A New Konosuba is coming out, rising of a shield hero gets another go next season, Slime
is finishing off it’s second season after already having a slice of life spinoff last
spring.
And a whole slew of new isekai are coming out in this season alone.
Hi!
We are doing a very close and personal video today.
Hey do you remember when Moe slice of life was one of the most prominent types of anime
to dominate what came out most every season?
Can we go back to that?
Should we go back to that?
No.
Because barring some select few the majority were just cardboard basic one-dimensional
shows.
With characters whose only selling point was how cute they were.
Not only that but the majority of shows could not match the quality that Kyoto Ani could
do in this field.
I posit the only reason that KyoAni hasn’t done a traditional Isekai show is because
they want to give other studios a fighting chance, so instead let’s go off and make
Evergarden, and Maid Dragon.
I don’t think I would be wrong in saying that was the right move.
But!
Moe is not the dominant feature in anime anymore, Isekai, being the dominant light novel feature
of webnovels in the 2000’s and 2010’s has now come to infect EVERYTHING!
It’s overtaken Moe and now, in any given season, it feels like we have like a dozen
Isekai shows to comb through.
In 2019 alone we had 19 shows that could bear the description of Isekai.
Are most of them any good?
ehhhhhh.
Like the Moe shows of old they usually rely heavily on one selling point, and if that
point was interesting to you then yes, it might have been good.
For you.
But if you are looking for broad appeal you either need to be so original that people
latch on to your uniqueness, or just be so damn awesome that we would have had no choice
but to just bow down to it’s majesty.
That said, while I am aware that cerian sub-sections of the anime community hate isekai with a
burning passion, I don’t think I’m one of them.
I can be dissapointed in the show's quirk or just plain uninterested in the story that
they are trying to tell, but I don’t hate an isekai show just because it’s an isekai.
and even looking at this season Summer 2021, I wouldn't consider most of these isekai shows
to even be bad.
Not great, but not terrible.
Even with the Pharmacist one that’s probably the most bland, I still find myself coming
back every week.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Ladies, Gentlemen and others, welcome back to Glass Reflection where Today we are doing
a roundup of the isekai shows of summer 2021.
A glimpse at what the state of Isekai is now, so we can try to analyze where we might be
headed in the future.
But before that let’s pass it on over to A Future Corporate Sellout version of myself
who hopefully has a sponsor for this video!
Glass Reflection would like to thank the sponsor for this video today, being the good people
over at SurfShark VPN.
A VPN is a way for you to help protect your privacy and what you view online as you surf
and watch anime and videos on the web!
Not only does it secure your data, encrypting it to help stop people from eavesdropping
on your connection, but it also allows you to mask your location.
Doing so allows you to bypass the region locking of a variety of streaming services, as not
all streaming services are equal in what regions they service.
So having a VPN like Surfshark can help you access shows you might not be able to otherwise.
Content blocked on services such as Netflix and Youtube can be accessible simply by connecting
to a local server from the country you’d like to access.
And of course, Surf Shark is available on a variety of devices as well as your PC!
So you can stream your anime on the go if you so choose
There will be a link and Promo code in the description where you can sign up for a percentage
off as well as an extra 3 months free, because we like you guys so much.
And best of all if you try it out and don’t find that it helps, it’s not doing what
you expected, or it doesn’t end up unblocking the content you want it too, Surfshark offers
a 30-day money back guarantee, no questions asked.
Thank you very much to Surfshark for sponsoring the video!
Let’s get back to it.
Alright let’s start with the easy one to discuss.
The one that most people are probably watching.
That Time I Was Reincarnated As a Slime, Season 2 Part 2.
I’ve said elsewhere that slime is one of my favourite Isekai of all time, it has many
aspects that other shows do poorly like having an overpowered protagonist, and while that
can and has been used as a almost magical get out of problem free card the show puts
a lot of weight into developing it’s character roster.
Granted that leads into the second most poorly done Isekai trait of giving the protagonist
a massive harem.
