The Isekai Saturation Heightens – This Week in Anime

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Nick and Nicky wade through this season’s otherworldly offerings to search for at least one gem in a trove of trash.

These series are streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation

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.

Nicky

Hey, there Nick! A new anime season means a truckload of new series. That same Truck-kun also happens to be going full speed, ignoring all traffic laws known to man, and coming right for us. Ahhhh!! Look out! It’s time for the summer’s isekai run-down!!

Nick

Don’t worry Nicky, with all the cool and inventive fantasy universes out there in the wide world of fiction, I’m sure we’re in for some fun, unique, totally memorable adven—

Aww piss. Another god damn circle town.

We’ll be fighting off the first episodes of five totally different fantasies of “being transported to another world.” While we normally wouldn’t lump stuff together this way, it seems like we get so many isekai every season that the only way to combat them is to group them up and start spamming AoE abilities like a bunch of low-level mobs. Steve and Jean-Karlo did this last season, so now it’s our turn in the Isekai Dungeon Mines.

This season is especially rife with isekai series. We’re only covering the new series here, but there’s three other sequel seasons airing now too. Roughly one quarter of this season is just isekai series and it’s genuinely kind of ridiculous. You’d think authors would have run out of ways to send random shmucks to fantasy worlds by now, but nope! Still a million ways to isekai in the east.

This repetitively titled series is probably the one that sticks closest to the formula of isekai light novel shows these days. You got your everyday Japanese high school who dies in an accident and gets reincarnated in Fantasy World, and wouldn’t ya know it he has super special magic powers! Sadly those powers don’t include taking showers.

We open with a tender moment between our protagonist, Haruto, and his kid sweetheart swearing loyalty to each other before parting, y’know, as kids do? Then skip to many years later where fatal tragedy strikes, unable to live up to his promise as a young adult.

His memories are then transported impoverished boy living in the slums, Rio. A dirt-boy who doesn’t really know what to do with any of that information and really only cares about getting revenge for his mother.

It’s a weird—if slightly novel—decision, that. It’s somewhat similar to the weird mind-mixing stuff in The Ascendance of a Bookworm with Main. But it also kind of begs the question of why this is even an isekai story and not just a traditional fantasy show.

It’s not like anything in the story of a slum orphan rescuing a princess is enhanced by him vaguely remembering what a traffic jam is, y’know?

We don’t get to see much of Haruto’s personality to get a good feel on him, but Rio’s circumstances from poverty to magic powers are interesting enough on their own. Why tack on the extra tropes? The isekai genre hasn’t stopped us from getting straight-up fantasy series, but it sometimes feels like the premise is simply an easy way of establishing familiarity in a new setting. In Spirit Chronicles case, it only establishes a lack of confidence. Nothing about the premiere is bad but none of it felt super original either.

Also, why does the main dude look like Kirito in the OP? Like…c’mon.

Now now, let’s be fair. He looks like Kirito and the guy from Mahouka’s love child. Which is fitting because I’m pretty sure this show is also going to be a Magic High School series too.

Mm mm, Isekai and Magic School. It’s like a mayonnaise Reese’s Cup.

We get so many of these that everything just starts meshing together like mashed potato-kuns. There’s no reason a show can’t be good while walking well-worn ground, but when you’re competing against so many other shows just in the current this season, more series should try harder to standout. We get a few interesting crumbs, like how Rio is treated by others for being a low-class child of immigrants, but that’s not close enough to a full meal.

Yeah, there could be something here examining how Rio, despite doing the right thing, is initially implicated and punished to try and make an uncomfortable political situation go away. But I have 0 faith the show is going to really dig into that idea.

I’m like 90% sure it’ll just turn out this one cop is a bad guy who’s in on the attempt to kidnap the princess, and nothing will ever come up on how they’re just allowed to torture orphans to get confessions.

The first episode also just moves pretty fast. The opener isn’t always the best impression of a story, especially when it’s usually trying to cram in the most dramatic beats. I also found it lacking in unique characterization when Rio could be interesting if more time was dedicated to setting him apart from the Potato-kun inside him.

The ED also implies that he’s not the only one that got isekai’d, so it might play on that more. But it’s not enough to make me invested.

