Hack Sign is great but it can be very slow. If you like things that are more atmospheric I would definitely suggest watching it. I love the opening to it.
Yeah that might be why i never got in to it, i did see a bit when i was younger but it was too slow. Hack legend of twilight was definitely faster paced.. I might give hack sign another try though
Even the third one was decent enough. The one with Haseo, 10 years later or something like that. Half season build-up before the main plot hits is a bit long, but .hack is a slow-burn series.
Shield Hero at least has a gimmick that can make it an interesting enough story. Not a masterpiece like FMA, but still better than 90% of Isekai at least.
I do agree though that the amount of Isekai right now is too damn high. At least in more recent times it has started to move toward more types (if my anime watch list is anything to go by at least).
Eh. It wasnt as good as the first season, but I didnt think it was that bad. Although we will see what happens with Season 3, since that goes over stuff that is more interesting and consequential to the later plot.
EDIT:
Nah, we need more.
You do you, I guess I am just Isekai'ed out. For me, my recent time has been SpyxFamily, Eighty-Six: 86, and getting caught up on some older anime like JoJo and Fairy Tale. The one exception on the Isekai wagon is getting caught up on Overlord.
I know it can be. I think I have just been funned out on it after watching too much, and seeing a lot that was basically just "Author self insert with completely OP powers and a harem of women throwing themselves at him."
I know I have heard of plenty that would be fun and break that mold. I just have other stuff I am more interested in higher up my watch list at the moment.
Gonna level with you, I watched the spider parts of "I'm a spider, so what?" on 3x speed. I watched that anime only for the human parts, her parts were so predictable and bland.
It's a different beast, but that beast isn't a good beast. Personal opinion, of course. There's no stakes, no danger with her. Will she succeed perfectly? Of course she will, she's solo and even the mildest fail-state is the end of the series, which means she can't fail. The humans, though... Oh, any of them could kick the bucket at any time, every encounter has a real risk of failure, of death.
For me, I've only read the manga so her parts were all I got until much later, I only know the difference because it came up in conversation a lot.
Though I disagree on her succeeding perfectly. Numerous times she is forced to retreat and literally failgrind her way into succeeding eventually. Often with skills/spells you don't get to see in fantasy simply because she isn't human, so its completely different method to kill this dragon.
My interest fell off completely once she hit the surface because the humans were introduced and all of them were just the same isekai story.
At first I was quite impressed with Shield hero at its premise but eventually came to become disappointed. I don't have anything against loli but every party members the main character obtains becomes a loli, even a freaking animal. That moment I rolled my eyes and gave up.
Unironically I liked the Redo of Healer anime better for the fact it embraced the hammness and stopped taking itself seriously.
SAO has had quite a few video games. Ironically, the best one was the Third Person Shooter "Gun Gale Online: Fatal Bullet."
If you want a series full of cute shenanigans and game development decisions that would drive any sensible gamer nuts upon hearing what they entail, there's "Bofuri: I Didn't Want to get Hurt, So I Maxed My Defense" (based on a light novel). But I suppose that's the thing about these ridiculous "VR Game series," you'd never want to ACTUALLY play them.
I've only tried one sword game (Hollow Fragment) and completely agree with you on that, but I would unironically recommend you give Fatal Bullet a shot.
Dude, there's a LOT of them based on going into a vr video game world, off the top of my head:
Log Horizon: seen for years as the better version, season 1 is phenomenal, 2 not as much and 3 I'd say is good its in between 1 and 2
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense: this one is just a laugh, ever had that guy that's a noob but accidentally breaks the game, here's the anime. It is just a lot of fun especially for gamers
SAO Abridged: seriously if you haven't watch it on YouTube, it's superior to the original!
Honorable mentions are a lot of Isakai where they are fully transported from a game so Overlord, No game no life, and recent stuck as a villainess and mob animes that came out.
Isekai means "another world" in Japanese. Used to refer to the genre of shows where the protagonist is transported to another (usually fantasy or game like) world. Some people also use it to describe shows like SAO where they are technically still on earth just in a VR game.
My favorite, and arguably the best Isekai in the last few years is a parody. Konosuba. It's raunchy and hilarious, and portrays much more what a typical tabletop rpg party actually acts like.
I second Konosuba. I also agree that yes, it does behave more like how me and my friends actually play DND (doing dumb shit that shouldnt work but it does anyway) than most other Isekai does.
