Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. During the mid to late 2010s the anime industry went on what I like to call an isekai phase. Isekai animes were pretty much everywhere and would usually go on to be some of the most popular anime in the years to come. However, the anime market became oversaturated with them and this made a lot people upset because it opened the door for lazy animes based off of isekai to be made. I guess everyone just figured, if they make an isekai they can make good money off of it. Too bad they decided to be greedy instead of put time and effort into telling a good story that we can enjoy. We all know which isekai animes are the most popular and which ones are passable, but which ones are considered the worst? Which ones did we have the hardest time sitting through and made us hate the genre and wish that isekai would just up and die like mecha anime? With webtoons seemingly on the rise it looks like the age of isekai might be coming to an end soon, but with a look at the next season of anime and some really good and popular isekai anime set to come out I think isekai might be sticking around a little while longer. While I have praised the best of isekai over the last few years, it only seems fair that I point out the worst of this genre. It’s your boy Nitsuj and these are the Top 11 Worst Isekai Anime.
#11. The Ones Within- Genome
An interesting premise with a bunch of Let’s Players all specializing in different game genres coming together in another world. When the anime first came out a lot of people liked it, but as time went on the anime quickly began losing its audience with each passing episode. This was mostly due to the fact that the anime had uninteresting scenarios, poor use of characters, and really didn’t go anywhere. There was only one good episode of the bunch that I really liked. The rest of the episodes were boring and the way it used its cast of characters was disappointing.
#10. Death March to a Parallel World Rhapsody
I’ve talked about this anime in the past so click here to get my full thoughts about the anime. To sum things up quickly, the anime just feels generic and uninteresting. It brings nothing new to the isekai genre, the characters are bland, and it leaves no impact on you whatsoever. While there are a few good things in the anime it’s not enough to make it memorable and will be seen as an anime to just pass the time for something better to do.
#9. In Another World with my Smartphone
One of the most well-known worst isekai animes out there. Just like Death March this anime was boring, bland, forgetful, uninteresting, and generic as hell. The anime came out way past its time and was viewed as a cheap attempt to cash in off the success of isekai anime. None of the characters had any personality and believes the trope that if my main character is OP he’ll be interesting. This anime came out way past its time and was an embarrassment to isekai anime.
#8. Maou-sama Retry
There have been a number of animes that have had the demon lord as their main character. Most of them are played for comedic affects and then you get this anime which has no idea what to do with its character, setting, and story. This anime was so boring to watch that I actually started speed watching the series after the first episode and even after doing this I had to stop watching it as it almost made me fall asleep watching it. This anime somehow manages to encapsulate all the problems of Death March and Smartphone. It’s so unbelievably boring, uninteresting, bland, forgetful, and generic that you find yourself asking how something like this was allowed to air in this time and age.
#7. Seven Senses of the Re’uion
When making this list I wasn’t sure whether or not this counted as an isekai anime. After careful discussion among my peers we all agreed that this anime does count as an isekai and boy is it one of the worst ones I’ve seen. Not only does this anime blatantly rip-off SAO and Anohana but it has some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen in an anime. This anime tries to make you feel sorry for the main characters but you honestly feel nothing for them because you know nothing about them and the anime fails to make you build a connection to them because we have bland characters and the writers apparently have no idea how to write gamers or do world-building as we know nothing about this world and every character is a walking cliché that you’ve seen a million times done better than this anime. While the anime came out in 2018 it feels like this anime is from the early 2000s. It was so out of place and behind the times of what makes a good isekai.
#6. The Cosmopolitan Prayers
Speaking of the early 2000s this was an isekai anime that made everyone ask, what the fuck am I watching? The story of this anime is that our main character Koto unknowingly seals the goddess Amaterasu and gets transported to another world. Once there, she teams up with a bunch of other priestesses to unseal Amaterasu who is being kept sealed by monsters. At first things start off nice. Koto becomes a magical girl and fights monsters but then the anime just sporadically turns into a mecha anime and gives us so many plot twists throughout the show that make no sense and just break up the story. The whole story just goes by way too fast that you have no time to process what you just saw and just walk away from this anime wondering what the fuck you just watched? The characters are flat and those that do get development are so annoying that you’ll wish they never got development at all. If you were hoping for an it’s so bad its good scenario you won’t get that here. It’s so bad that that you’ll hate yourself for even watching it.