I’ll give Spirit Chronicles this much: it has a plot. It’s not a terribly interesting one, and the dull as dirt aesthetic makes me negative amounts of interested in watching more, but it has a story that it starts to tell from minute 1. And that’s more than I can say for its nearest competitor:

For me, the fact that nothing happens in Drug Store in Another World, might as well be its selling point. We don’t get to see this guy tragically isekai’d in the first episode. The only hint is the title card that says he used to be a salaryman, and now he’s running a little store with a ghost and a dog.

I’m generally not for this kind of iyashikei thing anyway, but I can enjoy some stakesless nonsense if I’m in the mood. I’m genuinely excited that we’re getting another season of Restaurant to Another World, after all! But the key to making this kind of show work is in the atmosphere and aesthetics, and this pale, pastel cup of children’s cough syrup doesn’t have it.

Oh yeah, the visuals are not great, but it didn’t bother me. I can’t speak much for most of the jokes, as they aren’t punchy. Everything about this is like, supremely lame! But also comfy? So at least I can see how it’s enjoyable compared to the one billionth “hero’s journey” story.

For these kinds of shows I’m all about vibes, and this one is far from a lo-fi hip-hop stream I can study to. Especially not when its first episode features stories like “Kirio sells potions, makes money, The End.”

Though, uh, props to the Potion Reseller he makes a deal with being able to…fuck his wife more? I guess?

If this guy came up with a good contraceptive in this isekai world he’d be LOADED.

I’d say I’d use it to fall asleep, but I’m already watching The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent from last season.

Plus you’d be scared awake when this lady shows up.

I sometimes read r/relationships posts before bed, too, y’know? You can’t tell me what to do!

Though, I wasn’t really sure what to think about the show being like “ha ha my girlfriend is crazy and possessive” as a joke, at first. I think the fact that it’s otherwise chill kept it from feeling too mean when Kirio decides to help by offering an herbal anxie-tea treatment.

The whole thing just made my eyes roll. “Oh no, my girlfriend literally tries to murder me because she’s wracked with mental illness. Thank god some herbal tea is all she needs to stop being abusive and possessive, teehee~”(edited)

Like come on, if you’re gonna have a fantasy pharmacist from modern day, at least have him create Magic Lithium or something with his scientific knowledge, god damn.

I think being nice is its own fantasy. I saw Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear do the same thing, but that show had infinitely more bear punches in it. There are times where Kirio gets weird thinking about his friend’s ghost-panties or whatever, which makes him a not-so-nice guy, but it’s tame.

Honestly, at least that’s a bit of characterization. The rest of the episode he could be a cardboard cutout standing next to a box of herbal tea and it wouldn’t make any difference. Well, besides having some weird combo of Pet and Daughter in the wolf girl.

Maybe it’s just that the bar for this crap is so low it’s underground, but I’d expect any one of these shows to be way creepier about its animal-eared girls. Just meeting moderate standards of human decency can be a surprise sometimes.

Anime gives me trust issues.

I mean these things rarely start off full-creep. But If It’s for My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord showed that doesn’t preclude this show from ending with with Kirio marrying the wolf toddler.

Again, not that I’m going to find out because the one miracle cure this show did manage was a permanent fix to my chronic insomnia.

Well you better stay awake cuz we’ve got even more exciting titles like checks notes How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom. Oh boy. The only thing more exciting than a fantasy world is the fantasy world’s taxes.

Hey, it worked in Log Horizon for a couple seasons, who says balancing a magical checkbook can’t be interesting?

Plus this series at least doesn’t feature another Kirito clone. Though the main heroine does basically look like Asuna if she wore pants.

Anime girls often show a despairing lack of pants, so any addition is a net-positive

Also a noted departure from the manga adaptation, which gives her an absolute dumptruck ass to fill out those trousers.

A fitting decision, since the only thing this show is actually horny for is Civil Engineering.

Anyway, one day while doing his homework our hero is transported to another world to be sold-off for money?! Turns out all that warring with oncoming demon threats is very expensive with little pay-off.

I do like the twist in this one. Instead of being summoned by a stoic and desperate king, our hero is brought to Isekai Land by a bumbling failson who wears authority about as well as he wears his facial hair.

He looks like a sad version of The Burger King and he’s constantly apologizing like, “Damn, sorry to bother you, but can we like use you to pay off our debts and solve all our problems, pretty please?” To which our hero is the most calmly pissed-off about it he can be.

