The Best Isekai Manga That Do Not Have An Anime

Key Takeaways

• Standout isekai adaptations like Re: Zero & Reincarnated As A Slime are rare in a sea of repetitive shows.
• The isekai genre is overflowing with similar protagonists in new situations, but some hidden gems exist.
• Unique series like The Greatest Estate Developer & Record of Highserk War offer refreshing takes on isekai tropes.

The isekai genre of anime is so bloated at this point it’s comical. As things currently are, there’s some new isekai show every season (or multiple). And, these stories almost always feature the same old protagonists who suddenly find themselves in new or strange situations, which can have isekai fans feeling like every new adaptation is just another drop in the bucket.

However, every now and again there are standout adaptations such as Re: Zero, Reincarnated As A Slime,or more recently The Great Cleric, but those are few and far between. Thankfully, there are still quite a few amazing isekai manga to pick from as far as future adaptations go. Here are some of the best examples for potential future shows.

Updated October 15th, 2024 by Jacob Buchalter: Despite the absurd number of isekai series out there (and the number is only growing more with each passing day) there aren’t actually a ton of high-quality isekai that haven’t been adapted into anime yet. Most of the more well-known isekai stories like Reincarnated as a Slime or Jobless Reincarnation have had a ton of money, work, and time put into their adaptations, for example. However, just because most of the best isekai stories have already been adapted, doesn’t mean that all of them have. With that in mind, let’s look over all the isekai stories with a fine-tooth comb and pick out some of the best remaining ones that have yet to get the anime adaptation treatment.

22 Genius Martial Arts Trainer

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What If Your Physical Therapist Got Isekai’d?

Starting things off with an oddball choice, let’s talk about a manhwa by the name of Genius Martial Arts Trainer. This is a pretty standard wuxia-based isekai where the main character suddenly falls asleep or passes out one day and wakes up in the story they were reading or the game they were playing. In this one, the main character is a total gym maniac who became obsessed with working out as a result of his recovery from an injury during his time in the military.

After going through physical therapy, the MC kept building up his muscles until it became his entire life. However, one day, after doing a stream (turns out the pandemic was pretty rough for his gym business) the protagonist wakes up as one of the Shaolin Monks in one of his favorite web novels he used to read as a kid. From here, one would think it would follow all the same tropes of most of these isekai stories with the MC introducing modern ideas to the Shaolin Monks and growing at an abnormally fast rate. However, while these tropes do pop up in this story, the focus on physical fitness, proper stretching, and just taking care of your body in general is very refreshing. Most of the time, the MC basically functions as a personal trainer or physical therapist for a lot of the old-fashioned practices of these Shaolin Monks, and it turns out this concept is a lot more interesting to read about than it sounds.

20 World’s Strongest Rearguard: Labyrinth Country and Dungeon Seekers

An Isekai Story About Being a Support Main

Moving on to another isekai story with a relatively common ‘concept’ but a very unique ‘execution’, let’s talk about World’s Strongest Rearguard. This is a story that has all the classic signs of a very standard isekai such as the MC getting into an accident and being reincarnated into another world of magic and dungeons. However, in this new world, a large majority of the people have also been reincarnated here as ‘Seekers’ AKA adventurers who explore dungeons and advance their standing in life by earning Retribution Points with the guild.

To gain the abilities needed to explore these dungeons and fight monsters, Seekers need to pick a job at the guild. And, the main character of this story, Atobe Arihito, misunderstands how the job-picking system works and writes down ‘rearguard’ as his job, expecting the magical item to automatically pick a rearguard-type job for him. However, the item instead assigns the rearguard job to Atobe, an individual job called rearguard, which has never been done before. Now, Arihito has to make a living for himself in this new world with a mysterious job entirely designed around supporting his allies. It’s not the most unique or exciting read, but it’s a refreshing enough concept and the art is fantastic, so this is absolutely also deserving of an adaptation.

Two Min-Maxing as a Side Character-Type Isekais

Now let’s talk about two very similar series, one called I Killed an Academy Player and the other called The Extra’s Academy Survival Guide. Both of these series have the same artist, Girin Geurin, and both of them feature protagonists reincarnating in an isekai world in the body of a video game side character. While there are a lot of differences between these two stories, primarily the general outlook of both protagonists and the way they go about developing their skills, both of them start out as nothing more than side characters but quickly work their way into becoming an integral part of the main cast.

The art in both of these series is fantastic, the humor is pretty great, there’s a ton of fantastic world-building, the action scenes are well-done, and there’s even a bit of romance in both stories too. So, without a doubt, either of these series would make for good anime adaptations, just probably not both of them at the same time.

