Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be checking out… wait, seriously? An isekai? Don’t you folks know how I feel about those? Well, a job’s a job, so I guess today we’re checking out the industry’s latest isekai production: Jobless Reincarnation.
I don’t know anything about Jobless Reincarnation in particular, but I do know that I am flat-out exhausted by the isekai genre, and basically every one of its assumed qualities. There is definitely a strong potential isekai within the template as we know it – a show that genuinely reflects on the alienation of modern society, and interrogates the self-defeating ugliness of using fanatical fandom as an escape from reality. But even the shows that ostensibly do this, like Re:Zero, are still drenched in obnoxious otaku-isms, and simply not written well enough to keep my attention.
Characters in isekai shows speak in fan-aimed cliches, not like human beings, and the worlds they interact with are playpens filled with otaku ephemera, not convincingly realized alternative worlds. They are a warm hug aimed at a very specific set of consumers, which lack either the maturity of perspective or beauty of narrative craft to offer anything to a general audience of art-likers. As someone who has read a lot of actual adult-aimed novels, light novel storytelling is almost never going to impress me; particularly in this field, where novels are frequently written by amateur authors who are taking influence from other amateur authors, and being guided by editors whose notes presumably run the range from “needs more harem archetypes” to “mention her boobs more.” It’s the blind leading the blind while a third guy actively guides them off a cliff, and while the results of this process are understandable, they’re not generally consumable.
So that’s my opinion of isekai anime: a genre with theoretical potential, but no shows I could recommend to art enthusiasts, constructed under economic conditions that may well preclude the creation of any genuinely interesting art. Let’s see what I think of this one!
Episode 1
Some neat layouts and unusually realistic art design as we open on our protagonist, already having suffered a fatal crash. Presumably this art style is being used to establish a visual contrast with the world he eventually enters
One of the big issues with isekai is it’s just so damn structured. “Horror” can mean basically anything scary – “isekai” presumes a fairly strict adherence to an extremely overused narrative template, meaning any new isekai are almost destined to feel derivative. But again, to its intended audience, that’s presumably one of its charms – this audience isn’t looking to be surprised, they’re looking to be praised for their knowledge of anime archetypes. Fandom-aimed works feel like the opposite of true art to me; rather than challenging and dazzling, they tell viewers “you’re good. You’ve already figured it all out. The art you’ve consumed so far is enough art for you”
Our MC has been a shut-in for twenty years
This shot of him sinking beneath the doctors is really suffering from this show’s limited animation
“I wish I could’ve at least lost my virginity.” Are lines like this just intended to comfort the audience? Do these writers actually think this stale line is funny? So many of these productions’ details just feel bad for no reason – instead of giving us any reason to actually care about this protagonist, or perhaps introducing a fragment of what he’d lost, in order to provide a future hook, they just include these stale, canned lines, because other stories like this had these stale, canned lines. And it’s not like any single clumsy, weirdly horny line will sink the production by itself – but they just keep coming, and eventually you realize this story is clearly not intended for you, it’s intended for someone who can’t help but say “hehe nice cans” whenever they pass a woman on the street
Welp, clearly our protagonist has been literally reborn, as a baby with the mind of an adult man
“If you leave yourself that open, I might cop a feel.” Jesus fucking christ. Our protagonist, as a goddamn baby, is attempting to hornily grope that baby’s mother. Who is this for? Who watches a sequence like this and actually laughs? All this sequence tells me is that this protagonist is an idiot and a creep, and that the author is also an idiot and a creep. As I said, whatever their merits may be, these shows are so drenched in the absolute worst parts of anime culture that it’s impossible to wade through the sewage to find them. You can tell me, “oh yeah it’s got a lot of creepy, horny jokes, but the story goes to interesting places” – but guess what? There are countless great stories out there that don’t assume their audience is some weird insular creep, and thus don’t calibrate all their humor in that direction
Paul and Zenith are the parents
“Getting to suck on a hottie’s tits for free rules.” God I hate this genre. Thank you, my loyal readers, for reminding me just how bad anime can be
The protagonist is now named Rudeus. He was 34 in his past life
Now he’s stealing and sniffing his mother’s panties, because isekai is like that
Lilia is the maid. And of course, our protagonist immediately highlights her boobs too, because he’s just an absolutely wretched person. Why would I want to follow a character like this? What single thing about this show so far has encouraged further viewing in any way? He’s simplistic and deeply unpleasant, and his sense of humor is “I love to objectify and harass women,” and the narrative overall is entirely textbook isekai. Genuinely asking – what am I missing here? What here is good?
