Reincarnated in Another Column – This Week in Anime

New season, new glut of isekai! Chris and Lucas hold their noses and jump into this season’s pool, looking for new species as the genre evolves.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Loner Life in Another World is streaming on HIDIVE. As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I’ll Use My Appraisal Skill, ARIFURETA, I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History, The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor, Good-bye Dragon Life, Demon Lord 2099, TsumaSho, Demon Lord, Retry! R, The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party, Is, in Fact, the Strongest and The Most Notorious “Talker” Runs the World’s Greatest Clan are streaming on Crunchyroll.

Lucas

Chris, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to scrape the bottom of this barrel clean with you! In my mind, the seasonal isekai glut is a surefire indication that the anime bubble is prime for bursting yet again, and knocking these derivative power fantasies down a peg is a great way to find joy in a bad situation!



Where are we starting this time around? With Loner Life in Another World? I don’t know if it was the worst of the lot, but I think I hate this same-face MC more than any of the others from this season, so it seems like as good a jumping-off point as any!

As is often the case, we can cover a fair number of shows here, so kicking things right off with Loner Life works well enough. Especially since it is effectively the most “basic isekai” of this season’s batch.




To the point that said same-face MC (I think his name’s Haruka) fully predicts where it’s all going in the opening minutes and seems as exhausted with the affair as we are.

I know this isn’t a hard and fast rule in fiction, but this anime really brings to mind the old writing adage, “If the main character isn’t interested in the story, how can you expect the audience to be?”



Also, can we talk about how this show immediately undermines its one-interest premise, the protagonist having garbage stats and abilities, by immediately making him OP? I know isekai as a genre has mostly become a coping mechanism for self-victimized young men to feel powerful, but this fake-out just struck me as tonally dissonant.

I’d say “Get used to it” since supposedly weak skills actually being the strongest is a persistent gimmick in this genre space (as we’ll see), but in Loner Life‘s case, it still comes off like a misfire. Not only do Haruka’s amazing trash abilities suck any tension out of his solo survival efforts, they quickly turn around his opinion on the isekai situation. That was the actual unique thing this show had going for it at first!



And man, I hope you enjoy listening to him narrate all that as it happens for the entire length of the first episode.

You know, there was a chance I might have enjoyed that, but a full episode monologue was done so much better in So I’m a Spider, So What? from a few seasons back that, by the end of Loner Life ep 1, I felt like I should have spent my time re-watching that isekai instead.

Exactly. This sort of thing can work, but it does so much better when your protagonist is a cute spider played by Aoi Yūki voicing her little heart out. Loner Life is a decidedly less interesting Let’s Play to watch.



Really the nicest thing I can say about it is that even though it was probably the show that had me the least engaged as I watched it for this column, it was also the first one I watched, so it left me with ostensibly nowhere to go but up.

That’s a very thin silver lining, but I’m glad you found it! You’ve also uncovered a truth that I stumbled into as I watched all of these isekai; many of them would probably be fine as video games, but as traditional anime without any form of deeper engagement, they feel like the weakest part of most fantasy games.



Take As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I’ll Use My Appraisal Skill season 2, for instance. I could probably vibe with this series if it took the form of a crunchy tactics game. But, as an anime, it just feels like I’m watching a Let’s Play where the streamer has weak taste in waifus.

This tends to be a driving force of a lot of these series, I’ve found: authors who seemed to mostly be entertaining thought experiments about how they’d min/max this or that game system to their own benefit if they wound up in that world as opposed to our boring old regular one. Forgetting that fiddling with stats and menus doesn’t make for the most entertaining television, especially when you haven’t gotten the memo that games like Metaphor: Refantazio have been actively trying to make that part at least more visually interesting than these anime’s boring ol’ status screens.

Ooooh~ Now you’ve got me thinking. Are those various Persona anime adaptations technically anime? I’m putting that one on the TWIA backburner in case we ever need a pinch hitter topic!



Also, and I recognize this is a hot take tangent, but as someone who first got into video games through Metal Gear Solid, I’ll forever defend minimalist, but still artful and directed, UI and menus in video games. Bigger and busier doesn’t always mean better, damn it!