I'm going to go in a different direction from the other recommendations: instead of just looking at Isekai's, look at survival game anime. Basically, the protagonist is thrust into a death game. Examples:
Future Diary
Juni Taisen: Zodiac War
Danganronpa
Alternatively, were you impressed by the art and animation? Other anime from A-1 Pictures:
Erased
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash
From the New World
Maybe you liked the music? The soundtrack for SAO was done by Yuki Kajiura. Some other series with her music:
I would suggest Overlord, it's an isekai where the player of an MMO goes into a new world. It still has a lot of the game elements as well as pure fantasy too. The light novel for it is also really good.
Does it have to be anime? I've enjoyed an audio book greatly called Life Reset about a guy who plays a VR mmorpg, gets fucked over and turned into a goblin and due to a glitch gets stuck inside the game.
Put me into a rabbit hole of litrpg's recently and I can't stop finding great ones(and some mediocre and bad ones as well, lol).
Books are fine. I’m a huge reader. Last book I read like that was Ready Player Two but it had so many woke talking points it got very annoying. Can’t remember the name but there is a book by Piers Anthony from the 90s where a guy is playing a VR game that is a fantasy world but I don’t think he was trapped
It is the genre name for when the main character is, by one means or another, transported to another world, where they then have to start interacting with the new world. Sometimes using knowledge from their own world to make themselves absolutely overpowered (ie: "I am in a medieval world, but I know how to make a gun, so now every fight is trivial to me.")
Just be aware that a lot of them don’t match the SAO vibe. A lot of them are comedies and borderline slice of life. I think shield hero, mushoku tensei, and re:zero might be the biggest ones that actually match the more serious tone that SAO goes for.
It’s been a while but I think .hack had a similar premise.
.hack//legend of twilight was one of my first anime.Its the sequel though and i never got around to watching the first of the series .hack//Sign
Hack Sign is great but it can be very slow. If you like things that are more atmospheric I would definitely suggest watching it. I love the opening to it.
Yeah that might be why i never got in to it, i did see a bit when i was younger but it was too slow. Hack legend of twilight was definitely faster paced.. I might give hack sign another try though
Even the third one was decent enough. The one with Haseo, 10 years later or something like that. Half season build-up before the main plot hits is a bit long, but .hack is a slow-burn series.
Half of anime anymore is person transported to rpg land with “gamer” stats. Rising of Shield Hero, Arifureta, Re:Zero are all similar in that regard
Shield Hero at least has a gimmick that can make it an interesting enough story. Not a masterpiece like FMA, but still better than 90% of Isekai at least.
I do agree though that the amount of Isekai right now is too damn high. At least in more recent times it has started to move toward more types (if my anime watch list is anything to go by at least).
Eh. It wasnt as good as the first season, but I didnt think it was that bad. Although we will see what happens with Season 3, since that goes over stuff that is more interesting and consequential to the later plot.
EDIT:
You do you, I guess I am just Isekai'ed out. For me, my recent time has been SpyxFamily, Eighty-Six: 86, and getting caught up on some older anime like JoJo and Fairy Tale. The one exception on the Isekai wagon is getting caught up on Overlord.
I know it can be. I think I have just been funned out on it after watching too much, and seeing a lot that was basically just "Author self insert with completely OP powers and a harem of women throwing themselves at him."
I know I have heard of plenty that would be fun and break that mold. I just have other stuff I am more interested in higher up my watch list at the moment.
As shown by "I'm a spider, so what?" which is basically a generic isekai with one different element and it turns it into a completely different beast.
Especially if you read the manga, which excises all of the human characters until way later.
Gonna level with you, I watched the spider parts of "I'm a spider, so what?" on 3x speed. I watched that anime only for the human parts, her parts were so predictable and bland.
It's a different beast, but that beast isn't a good beast. Personal opinion, of course. There's no stakes, no danger with her. Will she succeed perfectly? Of course she will, she's solo and even the mildest fail-state is the end of the series, which means she can't fail. The humans, though... Oh, any of them could kick the bucket at any time, every encounter has a real risk of failure, of death.
For me, I've only read the manga so her parts were all I got until much later, I only know the difference because it came up in conversation a lot.
Though I disagree on her succeeding perfectly. Numerous times she is forced to retreat and literally failgrind her way into succeeding eventually. Often with skills/spells you don't get to see in fantasy simply because she isn't human, so its completely different method to kill this dragon.
My interest fell off completely once she hit the surface because the humans were introduced and all of them were just the same isekai story.