“Fuck off you sad King Radical knock-off. You’re interrupting my 17th game of Civ 6 this week.”

It’s a shame this dude looks like the generic placeholder for a Make Your Own Anime Character game, because he at least has something approaching a personality.

I think some of the delivery could be better too, from a direction standpoint. It also has this weird obsession changing the camera angle to make the talking more interesting, but it never really works. Seeing the main character actually take control of the situation feels novel where as most protagonists would have no choice but to be a powerless victim. You gotta admire that kind of self-respect.

It’s also at least a bit of a different power fantasy than you usually see here. Souma doesn’t become king because he’s blessed with divine power, but because he was a colossal nerd who researched city planning and domestic commerce instead of having a social life.

That doesn’t make the show interesting, unfortunately, but it’s a specific niche that I could see scratching a certain itch the way other hyper-specific anime do.

I put it up with Bookworm. A lot of the fantasy is about the ability to do some vertical math, and while I think guys who have an attitude about how being logical makes them superior are totally obnoxious, he never seems to have an ego about it. The show isn’t totally lacking in heart either, opening on a touching scene between Souma and his grandfather.

And that grandfather’s name…was Shinzo Abe.

and that’s why he gets permission to fuck the king’s daughter.

Thankfully for her, Souma doesn’t see her as a piece of meat, but rather as useful workforce. So she can eventually fall in love with him while he files paperwork at the horse DMV.

Her parents don’t even make a big deal about the engagement or anything, they’re just super casual like, “Yeah sure, do whatever you want, honey.” Another case where the total lack of the conventional drama is refreshing, but also not exactly riveting since there isn’t much to replace it with yet. Kazuma doesn’t even necessarily want the power he’s handed. He only desires to do a good job and save his own skin in the process.

Yeah it’s just not very engaging television if you’re not super into like, documentaries about traffic light patterns. Though I did have a hearty laugh at this sitcom-ass ending to the premiere:

While we’ve had a couple of potato protags with mostly noble intentions, what about a guy that is not-so-noble? What if whatever transported schmuck was actually a big ol’ jerk?! The Dungeon of Black Company has you covered.

I mean, this certainly isn’t the first isekai series starring a sociopathic monster. It’s just this is the first to admit it. And to Kinji’s credit, he may be a scum-sucking leech who drives working class monsters through hellish crunch, but at least he doesn’t own any slaves.

Once upon a time, Kinji was gazing down upon the masses from atop his very own kingdom. He saved up his money to invest in overseas real estate and live the dream of never having to actually work. He basks in his own achievement of becoming the ultimate parasite of society, a fucking landlord! But all of that slipped away the instant he falls into another world and into the grips of a back-breaking labor company.

Not gonna lie, this was actually a series I had a good amount of hope for. After the last year and some change, I’m in the mood for some pitch-black humor, and since we don’t seem to be getting any more Cells at Work! Code Black anytime soon, an isekai Always Sunny skewering exploitative work culture seemed like a great replacement.

The Dungeon of Black Company definitely lives up to its name of being a pitch-black comedy, but I think whether you find it funny or not definitely depends on how much you can tolerate Kinji. He’s clearly shit and there’s something a little delightful about that even if it’s just to mire his suffering. It’s not my definition of a “feel-good” time.

I’ve very much in the mood for this kind of humor right now, but unfortunately the first episode left me wanting in a lot of ways. Mostly I just don’t think the writing is sharp enough yet. A lot of jokes are funny in theory, but not in execution, so the biggest laugh I got out of this premiere was that the dragon girl is named Rim.

Like hey, Rim, Kinji’s got a job for you. Something only you can do. You might even call it a Rim jo—

Being crude and dark can be a lot of fun, but it takes a deft hand to make that entertaining and not just needlessly cruel. It’s clear that we’re not really supposed to endorse Kinji’s outlook, but given the situation, I’m not really sure what he’s supposed to learn from any of it? He spends the whole first episode trying to find bigger ways to grift his way from the bottom rung. He can never really dig himself up from his own hole as every plot he has gets foiled by his own hubris.

I imagine the ultimate moral would be for him to realize he’s not inherently better than his fellow exploited, bottom-rung workers and maybe develop some solidarity with them. But Kinji has a terminal case of Late Capitalism Brain so that probably won’t happen until he’s gone through several dozen more get-rich-quick schemes.