“He’s a child. He doesn’t know any better.” Yep, the plot so far is just “creepy middle-aged man uses becoming a baby in order to harass women.” No hook, just “harassing women sure is funny”
We’re wasting so much time on this kid’s superfluous inner monologue. That’s a problem endemic to light novel adaptations, though; the original format tends to just be a run-on monologue, with no real scene-setting or prose to sink into. Again, it’s a largely amateur art form, with editorial input mostly intended to make sure it hits all the right tropes
Some very nice cuts of character acting as mom and maid rush to Rudy. The character acting has been quite good in general, it’s just only being used for evil
Oh my god, his monologue is incessant and insufferable. Is this Kyon’s fault? Are we all paying the price of Haruhi’s success? At least Haruhi was occasionally actually witty!
“Mommy used to be an adventurer!” A line that speaks to another of this genre’s key failings. Isekai almost never envision a genuinely believable fantasy world, a world like Tolkien’s or Le Guin’s, with its own cultures and working societies. Instead, it’s always just “we’re inside a videogame’s version of a fantasy world,” which is a far more simplistic simulacrum, and generally doesn’t feel “real” as a place at all. These worlds just have Peasants and Adventurers, because that’s all they need for their game design, but a world like that is wildly insufficient for an actual fantasy story – it feels like simplistic wish fulfilment from moment one. You could never imagine someone actually living out their daily life in an isekai world; it’s just a videogame stage to make the protagonist look strong
More great character animation, wasted on this utter garbage
“I used to have over a thousand books at home! All light novels, though.” This man was thirty-four years old. Thirty-four years old, and he’d never purchased a book written for actual adult audiences, rather than insular teenagers. In the end, this might be the ultimate downfall of all these light novel productions – they are all written by and for people who never really grew up
Ah, time for another isekai staple: rambling explanations of arbitrary magic systems, because isekai are more about explaining how good you are at a videogame than actually telling a story. Great writing uses exposition like this as rarely as possible, but isekai is all about systems (and it’s not alone in that fascination – our prior worst anime trend, magical school anime, was also full of it). These stories are not about discovery in an unknown situation, they are about cataloging a familiar database
Of course, you don’t have to be this clumsy in this genre. Log Horizon explained its base magic systems through actual combat, using an active situation to create a sense of suspense and drama while still conveying the necessary exposition. Storytelling!
“Your magic affinity is set in stone from birth.” A smarter story might use this premise to explore the inherent injustice of our own quasi-Calvinist society, and how we must disassociate merit from these intractable qualities. But these stories are about wish fulfilment, not thematic interrogation, and so instead they generally just recreate the injustices of our own world, except the protagonist is now at the top and has all the power. Even the ones where their weakness is ostensibly the point, they generally unlock powers that make them secretly the best (like in Shield Hero, etc)
Excellent effects animation for this spellcasting. The production here is generally quite good, which unfortunately doesn’t really help. I will never be a sakuga guy – animation in a vacuum is not what I watch anime for, and I generally need an emotional, narrative connection for visual theater to work
“This is all the MP I’ve got?” Gaaaahhhhhhh
Our MC finds incantation-free magic easy, presumably because he’s so naturally good at everything
I do appreciate his methodical teasing at the limitations of magic. System-based conflict can be exciting, as Hunter x Hunter readily demonstrates, as long as you create a coherent and dramatically satisfying system. Most isekai stumble by ostensibly introducing such a system, but then just giving their protagonist the power to have all powers
What is the MC’s father’s job? He just spends all day swinging a sword around in the yard
Getting extremely bored of watching this kid power level this videogame
Whew, the conjuring of this intermediate water spell is gorgeous. Combining the effects animation with the spinning camerawork creates this incredible sense of building energy, and I love how the layers of the composition amplify the sense of consistent, flowing movement. Some beautiful cuts in this premiere
The parents actually have a pretty charming rapport. I feel like a lot of isekai would be much more pleasant without their protagonists
Ah, Paul is actually something like a village guard, or sheriff