I miss good Mecha anime.
At first I was quite impressed with Shield hero at its premise but eventually came to become disappointed. I don't have anything against loli but every party members the main character obtains becomes a loli, even a freaking animal. That moment I rolled my eyes and gave up.
Unironically I liked the Redo of Healer anime better for the fact it embraced the hammness and stopped taking itself seriously.
SAO has had quite a few video games. Ironically, the best one was the Third Person Shooter "Gun Gale Online: Fatal Bullet."
If you want a series full of cute shenanigans and game development decisions that would drive any sensible gamer nuts upon hearing what they entail, there's "Bofuri: I Didn't Want to get Hurt, So I Maxed My Defense" (based on a light novel). But I suppose that's the thing about these ridiculous "VR Game series," you'd never want to ACTUALLY play them.
I've only tried one sword game (Hollow Fragment) and completely agree with you on that, but I would unironically recommend you give Fatal Bullet a shot.
Dude, there's a LOT of them based on going into a vr video game world, off the top of my head:
Log Horizon: seen for years as the better version, season 1 is phenomenal, 2 not as much and 3 I'd say is good its in between 1 and 2
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense: this one is just a laugh, ever had that guy that's a noob but accidentally breaks the game, here's the anime. It is just a lot of fun especially for gamers
SAO Abridged: seriously if you haven't watch it on YouTube, it's superior to the original!
Honorable mentions are a lot of Isakai where they are fully transported from a game so Overlord, No game no life, and recent stuck as a villainess and mob animes that came out.
Thanks! What does Isekai mean? I’ll look those up.
Isekai means "another world" in Japanese. Used to refer to the genre of shows where the protagonist is transported to another (usually fantasy or game like) world. Some people also use it to describe shows like SAO where they are technically still on earth just in a VR game.
Oh. Cool. Thanks!
My favorite, and arguably the best Isekai in the last few years is a parody. Konosuba. It's raunchy and hilarious, and portrays much more what a typical tabletop rpg party actually acts like.
I second Konosuba. I also agree that yes, it does behave more like how me and my friends actually play DND (doing dumb shit that shouldnt work but it does anyway) than most other Isekai does.
That's a pass then.
I'm going to go in a different direction from the other recommendations: instead of just looking at Isekai's, look at survival game anime. Basically, the protagonist is thrust into a death game. Examples:
Alternatively, were you impressed by the art and animation? Other anime from A-1 Pictures:
Maybe you liked the music? The soundtrack for SAO was done by Yuki Kajiura. Some other series with her music:
Greatly appreciated. I’m barely above the level of an anime normie but you guys are pushing me well past that
Some of us have power levels beyond that which a scouter can read.
Log Horizon
.hack
Land of Leadale
I would suggest Overlord, it's an isekai where the player of an MMO goes into a new world. It still has a lot of the game elements as well as pure fantasy too. The light novel for it is also really good.
Does it have to be anime? I've enjoyed an audio book greatly called Life Reset about a guy who plays a VR mmorpg, gets fucked over and turned into a goblin and due to a glitch gets stuck inside the game.
Put me into a rabbit hole of litrpg's recently and I can't stop finding great ones(and some mediocre and bad ones as well, lol).
Books are fine. I’m a huge reader. Last book I read like that was Ready Player Two but it had so many woke talking points it got very annoying. Can’t remember the name but there is a book by Piers Anthony from the 90s where a guy is playing a VR game that is a fantasy world but I don’t think he was trapped
Just look up isekai lol. Sao is basically a genre, the whole video game life
there have been dozens of isekai animes which jumped in to capitalize on SWO's success.
just look up any anime site with an isekai category.
Thanks! What does Isekai mean?
It is the genre name for when the main character is, by one means or another, transported to another world, where they then have to start interacting with the new world. Sometimes using knowledge from their own world to make themselves absolutely overpowered (ie: "I am in a medieval world, but I know how to make a gun, so now every fight is trivial to me.")
Ok. That makes sense. Greatly appreciated
Just be aware that a lot of them don’t match the SAO vibe. A lot of them are comedies and borderline slice of life. I think shield hero, mushoku tensei, and re:zero might be the biggest ones that actually match the more serious tone that SAO goes for.
Thanks. I remember I was sucked into SAO after that first episode
Soiled interesting! Thanks!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isekai
Not related per se, but if you liked SOA, you might also like HxH, Dragon's Dogma and DOTA.