Decent visual effort can go a long way, and getting back to the topic at hand can also be a make-or-break factor for the shovelware of seasonal isekai. For instance, I know we don’t always make time for sequel seasons like Reincarnated Aristocrat up there in these regular run-downs, just due to time constraints and what each of us is individually caught up on. But my old frenemy ARIFURETA came back for a third round this season, and I’ll always be amazed at how this show turned itself around visually.




It still doesn’t look amazing, sure, but these solidly animated scenes of murderous bunny girls kicking ass would’ve been unheard of the way the show looked back in its first season.

You know, I actually worked on a promotional push for Arifureta forever ago and was also surprised by the season 3 premiere. The show went from “edgelord shenanigans with medium-popular kinks clunkily inserted” to “edgelord shenanigans with medium-popular kinks clunkily inserted feat. production values!”

It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t have to scrap your whole production and reanimate the entire show in a matter of months.

That being said, I got some big ol’ red flags from the MC basically saying, “Uh, actually, it would be sexist of us to help prevent what appears to be a racially motivated assault.” The end credits are nothing but a walk cycle of said MC, topless still images of the female cast, and a shot of the MC’s gun.

ARIFURETA is still ARIFURETA at its core, even if it’s softened by Hajime being taken decidedly less seriously at this point in the story.



Checking in on some of these later seasons (I know a lot of people are really psyched about the re-return of Re:Zero) does underscore some shortcomings of sloshing through the new isekai of the season based on the first blush, as we do. Shows like ARIFURETA can grow and change over time! So maybe something like Loner Life will develop into something worth watching after a while. Similarly, maybe I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History won’t feel quite so 1:1 with its villainess-isekai forebears as it goes on.



At least this show was decently cute at the start.

Hey, there was nothing cute about those CGI horses! I’ll have you know they only look like that when they’re in deep distress.



Jokes aside, I agree with you, and I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History was definitely one of the most inoffensive isekai of the season. I like that its video game-y world is clearly based on a Princess Maker-like title, and I see a lot of potential here, even if I don’t think I’ll personally return to it anytime soon.

Look, I respect the villainessekai subgenre slightly more than its more basic cousins, but that respect is tempered by the fact that I already watched My Next Life as a Villainess pretty much knock this setup out of the park the first time.




I enjoyed watching Alicia’s commitment to gainz and I appreciate that she’ll apparently get herself a sick eyepatch at some point, but you’re right that this is probably stuck in the “Wait to see if any of my friends tell me this actually got amazing and I should catch up” position.

Yeah, while I do love that there’s now a specific sub-genre of isekai that’s explicitly for women and meant to empower them, it feels like the villainess genre has become pretty formulaic pretty quickly.

It’s equality! It actually proves a point that’s come up time and again with vanilla isekai: that the premise itself can’t be what makes a show good or bad, it has to be its own unique ideas and execution.



My Next Life as a Villainess had a premise that was more novel at the time it came out, sure. But it also had immediate character and personality. Yeah, I know it’s just the first episode of Villainess Who Goes Down in History here, but I don’t think I could tell you as much about any of these supposed suitors as I could about Keith at the end of Next Life as a Villainess‘ first episode.

The old saying holds true! You can’t judge a book by its cover, but I’ve returned plenty of titles to the library after getting one chapter in and failing to inspire me to read more. I know some people enjoy genre fiction, but I don’t have it in me to keep returning to familiar outings in what’s comfort media to a lot of people.



This is a great lead-in to my favorite pseudo-isekai of the season, The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor! And I’m not just saying that because Byakuya Togami from Danganranpa makes a cameo in the first episode.

Ah yes, now we’re getting into the thought-provoking premieres that get you asking the real questions. Questions such as “Is it still a villainess isekai if the heroine is really only adjacent to a villain?” and “Is it still an isekai if you’re getting reincarnated as yourself six years earlier in your own world?”

Hmm, these are all great questions that isekai scholars will debate for years to come, but I’m going to give a confident YES off the bat because I really want to talk about this anime! Between the dark atmosphere in the opening, the killer visuals, and the fantasy melodrama, I was hooked from the get-go, and I can’t really say that about any other anime from this season.

