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fefeman · 4 years

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My ranking of Isekais.

Featuring all the Isekai I watched, and none i didn’t watch. Obviously.

What’s an Isekai?

For those of you that don’t know what an Isekai is, its a story where a person from our world is sent to another world (generally a fantasy world). Beyond that, there seem to be disagreement on what exactly count and doesn’t. For example, some peoples consider it only include Japanese media, and non japaneses medias that fit the criteria are in a different category. Other consider the inclusion of video games aspects to be essential for an isekai, as many popular ones do includes those. In fact some peoples do consider that it’s those mechanic that make an isekai, and the “transported to another world” is secondary.

Here, I’ll use the following definition: - Anime/manga where someone from our world is sent to another world.

Some explanation:

Ok, so first of all, all of this is my opinion. I am in no way judging you if you think differently, it is merely what I think of the shows.

Also, I think it’s important to mention that, for all those shows, I liked them at some point, and I still like some. I don’t think it’s possible to make a fair critic of something if you didn’t have fondness for it at some point. Otherwise, you can make clueless statement like “I don’t understand why peoples like it”.

I’ll also won’t be giving them notes, because I think I’ll need more time to grade each show. And anyway I don’t think I can objectively judge them, at least not all of them at the same time.

The rest under the cut.

12) Gate: Thus the JSDF fought here

Plot: A gate to another world open in the middle of Tokyo, with roman soldiers and monsters coming out of it. After they repel the invasion, the JSDF (Japanese military) start their own invasion of the other world, to recover abducted citizens, get trade deal with the local lords, and overall flex to the rest of the two world.

An interesting premise that I feel is wasted. Modern vs magic is a cool concept, but it doesn’t work if instead of the two opposing side using one or the other, one side has both the tech and the magic, while the others has nothing. It’s an incredibly unbalanced conflict that still want you to take it seriously. The lack of understanding of real world politic, the denial of japan war-crime in china and korea, the main character seemingly being two completly different person wether the author want a powerful soldier or an otaku self insert, the pro colonial views, all of that make it my least favorite Isekai.

11) Rising of the Shield hero

The plot: Guy die in a library, and arrive in a fantasy world where a calamity is about to happen/is happening, and he is one of the 4 heroes supposed to stop it. But he is wrongfully accused of rape by the princess, and this become a social pariah who have to use underhanded tactics to survive and win, like owning slaves.

The central conflict is not as unbalanced as Gate, but has the same general problem of not delivering on the premise it set up to deliver. You start expecting a story of a social pariah, but quickly it turn out the MC isn’t as hated as expected, his enemies not as influential and powerful as they appeared. That, plus the main character’s morally questionable are treated rather lightly, or sometime even as the rational solution.

10) Familiar of Zero

Plot: In a fantasy world, aristocrat hold the power of magic, and are supposed to summon a familiar. A young noble with a very long name has the “misfortune” of summoning a living teenage boy from japan instead of a powerful beast like she hoped.

A frustrating love story where the character have little chemistry and constantly fight without doing much progress (or rather, it reset every season). The cooler setting and story is used as background for the much less interesting romance. A lot of the fanfics of it seem to be out of spite and desire to replace the passive, lazy and annoying Boy main character by someone who’s actually interesting and get the rest of the cast to develop a bit.

9) Overlord

The plot: In a cyberpunk future, a salaryman is the guild leader of the strongest guild in a vrmmorpg. When the game server are shut down, instead of being disconnected like expected, he instead become his avatar, a powerful lich, and all the guild NPC have also become alive. Also, he’s now in a completely different fantasy world.

Somehow, the power level balance is worse than with Gate. The show can tolerate it better at first due to the joke of the main character being paranoid and too careful to do anything, and the tension between his underlings, but it quickly become stall. “Too strong and too cautious” is a joke that work only so long.

Too bad, because the world-building is interesting, and a series fully built in this universe without external or overpowered characters would work well.

on a side note, I still hold a grudge with it because everytime I search for things about the video game Overlord (the one written by Rihanna Pratchett), I find 99% of LN stuff.

8) That time I got reincarnated as a slime.

the plot: Salaryman is stabbed, die, become a slime that can absorb the power of anything he eat, befriend a powerful dragon, and start making a city with the creatures of the setting (goblins, lizard peoples, ogres, etc...)

Pretty basic, but also doesn’t try to frame itself as a profound or groundbreaking show. This make it much more palatable and it’s easier to enjoy it.

7) kemonomichi, Rise up.

the plot: A Pro-wrestler with a furry fetish and a fondness for animals is invoked into another world to fight the demon lord, ignore his mission and try to create a pet shop with magical animal. He’s also rather handsy with the various animal peoples.

I lost braincell watching that one, and I’ll do it again. Like Slime, it’s about an idiot doing idiot things and it doesn’t pretend to be more than that. A bit more comedy based than Slime, but that okay,

6) Cautious hero

The plot: Goddess summon a hero that is overpowered, but also completely paranoid and overcautious. She need him to save the world, but he that’s difficult to push him to do the saving... or is it?

“Too strong but also too cautious” made well. The writer know when the joke stop working, and start the emotional climax with the right timing. By the time the end start, the MC carefulness is now fully justified because it’s the only thing allow him to fight on equal ground with his foes, and thus the tension of the latter fight isn’t completely gone.

You have to praise a writer who know what’s the appeal of his story, and when this appeal will go away.

5) Konosuba

The plot: A shut in die in a rather humiliating manner, only to be mocked in the afterlife by a goddess who need to fill a quota of “reincarnated heroes”. Out of spite, he use a loophole to get the goddess to come with him, which work due to how unpopular she was with her peers. now, the two + another duo of idiots work together since nobody else want to associate with them.

