Winter 2025
13 January, 2025
There are those who are concerned about isekai taking over anime, but on the whole, I think they are incorrect. 2024 saw an awful lot of sequels and an awful lot of non-isekai anime; as much as I enjoyed many of its series, isekai was only one genre among many.
That said, with a whopping 12 full-length TV anime series this season, only three of them sequels, and a bunch more isekai-adjacent fantasy LN adaptations (one of them, Botsuraku Yotei no Kizoku dakedo, Hima Datta kara Mahou wo Kiwametemita even a case of same-world reincarnation!) such fans have ample cause for complaint; I, on the other hand, am thoroughly enjoying it.
If I can identify a trend in this season, beyond finally getting a bunch of new stories after only two last time around, it is that the majority feature salarymen as the protagonists; Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken inspired a rise of unusual or weak monster reincarnations first, but this immensely popular franchise has influenced isekai in more ways than one. Isekai audiences in the narou-kei era have long skewed on the older side, and I suppose it's an understandable progression; they have more money than NEETs to spend on LNs/merch/manga and all. One might think (or at least hope) that success in working life would be enough to make someone happy, or at least less desperate to escape; alas, regardless of one’s position, this world far too often remains profoundly unsatisfying.
Salaryman ga Isekai ni Ittara Shitennou ni Natta Hanashi makes the most of the storytelling potential inherent in this character type; it is hard to imagine Konosuba’s Kazuma or Re:Zero’s Subaru becoming nearly as effective a diplomat as this anime’s title character.
Uchimura Dennosuke, an overworked salaryman, is headhunted by the setting’s demon king to join his Shitennou – a term which has been translated in many ways, but in this context I think Monster Farm: Enbanseki no Himitsu/Monster Rancher’s “big bad four” gets the point across well.
Unlike his comrades, however, he’s not wanted for any otherworldly demonic powers; force can create an empire, but ruling one requires administration and diplomacy. One can not rule from horseback, as the saying goes. With a cute (if unfortunately censored, compared to her manga outfit) salamander girl named Ulmandra as his senpai - albeit one better at fire breathing than at persuasion - Dennosuke’s able to smooth over cultural misunderstandings with a giant minotaur and bring the ogres, facing an impending succession struggle, into a subsidiary alliance… complete with said ogre princess Olulu, who views Ulmandra as something of a love rival, being posted to the Maou as ambassador.
It’s clearly following Tensura’s formula, but its a fun one, and making the main character not the (eventual) maou himself but a diplomat working on his behalf is different enough to be interesting. Or maybe I’m just a strategy geek, but I’m definitely enjoying this series, so far.
Izure Saikyou no Renkinjutsushi also gives us a salaryman… but he’s de-aged to 17 in the other world. An accident with a UFO catcher, an apologetic god, and the desire for a slow life somewhere peaceful, but having to fight monsters sometimes without meaning to. He picks Alchemist as his job (character class) as it looks like it would suit his goals.
We’ve seen it all before, Potion-danomi de Ikinobimasu! comes to mind.
Then again, Izure Saikyou’s protagonist has a pet spider. Kaede, with a habit of tying characters up, and she does kind of steal the show; she’s the best spider I’ve seen this side of Kumo desu ga, nani ka?'s Kumoko.
Episode two is a bit more interesting than the opening; the character gifts his hometown a nice magic wall and has to say goodbye, but gets a new cloak to remember a place that has become his home. New traveling companions, and Kaede’s varying opinions of them. His potions have him get in good with a noble, who strongly recommends the main character buy a slave; its sensible enough in a setting before wage labor, but the overworked MC is horrified by the thought.
Also, this show doesn’t cut away from the bathroom question: the protagonist makes one for himself with magic, and has a request to make more; alas, like many a premodern city, there’s no city-wide sanitation system.
Arafoo Otoko no Isekai Tsuuhan Seikatsu’s protagonist, Kenichi Hamada, does not have any special powers of production, but one can still get plenty rich in the other world through arbitrage!
If Izure Saikyou is Potion-danomi de Ikonobimasu then this is Rouga ni Sonaete de 8-manmai no Kinka wo Tamemasu… but as much as I like FUNA’s works I think I stretch the comparison too far, Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi but with more than just food is a better comparison.
The base setting being 2037 is one of those interesting things which might come into play later, if we go back to Earth at any point. But for now, Kenichi is buying and selling, learning the language and making friends, and being surprised at how popular a clothespin is in the other world. He learns about a legal pepper monopoly from one of said friends, a fellow merchant who’s glad to take it off his hands. One intriguing thing it does emphasize is that knowing basic arithmetic alone qualifies him to be a merchant, once he picks up the local language; mathematics was a slow field to develop and I would certainly not want to do it before the invention of place value and adoption of Hindu-Arabic numerals. I think the author has done their research on premodern economies, which might lead somewhere interesting, although we don’t see the small surpluses and emphasis on food production – then again, maybe the existence of magic and monsters avoids some particular real-world problems.
