For me, I’m torn between Mushoku Tensei (very good worldbuilding) and Uncle From Another World (has the better direction)
Digimon & Inuyasha
At risk of showing my age, The Twelve Kingdoms blows most modern isekai out of the water, even with its flaws. The MC‘s journey and character growth is amazing, and the world building is incredibly unique.
Re:ZERO or Ascendance of a Bookworm (underrated in my opinion).
Ascendance of a Bookworm is amazing. I really hope it gets some more seasons soon.
Ascendance of a Bookworm is a favorite of my wife and I. We’ve rewatched it a few times, as it has a cozy feel to it sometimes. I really hope they continue the story but it is at a decent enough stopping point if doesn’t get any more seasons.
The next season was announced in December of 2023 and it’s changing studio to Wit Studio, so hopefully they do a good job of it. I’ve rewatched it and it’s great for being both relaxing and engaging at the same time, planning to read the light novel at some point.
Konosuba
So many isekais have great starts, but fall off execution in the second season. Maybe they run out of ideas, or just had a good concept, but then lacked creativity to keep the plot interesting… So there are a lot of S1’s
Sword Art Online Season 1
Log Horizon Season 1
Level 99 Villainess
Shangri-La Frontier
Rising Of The Shield Hero Season 1
Overlord
Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation
I really liked Uncle from another world too, but I wouldn’t list it to that question. I guess because it’s more of a comedy than with a spanning story and depth or development.
Scrolling through the comments to remember some of them,
- Mushoku Tensei - great - the first two seasons have exceptional world building, story telling, contrasting, and developments; not everything is great, but a lot is; for me, last two seasons fell off a bit
- Grimgar - very good - very unique, great world and characters and relationship between them
- Ascendance of a Bookworm - very good
- The Eminence in Shadow - very good - exceptional satire
- The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady - very good until the ending, with exceptional visuals and vibrancy
- Life with an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout - very good - great comedy with a gender bend/swap
/edit: Found two more from my list of good/decent non-harem isekais I replied to some no longer existing lemmy post.
Unrelated to isekai, but I saw from your site that you migrated from Wordpress to Hugo. What method did you use to do that? I have an old wordpress site that I keep running for somebody, but it isn’t actively updated anymore. If I could convert that to static html and host it using something like github pages, that would be awesome. I looked into it once before, but there were a bunch of different plugins and methods, so the inertia of not doing it won out.
Space Jam.
Honest answer, much like typical shonen series I find isekai really boring and hard to watch. If I see “reincarnated” or “another world” in a show’s title it’s pretty much an instant pass from me.
Give me more DanDaDan dubs pls.
My favorite isekai is Farscape.
But if it has to be anime: Inuyasha.
Reincarnated as a vending machine, I now wander the dungeon is my latest favorite. It’s funny and a cute show.
Konosuba Since it’s a parody.
I don’t like isekai.
Overall, probably Slime Isekai. It’s got a good mix of wholesomeness, action, comedy, and world building. And it has just the right amount of OP in the MC.
Overlord is a good runner up. Great character development, good story and humor, intriguing world, etc.
Mushoku is easy top 5 but the bullying and horny drop it down a few notches for me.
Konosuba is also top 5. It nails the parody.
For non-anime, Reincarnated as a Sword is my favorite isekai light novel series, not that I’ve read all that many isekai light novels. However the anime adaptation was mediocre at best. It barely touches on the deep world creation and character development found in the LN.
For video game isekai, Shangri-La Frontier. No trapped in a video game nonsense. No completely unrealistic game mechanics. The game feels like it could be a real game. And the MC is OP only in the sense that they’re good at games, not because of cheats.
Villainess isekai is practically it’s own thing now and I have my favorites there as well but the classic is All Routes Lead to Doom.
I really love isekai so I could keep going but I’ll stop here before I start talking about Trapped in a Dating Sim.
Every one you mentioned is great! I really enjoy all of the villainess isekai, and Trapped in a Dating Sim is really a hilarious variation that came early in the dating sim sub genre. I love it when the main character is a villain.
Ngl, the Trapped in a Dating Sim anime is what got me reading more light novels. The anime wasn’t perfect by any means, but it was still so good. I wanted more of that world and the light novels didn’t disappoint.
I’ll let you guess from my instance 😁
Ascendance of a Bookworm. A really good one!
Being a parody, it subverts most tropes of isekai anime. Its humor is exactly my type too.
Honorable mentions:
Most other isekai anime have the same cookie-cutter plot, making them so predictable and boring. Or they have an interesting premise, but waste it with poor writing and dumb characters.
I’m Standing on a Million Lives - My First and Favourite
