Another anime I’m enjoying this season is That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, the currently running anime with goblins…no, no that anime with goblins, the other one. It’s the story of a 37-year-old man who’s killed in a random knife attack and (before making his friend promise to wipe his hard drive), finds himself reincarnated in an isekai fantasy world as a Slime. But not just any Slime: he gets upgraded with dozens of skills to the point that he can take on almost any problem or boss in the show, and he uses his abilities with great wisdom. And eventually gets cuddled by some sexy elves…
As with perceived explosion in visual anime fanservice, there might be a tendency to think that the isekai genre is a recent thing. The popularity of Sword Art Online certainly caused the isekai-and-fantasy genre to explode, creating copycats the same way every third anime of the late 90s was filled with themes and tropes that Evangelion had explored. It’s fun to look back at the genre before it went mainstream…
There were quite a few isekai anime shows in the 1990s and early 2000s, like Inuyasha, Vision of Escaflowne and El Hazard. Spirited Away, which tells of the kami kakushi or “spiriting away by gods to another world” of Chihiro, also fits the bill. Another classic story of girls who are transported to a fantasy world—in this case one in which nearly every character is named after Japanese and American cars—is Magical Knight Rayearth, the anime that was responsible for my kids learning English. Going back even further, Aura Battler Dunbine and Super Dimension Century Orguss sort of got the isekai anime party going.
There are lots of examples outside of anime, too. What is the classic Never Ending Story film but an isekai story? Or The Chronicles of Narnia? Or the Outlander series? Even TRON is an isekai about a world of sentient programs fighting battles inside a computer system, who need to be saved by a Gary Stu hero from the outside world.
Going back even further, there are older examples, like Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the classic alternative fiction story about a 19th-century man who finds himself in 6th century England, where he uses knowledge and innovation to “win” the game like the best isekai heroes. Of course, the mother of all isekai stories would have to be Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland going all the way back to 1865. Even Japan’s onahole companies have been getting in on the isekai action.
Are you enjoying That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime? Got any other isekai anime favorites? Tellus on Twitter!
Near the end of the year, J-List has lots of fun bringing out our trademark Fukubukuro grab bags, which are giant red bags (well, boxes with the contents included, along with one of the red bags that you can assemble if you like) filled with wonderful things. Today we’ve got two new Fukubukuro posted, a Kitty Cat Bat, with neko-tastic products for you, along with our always popular ecchi grab bag, filled with a huge number of naughty products our staff has assembled. Browse all our Fukubukuro right now!