Then again, these is no rule that a fantasy setting has to have magic, let alone the abundant magic one typically experiences in isekai fantasy. Magic Maker: Isekai Mahou no Tsukurikata, as its semi-redundant bilingual title suggests, is very much a low magic series; the main character’s father, a well-educated adult, although familiar with monsters and fairies, has never heard of magic.
So from there we get a charming quest about the main kid, Shion, his older sister, Marie, and a local girl, Rose, investigating how fireflies float up before sunset, the associated trout, and wondering if they found something; some people can see it, others can’t. Plus a bit of incest shipteasing, with Marie wanting to marry her brother.
Unfortunately, despite having isekai in the very title and as the fundamental reason for the series’ central quest, the anime very much runs away from the concept; we see nothing of Shion on Earth and only a single line at the first episode’s conclusion confirms this is an isekai tensei at all. The manga and LN do not do this, and I think the anime loses something important with this decision.
Then again, sometimes one just gets summoned into a world of wizards. Mahoutsukai no Yakusoku is a mobile game adaptation (a fact which admittedly has me concerned) and technically an otoge. Yet its heroine, Akira, is not in any sense a villainess; summoned to become a sage, she quickly develops a reverse harem, like the shoujo heroines of bygone days. She’s thrown right into the midst of chaos, and her perfectly understandable initial reluctance leads Lord Drummond to threaten arrest… and more wizards to show up to rescue her from the summoner/kidnapper.
The former knight captain, Cain, protects our heroine, and has to encourage his former students to fight… so he can show off by beating them. An escape on a magic staircase, a new, weirdly pale love interest, dream smoke putting pursuers to sleep, all before anyone tells Akira what’s going on.
An annual war, wizards struggling, a broomstick flight (and near fall) from a very high tower, a beautiful stream of flower petals repairing the world… this show wastes no time throwing us into the action, and with character names like Heathcliff, Shylock, and Faust has a distinct naming sense. It looks promising, and I’m excited to see what happens next.
Popular as it is to summon nobodies, and as great as the appeal is of achieving social mobility in another world, or of an audience representative leaving this one behind, there is also fun to be had in watching what this world’s heroes can do against those of another world. Sentai Red Isekai de Boukensha ni Naru belongs to an isekai subtype one doesn’t often see in anime – 2021’s Sekai Saikou no Ansatsusha, Isekai Kizoku ni Tensei suru is the last isekai hero I can remember with this level of competence, although perhaps last summer’s Isekai Suicide Squad (or even winter 2023’s Ishura - more to come on that later) works if you stretch the definition of hero. When you need to save the world, it makes sense to summon someone who’s already powerful, right?
Oh, and there’s obviously the appeal to sentai fans – Super Sentai, after all, is one of Japan’s great tokusatsu franchises and a bonafide cultural phenomenon. I’m sure I’m missing references, but we’ve got the mechanical beasts, the combining into a mech, the cool gadgets, and the protagonist dressed in red.
Anyway, fresh from defeat in a great battle, our title character hits his head and lands in another world. The main character is a big part of the show’s charm; he’s an earnest, power of friendship guy played completely straight, even to the point of rescuing other adventurers from what was actually a test of skill against a mage’s familiar. He misses his old friends, and wants to see them again, but has found a new world which needs saving.
Also, said mage is from a former family of court mages (or royal scepters, to use the in-show title) and thinks magic should be used to improve people’s lives instead of for war – so he quickly befriends her. And good thing, too, because friendship means power-ups! Enjoy your adventures, find your way home (maybe) and save two worlds, Red!
I am still not entirely sure if Zenshuu’s overworked protagonist is actually adventuring through the world of her favorite anime, or just having a long isekai-themed dream after collapsing from exhaustion; the first episode gave the latter answer, and I thought we were dealing with a half-episode dream sequence, and then the second is spent entirely in the other world. Our gremlin protagonist has let her hair grow out so much it covers her face, and, like Isekai Ojisan’s ‘orc’, she’s not initially seen as human.
But there are things a professional animator can do, especially when, like many a villainess, she knows the plot ahead of time – and unlike them, wants to help so much that she openly spoils the plot. Natsuko sketches out pictures of their enemies, she prays to go home and then realizing maybe she doesn’t want to. She's an easy to root for and has a unique set of powers, and its always nice to see the tributes to an animator’s craft.
Speaking of villainesses, we do have one this season. Akuyaku Reijou Tensei Ojisan’s 52-year old title character, Kenzaburo, might legitimately have the old age (as of summoning/reincarnation) record among isekai protagonists; I can’t think of an older one off the top of my head. He’s truck-kuned into a game his teenage daughter enjoys, and although he’s otaku enough to grasp the concept of isekai tensei, he doesn’t know villainness stuff at all.
