The tonal clash at the end of every episode going into what sounds like a major key version of “Complicated” over the credits is sublime
The whole thing is still so stunningly tasteless even with none of the shock value
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Been watchin’ some more animes when I’m working out.
Isekai:
My Next Life as a Villainess: Pretty rough… had to drop after ep 3. Definitely aimed at a much younger audience.
Kemono Jihen: Yeesh… had to drop after ep 3. See above.
Astra Lost in Space (Kanta no Astra): Fairly promising start but, had to drop after ep 3. Hoping this would get a little crazy, but it’s very quickly into a really generic groove.
In the Land of Leadale (Leadale no Daichi nite): Okay this was animated well, but it sucks unfortunately… dropped it after ep 3. Was hoping it would break outside the isekai formula but, no dice.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon: I think you get the idea… not great, real generic. Reminds me why a lot of the anime industry is in such a bad shape.
ReZero: Better than most isekai, and I defniitely hung in there a lot longer than the others, but, ultimately, just kind of a slog and a bummer.
Log Horizon: So I don’t enjoy watching this, but I’m told it goes in some fun directions, so I’m powering through past ep 3. Real generic so far though, beyond a few fun tweaks to the SAO formula.
And the non-isekai:
Ranking of Kings: Far and away the best anime I’ve seen in probably a decade. Fuggin’ love this show. Great characters, great world building, really enjoyable story.
Appare-Ranman!: This show owns. On ep 6, it’s really good. Crazy premise done well.
Keijo!!!: Friend of mine loves this show, and sure enough, it’s pretty delightful. Crucially, the butt-fighting is played completely straight.
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Sounds like you are an isekai expert! If I were going to watch only one, which one do you recommend? (I am not necessarily looking for “good isekai for people who aren’t really interested in isekai things”, I may actually prefer “isekai that takes the genre tropes to extremes and prefers to risk turning into a fiasco rather than settle for mediocrity”.)
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oh, sure, now people are catching on that Keijo!!! is good
I’ve been saying it for years and all I get is called a pervert
I’m glad baseball has put slow motion butt replays into the public conscious so that a show like Keijo!!! can be appreciated like it should have been
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I feel like what keijo needed was to go full into the world building, as horse girls did. Desert Storm was decided by a butt battle as the American lined up the highway of death booty blaster on Iraq.
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I’d say the one I’d definitely recommend as the Isekai Winner would be:
Just a pleasant show about a librarian from the modern era being isekai’d into the body of a sickly little peasant girl in a fantasy kingdom.
Most of this show is her using her general understanding of history to progress technology further, trying to provide for her family and fellow peasants, with the ultimate goal of creating the means for people of her poverty level to create and enjoy books.
Other ones I enjoyed and would continue to eagerly watch were more episodes to come out:
Really carried by it’s great protagoist, who is a deranged hikkomori girl who gets isekai’d with her class into Generic Fantasy World. However, while all her classmates become humans and elves and such, she gets put into the body of a level 1 mob spider monster. She then fights for her life in a dungeon for half a season to survive and grow in power.
I would really recommend it for that early stretch of the show. It’s a lot of fun. After the halfway point, it starts getting a lot more generic, and she ultimately ends up in the same place as every other isekai. Disappointing, but, still a fun watch.
I’m not super far into this one, but I do like it quite a bit, mainly because it, like Ascendance of a Bookworm, is largely about trying to bring modern knowledge into a historical setting, to improve it or make significant change. So for example, in Log Horizon, they ignore the quests of the game and start tracking down where currency is printed and coined, to explore that.
So, it’s pretty solid, and pretty subversive as far as this genre goes.
I really don’t like SAO, but Gun Gale is a spinoff with a different protagonist, and overall, I liked it. Nothing ground-breaking, it is not at all subverting anything, but it’s a fun watch and it wraps up after one season.
Overall though, man oh man this genre sucks. I mainly watch these because they’re sometimes nice background noise to have one while I’m doing something or working out.
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I want to be clear that I do NOT enjoy Keijo!!! because I am a deranged pervert like notbov, I enjoy it for its professionalism, its sportsmanship, and its bar-raising asswork. It is criminal that this show did not get more seasons.
the best isekai is the He-Man movie
change my mind
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Watched a few eps of Ya Boy Kongming!, I really like it. He’s essentially the manager for an aspiring singer, deploying his various military strategies to keep crowds interested and make her venue appearances successful.
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Your top two sound really good and I had never heard of either, thanks!!
I think I’ll watch the spider one first as it sparks my interest. Going downhill after the first arc is no problem given that you explained exactly when I ought to cut bait
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Bookworm is a really good show if only because you are seeing just how desperate she is for any fucking book
“fuck it, I’ll invent the printing press myself”
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I’m sold. One of the reasons the only entry in this genre I’ve loved so far is Isekai Ojisan is the protag’s palpable desperation to play any action videogame. His curse is to have been transported into a JRPG videogame world instead
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just watch digimon adventure
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i have probably absorbed the most isekai content of any user here and the only good ones are Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute! and the one where the dude has sex with his house and the house gives birth to another story. oh and Digimon Adventure
EDIT: im sorry i dont remember the title of the housefucker one, also it isnt good its just really funny that that happens
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Ranking of Kings sucks cuz its blatantly racist against Koreans, did we not learn from Attack on Titan???
oh so that’s what this is a pic of
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My gf and I watched the first episode of Bookworm because we’re both librarians and wanted to see how deep it got into librarian theory and stuff like that. It doesn’t get into it at all, but I would REALLY like to put fake subtitles over it that make it seem like the protagonist is, like, talking about Ranganathan’s 5 laws of library science and complaining about MARC-21.
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Looks like Bookworm and I’m a Spider are both only licensed by Crunchyroll and it’s only offering me a dub. What’s the easiest way to get a subbed version?