Ah yes, completely hair beastmen, but super bangable beastwomen. Anyway, I’ve already watched a couple isekai shows this season, but let’s get the rest out of the way. I already know I won’t keep following most of these insipid series to the end, but let’s find out why.
*****
I’m a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic
Yet another isekai where an adult becomes a child. Yet another isekai where the main character doesn’t even or think about his previous life. Y’know, I’m not even close with my parents, but I think I would still miss them if I could never see or speak to them again. If a selfish asshole like me can miss my parents, what’s their excuse? Are isekai MCs sociopathic? Probably not. It’s laziness. These authors are in for a quick buck, and the audience don’t care. So why waste time addressing these concerns? Clearly, the genre isn’t going away any time soon, so what they have works. They won’t win over curmudgeons like me, but don’t need me or my money.
It’s… a little dismaying, I guess. Whenever these shows dive headfirst into their made-up fantasy magic system, they go into so much detail. So, so much detail. But not a single word about their loved ones from their previous lives. This anime is no different. Our MC and his eventual tutor goes on and on about prime numbers and strengthening their magical spells, absorbing summons, whatever. As you can probably guess, I tuned that shit out. Why would I waste precious brain power trying to understand a made up magic system? It’s not a story. It has no humanity in it. It’s just… pointless minutia. I care about characters undergoing big changes like learning to be a better person, surmounting shortcomings, defeating vices, etc.
It’s also weird when they wake up in an existing person’s body. If they suddenly regained memories of their previous life, okay, fine. But when you take over someone else’s body, where did the previous person go? But again, we never stop to think about it. We’ve got the same tired tropes and genre conventions to get through! Those are more important!
Anyway, our hero Liam is born into a noble family, but one on (as the title suggests) the brink of ruin. There’s a class system, but I guess there’s a bit of meritocracy mixed in? If nobles haven’t been very noble, i.e. doing actual good stuff, then they will be stripped of their title. Needless to say, our MC has oodles of rare magic talent (of course) and his brothers either don’t care or are green-eyed losers (of course). Dad don’t care unless you can make him look good. I’m guessing he pumps out kids in the hopes that one of them can do something for him. Pretty sad, but par for the course.
It’s also common for isekai stories to do a little cultural fusion. The setting is almost always European in some fashion. They love that shit. But they also want to have their cake and eat it too, so the MC almost always introduce Japanese culture to his new world full of super open-minded people. No one’s ever like, “Ew, miso is kinda weird.” What’s kinda weird about this show, however, is that ramen somehow already exists. What’s an enterprising MC to do then? Well, he tries to invent instant ramen.
For plot reasons that aren’t important enough to explain beyond big bro jealous. Big bro tries to screw over MC. Our hero becomes an adventurer at the ripe age of 11? 12? Somewhere around there. Naturally, he’s probably 99% stronger than the adults in the area. Hell, maybe the world. We meet Asuna (pictured above), likely the first love interest. But surely, a simple girl like her can’t keep up with our uber awesome MC, right? So the guild leader or whatever suggests a suspicious sounding idea: become Liam’s familiar. If you’re thinking, “Wait, doesn’t that make him her master?” Yes, yes it does. An 11-year-old is her master now. Look, she’ll have to obey his orders, but in return, she gets super speed! Who wouldn’t take that trade? Gimme a break. She even says she wouldn’t mind if he did anything weird, which is a weird fucking thing to say to an 11-year-old that you’ve only been adventuring with for a short while. But the hilarity doesn’t stop there. They test this familiar on one of her friends, who now gets the unique ability to make delicious healing sandwiches. I can’t make this shit up. Well, isekai harems gotta harem.
Eventually, Liam catches the eye of the princess, then he has to take care of some dangerous dragon. But honestly, I’ve stopped caring about this show by this point. Big bro is up to something, but I’m ready to move on. Look, I gave it three episodes. Next!
*****
The Daily Life of a Middle-Aged Online Shopper in Another World
Not all isekai heroes are fighters. Some of them only wanna bring modern conveniences to a fantasy world for whatever reason. Nobody thinks you’re hot shit in your world, but you could blow a bunch of puny minds in the Middle Ages if you showed them your phone or whatever. So what does our MC here do? He sweeps them off their feet with clothespins. No, seriously.
