Note (5/12/2023): I decided to make my “Lists of 5” series public, due to the fact that my $5 tier on Patreon is now my lowest tier. This post is now public. You can become a paid subscriber if you want to support my writing!
I don’t know if any of y’all remember, but I started my Patreon to support my art/illustration practice. At the time I had just dropped out of art school due to the loss of my childcare subsidy. I was camming and doing other stuff, and I wanted to continue to pursue cartooning and writing. But suddenly I started making money from writing, so I put the art on the backburner.
I have always loved manga/comics and anime/animation. I never stopped watching cartoons. Recently me and my partner have been bingeing a genre of Japanese anime called isekai. If you like portal fiction and cartoons like I do, then you’ll probably enjoy this genre. It is a fantasy genre that involves following a character, or group of characters, who are transported to another, unfamiliar, world. Please share this post when you see it!
Here is a list of 5 of the best ones I’ve watched (and rewatched):
1. Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation (Mushoku Tensei: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu)
Where to Watch: Hulu, Crunchyroll
This anime is about a 34-year old homeless man who dies and is reincarnated into a fantasy world as a seemingly precocious child. He is kind of a pervert but his primary motivation is that he wants to make good on his second chance and be a better person. He wants to make friends and connect with his loved ones. In his previous life he was bullied horrendously, and thus became a recluse. He became the black sheep of his family. Because of this, I connected with him heavily. Even though he enters this new world aware of his previous life, he still makes a lot of mistakes and is humbled by his experiences. But he continues to strive to do better, and to take chances that he never would have before. One of my favorite scenes was when he managed to overcome his fear of leaving the area around his home, because he was afraid that if he left he would wake up in his old body. Multiple times throughout the beginning of the show he expresses a fear that this new life is a dream. He saw his old body as a prison, and he reacted like a person who had been in solitary confinement and was afraid of the dark. The moment he was able to relinquish that fear was a joyous one.
2. Inuyasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale (and Inuyasha: The Final Act)
Where to Watch: Hulu, Crunchyroll, Funimation, and more
Inuyasha stays in my top 10. If I can ever finish YashaHime—the modern adaptation which follows the children of Inuyasha/Kagome and Rin/Sesshōmaru—without stopping, that’ll probably make the list as well. Words cannot express how much I love Inuyasha. I have been watching and rewatching it since I was in junior high. The show aired on Adult Swim and Toonami between 2002-2015. It’s set in the Sengoku period and is a comedy/horror/portal fantasy mashup. Here’s an interview with Rumiko Takahashi: http://www.viz.com/products/series/inuyasha/interview.shtml
3. No Game No Life
Where to Watch: Hulu
I’ve been really into isekai’s that depict people who didn’t necessarily fit in, or who were workers in an abusive employment situation, or were just depressed or disaffected or bullied, who then are given this “out” as an opportunity to improve their lives in some way, or to escape their current situation. No Game No Life is about a brother and sister gaming duo whose entire day is spent gaming under the name [ ] (“blank”). Unfortunately there is only one season and one movie (a prequel) because the artist/writer got accused of plagiarization. But the anime is SO GOOD. It’s like Tokyo Ravens good. And that only had one season too, smh. Anyway, No Game No Life was also adapted into a manga (it began as a light novel series).
4. By the Grace of the Gods
Where to watch: Hulu
By the Grace of the Gods has a premise similar to Jobless Reincarnation, in that he was reincarnated into a fantasy world and receives a second chance at life. Where it diverges is that the man is in his 40s and spent part of adulthood caring for his sick mother. He never married, and after she died he was alone and depressed. He worked all the time, and his workplace was abusive and isolating. He died in his sleep and was visited by deities from another world who granted him a new life and reincarnated him into the body of an eight year old child. The anime is a very sweet, slice of life type of show besides that, which is why I enjoy it. It’s so positive and there’s a deep sense of joyous escape as we watch the main character form new bonds and live a mostly peaceful life. There’s some action and some quotidian dangers thrown in, but mainly we watch him build relationships and community that he was denied in his previous life—mostly because he was too busy working!
5. Sword Art Online
Where to Watch: Hulu, Netflix, Crunchyroll, Funimation
This is my favorite isekai right now. My partner showed it to me, and I’ve been hooked since. I watched the first season, then I watched the Gun Gale spinoff, and then I went back and rewatched the original again. In Sword Art Online the main character, and thousands of other players, got stuck in a virtual reality MMORPG. If you died in the game, you died in real life. If your family member removed your headgear, you died. What a terrifying notion. But I loved it, because it helped me connect some dots regarding what Nathan Jurgenson termed “digital dualism.” According to Jurgenson: Digital dualists believe that the digital world is “virtual” and the physical world “real.” He writes that “our reality is both technological and organic, both digital and physical, all at once. We are not crossing in and out of separate digital and physical realities, ala The Matrix, but instead live in one reality, one that is augmented by atoms and bits. And our selves are not separated across these two spheres as some dualistic “first” and “second” self, but is instead an augmented self.” A death in Sword Art Online was real. Falling in love in the game was real. Watching someone you love become a different version of their self than they were before both of you got stuck in the game, and becoming so terrified of the difference that you murder them… that’s some real shit. I have more to say about Sword Art Online than I can put in this post, but you should definitely watch the first season.
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