Oh yeah, he’s definitely gonna be taking remedial lessons from the School of Hard Knocks, but unlike Cells at Work! Code Black, I don’t really think it carries enough weight to embrace the kind of horror or sympathy necessary for the audience to get anything out of it that isn’t just nihilistic and mean.

I also wouldn’t want a story where Kinji learns the “value of hard work” without changing anything about the company either, because there’s no value in being exploited. It needs to punch up hard in order to drive a good message home.

M
Pretty much. Plus Kinji still gets off too easy in the first episode. Mind controlling your coworkers until they drop near-death from exhaustion deserves more than a ~~mild pummeling~~ getting your ass (b)eaten by a dragon.

Again, naming her Rim was a Choice.

She’s also not even the best dragon girl of this batch so far!!

Ah yes, we’ve saved the best for last!

I had very little expectations for Tsukimichi -Moonlit Fantasy-. On the surface, it doesn’t break the mold of isekai, but it wholly succeeds in its execution and self-awareness to the point of actually being the only one that is actually funny.

I’m not gonna blow smoke and claim Tsukimichi is amazing, but it’s the only one of this batch of otherworld stories that I actually plan to watch more of in my free time. And it’s entirely because it’s just silly and lighthearted enough to excuse itself.

The humor is not any less corny than some of the other more dorky-style shows, but I prefer it to seeing another completely self-serious version for the umpteenth time. The frequent art style shifts also make whatever lame joke stick better. Natsuki Hanae gives a pretty good performance as Makoto.

Look, after Spirit Chronicles I was just excited to see anything with personality, and God promising to destroy our hero’s embarrassing anime tiddy merch as a send-off present hit my funny bone.

It helps that he and the god Tsukuyomi have an immediately good rapport. It’s also not really about him being The Chosen One out of nowhere, and actually it’s his PARENTS that were once heroes who reverse-isekai’d on the condition that they’d give up what was most important to them someday. Makoto consents to go in order to spare his two sisters his fate.

Also he’s definitely not the chosen one because the goddess of this world hates looking at him. Literally tells him to fuck off to the ends of the earth and don’t have kids. Truly brutal.

I appreciate this show giving me many useful images.

But hey, that actually turns out to be a blessing. Otherwise he’d never have gotten to meet the best girl of this season.

Finally, an isekai with Miss Piggy.

Listen, you see enough tsundere redheads and blonde knights in these shows, you start to crave some variety among the heroines. So giving us an orc girl voiced by Saori Hayami is like an oasis in the desert.

I will say he’s also kinda a coward for trying to ditch on her romance path though.

Look, his heart belongs to the tall girl he left behind. I can respect that.

At least in this world he has a few other perks that aren’t height-related. The goddess didn’t grant him much, but she did give him the ability to speak and read any language. Tsukuyomi-bro had the courtesy to take off his earth-weights so he can punch harder than Goku without even trying. However, this is not enough to make him seem cool.

Oh he’s a total goober, but that’s what makes him charming. It helps that even he’s aware of it.

Yeah, it’s more fun that he owns how lame he is and how he just stumbles into victory by accident.

Even while trying to leave the orc community, he falls flat and awakens the boss monster. The dragon ends up putting him in his own Mind Prison after he beats it up, but the dragon is so entertained by his little brain drama that it wants to team-up instead.

She totally seems like a MUCH better dragon girl than any of these other weird pact relationships.

Actually I think the dragon’s just a weeb, to where she agrees to a soul pact entirely so she can see more samurai movies in his brain.

Though if this were a truly great show, she’d just stay a giant lizard and he’d travel along with her like the follow-up to Dragon Goes House-Hunting.

You’re probably right given how we see her watching films on her “laptop” in the cold open, but doesn’t sound as nice. Unfortunately the general isekai-audience is too cowardly to enjoy just dating a whole dragon (Unless you played Drakengard).

But yeah, Tsukimichi isn’t amazing, but its humble reach does not exceed its grasp. That’s more than anything else we’ve covered here. If folks are at all curious about if any of the 10 million isekai series this year are worth watching, go with that one.

I don’t hate the genre on principal but we’re swimming in them. We’re doing a real community service by trying to find the ones that even mildly break the formula. If none of the offers here today appeal to you, there’s always stuff leftover from the past few seasons. And if that stuff is no good, just wait, because there’s always more. The infinite amounts of isekai are truly endless!