Soooo much wasted time. This rambling exposition about finding him a magic tutor serves no purpose at all – any half-decent editor would cut this whole segment. But I suppose any half-decent editor would reduce most light novels to four or five pages, and we can’t have that
Ohoho, they expected an old man, but the tutor is actually a cute girl! Imagine my surprise, a surprise enriched by the narrator actively telling me this is supposed to be surprising
Her name is Roxy, and the narrator immediately starts talking about her pubic hair. Just, you know, gotta keep reminding us that our protagonist is a detestable shitheel
“Maybe she has a complex about it? I don’t mean her chest, though.” God, the worst of anime is so, so bad
There are three types of magic: attack, healing, and summoning. Again, this is because this is a videogame world, not an actual fantasy world. A genuinely decent work of fantasy would likely use the infinite potential of magic to design its own system, or perhaps take a non-systemic approach to magic altogether; instead, we’re just getting JRPG attacks
The character animation for Roxy is extremely fluid, to the point where it feels like she’s overplaying her clumsiness
Really good facial acting, too – I like how we can very briefly note the pride in her face at being praised, before she turns aside and denies her talents
As expected, his incantation-free magic means he’s actually the best at it
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And Done
Whew, my god, it’s finally over. Well, that was atrocious. It was atrocious in most of the ways isekai tend to be atrocious, from its absurd glut of obnoxious, unnecessary exposition, to the “jokes” which only emphasized the grossness of its abhorrent protagonist. It was clumsy and poorly paced, and the world it was illustrating offered no genuine hooks at all – rather the opposite, in fact. Through its explanation of magic and fantasy culture, it basically just emphasized that its author has never thought deeply about fantasy or people, and is only interested in play-acting in a videogame world. With an utterly obnoxious protagonist, a barely-sketched world, and no hooks beyond the generic conceit of every isekai, Jobless Reincarnation stands as a total waste of some genuinely great animation. Isekai continues to precisely meet my expectations.
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This is a good summary of Jobless Reincarnation that I think captures why it’s so bad, and although it’s definitely the worst of the pack of currently airing isekai shows, its problems are rife throughout the entire genre.
But there is one thing that sticks out to me…
You repeatedly bring up problems with the isekai genre as a whole, but I think it’s really just a problem with modern isekai. I would assume that somebody who’s written so much on anime in general would be familiar with the history of the genre, but a quick search through the archives here didn’t real much discussion about it. Before it was taken over by teenage boy wish-fulfillment shows, it was frequently used to explore stories about female characters who felt helpless and meaningless in the “real” world learning to take control of their lives. If you’re not familiar with 90’s/early 2000’s era isekai, I can’t recommend Twelve Kingdoms strongly enough. Magic Knight Rayearth, The Vision of Escaflowne, and Fushigi Yuugi are also great examples. For a few male-targeted examples, Now and Then, Here and There and Digimon Adventure are also classics. (personally I think Digimon Tamers is the best one, and it doesn’t require any prior knowledge of the series, but there’s a good reason why the original Digimon Adventure is still so beloved)
It’s a shame that modern isekai is so, well, Mushoku Tensei, but it wasn’t always that way.
Oh, no disagreements here! I love Escaflowne, and agree that “isekai” as it was imagined back in the ’90s was a compelling subgenre. My complaints are solely with the genre’s current incarnation, which feels both so rigid and so distant from the “classic isekai” that it seems tough to compare them.
Some people will try and justify how dry and generic Mushoku Tensei is by arguing that it was the template for all the big, modern isekai that came after, the ones that people actually like – except that’s not even true. So you can’t even say it was a “necessary evil” for the quality titles we did get, it’s just evil lol
I really do think the only appeal of Mushoku Tensei so far is “watch this absolute dumpsterfire of a person get better”, which, why, for what purpose? If your story deliberately starts out with your POV character being the worst person he could possibly be, and with nothing else in the narrative keeping my attention, what possible merit is there in continuing? I get that some stories absolutely do need more than just a single episode to fully establish the long-term goal of their narrative and the ideas it wants to explore, but there just, has to some kind of positive plot or character hook to get me that far.