Do-Over Damsel does decidedly slot into the “pseudo-isekai” category, I’ll concede, and there are a few of those this season as well. The framing of Jill is of someone who met their end and now gets to use a second chance and their previous experiences to make a better life for themselves. Spiritually, it’s there.

I don’t think anyone’s going to argue against any title with some version of “Re-Do” in the title getting an honorary isekai label! So what if Jill doesn’t come from a different world, she checks off every other box in the isekai protag list! Even being a part of a problematic age-gap romance, which I desperately hope doesn’t get creepier as the series goes on.

Yeah, it turns out there are other questions this show provokes, but I’m pretty sure they’re best answered by a judge and/or jury.

Ugh, I’m torn. While I won’t blame anyone for noping out of this anime as soon as this scene hit, I have to keep in mind that there’s a lot of celebrated fiction geared towards young women that involves older men realizing how special they are and giving them a path towards empowerment. Sure, that fantasy is rooted in misogyny, but Do-Over Damsel doesn’t yet have the male gaze elements tip me off to a series operating in bad faith.

Indeed, Jill’s intermittently quite cool and entertaining in her time-displaced variations. I am a little annoyed that shrinking her down to her ten-year-old self undercuts the potential for further badass displays like she has in the intro, but her shrunk-down self has her moments.




Maybe it helps a little bit that she’s still technically 17 years old on the inside and also extremely not okay with Hadis’ whole deal. Truly she is like a reverse Rudeus.

Aside from the inherent turn-off some may find in the central romance, I think I can see what you find appealing in Do-Over Damsel‘s premiere. It’s got well-presented, cool, and funny parts, and there’s some decently dense drama in here, some of it even making me interested in learning more about Hadis!

I’m giving Do-Over Damsel the highest praise I can give in a TWIA seasonal isekai round-up! Readers, I’m actually going to watch more of this anime! I can only say that about two other anime, I checked out for this column, and both of them are in a shaky, “if I have an afternoon or evening to fill” kind of way.

Well, it’s good to know Do-Over Damsel has some kind of company, at least beyond sharing space in the “Reincarnated, but in your own world” genre, which is oddly prolific this season.




Is it also a problematic age-gap romance if it’s a millennia-old reincarnated dragon and a 17-year-old lamia? Man, I have no friggin’ idea.

I feel like the answer is no, but I also don’t want to commit to that answer on the record.



I will say, though, that it’s almost impressive how Good Bye, Dragon Life opens with a novel (for the genre) premise and then spends the rest of the first episode doubling down on the most conventional of isekai tropes. It’s like the people behind it aspired to make whole-grain bread. It’s technically spicier than white bread, but still won’t upset any isekai fan’s atrophied palate.

It’s to the point where I actually kinda forgot about the whole “The MC used to be a dragon” gimmick partway through! Technically slightly more happens in this than in the likes of Loner Life, but I don’t want to give Dragon Life more credit just because it gave the lead a cute lamia to soundboard off of as opposed to just monologuing for half an hour.

That’s the thing about getting so many series playing in these fantasy sandboxes at decidedly more derivative levels: you get anime that are evocative of previous series in the established genre space.




For instance, even one of this season’s more surprising reinventions of the ideas of rebirth and world-transportation can’t help but give off just a few The Devil Is a Part-Timer! vibes.

I am SO BUMMED that I didn’t like Demon Lord 2099 more than what I did! The blending of fantasy and cyberpunk elements seems like exactly the kind of kick-in-the-pants the isekai genre needs, but there were too many mini-clashes with my personal tastes and sensibilities for me to feel inspired to watch more.

Hey, that’s the kind of understanding you hope to come to when partaking of this seasonal sampler platter. It makes for a solid conversational contrast, too, since I quite dug the Demon Lord Velsvalt’s misadventures in the same year where The Punisher lives on the edge.

Ooooh! It’s rare that folks have split reactions during the isekai round-up! What did you like in Demon Lord 2099? Is this doing well on the seasonal isekai scale for you, or did you dig it as a general release?

