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This Week in Anime
Are Any of the New Isekai Worth Watching?

by Steve Jones & Christopher Farris,

Viewers have limited time and a whole heap of isekai series dropped this season. Looking to spend some time in another world but don't know which one to start with? Chris and Steve went world-hopping to find the very creme of the isekai crop.

These series is streaming on Crunchyroll

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.


@Lossthief @BeeDubsProwl @NickyEnchilada @vestenet

Chris
Well, Steve, I hope you enjoyed the downtime this winter. Because a new season of anime has started in earnest, and that can only mean one thing.

Steve
That's right, it's time to pay the isekai tax! And after a fall anime docket uncommonly stacked with strong original and adaptational programming of the not-another-world variety, the debt we've accrued is relatively high this season.
Even paring things down to new, non-sequel series, as well as disregarding shows that are only "isekai-ish," like Reborn to Master the Blade, that still leaves us with six world-hopping fantasy shows. A high price, to be sure, but I bet that with teamwork and gumption, we can get it all paid off!
Yeah, it's not as bad as it looks at first blush. There's still quite a lot of detritus in a magic academy and/or a medieval Europe-inspired fantasy land, but we can only pin some of that on the isekai phenomenon exclusively. And after watching all six of our featured isekai shows, I enjoyed some of them! It pays to keep an open mind.
That's a thing! The last time we embarked on this exercise, some six months ago, it seemed like several shows then had overlap in terms of structure or characterizations feeling samey as the isekai genre is often accused of being. This Winter 2023 batch, by comparison, is made up of series that each has their own clear-cut 'gimmick' setting them apart, and some work well.

It doesn't mean we're free of magic stat sheets or protagonists who look like someone just mashed through the default selections on a character customization screen, but you know, baby steps.
When I'm on assignment, I'll take whatever blood from the isekai stone I can get. Though, despite the unique gimmicks, some series manage to make those work much better than others. And to kick us off, let's start at the bottom of my ladder with the show that literally put me to sleep: The Reincarnation of the Strongest Exorcist in Another World.

Not only is typing out the whole title an exhausting effort in itself, but it also takes a potentially interesting protagonist—an exorcist from feudal Japan, not a high school student hit by a truck—and mires everything in isekai clichés.
This was absolutely one that wound up defining itself for me based on how it felt like it should have been better than it was. I've always said that having more interest in isekai protags as characters before they reincarnated is something more of these series should do, and Strongest Exorcist has a lot of consideration for MC Seika's past mystic life and how it drives his attitude and actions upon making it into the RPG Maker universe.

But in practice, the gimmicky genesis is just an excuse to entertain those isekai standards, as you said. Does it really matter that Seika's "secretly overpowered" magical status results from his exorcism abilities when the result is still that basic trope we know too well from both the isekai and magic school genres?

Because, oh yeah, this show also goes to a magic school, by the way.
The story's so caught up in his super spirit powers that it forgets to give him a personality. Like, his only character trait is "scheming," and not even in an enjoyable way.

And it's doubly sad to see because the story also goes out of its way to give him a total dick of a brother to make him seem cool by comparison. It doesn't work!
It tries to tick all the boxes for characterizing its lead based on his reactions to the people and institutions in orbit around him (including, somewhat unbelievably, the fact that Strongest Exorcist is the only one of this isekai batch to feature slavery so far).

Maybe it's just a consequence of still being at the beginning of this story, but the show seems to want us to be impressed at Seika's hidden power and ability to have things go All According To Keikaku, without giving us any real reason yet to want to see him succeed at...whatever it is he's trying to do in this. Go to a magic school and live a successful life, I guess?
You have to give your audience some thread to grasp onto when you kick off your story. All I get out of Strongest Exorcist is a dude who says he wants to keep a low profile and then slaps a giant salamander. Make up your mind, bro. Or don't. I'm not watching any further, regardless.

By the way, I wasn't kidding about its soporific qualities. I finished this episode and then collapsed onto my bed for a two-hour nap.
It didn't affect me that adversely, but I will confirm that the pacing on the first episode of this one is absolutely agonizing. That's another thing I meant by saying it felt like it should have been better: There could've been some potential, but the presentation of the first part of the story is just in no hurry to get to whatever that may be.