I mean come on, Slime even changed the race of a lizard woman so that she could be a hot
human shaped girl.
While it may contain aspects that have become trite and stale over the years, it doesn’t
lean into those ones as much as it could and neither does it rely on them to keep the story
interesting.
If I was to recommend a modern, post SAO isekai this is where I would start.
It has everything standard about isekai in it but even the ones that are overused elsewhere
are done in almost their best possible way here.
Or pretty close to it.
But Slime has also been around for awhile, since it started back in 2018.
So what are some other shows, some newer shows of this season like?
Tsukimichi Moonlit Fantasy
There are a lot of comparisons in this one to slime that people, including myself, could
make.
It’s saving grace from poor comparisons is of course the fact that it’s original
material came first by almost a full year.
So comparisons to slime are actually in it’s benefit as it paved the way.
But you have a protagonist who gets isekai’ed , only for the goddess of the new world to
be disgusted by him and banish him immediately to the ends of the world.
Beyond this point is where the slime similarities come in.
He ends up making contracts with powerful beast entities who conveniently turn into
beautiful women because of it and begin to somewhat serve him and call him master.
Can you say: Building a harem?
Cause like it or hate it that’s what we are doin!
One of them, an ancient dragon, creates a secondary dimensional world for various beast
tribes to live in safety away from the desolate wasteland they used to call their home.
Very similar to what Rimuru Tempest is doing over in the Tempest nation in Slime.
Beyond that point though is where the slime similarities end.
The cast is nowhere near as large, and it’s overall story is not really put into focus,
instead relying on the character interactions between this group of 3 overpowered lead characters.
Two of which have several triggers that make them go berserk against anyone or anything.
For comedic effect of course, so that doesn’t make this all that serious of a story.
If that’s what you are looking for it does a fairly decent job.
It feels at times more of a parody of Isekai than anything.
But maybe that’s not the right way to describe it because considering it’s original story's
age, it’s almost parodying things that have come after it.
I’m probably completely wrong with that but it’s just the feeling that I’m getting.
As a comedy isekai it does it’s job but I still feel like it’s missing that special
something something.
Just one more little push to be truly great.
Moving on!
Drugstore in Another World: The Slow Life of a Cheat Pharmacist
There’s not much to say on this one as it’s extremely simple.
Salaryman get’s isekai’ed into a fairly generic fantasy town and begins to use his
skills to make potions, tonics, and all sorts of useful items for the local townsfolk.
I’m not gonna die on a hill by saying this one is particularly good, it’s just a series
that meets my admittedly low expectations for it.
It sets the bar real low and that’s fine.
This one specifically feels like this series is the Isekai equivalent to cotton candy.
Super super sweet but lacks any real depth and disappears under any semblance of a critical
eye.
But if all you want is a boost of sweetness then it’s the perfect remedy so to speak.
Seirei Gensouki
This one had potential, and who knows further episodes may make it better and it may develop
going forward.
But so far initially it seems to have disregarded everything about it that makes it unique.
To the point where, it’s almost hard to even call this an isekai.
Because it’s starting to feel more like a traditional fantasy rather than an isekai.
The isekai element just feels shoehorned in.
The lead character gets isekai’ed by a train while traveling on a bus which is a fun change
of pace but poor bus-kun.
What did anybody ever do to you?
But, in getting isekai’ed, instead of getting his own body his memories are implanted in
the body of a young commoner boy.
There’s a bit of self-confusion as he now has two separate memories to contend with
and originally I thought that some kind of journey of the self but that’s discarded
almost immediately.
What follows are several episodes of his character getting stepped on in a class war against
virtually every other character.
Those of noble blood are disgusted that a commoner is even allowed to mingle with them
let alone be better than them at anything.
If they didn’t spend so long beating us over the head with that I’d probably enjoy
the series far more but so far that’s the only cause of tension that the show has relied
on.
I’m disappointed by what the show has done with the protagonists' unique situation at
the start, his dual memory thing now just becomes a catch all to give the MC knowledge
and superpowers to a point.
and even discounting that what we got instead wasn’t enough to catch my interest either.