Well, for one thing, having a bit of sauce on its production definitely helped bump Demon Lord 2099 up compared to its isekai contemporaries. These things so regularly look totally basic, so something that eschews the RPG Maker look is immediately going to get my attention.



But the reason for applying that style, the premise, is what I would say is the show’s main appeal. It’s not properly isekai nor reverse-isekai like Devil is a Part-Timer, but…half-isekai? The world our hero-villain wakes up in is a combination of his and a futuristic Earth, and the resultant magitek aesthetic is far more compelling for me to follow than plain ol’ swords and spells and stat sheets.



It also has a cute hacker who rigs a VTuber billboard to go all Italian-Senate-Tifa, so there’s that.

There’s definitely a gap between its banger opening establishing its premise and the tense revelations that set up the conflict, where it feels like the character writing could’ve gotten snappier, as in Baccano!. The hacker scene stands out in that regard as well. So there’s admittedly some critical bias at work in watching this one after so many of the others on this list, but even with that acknowledgment, I can see myself following Demon Lord 2099 for fun this season.



I certainly appreciate it proving that “isekai” as a broad genre label has so many more different permutations it could encompass.

We can agree on that, and I hope this anime at least inspires more experimentation with this well-worn genre.



This is what I’ll also say about TsumaSho! It seems like a pretty interesting reincarnation story, a stellar and perfectly directed first half, but a main character who’s just a little too dense for me to follow around for a full 12 episodes.

Ah, reincarnated in your own world, and it’s also our world. That’s definitely not really isekai. That’s just sekai.



On the other hand, hey, there’s Aoi Yūki!

Ayyyyye, make that money Aoi Yūki! Also, please, for the love of god, don’t let this show get weird with her character! If TsumaSho can tactfully navigate an adult woman inhabiting the body of a 10-year-old, I think it’ll be a very compelling examination of grief and family dynamics. If it can’t be chill, I fear I’ll have to delete anything related to it from my browser history.

The show seems to have a decent amount of self-awareness so far, anyway. I have to admit that I’m darkly amused that the series whose title literally translates to My Wife Will Become an Elementary School Student wasn’t even the most troublesome on that topic as some of its reincarnation brethren. Thanks, Do-Over Damsel.

We’ve covered all the new proper isekai and even some of the not-quite-isekai reincarnation anime. The latter brings to mind the question of what really “counts” as this genre increasingly slips its tendrils into other anime. Like all the new fantasy shows, should series like The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party, Is, in Fact, the Strongest and The Most Notorious “Talker” Runs the World’s Greatest Clan get honorary mentions just because they’ve got character classes, stats, undervalued protagonists, and overly long titles?

They’re all playing in the same sandbox and drawing from the same pool of inspirations, so I’m tempted to say yes, but I don’t have much to say about either of them, so I’m setting myself up for failure there, haha.



Though, do you think the The Most Notorious “Talker” Runs the World’s Greatest Clan people are mad that the new season of Arifureta is coming out this season? These anime seem like they’d be almost identical to a casual observer, which means that the more established Arifureta is probably going to blow Talker out of the water.

This is an audience that thrives on feeling persecuted, so honestly, they’re probably living for it.

In that case, congrats to them for getting a new chad grandpa to stan, I guess.

As for me, my main takeaway from all these psuedo-isekai and isekai-flavored fantasy series is that if the seemingly unstoppable genre can’t ever properly recede, maybe diluting itself is the next best thing. As we’ve seen with Demon Lord 2099 and Do-Over Damsel, stretching the definition can result in anime that at least feel fresh, even if they still aren’t outstanding, story-wise, for whatever reason. It’s nice to get a seasonal batch where there aren’t four more photocopied shows like Loner Life.

Hey, if the isekai deluge isn’t going to slow down anytime soon, the least it can do is rapidly evolve into micro-genres and unique takes on what people expect from this kind of media. I wish we got here through less overtly capitalist means, but flooding the market is one way to breed innovation and foster more unique stories and voices.

It’s just like the old saying goes: If you can’t beat ’em, have ’em get reincarnated as something else in another world.