - The first AI-powered humanoid robot tries to prevent the robot apocalypse
  • 2022 - Chainsaw Man - A sad boy has a wild (and bad) time. Honorable mentions go to Spy x Family and Bocchi the Rock. It was a strong year.
  • 2023 - Skip and Loafer - A book-smart girl from the country moves to Tokyo for a better high school and adapts to city life
  • 2024 - LOOK BACK - A story about 2 artists. Honestly this year was stacked too, so honorable mentions go to Bang Brave Bang Bravern! (big gay robots), DAN DA DAN (romance, yokai, and aliens), and Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi (traditional fantasy, but really well executed).

Notably even though every year a whole pile of isekai gets released not one of them made it into that list. I'd avoid them as a general rule for a while, except when you hear a lot of people recommending a specific specimen.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Shield Hero taught publishers that people want that but also with the main character owning slaves for some reason.

Oh, it's an open secret that a lot of anime plots are first tested in the pornography / H Eroge market first. Slave waifus (that fall in love with main character) have been a thing there for literally decades.

The question is how good do these writers hide that fact from the public and mainstream. And erm..... Yeah, Shield Hero doesn't do so good there.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Zenshu is killing it this season. Anime-original story, tries to actually connect with Natsuko Hirose's "real life" (not just focused on the fantasy world but also her experiences before getting Isekai'd), etc. etc.

Reincarnated as a Slime is my favorite somewhat trashy isekai (as in: it follows all the tropes but otherwise the animation quality is actually really good). Its an "overpowered" show where the main character rarely comes across a real challenge though.

I'm a Spider, so What?! is a fun boss rush that had a deeper than expected story. Main character always wins of course, lol, but I think it "felt" like a challenge as she learned combat of this new world?

Overlord is a "take over the world" / "Kingdom builder" (Slime also is a kingdom builder but its not as good as Overlord). Overpowered once again, literally no one in the new world can challenge the main character. But I don't think that's a bad thing for Overlord, it allows the plot to focus on kingdom building / alliances / kingdoms rather than the fights.

A grossly underrated Isekai is: "The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash". Its basically just this young girl talking to herself for ~12 episodes as she's forced to run away from home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-biFNoRk-3I . Still, the people she meets on the journey are all helpful and optimistic. This isn't a battle anime (she runs away from pretty much every fight), and she very much relies upon the kindness of strangers. Its actually quite unique for an anime since she doesn't have nearly as much "Because I'm the Main Character" energy, even if she gets a few special friends along the way. Very much an "underpowered" main character, who has to mostly dig through trash, cry, find friends and run away constantly.


Re:Zero and Jobless Reincarnation are probably the most popular Isekai. But I didn't like them. I figure I should mention them though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

I think parodies and deconstructions of the isekai genre are fun:

  • Villainess Level 99
  • The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious
  • My Instant Death Ability Is So Overpowered
[–] olicvb 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Since I didn't see it here:

  • Saga of Tanya the Evil | A psychopathic atheist bureaucrat makes a deal with God that he'll keep his beliefs no matter what. So God reincarnates him (now her, named Tanya) into an alternate universe where it's WW1, but some people are born with magic. The main character is one of those people, and essentially has a crazy amount of magic, but can only use it if they pray to God. Tanya decides to double down on their beliefs that God doesn't exist and plans on outlasting the war.
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago

There’s a ton of well-reviewed isekai out there. But there’s also a lot of really bad stuff too.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

I think the Chronicles of Narnia is probably the best isekai.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

4 humans of "reality" becoming Kings and Queens of a fantasy world after meeting the god of that world? With Judeo-Christian slop words thrown around to sound deeper?

Definitely an Isekai.

Alas, its too 'new". Its decades after "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", which not only has kings, queens, fantasy, overpowered main character, science (gatling guns used on fantasy troops)... but also has the "Full Sentence Title" that Isekai are known for.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

MC does not get hit by a truck because trucks hadn't been invented yet.

He gets hit by a baseball.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 hours ago

I'd say Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is a contender for best isekai if the target demographic is kids.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 hours ago

There are good isekai, but it's littered with slop. Some I enjoyed:

  1. Re:Zero
  2. Konosuba
  3. Ascendance of a Bookworm
  4. My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom
  5. No Game No Life (though note that it's been a looong time since I've seen that one..)
  6. Youjo Senki
  7. Overlord
  8. Re:Creators (mostly interesting because it's a reverse isekai, but has lots of boring exposition)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

I haven't seen anyone mention Isekai Nonbiri Nouka. I thought it was pretty good.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

I kinda find modern isekai are very formulaic. If you just want some fan service and an OP power fantasy protag who doesn't struggle at anything, then they look nice enough, but are still kinda trash.

I'd recommend watching some of the early ones when the genre wasn't so well defined:

  • Now and Then, Here and There
  • Twelve Kingdoms
  • El Hazard
  • Vision of Edcaflowne
[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Or even further back:

  • GoShogun The Time Etranger - A weird abstract 1 shot OAV with the characters from the GoShogun combination mecha TV show. This was one of my favorites from the 80s.
  • Leda: The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko - A fun 1 shot OAV from the 80s, with fun direction, characters and mecha designs.
  • Aura Battler Dunbine TV show - With its great insectoid mecha, by Yoshiyuki "Gundam" Tomino
  • Super Dimension Century Orguss TV show - less clearly isekai, but it's fun work by the crew who did Macross: Noboru Ishiguro, Yasumi Mikamoto, character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto.
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

I haven't watched them, but I've heard little but good about Twelve Kingdoms, Magic Knights Rayearth, and El-Hazard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

Re:Zero, Bookworm, KonoSuba, Slime... There are a lot of good isekai out there.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago

"Good" is subjective. What's your criteria for good?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

KonoSuba is a satire/deconstruction of the isekai genre, and it's been well-received.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

I should note that KonoSuba is on the sexual side with its camera angles and... erm... Darkness. Just Darkness in general.

Hilariously so of course. But I've tried to get people to watch Konosuba in my group and they were all turned off by its sexual nature.