There are certainly many LN anime protagonists that start their shows not particularly likable and flawed, but the ones that work largely start with one of two things. Either the writing has to make it damn clear that our protagonist’s worldview is warped, or dunk on him for shits and giggles repeatedly. Or you can just avoid making him a pedophile and just give them believable faults that don’t serve to make them irredeemable instead. Hachiman, Natsuki Subaru, this season’s Tomozaki all accomplish this. Hell, even Araragi, even if it takes until at least Nise to realize that he’s even supposed to have any kind of arc at all (and his relationship with Mayoi and his sisters is…a bit skeevy sometimes)
Just personally, I don’t think a show that “interrogates the self-defeating ugliness of using fanatical fandom as an escape from reality” like Re:Zero does would have worked nearly so well as the kind of critique it was aiming for if it hadn’t also made such a showcase of the kind of “obnoxious otaku-isms” that it ultimately took such withering aim at.
I think one of the things that makes that show hit as hard as it does for the people it impacts is because it shows its target audience something in Subaru that is so recognizable as trying to fit the isekai mold, and shows them a world with enough (superficial) similarities to what they’re looking for to seem to them (and Subaru) like it could work for a while…
…only to gradually strip away the curtain more and more, the more he tries. Revealing that no, this isn’t actually a world built around him, that he isn’t anything like the center of it, and that so long as he keeps acting like he is, he’ll just keep destroying his relationships and driving himself further into despair, isolation and failure.
And that the only chance he has of finding a way out is to understand his flaws, gain some humility, and how his “isekai protagonist” outlook is harming everyone, including himself.
Yeah like, it’s very telling that just about every single one of Subaru’s assumptions that he makes about himself, the world, and the people around him turn out to be very, very wrong and in some instances, become his undoing. He might brag about being genre-saavy, but it hardly ever does him any favors. He has to gain actual awareness and understanding of the people he interacts with in order to form meaningful relationships
And Subaru’s particular baggage, being absolutely starved for positive affirmation, has very specific and understandable roots as well, even if it takes until the 2nd season to find out exactly what that is. It doesn’t just give him a lazy “oh, he was bullied in school and that’s why he’s a sex criminal” backstory and call it a day, like what Mushoku Tensei does
I agree that Re:Zero only really functions because of how much Otaku stuff there is in it. Otherwise it would be like Utena: brilliant, but ignored by the majority of the fanbase.
However, it does overdo it quite a bit, to the point where a lot of Re:Zero fans miss that it’s supposed to be an argument against the isekai mentality at all. Lots of characters end up falling for Subaru anyways, and while he’s shown to suffer a lot he’s often made out to be the hero anyways. The only arc that really, truly interrogated him was eps 12-18 of the first season when Emelia ditches him and everyone dunks on him. After that he mostly suffers for fantasy-related reasons and not because of his own flaws.
I feel like the show is close to striking the right balance, but after watching thirty-some episodes of it it’s become clear that the show isn’t truly interested in digging to the heart of the isekai genre. It would rather prod at it occasionally, offering up some genuinely compelling critiques but burying them under so much of the same that they fail to have any real bite.
I mean, you’re correct that once he identifies and starts to correct particular flaws, he stops suffering for those particular ones as much… but I think the interrogation continues even past that to how he then fixes the problems and how that then helps him improve things and move on to other character issues.
Far from losing interest in critique after episode 18, I think one of my favorite articulations came toward the very end of the season. Where, for the final iteration, the loop that actually sees him break through and stop Betelgeuse for good, the key decision Subaru makes to initiate the path to success to put himself into a support role, and enable the knight who had been the subject of his insecurities, who was coded as the “asshole rival for your waifu” (of the type virtually omnipresent in normal isekai) to take the glory instead.
But of course, by that point Subaru had realized it was actually him that had been the asshole, not the knight, and he’d made the effort to mend fences with the guy he’d insulted, and see the humanity in him. So by that point they can work as a team without hesitation, and there isn’t the slightest insecurity with his “rival” taking center stage instead of him.
So yeah, Re:Zero isn’t only interested in shitting on Subaru as 100% worthless, and I fully agree that there is an element of “reconstruction” of the fantasy, pulling out the parts of his desires that are actually worthwhile (like his genuine compassion to those in trouble) and showing how the base impulse wasn’t fundamentally wrong… just made toxic by how he applied it to people, the ego complex it gave him, and even worse, the sense of entitlement he had as a result.
It’s not wrong to want to be a hero. You just have to understand what heroism actually looks like, in practice. And pulling that apart (and, yes, putting it back together) is what I think Re:Zero is aiming for.