Basically, our hero Kenichi has the power of Amazon Shangri-La at his finger tips, and somehow, the same online merchant can also deliver items to Kenichi’s new… dimension? World? He briefly questions how it works and all, but it’s just lipservice. He’s not going to stew on it. I guess you could argue that this is better than isekai heroes pretending that their previous world doesn’t exist, but barely.
Also, I vaguely remember seeing this concept before. Wasn’t there an isekai with the same online purchasing mechanic but the main character there spent his time cooking instead? I remember watching a guy making all sorts of meals for his demanding direwolf or whatever. But the animation was kinda shit and there was no real conflict to speak of, so I stopped watching. Will this show be any better? Doubt it.
Kenichi starts off by buying himself food, a bike, impressing the locals with black pepper, so on and so forth. Like the previous show, Japanese products are always a big hit. Why wouldn’t these isekai folks be impressed with superior Japanese katanas! Nippon steel folded a thousand times!!! He settles on the idea of becoming a trader, but before he can do that, he needs to learn how to read and write (despite magically being able to speak the same language). So he barters for education with candy. Look, fellas, if your dating game is weak, simply isekai yourself with candy corn or whatever. Isekai women are DTF with just a bit of sweets and a pretty picture.
Anyway, the first episode ends with a poor, destitute catgirl in a forest struggling to survive. She’ll probably end up being the MC’s adopted daughter, because that’s how these shows go. Everyone in the MC’s circle has to be an adoring, devoted female. Even your kid has to be female. There’s a second episode out already, but not when I was taking notes for this show. Will I watch the second episode? Meh. Lemme guess, he’s going to go bust a few slavers’ heads.
*****
Headhunted to Another World: From Salaryman to Big Four!
Speaking of uninspiring middle-aged men, we get yet another salaryman as an MC. Our hero Uchimura is underappreciated by company, but somehow a demon king from an entirely different world can spot everything that makes him great. How does the demon lord have so much info on Uchimura? Shrug. How does a demon king even understand anything about the MC? Why does not go “Huh, what’s a salaryman?” Shrug. Did our MC really die because a woman on a scooter hit him? Shrug. It even looks like our guy has friends and loved ones, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Who cares about all that? It’s time to dive headfirst into your new world full of hot anime waifus.
Curiously, the other generals and important characters are all hot women. They’re not super impressed with Uchimura right now, but y’see, this is where the character arc comes in. Over time, a salaryman who doesn’t even have the requisite soft skills to get promoted in Japan will somehow expand the demon king’s territory, reorganize the army, negotiate various pacts and alliances with rival countries and clans, so on and so forth. And one by one, each of those tut-tutting generals will fall in line and thus in love.
It would be something if Uchimura actually flexes real skills. But it’s all basic, baby shit. For example, if you’re going to negotiate, try not to lose your temper and start screaming at the person (or minotaur) that you’re trying to befriend. Try, y’know, understanding their culture and not make assumptions. Try looking beyond their words and — shocker — reading their body language. Don’t get baited when the other side is obviously trying to antagonize you in order to get you off your game. In other words, learn basic communication. Wowee, maybe if I watch this show from start to finish, I can get my MBA and beocme a big deal at a Fortune 500 company! But all of the tips above are somehow major revelations to our skin-bearing demon general Ulmandra, so she’s the first to fall for the guy.
In any case, the show was boring. Next.
*****
Magic Maker: How to Make Magic in Another World
Here’s another isekai where the main character is obsessed with magic. Shion loves magic so much that he “voluntarily” stayed a virgin until he was 30, because he thought his penis not touching another general for an arbitrary length of time would somehow make him a wizard. Does he actually believe that? No, but he wanted to believe, man! If a man can’t dream, what is even the point of life?
I guess the one somewhat novel thing about this show is that the first episode actually plays out from Shion’s isekai sister Marie’s perspective. So if you went into this show blind, you might not even suspect that it’s an isekai until the very end of the first episode. After all, Marie just sees her parents bring home a baby boy. And over the years, she saw him get depressed when their parents told them that they know nothing about this thing called “magic.” Naturally, our protective big sis takes it upon herself to cheer Shion up by proving that there’s magic somewhere in this isekai world. Uh, something about trout doing a courting ritual results in balls of light emerging from a lake. That’s… certainly one way of introducing magic. Shion then learns that he too can glow like a trout whenever he expresses his love for his sister. Not quite courtship, but… that’s bit odd, no?