#5. Do you love your mom and her two-hit multi-target attacks?
The anime that would have worked out better if it was a hentai. There’s no shortage of jokes when it comes to this anime. For the first 5 minutes the series actually did seem like it was going to be interesting. A gamer going to another world with his mom fighting beside him could have been interesting, but after the first 5 minutes the show quickly becomes just another generic isekai anime. It repeats the same jokes from past isekai animes only to have the jokes fail here and come across as kind of disturbing as this series almost makes it seem like there’s some kind of incest relationship forming between a mom and son. The anime quickly becomes uncomfortable to watch and I quickly stopped watching after the first episode as I quickly loss interest and never looked back. I’ll give the anime this, Mamako was definitely a cute MILF.
#4. The Master Ragnarok and Blesser of Einherjar
Oh man, this series was just awful. It tries so hard to be a harem anime despite the fact that our main character right from the get go says he already has someone he likes back home. We get battle scenes that are slow and boring, a bunch of characters who have cliché personalities, and a world that has zero world building and leaves out so many things that were essential to making the anime make sense to the viewer. There was so much promise with this anime and they managed to ruin it every step of the way.
#3. Conception
Based off the JRPG under the same name, Conception was a series that was doomed to fail from the get go. The anime tries to cover the entire series in 12 episodes, and it fails in spectacular fashion. Aside from rushing through the story entirely, the show makes the characters uninteresting, has terrible fight scenes, an annoying side character, and lots of perverted humor that not even a sexually frustrated teenager would find this funny. As someone who played the sequel to this series on the PS Vita I am appalled at the blatant disrespect this series received and everyone who worked on this anime should be embarrassed to even be associated with its creation. This isn’t only one of the worst isekai animes I’ve seen but it’s probably the worst video game anime I’ve ever seen as well and that’s saying something.
#2. Isekai Cheat Magician
Hands down the laziest isekai anime I have ever seen. In a season of anime where we got Arifureta, Maou-sama, and MILF isekai this series managed to stand above the bunch as the worst isekai of the bunch. There is no effort or creativity thrown into this anime. It was a quick cash grab that copies from just about every isekai anime that came before it and was just riding the wave of the isekai popularity. Everything in this anime is uninteresting to watch and hear as we get OP characters who have no personalities whatsoever, going on adventures that we’ve seen done in other isekai animes, fight scenes that will put you to sleep, and has a story that has no idea where it’s going or what it wants to do. This was another anime I had to drop as sitting through each episode felt like hell and made me angry for just how lazy and disrespectful this show was. It slapped everybody in the face and spits at the creativity and effort put into making a good isekai. Fuck this anime.
And number 1. . .
#1. Kenja no Mago
Dear sweet God why does this series exist? Imagine if Smartphone and Cheat Magician fused together, this would be the result. The whole series is so predictable and boring to watch. It was so boring that they literally abandoned the main plot of the story for several episodes only to come back to it near the end of the series and resolve it in one of the most boring climaxes I have ever seen done in an anime. While Isekai Cheat Magician may be the laziest isekai anime I’ve seen this was without a doubt the most boring isekai anime I had the displeasure of watching and the one thing I hate more than lazy anime is boring anime as there is just nothing to look forward to when watching this anime. All the problems that I’ve talked about on this list can be found in this anime only worse. When people ask me what I think caused the downfall of isekai anime this is the anime I point to. If you want to know the definition of insanity than look no further than this anime.
And that’s my list. Do your best and avoid these animes are all times my friends. Let me know what you think is the worst isekai anime in the comments below. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.
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