If an anime is going to be slow and boring, it ought to at least commit to making that part of its presentational identity.
Ah yes, the subgenre of a subgenre, the good ol' "slow-life" isekai that imagines a magical world where society moves with a more grandfatherly pace. Where nobody's on Facebook talking about ivermectin. Where a man can work on his farmer's tan in peace—provided he has explicit permission from God Himself.
Sometimes multiple Gods. There's a whole theocracy bureaucracy to navigate.

So many isekai series are about the fundamental fantasy of being on Easy Street, whether that's through being overpowered, having cheat abilities, or being irresistible to women you may or may not legally own. Farming Life in Another World takes that vibe to a simplified apex: Reaping the rewards of the self-sustaining farm life with little of the back-breaking hard work usually required.
For me, this is emblematic of the self-defeating nature of many isekai stories. This dude's magic hoe robs his farming journey of the conflict that would have otherwise made it interesting. Like, I get that this show is supposed to be conflict-free, but as a viewer, what interests me about farming is the process, not the product. For instance, the best part of the episode is when he makes a toilet because that grounds his journey in something tangible that often gets overlooked by similar narratives. That's a hook! And a hole.
The little bits of struggle and conflict we see from Hiraku here are the most amusing part of the first episode. Like speaking of holes, I chuckled at him digging himself down into one, trying to hit water, realizing he needed to dig diagonally to avoid that. Funny and educational in the way a show like this could be!

"No, no, dig up, stupid!"
Exactly, I want more of that! The unequivocally better version of Farming Life, if you ask me, is this: guy gets reincarnated, tries to start a farm based on his knowledge from sim games, realizes that none of it maps onto real agriculture in a useful way, and then goes through the long, painful, yet ultimately rewarding process of learning how actually to farm. Instead, we get this Minecraft BS.
They do pay lip service to the idea that he had to figure out building more complex structures on his own, but then we skip past any of the experimentation phases to him having made nails out of wood and built a hut to crash in.

I will concede that this is a case of me knowing this isn't my bag, even as I'm also aware there's an audience that'll be down for what Farming Life is doing. The kinds of people who will throw it on in the background to help them unwind while they pass the time in Stardew Valley.
Unlike Strongest Exorcist, I can't get upset at this one. It's boring but inoffensively so. And at least I got a good laugh from hearing an all-powerful deity say, "Whoops, sorry, dude. I didn't mean to goof up your whole life so badly. Wanna take a mulligan on this one?"

Just too bad he couldn't have been reborn into a better anime.
Yeah, this is one where the complexity will increase at a deliberate clip, going by the opening of the first episode, where we see our hero become mayor of a village of hot, beer-chugging anime ladies. And the second episode introduces a cute spider and a cute vampire, but I wonder if that's enough to keep me following something when I know its style just 200% isn't for me.

This means it's time for us to start digging into the real fanservice.
Hey, what's more fantastically fanservicey than believing I might be able to retire someday?
About time we had a protagonist with a relatable and down-to-earth motivation.
Achievable through the universally-applicable methods of free enterprise and firearms.
You, too, can achieve financial independence and security with this one weird trick! Accountants HATE her.
This is also where we start gettin' into the weird ones. The mechanics of 80,000 Gold are a world apart from other world-warping stories since protagonist Mitsuha can switch between the isekai and her own sekai at will. Naturally, she immediately decides to exploit technology gaps and exchange rates to enrich herself.

It's distinctive, sure, but it also exists alongside other oddities in the show's arrangement, like the initial language barrier that results in that indecipherable Nude Mom exchange you led with, or just the general sense of how off a lot of this premiere feels.
It's pretty smart about avoiding a lot of isekai pitfalls. Another interminable thing about Strongest Exorcist and Farming Life, for instance, is how much time we spend in the protagonists' heads as they go on and on monologuing about their activities. Mitsuha instead has her deceased brother act as a spirit guide for her isekai adventures, opening a dialogue that is equally grim and quite great.

There are a lot of places where the focus on Mitsuha's planning and preparation could lead this show down the same path as Strongest Exorcist in terms of trying to be a substitute for characterization. But 80,000 Gold knows enough to anchor what its lead is trying to do to her home world issues of losing her family and her post-school prospects not looking great.

But it's also another one where the pacing, especially in the first half of the opening episode, felt oddly languid, and introducing all its myriad mechanics threw me off in terms of figuring out where it was going.
It's far from perfect, but Mitsuha is plucky and likable enough to root for, even when she's taking a butcher knife to a pack of wolves just looking for some lunch.
That's another aspect where the show feels more askew to me after I checked out the second episode, where Mitsuha graduates to buying guns from PMCs and justifying going all The Punisher on bandits.