Anyway, if the relationship dynamic between the two siblings sounds wholesome, it’s only true on paper. Anime then has to do its anime thing where the all-too-innocent sister insists that she has to marry her brother. When told that she couldn’t, she still swears that she’ll never want to leave Shion’s side. That’s fine, I guess, since the girl is still young and doesn’t know any better. But you gotta remember that Shion is a 30-year-old self-professed virgin obsessed with being a wizard in a young boy’s body. So for him to be like, “Yo, I swear I’ll never a woman either so we can be together forever,” that’s a bit weird to me. A lot weird.
Anyway, because our MC is a mage, his sister naturally has to be a bit tomboyish. Shion has no interest in studying swordfighting, but Marie embraces it. After all, she has to protect the brother she can’t marry but will remain with forever! Then there’s some stuff near the end of the second episode about fairies being caught and sold — yes, the parents don’t know if magic exist, but they do know about fairies — so I guess if that sounds intriguing, you can keep watching. Personally, I’m not a big fan of child protagonists. The OP suggests that they will eventually grow a bit older but not too old. And as such, I’m not too interested.
*****
From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad’s Been Reincarnated!
Here comes the only isekai in this post that has a somewhat novel concept: when our main character, a 50-something-year-old bureaucrat gets hit by a car in order to save a kid, he finds himself in the body of an ojousama with drill hair. Even funnier is the fact that this is the most wholesome isekai of all the shows in this post. Despite the fact that our ojisan looks like one of those shady men from all the ojisan memes, he’s actually a caring father with a loving family that is just as dorky and bespectacled as he is.
Anyway, he ends up in his daughter’s favorite otome game for some reason. This will probably never get explained. He gets to play the role of Grace, a girl who used to be really nice and friendly with everyone, but was led astray by proper lady lessons. Yup, being high class makes you a bitch. Grace is supposed to play the villainess to Anna Doll (what an unfortunate name), i.e. try to steal Anna’s love interests and what not. Right off the bat, my big question is whether or not he’s going to romance any of the boys. I mean, c’mon, it’s an otome game and you’re one of the main female characters! Romance is literally the game!
Of course, even though the basic premise of this isekai is novel, the setup is still very familiar. If you get zapped into an otome game, you gotta be the villainess. It’s always the villainess. Something about a bad-girl-turn-good really captivates people. It’s just funny that if you flip the genders, then the male MC becomes a demon lord or whatever. But not, like, one of the playboys vying for the harem’s attention over the main male MC, y’know? You don’t see an isekai where the hero wakes up as a gyaru-oh and stops NTR’ing people.
And of course, our ojisan immediately embraces his new environment like all isekai MCs before him. This is especially tough because, again, we can even see his loving, adorkable family. If I were him, I’d be dying to return to my wife and daughter. But our ojisan rolls with the punches a little too easily. He wants to fulfill the role of the villainess even though he can’t, and he doesn’t want to deviate from the plot too much. But why? I wish these characters would take a minute to reflect on their situation and ensuing motivations.
Anyway, ojisan’s problem is that he’s a nice guy, and you can’t turn into a mean girl overnight. According to otome genre conventions, he has to be mean to main heroine (always a commoner, always ditzy, always gets top marks so she gets to enroll in a prestigious academy full of nobles, etc), but ojisan doesn’t have it in him! Even when he tries to flex his meanness, it comes out as (at best stern) fatherly advice. Naturally, this endears him to everyone around him. So if we’re not going to do a yuri thing with Anna because ojisan has a family back in the real world, and he’s not going to court the boys, what exactly are we doing? I’m not sure.
This might just be a light-hearted show where Grace’s natural elegance and ojisan’s fatherly love gets him into silly, somewhat amusing situations. And while I do appreciate the novel premise, can this really sustain my interest for a season? No major plot threads have really merged. Yes, they learn magic at the academy. This is an isekai after all. A golem briefly attacks, but ojisan subdues it just as quickly. The boy hunks invite Grace and Anna to the student council, but that’s it. There’s no conflict yet; they’re all impressed with Grace’s “growth.” And finally, ojisan comes across a few mean girls when he goes to eat at the cafeteria. But instead of hatching a scheme as stereotypical mean girls in fiction are wont to do, ojisan teaches them to be nice in a few minutes flat. So… what now? Of all the shows in this post, this is the one I’m most likely to keep watching, but I’m still not entirely sold.
Last but not least, you can’t convince me that this is enough food for a teenage girl. No way, man. It doesn’t even look like it adds up to 500 calories.