Now don't get me wrong, standard qualifier from an avid anime watcher, yes, isekai fantasy anime was always generally considered pretty trash. I consider it the junk food of anime where you know it's terrible for you but you kind of watch it anyway and I've sometimes found it entertaining because the studios redeem the shows with decent character writing and backstories.
The last couple of shows overall have been so bad it's surprising and it's almost woke levels of shittiness and I hope this is just a blip because it's summer anime but how do you manage to fuck up such a basic premise as making an interesting fantasy story? It doesn't have to be original or even amazing, just make it decent. I'm seeing the newer stuff come out and it's like they've shamelessly copy-pasted scenes and plastered them onto the new characters and their budget is clearly very low because you've got the poorly rendered 3D monsters problem again.
Maybe Frieren raised my expectations way too much but even by Isekai trash anime standards it's been a particularly poor showing at the moment. Once you notice all the shit they do to cut corners in animation like literal slideshow scenes with audio ( It's usually a hotspring scene or they're 'wandering' around a market ) it's really hard to unsee it and I despise studios that do this.
Ahhhh fuck. Those just came out today, it looks like? Now I'll have to watch them and decide for myself.
I hope they keep some but, yeah, it's certainly been overused.
I haven't seen the ones you're talking about yet, but I think last season may have been worse. New Gate was slightly entertaining trash; Chillin' in Another World was cute and enjoyable, but still kind of trash; Reincarnated Aristocrat was fairly trash; Re:Monster was decent funny trash; and then Banished Former Hero and Reincarnated as the 7th Prince were both just utter trash.
Fact is though, isekai will always have some percentage of utter trash. Some seasons it's almost one hundred percent, others it's pretty low. It's hard to read trends, since it can quite quickly change pretty dramatically. This or next season could be the best isekais ever, for all we know.
I'd advise you to read the Manga for the Aristocrat one, don't know if they're doing another season for the anime but in the Manga they have a whole war arc and even bring in advanced tactics of using flying magical drones for the targeting trajectory for magical artillery.
Honestly, in the case of that one, it's mostly personal bias; I don't like the super young MC thing. It's just kind of weird, and it doesn't matter if it's good or not, it's hard to get into. Really not my thing.
That's fair, I wonder if you enjoyed Kaiju No 8 for the older protagonist?
I did enjoy Kaiju No 8, but not because of the older protagonist. I just don't enjoy the super child-like characters, is all. Well, at least in the action sense. As part of a family (Spy x Family, for example), anime children can be adorable. But as action MCs I just find it off-putting.