It just turns that initially earnest effort toward something that feels more pragmatic and cynical. Even though you know I enjoy an anime girl brandishing firearms as much as the next viewer.
I can't say I ever expect these series to be tasteful, so I find the concept of an isekai protagonist carrying a Glock into RPG World very funny. You go, girl. Spew that lead and get that bread.
Fair enough! And even though we're not expecting these things to be tasteful, we can still hope for them to have flavor!
Ah yes, Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill. Not only is it another mouthful, but it's also my favorite isekai premiere to star a guy who rivals Tobias Fünke in the innuendo-laden dialogue department.
What are you talking about? This is just a dimensionally-displaced hero coming to understand the benefits of giving everyone his otherworldly sausage.
What kind of sucker wouldn't want to slurp down a tube of meat that adds 2% to your total MP? That's a flavor and a statistical win in my book.
It's a gimmicky twist to the JRPG-mechanic isekai formula that works because it is obvious in hindsight. Games with food-crafting systems always bequeath status buffs from those meals, so it makes sense that Mukoda's dishes made of pre-packed Fantasy Amazon ingredients would work like that, even if he hadn't immediately considered it.

Also, not for nothing that this show is pretty adept at making Mukoda's meat look plenty delectable.
Food porn goes a long way toward making Campfire Cooking palatable. Production-wise, the rest of the show is pretty boilerplate, but I have to credit them with adding extra sauce where it counts the most. Although MAPPA has as much on its plate as it does, I can imagine this line of dialogue being spoken verbatim to the animation directors.
I'm happy for MAPPA's famously overburdened team to have something they seem to be getting to take it easy on, animation-wise. And even then, this thing still looks good, between the food and the lovely backgrounds.

"Taking it easy" also seems to be the general vibe this show is going for. It's akin to Farming Life but a little more calculated in its deployment. Like Mukoda being an older, wiser guy who opts to do the campfire cooking travelogue thing in lieu of the demon king quest he correctly assesses as super sus.
Many isekai protags tend to be preternaturally savvy thanks to their extensive video game knowledge, so it's refreshing to see a grown-ass adult who knows what poor management looks like on sight and vows to skedaddle as soon as possible. Keep your head down and slip between the cracks. That's my kind of hero.
Campfire Cooking wasn't my favorite of this batch of isekai premieres, but it was the one that made me relate in terms of this being the sort of thing I would first try to do if I took my own trip on the one-way Truck-kun express.
It also has a decent sense of humor. Like all the adventurers oohing and ahhing over Mukohda's soup while he carefully shoves the flavor packets out of sight. It goes a long way toward making him more relatable.
Yeah, it's akin to those posts about blowing the minds of medieval peasants by feeding them Doritos, but it's presented with a degree of knowing charm.

Maybe it says a lot about my age and attitude that this is the stuff I project on like other isekai viewers imagining themselves as the world's strongest mage. I'm still not sure it's enough to guarantee I'll follow it for a whole season.
It doesn't quite crack my isekai aversion, but like 80,000 Gold, it has enough identity and personality to be an easy pick for audiences less jaded than I am.
Well, jeez, if delicious campfire-cooked meals can't get you to open your heart to isekai, what else could pick that lock?
How about a woman with an affinity for big suits of armor? If she can't pick the lock, she can smash it.
Handyman Saitou in Another World has a gimmick that's right there in the title, sure, but it also has a lady in full plate armor with a big sword and a money-grubbing fairy who charges her party members for healing magic. So just a lot of bonuses right out of the gate.
Not to mention it has jokes that made me laugh. No self-aware jabs at the audience's ribs, just a good old-fashioned gag about being old as dirt.
Hey, we were just talking about these shows being relatable!
It's worth noting that Handyman Saitou is structured the most like a comedy out of all of these. Rather than go with an A-to-B narrative, it's split into vignettes and sketches with setups and punchlines.
It's absolutely, obviously based on a comic strip. Several bits aren't even connected to the titular handyman and his party. Instead, it tags in completely different setups about dwarves with unconventional class builds and adorable puppy companions.