Toss in a timeskip of 5 years that apparently did nothing to change the situation.
It's like it almost never happened.
We just needed the characters to be older now and really I’m just bored with it.
I’ve seen readers of the original material say it’ll get better in later arcs, that’s
what they all say.
but when the OP has our main character in what can be described as a Kirito cosplay
I’m not holding my breath.
How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom
I actually thought going into this one that it would be similar to the last, a serious
premise that doesn’t live up to its potential.
There were some curious missteps but, when you have a series that references things like
Slayers and Salt Bae, well that’s a series of culture.
So our main guy gets isekaied and instead of becoming a traditional hero who goes up
north to fight the invading demons, he instead gets crowned king and we begin a medieval
kingdom economic simulator.
Looking at the various problems facing his new home and some of the solutions he has
to fix them.
His methods are rather...unorthodox.
When I first heard that the series was going to be a bit more economic focused I was thinking
it was going to be like Maoyuu Maou Yuusha but really it doesn't have that kind of Plot
behind it.
I’m hesitant to say that it’s “good”, more that I’m finding it enjoyable.
More so than anything else I mentioned today baring slime of course.
There’s a level of optimism here that permeates the story, so even though there are tidbits
that have me tilt my head a bit in confusion, like the whole search for talented people
that wasn’t properly explained, I’m letting the show pull me along for the ride and I
can’t say I’ve been disappointed yet.
But I’m also not setting high expectations for it to continually blow me out of the water.
There’s also like the dungeon of Black company but...you know I didn’t really see anything
interesting about that going into it, and I don’t think anything beyond the first
episode is worth bringing up that changes how things have been going compared to other
things that I’ve shown here today.
So this is what Isekai is in 2021, there are a handful of well known properties that have
more stuff coming soon, and then this massive onslaught of other shows that are hard to
latch onto because there’s only so much unique about them.
Most of them only seem to have like one interesting thing about them, one quirk.
The kind of thing that you can maybe latch onto initially for the first episode or so
but it’s not enough to keep you coming back every week.
Looking at this season, I’m going back to Cheat Pharmacist not because it’s good but
because it serves a purpose of just being a rather nice and pointless show that I can
just turn on and enjoy.
That’s fine for me but it probably won’t be for others.
And Realist Hero keeps doing this, somewhat bull cliffhanger thing where something is
revealed to one of the characters but for us?
Well better come back next week and...yeah I’m going to do it but I don’t have to
be happy about it.
The rest?
Again they aren't bad, there’s just nothing exceptionally good about them either.
We are in a place now with the anime community where watching things is a little bit more
difficult or at least different than it was last year.
Depending on where you live, things are opening back up, the world is trying to revert back
to what it was pre 2020, albeit slowly and not without scars, but because of that I feel
like the same people who leaned into watching anime over the last year for comfort are taking
a break.
Probably for the best too because nothing in this season specifically screams MUST WATCH.
Even things like slime.
There are at least two shows this season not released yet that could change things and
I’m hopeful that they do....
But, to convince people to watch things en-masse again you need to be special, you need to
be unique.
And these ain’t it chief.
Just being good is not going to cut it right now.
So for isekai, something that already has a somewhat negative connotation amongst some
of the anime community that’s doubly so.
Isekai needs a new BIG show, or else it’s gonna fall by the wayside, mark my words.
That's all for today, tune in next time where we look at something I’m super looking forward
to!
Which means that no one else is gonna watch it.
Probably.
That’s usually how these seasonal videos turn out.
A very big thank you to all of the patrons whose names have been scrolling here on the
screen for a bit, for supporting these videos I cannot do it without you!
And a very special thank you to patrons: Wago 221, Omar Shoman, Hector Montemayor, Ryefan
Boneapart, and Siri Yamiko for being especially awesome!
Until next time, ladies, gentlemen, and others watch more anime and Stay Frosty!