As an old man, Kenzaburo is far more responsible than your ordinary teenage protagonist, and (despite a very ojousama character design) does not assume his expected role whatsoever; he easily befriends the heroine instead of bullying her. Turning into a villainess in name only is a bit too normal for this subgenre, but one wonders abut the consequences of not trying at all; how will the world react to Grace’s sudden personality switch?
Finally, of the season’s new isekai, there’s Nihon e Youkoso Elf-san, which features another elf following in the footsteps of Elf-san no Yarasenai and Edomae Elf's title characters in her trip to Japan. This one, Marie, did not just wander through a portal; she was adventuring in a dungeon with her friend Kazuhiho, was trapped by an archdragon’s attack, and Kazuhiho had only one way to let them escape.
Except, of course, that Kazuhiho is named Kazuhiko (it was a typo), significantly older than he appears in Marie’s world (from a kid to 25 – time passes differently) and reached the other world by dreaming; the other world as a dreamlike place is an old metaphor, but seldom treated so literally, and gating out to escape danger at home is also kind of rare. (Off the top of my head, Fushigi Yuugi: Byakko Senki does it, with the Great Kanto Earthquake the danger in question – great manga, but I digress).
All of which is really cool, but the end of the episode runs into the usual reverse isekai problem, after Marie wakes up naked in another world's bed; her home world is so much more fun!
Marie dresses in a schoolgirl outfit, gets to see the sakura, struggles with riding in a car and does all the other adaptation that would be neat if she was an established character in the middle of a longer-running isekai show, but here it feels too mundane. At least she’s seeing spirits she didn’t back home; elf interactions with youkai or kami or something would be fun if they went that route.
Given this blog’s fundamental conceit, I would like to tell you all about Mashin Souzouden Wataru and its place in the Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru franchise. Unfortunately, pleased as I am to see a 1988 isekai rebooted, Wataru is not a series I ever got into; it is aimed at younger audiences, but was very slow to receive any kind of English translation, and I never got around to watching it once it did. Still, with three full-year series and a bunch of video games and movies, it was a phenomenon in its day and its nice to see this kind of franchise not be totally forgotten.
A lot does carry over from what I remember of the first three episodes; its still an isekai, the gold dragon and the robot were there – and note that robots were everywhere in the period’s isekai after Dunbine.
The Youtuber , err, “Ryutuber” aspect, however, is entirely new; the industry did not even exist when the original was made, nor did the bandwidth to stream videos over the internet. And the remake goes heavily on this topic; this version of Wataru is going over to his cousin’s place to film a video when they get pulled into the other world, although the cousin, Kakeru lands elsewhere and we don’t see him for the rest of the episode. The villain of the day tries to force people to subscribe to his account, and Wataru teams up with a million-subscriber Ryutuber – all this, in a world where no one can get reception. Digimon Adventure's Izumi Koushirou couldn't get internet in the other world either.
I confess that the Ryutuber aspect feels like a tacked on attempt to chase trends, but Wataru still boasts a unique setting – Wataru trips down a floating staircase in this version, which feels so much like the kind of thing from the original series that I legitimately thought it was there last time (but didn’t find it, I checked). It is, after all, a reboot of an anime from an era when innovative settings were simply part of how isekai worked. I wish the narou-kei era would encourage that kind of experimentation, and it's not every day you see someone get powers from a dragon god and have the robot they built (Souzouden, or creator, is in the title this time around, so that one aspect of Wataru’s character is front and center) fight a rat mech that uses a longsword. It looks like a fun start, and I might have to go back and watch the original once I’m done.
Ishura is less an isekai anime than it is a show with an otherworlder in its large cast, with a tournament I honestly lost track of while trying to follow its first season. Still, as of the 2nd season, the world is searching for the true hero, and Soujirou the Willow-Sword (the otherworlder in question, and a samurai) is here again, fighting a giant worm at the episode’s end. In the meantime, the characters native to the setting are also plenty of fun; the first episode focuses on a muscle gigant, Mele the Horizon’s Roar, who befriends children and lifts them to the stars, and a clarivoyant character, Kuuro the Cautious, dodging assassins with a fairy-sized Minian named Cuneigh tucked into his coat.
And to end things, Korea comes through with the prettiest fights and likely the highest budget of the season; Na Honjaman Level Up or Ore dake Level Up na Ken Season 2, ~Arise from the Shadow~ (which title to use when an anime adapts a manhwa?) gives us a mysterious and high-level red gate, some breathtaking, bloody fights with an ice bear and ice elves, and the usual bit of betrayal that's always a risk when no one on the outside sees what happens inside a dungeon. It’s a tough and bloody battle - Sung could only save two of eight from a certain guild, and only one of the casualties was a traitor – and my screencaps don’t do this fight justice. Still, take a look, and enjoy the winter 2025 season!