There are several sensible chuckles in there for sure, and the structure does that thing where if one punch-line didn't work for you, there's no problem just moving right along to the next one.
Yeah, while I can't say I got my gut busted by any of its bits, it did well enough that I wouldn't mind sticking around to see if it can sustain that format for a couple more full-length episodes. I also like that Saitou is just a guy in this one. No special powers. No gifts from god. He knows his way around an Allen wrench and subscribes to that lock-picking lawyer on YouTube.
It's downright refreshing that the sum total of his motivations here seems to be simply appreciated for doing his job well. Indeed, relatable for anybody who's engaged with the real-world employment system, but it also helps this party of adventurers feel like actual comrades even at the very beginning of this show instead of mere fantasy archetypes and vectors for jokes.
It best gets at the wish-fulfillment angle of isekai without veering into a cringe power fantasy. And it throws enough warmth at you to not feel too acerbic, either. All that, plus good character designs, plus a solid handle on its sense of humor—that's a pretty nice premiere right there.
I hope they're able to lean more into the good-natured side of the humor there, compared to the off-color (if admittedly kinda funny) dick jokes or the way they proved they couldn't help themselves with their treatment of Raelza in the second episode.


Dunno that I need this fully turning into an anime version of Oglaf.
Well, I've got just the thing if you want an isekai anime that treats its heroine with dignity.

Oops, wrong screenshots. Oh well.
No, no, these are all absolutely accurate to the appreciable appeal of Anis.

Pretty much any isekai series would be improved by having their protag be an unapologetic little weirdo. The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady is a prime example, even with another one of those stupidly long titles.
Yep, it turns out it's a good idea to skip past the usual isekai rigmarole and get right to the part where we learn that our heroine is a tiny freak who takes performance-enhancing stimulants and loves women. That's the most surefire way into your audience's heart.

Subtlety? This show's never heard of it.

Like I do not want to bury the lede on this one: Magical Revolution was easily my favorite of these premieres, actually one of my favorite new shows from this season overall. And the biggest component of that was Anis having more personality and face game in her pinky finger than 90% of the potato-tagonists of seasonal isekai shovelware combined.

It's funny, this was the first of these episodes I watched, and my takeaway was "good, but could stand to be a little less isekai-pilled." Little did I know how bland some of the other series would be. So now that I'm returning to MagiRevo, it looks radiant.
A lot of it is still based on familiar structures. Like Anis's eventual bride-to-be is having her own otome game villainess plot happening in the other half of the first episode. And it's all self-serious intrigue and drama played too straight.


At least until Anis literally crashes in at the end to redact that 'straight' part.
Crashes your party, kidnaps your (ex-)fiancée, refuses to elaborate.
The last couple of seasons sure have been good for premieres with girl-girl marriage proposals.

I mean, they're no golf wives, but they are still plenty respectable.
I am still determining if Anis and Euphy here will fill the big shoes of previous seasonal couples like Eve/Aoi, Chisato/Takina, or Suletta/Miorine, but I'm hoping they can try.

But anyway, Magical Revolution works overall because it's anchored to Anis as such a strong protagonist. Even in those more dramatized earlier bits with her brother and Euphy, we've got Anis bouncing her way into the background, obliviously making awful puns. And the way the show thus far has glossed over her 'Reincarnated' status is good since it lets her feel less like merely an isekai protagonist and more like a...regular character.

Whoa, Chris, are you saying that isekai stories might benefit from toning down the overplayed in-group signifiers so they can instead focus on the basics of fantasy storytelling?
Astonishing stuff befitting a series with "Revolution" in its title, to be sure. But it is that same old adage regarding critical coverage of this stuff: Isekai itself isn't inherently flawed as a genre; it's just that there are so many isekai that don't put in the work to be good.
And all that being said, I'm big enough to admit that this season's new isekai turned out better than I expected. By my tally, we got two bad premieres, two okay ones, and two that were pretty darn enjoyable.
It's not a bad turnout at all. Given the propensity of the gimmicks powering this batch's success (and "success"), I'm almost of the mind that the years of floundering and finding itself have let the isekai genre start to refine things. It may be finally reaching a point where we move past the copied homework setups to let stories use the opening framework to try new, exciting things.

Or this season is just a fluke, and we'll be back to a dozen "Reincarnated With My Little Sister As My Elf Slave" shows for Spring 2023.
You know, for as much as I knocked on the show, maybe it's a good idea to get started on that exorcism stuff right now.
A world that's been fully rid of bad isekai? Now that's one I wouldn't mind being reincarnated into.
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