And yeah, there were definitely characters who saw his good traits among the bad, and liked him for it. He’d never have made it through otherwise, if there hadn’t been multiple people who did see what he had the potential to become, and were willing to offer him a hand to help him work on the toxic parts of himself that were holding him back.
At least Log Horizon is back and is still extremely Log Horizon
While I agree Tamers is the best Digimon series, I think Adventure is the best Isekai of the franchise… and I’m not sure you can even really call Tamers an Isekai with how much of that series takes place in the real world… It’s almost a reverse Isekai with all the other worldly beings that show up in what’s a very close to real-life version of Earth otherwise.
Though, while on the subject of oldschool Isekai, I feel like I should mention Monster Rancher… which despite it’s main protag literally getting sucked into a video game, does a good job of avoiding the “you now live in a poorly designed RPG and have GameShark powers” trope… and if you missed the first episode, might not realize the one dimensionally displaced member of the party isn’t a native to the fantasy world.
Oh god. Who paid him to watch this?
WHY WOULD YOU MAKE THIS MAN SUFFER LIKE THAT!?
I am going comment not on the actual topic of the article (which I have probably about as much interest in as you do), but rather the introduction and your list of problems in general with the isekai landscape.
To be even more specific, I would like to mention to you a series (that you have probably already heard about) that addresses most of your concerns. Actually, upon checking, I see that you have watched at least the first episode of the anime, and did not necessarily like it too much. Nonetheless, please hear me out.
So the series in question is Honzuki no Gekokujou, i.e. Ascendance of a Bookworm. You have complained about the first episode not containing much, and frankly, that is true in a way. The story does start slow, and while it picks up the pace after a while, it will never rush through things. On the other hand, it takes great care in gradually building up a world, its people, revealing more and more to us as the protagonist’s view expands.
Let me make it clear though in advance that I am mostly recommending the novels. The anime is certainly not bad, but in comparison it just does not measure up. Much of what makes the story stand out is lost in the process of condensing only the important plot points.
What Bookworm does particularly well is present an alternative world that actually feels real, that makes sense within its own “ruleset”. The quotation marks are absolutely necessary here as the world isn’t the least bit game-y (unlike much of the modern isekai). It starts looking like what you would generally expect in a medieval sort of setting (akin to Spice and Wolf), but at the same time you start seeing differences too. And as the setting gradually reveals itself, all of the little things start making sense in hindsight.
The same can be said about how the books handle the characters. The story is written (with some important exceptions) from the perspective of the protagonist, but it doesn’t only progress “on screen”. The characters all have lives outside of the main character, plotlines progress with us often only seeing their imprint on our perspective, but it is perfectly possible to identify many story elements, small clues and such when looking back, the significance of which is often only clearly revealed many volumes later. The story is not on-the-nose about it though, it respects the intelligence of the reader to figure out the connections. In the same vein, it is often possible for the attentive reader to predict many things in advance, but that does not take away from the enjoyment at all, rather it adds to it. Multiple plot threads are being weaved together in the fore- and background in a believable, realistic fashion. (Largely because of the realistic, no-shortcuts approach though, many of these do end up spanning over multiple volumes.)
(At the same time, from this you can probably deduce why the anime fails to deliver what I most enjoy about the novels though: there just isn’t enough time (and sometimes budget) to properly deliver the nuances, the subtleties that really elevate the series.)
So basically, two of your major concerns are definitively taken care of: the world feels real, makes sense, its characters are not there for the convenience of the plot but behave believably, as real people, with lives progressing whether we see it or not. The story is also devoid of much of the unfortunate tropes of modern isekai. No cringey forced fanservice or harem elements, no otaku-pleasing.
Lastly, as for the general quality of the writing: I wouldn’t necessarily say that it is on par with the classics of literature, but it is definitely head-and-shoulders above the supermajority of the light novel scene. That is true even if we merely consider the local aspects, the language use for instance, without the above described qualities of the larger scale story structure.
P.S. Wow, that ended up a lot longer than I thought. Anyway, it is my hope that should you consider to check out this series, you would agree with much of what I have said.
Alll that talk about Isekai and Video Games and Isekai makes me think about Ni No Kuni, which is an Isekai video game and manages to actually use it to say something (about loss, and the importance of forming relationships).
It even has a magical system that is far more developped than it needs to be, . and actual worldbuilding as well, even if it’s ostensibly a mirror of our world.
Not sure if Ni No Kuni II is as good yet.