Isekai isn’t always bad; two atypical and fun isekai series from last anime season

Isekai (“parallel world”) fiction has had a major resurgence in the last ten years of anime/manga, and become a true glut genre in the last five. Load up Crunchyroll and you’ll be buried in derivative power fantasies with increasingly long, literal titles adapted from online novels. Nearly always about escaping crushing modern reality in favor of an easy life of unrivaled power and plentiful lovers in a fantasy RPG world, this genre is extremely derivative by nature, frequently leaning on readers’ existing understanding of video games to fill in for a lack of original ideas. Many authors are content to just fill out the standard template with their own faces on the cover, and the genre is so popular— presumably with gamers— that even such bottom-of-the-barrel novels get anime/manga adaptations sooner or later.

“Well, you see, my isekai story is different because the RPG skill that caused people to shun me from society, but is actually the strongest weapon, is the skill “Shake.” And my hot elf girlfriend has red hair, and she loves me for who I am!”

(The thing I hate most passionately about isekai slop is the false modesty of a fake underdog.)

But that doesn’t mean that every single isekai title is bad; I strongly recommend Re:Zero, which does just enough to subvert cliche and tell its own story. There’s just too much isekai anime to check every single one, and they’re usually the same bad story told over and over again, so eventually you stop checking.

From this past anime season, I’d like to recommend two isekai titles that put offbeat twists on their genre premises and which I found well worth watching. Those titles are From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad’s Been Reincarnated! and The Red Ranger Becomes An Adventurer In Another World.

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From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad’s Been Reincarnated!

The “villainess” subgenre in isekai— which I believe to have been invented by the adorable My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom— is extremely well established by now, and this interpretation doesn’t change the major details. The protagonist wakes up in the body of a villain at a magic academy and has to navigate their otome game RPG world (Angelique, generally) with some knowledge of the “original game” in mind.

The big twist, as the title indicates, is that the reincarnated party is a 50-something office drone. Kenzaburo has woken up inside of his daughter’s favorite otome game, Love and Beast (Angelique, but there are also Pokemon) inhabiting the body and swirling golden locks of classical anime-style rich-bitch Grace Auvergne. In one of many delightful old-guy generation gap jokes, Kenzaburo explains this character type to the audience via Aim for the Ace, Candy Candy, and Glass Mask. (I can vouch for the first and the last of these being excellent.)

With only a passing idea of what he needs to do in this world and role, Kenzaburo approaches magical high school politics from the point of view of a veteran office worker and father whose actual otaku specialty is 80s Toei tokusatsu. In trying to assist the game world’s heroine, Kenzaburo unwittingly dads the entire stock cast of princes and ladies, becoming everybody’s beloved Lady Grace.

In a second twist and unknown to Kenzaburo, his wife and daughter back in the real world watch his exploits in the form of a video game on their TV and support him from the shadows.

This series has just enough going on to make a new but already exhausted subgenre worth watching again. None of the supporting cast are anything but generic takes on well-worn otome archetypes, characters that even I’ve seen a million times. But Kenzaburo’s unique position, well-meaning nature and delightful obliviousness are really why you watch this. A lot of isekai are about how the guy already knows everything about some bullshit RPG so he can exploit it for points: this series is about a guy who doesn’t quite understand where he is, doing his best with what he’s got and succeeding in ways he doesn’t really intend. Much better.

This is an adaptation of a manga that doesn’t look like it’s ending any time soon, so be aware there’s no ending, and the season sputters out a bit on a boring arc that gets dragged out for too long. Also, the old man and the villainess sing both Galaxy Express 999 and Matsuken Samba II. Prime entertainment.

The Red Ranger Becomes An Adventurer In Another World

As you might have already guessed, this shonen manga adaptation smashes one niche setting into another with chaotic results. When a classical Red Ranger (ie sentai, Power Rangers) shows up in a fantasy RPG land, tokusatsu basically eats the fantasy RPG setting. After all, what is a Dungeons and Dragons world supposed to even do with a guy who makes explosions go off behind him every time he does his weird poses, and who brings a giant robot to a dragon fight?

As you might imagine, the Red Ranger Asagaki Togo is also an all-consuming personality; a literal “power of friendship” type like my beloved Kamen Rider Fourze. In his entourage are the classical Girlfriend Mage, an insecure RPG hero, a princess, and an elven Kamen Rider. (That the show understands and properly presents the differences between a sentai ranger and a Kamen Rider speaks to its dedication to the premise.) They set out to purge a magical epidemic from the land that turns out to work a lot like the average tokusatsu TV show does…

Red is also an overpowered hero who easily dispatches most foes, like in most isekai. But rather than simply having a bigger number than the other guy, the shock and awe of his attack is that he’s just from another genre, and nothing he does makes any damn sense to anyone around him. The show gets a lot of mileage and a lot of laughs out of this. Why do his tools talk?!

Japanese superheroes are a pretty commonly parodied genre, but the only ones who ever get it right are the people who really love the material, like the folks behind this series. My favorite gag comes early, when the mage pulls out the dreaded isekai cliche of an RPG status window to check on Red’s stats. Rather than being shown anything rational or scientific, she gets a spread out of a children’s magazine that lists his punching power and kicking power seperately in tons.

For sentai jokes to be funny and not played out, you have to be playing on a certain level, and loving rather than derisive. Eventually the whole world joins in on the spirit of the thing. The mage will eventually yell at a child for making fun of Red’s spandexed butt, yelling “that’s the best part!”

Like Gekiganger 3 in Nadesico, the anime staff commit hard to the “existence” of the fake sentai series (Kizuna Five) that Red is originally from. To establish Red’s character and backstory, the show flashes back to “episodes” of the series, and of course there’s eventually a full episode with theme songs and all. Silly though it may be, all of Togo’s trauma is back there in that world, and eventually the two worlds start to look a lot more tied together than we would have guessed.

Die-hard tokusatsu fans get a huge surprise halfway through the series with an original episode of Kizuna Five written by sentai/Rider legend Toshiki Inoue (Donbrothers, Kamen Rider Ryuki). Kizunakiller is a trope that he likes; the hero’s secret brother who loves him so much he hates him, and how that evil energy transforms him into… a huge punchline. Secret cameos pop up from all over Inoue’s work; I spotted Donbrothers and Jetman offhand.

It’s a super-cheap adaptation by Satelight that reminded me of their equally shoestring but very entertaining take on Rokudo’s Bad Girls. Aquarion guests, because why not. This is another case where the source manga is long and you’re probably not going to see a second season, so I’d advise just jumping on the manga.

A thought in closing

It’s not that these titles are wildly original: in fact they’re both deeply derivative takes on derivative genres. But both of them become fresh by flipping their point of view: Sentai Red genre-busts, and Bureaucrat drops a 50-year-old into a world where nobody’s over 30. You won’t make an all-time classic this way, but just those little nudges are enough to create new worlds worth paying attention to.

That, and tokusatsu makes everything better.

The Red Ranger Becomes An Adventurer In Another World streams on Crunchyroll, and From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad’s Been Reincarnated! streams on Hidive.