What Makes a Good Isekai Anime?

With all of the Isekai anime out there, what actually makes for a good one?

By Nick Valdez

Isekai is one of the most popular subgenres in anime, manga, and light novels today, but it can be difficult to actually provide a good one. Isekai stories have been around for quite a long time with some of these stories of traveling to another world going back to Japanese folk tales, but modern Isekai as anime fans know it can be tracked back to a few sources. Depending on who you ask about what actually came first or what had more impact, Aura Battler Dunbine (released in the early 1980s) is likely the first major example of forcibly being transferred to another world. 

As Isekai light novels or original anime projects continued to flood the market in the decades since, we've seen all sorts of variations of the idea. There are worlds based on video games, fantasy locations, anime worlds based on other anime world, and so on. This even started reflecting in the main character in which they transform into something else entirely as it gets harder and harder to find a new angle on the idea. It's the ones that try a little bit harder than end up the best, however. 

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(Photo: Eight-Bit)

What Is a Good Isekai Anime? 

A "good" Isekai anime is naturally going to be a hard thing to pin down as fans seek out different things in their Isekai experiences. There are different ways to enjoy an Isekai. If we were to take the best qualities of the best examples, it'd be perfect. It starts at a good core with wanting an interesting other world to transport to. This is far from a generic fantasy setting (with the same circular town seen in many, many projects), but a world with its own rules, power systems, and layers within that world. For example, take something like Overlord or How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom. These series are focused on wide societal changes within their world rather than just the protagonist. 

You want a world that feels like stuff was going on before the protagonist is thrown into it regardless of which way it ends up working out. This new world should feel lived in, or at the least, feel like a concrete setting that a character that grow and change in. Secondly, you want a protagonist that's proactive. Regardless of whether you want a character that's there purely for wish fulfillment and ends up being the strongest in their universe by default (like Sword Art Online, Chronicles of an Aristocrat Reborn in Another World, or Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody), or one that's more well rounded, a good protagonist can make or break an Isekai. 

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The best Isekai protagonists are challenged, and while many of them are strong, there's an inherent struggle to each of their battles to balance things. Thirdly, you need an extended cast you want to see with personalities of their own. It can't just be a cast that's fawning all over the main character, it needs to be a cast that you get an idea that each one has something else going on outside of the main character's issues. Or at least bring different aspects to that central romance. 

With so many out there, what do you think makes a good Isekai anime? What are some of your favorites? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! 

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