- Updated on: July 25, 2022
- by Ernie
Isekais tend to give the most satisfaction to the people who watch anime to escape the real world. This isn’t a surprise, as starting a new life in a much better place suited to your needs and expectations sounds like a dream for many.
I can assure you, you won’t get magically isekaid if you stay logged in a game to the very last moments of the server’s shutdown, nor if you get hit by a truck. And no, you won’t get sucked into a book either, so don’t go to the library waiting for something like that.
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On the other hand, we can watch plenty of shows featuring lucky (or unlucky) youngsters getting transported to a world that is based on a video game. While most of these worlds are similar to RPGs, they are versatile enough to give a different enjoyment every time. Now sit back and read about the 15 best anime of this subgenre!
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15. Recovery of an MMO Junkie

After working 11 hard years with no fun allowed, Moriko Morioka decided to quit her job and focus on the real stuff full time: online games. She started playing Fruits de Mer, a popular MMO, and quickly got trapped in the world. Of course, metaphorically.
She spent more and more time on the game as “Hayashi”, and after a while, she got completely absorbed in it. Moriko rarely left her apartment, but one time she did, she met a shy young man named Yuuta Sakura, who also played Fruits de Mer with a passion! Their relationship slowly bloomed due to their mutual interests.
14. Demon Lord Retry

The successful game developer Akira Oono decided to shut down his game’s servers after fifteen years. The next time he woke, a little unusual situation occurred. He wasn’t in his bedroom anymore, but next to a lake in his own game, as the Demon King he created one day!
Now in the body of Hakuto Kunai, he figured it’s best if he searches for some answers on why this all happened to her. On his way out of the forest, a little girl named Aku ran into him while escaping from a demon. Hakuto saved him, but to his surprise, she wasn’t a character he created. Now being especially suspicious of the whole occurrence, she sets off to find who or what summoned him to this world.
13. Full Dive: The Ultimate Next-Gen Full Dive RPG Is Even Shittier than Real Life!

Yeah, the title didn’t lie. The game featured in the shows is absolutely horrendous, just like the anime itself. No wonder it came in so undetected during the 2021 Spring season, but if you decide to turn off your brain a bit, it can definitely pass as a comedy.
The VRMMO game Kiwame Quest gathered a huge fanbase in the golden age of the genre, but its reputation faded away as the game was just too realistic. Soon no one really played it anymore.
The young Hiroshi Yuuki decided to try it out after suffering great damage from an accident. He spent most of his years playing video games, and as he managed to grab a copy of Kiwame Quast. It became his new source of happiness which is weird, as he himself realized how bad that game was. Yet he still wanted to clear it no matter what. Talk about dedication!
12. My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

When we dream about living our lives as famous characters, the target vessels would probably be the good guys, right? Living as a villain usually means death or even worse things at the end, and there’s no guarantee you could even avoid your destiny at all.
One girl still managed to pull the worst card: she reincarnated as the main villain of her favorite game, Katarina Claes from Fortune Lover. She tried to use her deep knowledge about the game to not get killed off at any moment. Katarina was at a big disadvantage, as no matter which original ending came close, she would die in every one of them. Can she pull off something so twisted to preserve her life?
11. Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.

In the world of long anime titles, Kaede, a new player of New World Online decided to max out her defensive stats out of fear of getting hurt. After some grinding, she already became invincible, as no one could kill this massive tank character named Maple.
I have to be honest with you guys, there were times I’ve put all of my skill points into defensive skills too. It just feels good to stay alive for a longer period of the fight, and Maple can confirm that it works. She ranked the third highest on a huge event despite only playing the game for a short while. Talk about OP stats, huh.
Bofuri is actually a pretty good watch for anyone, as the author of the original light novels actually had experience in MMOs, so the details are on point throughout the story!
10. Darwin’s Game

Have you ever been told by a friend to download a shady mobile game because “IT’S SO GOOD I SWEAR IT’S NOT A SCAM”? Well, I have, so I can completely understand how Kaname felt when he got scammed on the spot as well. But instead of murderous ads, he got his neck bitten by a snake.
After waking up, he just shrugs it off as a hallucination, and then he made the genius idea to open the game again. Well, Darwin’s Game wasn’t just a regular battle royale, your opponents appear in front of you, and you actually gotta fight for your life. That’s why you should never play battle royale games.
9. Accel World

This anime might be the dream of many middle schoolers. It’s just too good to come true. Imagine that you find pleasure in nothing else but video games and that a girl introduces you to a broken reality fighting game in your school.
Brain Burst can basically use brain waves to make it seem like time stops, and the participants can duel each other in another reality to gather points and level up. The cool girl asked the protagonist, Haruyuki to help her uncover the truth behind this program, and to do that, he first must reach level ten, the highest in the game. It won’t be an easy task for sure!
8. Re:Creators

Souta Mizushino designed his own world as a talented writer, despite being just a high schoolboy. One day, he got transported into a fight scene, but he soon got back to his world without an issue. Then he discovered the little trouble that occurred: other characters came back with him too.
They were brought into the real world by Altair, a seemingly NPC, who wishes for the destruction of human reality. Souta had to work together with the main heroine of the story, Selesia to get control of the situation, but there is just too much to take care of for them!
7. Isekai Quartet