From the same author as Kemonomichi (actually, Konosuba is older than kemonomichi). It work surprisingly well because the characters are just annoying enough you like their punishment, but not enough that you want to leave. Even if they seem to have a caustic friendship, they have some degree of chemistry.

4) My next life as a villainess

The plot: A young and frankly annoying noble girl in a fantasy world hit her head, and suddenly remember her past life from the modern world. She also realize she’s the antagonist in a romance game, and set out to stop the ending where she is punished for being mean... And in the meantime, become the love interest of everyone else.

This one is good. As someone who always dreamed of a bisexual harem story, it deliver. All the attraction of the suitors feel justified (albeit, they are archetypical) and endearing, and even outside of the attraction, it’s pretty clear they are friends, not just with Catarina, but among each others. Overall, they all have good chemistry.

3) Ascendance of a bookworm

The plot: A librarian die and reincarnate into a sickly young girl in medieval world where the printed press still hasn’t be invented. Which is hard for a girl with a book obsession. So she set out to try to create books using her real world knowledge, and in the meantime cause changes in the economy and social structure of the world.

Worldbuilding, worldbuilding, and worldbuilding. That’s the core of this show, a lot of time is spent focusing on it. And not just the fancy stuff like what X lord think of Y baron. Here we’re talking the way of life of the little peoples, how they stock up the food before winter, where to they get their oil, how the merchant avoid fraud, etc...

Beyond that, the creation process of Main is pretty interesting. It’s not Dr stone where she create everything from zero, she’s constantly confronted of the inaccessibility of certain products or the fact some thing are tiring and take time.

There is also the more social elements of the story, that really start to show up toward the end of the first seasons, so I’m not exactly sure how this one will end.

Overall very good, would recommend if you’re into slow world building and economy.

2) Re:zero

The plot: A self-hating nerd is transported into another world, and die. But then he come back to a few hours ago, and realize after a few mess up that he’ll “respawn” every-time he die. Now he try to help a mysterious girl that helped him, and his friends, but even with resurrection power, it’s pretty hard.

I know Re:zero have a bit of a reputation as a “waifu show” because many peoples saw a certain character getting tons of fanarts and constantly getting talked about.

This is pretty sad because the scene that caused that was explicitly a critique of the waifu culture.

Anyway, Re:zero is perhaps the Isekai with the best plot structure. The returns allow to explore various aspect of the same character, giving them more depth. It also allow to create some interesting drama, by having the main character relationship with the supporting cast be uneven. Hell, it isn’t a gimmick used as a crutch, because the author can also pull it off without the use of return.

Beyond that, Re:zero is one of the few Isekai with a strong thematic element. It’s about the main character learning to confront his own preconceptions and flaws, or that peoples are multifaceted and that he can’t just pigeonhole them into one category. It’s about growing up, and it’s damn good at exploring this theme.

It’s a very good show, and a damn shame it got coined as the “waifuwar show” because it’s message flew over a lot of peoples head.

1) Log Horizon

The plot: All the players of an MMO are transported in the world of the game, a post apocalyptic earth with magic and the ruins of modern civilisation. Since they still respawn like in the game, they are immortal demigods in this world, and those tend to be VERY hard to manage, but some experienced players decide to do it.

First off: Log Horizon is the only thing I’ll consider a TRUE Isekai. All the others can have their story adapted to remove the involvement of our world. But this couldn’t work with Log Horizon. It is too dependent on the relationship between peoples and MMO and, to a lesser degree, internet community.

Now, for the others good stuff:

- A focus on the way a community will build in this situation. It’s not about lone hero beating things, it’s about how you stop a bunch of immortal peoples from losing their moral and dignity.

- NPCs became alive and sapient too, or rather, from their perspective, players went from soulless automatons that silently worked for them to a bunch of raving maniacs that were utterly traumatized. Each side has their own vision of the others as “not person”, and need to deal with the new situation. But at the same time, the Players are so much more powerful than NPCs that there is a power imbalances that sour the relationship, and it’s explored relatively well. So the “NPC” becoming sapient is explored at it’s fullest, even on things that peoples don’t immediately think off regarding that subject.

- Because this isn’t exactly the game, the players don’t know how things work exactly, and have to experiment and try new things. They need to mix their game knowledge and real life knowledge, and so instead of those knowledge being something that make them overpowered, it’s only a lead they can explore.

- What more, the world is changing. It’s slowly becoming more rich and complex, lore only characters becoming real, flavor text affecting reality and natural events the dev didn’t think off starting by themselves. So the players need to constantly adapt to a world that become less and less like the one they know.

- The world is a 1/2 scale of earth, with slightly changed environment. Thus, since it was played internationally, there are peoples of almost every country in the world, somewhere at their avatar location. That mean, and it is shown, that the MC solution and reaction to the new world isn’t universal, and that different places reacted differently.

- It explore the relation peoples have with games (and how it becoming real would affect you), from those who dedicate their life to it, those who know they have an addiction and see it as a prison, those who just want to try, those who see it as a source of enjoyment and want to share it with others, those who escape with it, etc... But also their view on society (tho the two are somewhat linked, at least in universe). Which mean there is a LOT of interesting conflict due to diverging worldview, but also a lot of mutual understanding.

It is, simply, an excellent show, albeit one that can be rather slow and verbose. I highly recommend it to anyone.

Now reminder. this is my reading and interpretation of the shows listed. If yours is different, it is no less valid, and I’ll be interested into hearing it. I also simplified some of them due to time constrain, so if you want to know more about one, go ahead.)

#ranking #review #somewhat #Isekai #Re:zero #log horizon #ascendance of a bookworm #hamefura #konosuba #Gate #cautious hero #Hataage! Kemono Michi #that time i got reincarnated as a slime #Overlord #familiar of zero #shield hero

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