The mashup of four popular isekai can’t go wrong, right? It wasn’t exactly a bad idea to turn these otherwise very different anime into a slice of life, as we have seen the more or less positive example of Attack on Titan’s Junior High special.
As the series of Re: Zero, Overlord, Konosuba, and Saga of Tanya The Evil were all merged, the most important and fun characters were brought together to entertain us. Almost every source material is a fun isekai where the protagonist was sent to a game world, so it’s out of question whether it’s worthy to watch!
6. Overlord

The trend that Sword Art Online started hasn’t quite faded away just yet, and it probably won’t ever do. Now it became a common concept to trap players in the game with server shutdowns or just simple logout issues, but Overlord turned out remarkable despite the cliches.
Momonga was a dedicated player of the resident popular game, Yggdrasil. He controlled the dark lord Ainz Ooal Gown character, and he wanted to stay to the last moments before the game was closed for good. To his surprise, he is still conscious, and as he has the power to do anything he wants, the now legit skeleton king decided to explore the world a bit more!
5. Rising of The Shield Hero

As the surprisingly adult Naofumi wandered into his local library one day, he got summoned to a world through a book that he found interest in. He was chosen as one of the four great heroes, specifically the Shield Hero.
Now, the Shield Hero is the worst one of them. Not only he doesn’t have any good offensive damage or special abilities to use, but the hero is seemingly hated all around the nation for no reason. Naofumi had the misfortune to be robbed and falsely accused right at the start, so he went off on a journey with almost no money or companions to help him.
Despite all the setbacks, he managed to clear his name and protect the kingdom from mysterious monsters in the process. This dark fantasy still has a lot of potentials, and the RPG aspects are on point. I can recommend it to anyone interested in the genre.
4. Log Horizon

What happens if you lock up 30000 gamers together? If you did it in real life, that would probably be a catastrophe, but if they got stuck in a video game, things might play out a little different.
When Shiroe got trapped in the popular MMORPG, Elder Tale, he didn’t hesitate for a moment. As an experienced player of the game, and also a pretty smart social reject, he set off to explore the limits of his new reality (Just Dance reference?).
Log Horizon is a well-crafted anime involving geopolitics and interacting with – or commanding – other beings despite the presence of anxiety, so I can recommend it to anyone interested in the genre!
3. Re: Zero

Many main characters suffered enough already, but Subaru easily takes the win in this depressing category. He died 16 times only during the first season and went through hell every single time. But I’m happy to say that he didn’t die once in the second part of season 2, which was a great relief for him too!
After finding himself in an RPG-like world while he was just shopping, Subaru met a beautiful silver-haired girl, Emilia, who was also one of the possible heirs to the throne of the country. He didn’t get to enjoy her presence for long though, as he died in an assassin’s attack.
But he didn’t die for good just like that, as he woke up exactly at the place where he arrived in the world, like in a case of a checkpoint. The reincarnation process repeated, so he had to relive every painful death of his and his friends along the way. On the contrary, he got himself a good gf – no, it was a joke, Rem is still the best girl!
2. Konosuba

Konosuba immediately became everyone’s favorite isekai the moment it came out. It was expected quite honestly, as we haven’t seen comedy so sharp for a long time before. The show was a perfect combination of chill leveling up and making-a-bank isekai time, and diverse comedy of course.
The main character, Kazuma died the most hilarious and humiliating death of all isekai: he jumped in front of a truck to save a girl, but the truck was actually a tractor coming with a very slow speed, and Kazuma just died of the shock without a single scar. He also wet himself in the process. Oof.
Well, let’s put away all our embarrassing moments because we all have a chance to have fun in the afterlife. Kazuma managed to gather a party of the three wonderful girls: the useless goddess, Aqua, the idiot savant kid, Megumin, and the horny tank knight, Darkness. These four made a good comedy quartet, but they overall had very little effect on anything really.
1. No Game No Life

No Game No Life is the textbook perfect example of people getting involved in a game–based world. It’s not like other anime don’t have the exact same concept, but the creators of Yes Game Yes Life really paid attention to every detail, so the anime won’t feel cringe or dishonest at any time.
The mastermind online gamer sibling duo dominates every game they take a liking to, and one day they get a weird email with an invitation to a chess match. Shiro and Sora then woke up in another world, where everything revolved around games.
The God of Games, Tet guided them through the weird realm, where every issue was decided by strategic games, things that could even be considered as gambling for some. An incredible concept got an incredible outcome, so this anime is definitely worth watching!
Which gaming-related anime do you like?

These were our top picks for the best anime where the main character got transported to a world based on a video game! Which was your favorite? While I wouldn’t want to restart my life, especially in a dangerous place, many would give their all for an opportunity like that. Would you?
A lot of the series above does not match the title, as a lot of the series are “travel to another world”(isekai), rather than travel into the game world, there are even some that are based on our reality/alt reality that plays the game from the real world.
can you list down some that don’t fit the title?