18 Release That Witch

A Modern Man Efficiently Utilizing Magic

Next up is a series that takes a pretty unique approach to the standard reincarnation isekai format. In Release That Witch, the main character reincarnates as a noble in a fantasy world (which is pretty common for these stories) but instead of developing his territory himself using some cheat ability, he decides to rely on the ‘taboo’ power of witches. However, he doesn’t do this by having the witches use their powers to fight battles or do anything all that absurd, rather the witches’ abilities are basically used to complete a variety of modern-day tasks that otherwise wouldn’t be possible in this medieval setting.

Essentially, Release That Witch is a story where a reincarnated noble uses the power of magic to advance his territory in unique ways using the knowledge from his past life. If that at all sounds interesting, then this series is absolutely worth a read. And, as a final selling point for Release That Witch, this series currently has over 500 chapters in publication, so there’s more than enough content for an anime adaptation to work with.

17 The Greatest Estate Developer

The Ultimate Manwha Comedy

Moving on to a pretty unique inclusion, but not in any of the ones you’d probably expect. The Greatest Estate Developer is an incredible read, that’s for sure. But, it’s not really due to its plot, fights, or general story. Rather, what makes this Manwha endlessly entertaining is the main character himself, Lloyd Frontera, or more like Kim Suho, as that’s the actual person in the body of Lloyd. Yes, this is another one of those series where the character is transported or ‘reincarnated’ into the world of some fiction series they know.

The Greatest Estate Developer has some fun characters, a lot of interesting story elements, and so on, but the comedy is leagues above other similar series. Kim Suho is such an absurd degenerate with the most twisted (for a good cause, most of the time) ideas and Lloyd was (before being taken over by Kim Suho) a degenerate who would die at the hands of the story’s main character. However, Kim Suho manages to avoid this fate, recruit the hero, and travel from city to city (and sometimes even between dimensions) doing all sorts of engineering and architectural projects to make himself rich.

16 Record Of Highserk War

An Isekai Story Mixed With The Horrors of War

This is absolutely one of the best isekai recommendations for those who want a ‘darker’ isekai story but without going overboard. Record of Highserk War is a pretty accurate depiction of how an isekai would theoretically work, as Raizou Takakura was just ‘born’ into another world into a poor farming family and eventually had to join the military and become what he would consider a serial killer just to keep himself alive.

This story is gritty, it’s violent, and it also doesn’t shy away from some of the more horrifying aspects of war. However, there’s a lot of heart to the series too, as Raizou does have friends and compatriots in this world, and he’s not just killing for killing’s sake. Basically, if you want a manga that has fantastic art, some really interesting world-building, and a likable cast of characters, Record of Highserk War is an easy recommendation.

15 How To Use A Returner

What If The Main Character Was The Guy Long-Conning The Hero?

This is a Manhwa series that hasn’t been updated in quite a bit but has more than enough content in what’s currently been told to last at least a couple of anime seasons. This isekai quickly gets its trope-filled setup out of the way where a bunch of people are suddenly brought to a new world and told to kill, level, and survive, which is already a plus. But, the real selling point of How to Use a Returner, like with The Greatest Estate Developer, is with the MC. Lee Giyoung is the ‘hero’ of this story, and he’s a real piece of work.

Giyoung is manipulative, conniving, greedy, and selfish, but he’s incredibly clever. However, all of his other stats are pretty awful, so Giyoung must depend on his manipulation skills to make ‘connections’ with a whole host of powerful characters. And, the one who he cares about keeping close the most is one Kim Hyunsung, someone whom Giyoung knows is an actual ‘returner’ who’s come back from the future to try and rectify all of his mistakes. This story goes all over the place and always has some new goal in sight, but the ‘core’ of the series never changes, which is seeing how Lee Giyoung manages to outsmart and out-act everyone around him to reach the most comfortable position.

14 Tyrant Of The Tower Defense Game

One of the Best ‘Trapped In a Game’ Series of All Time

In recent years, it feels like the ‘gamer gets pulled into the game they’re addicted to’ subgenre of isekai has only become more popular. And, while a lot of these series end up recycling a lot of the same tropes and plot devices, a standout series called Tyrant of the Tower Defense Game tries a lot of new things while excelling at all the tried-and-true things that make this sub-genre so popular.

Essentially, a popular ‘retro game’ streamer who managed to beat this game for the first time ever after years of attempts is then pulled into the game world by the ‘developer’ to beat it all over again. However, this time, Retrotaku won’t be beating it as a player, but rather he’ll have to beat it in the body of one of the game’s most well-known characters. To be more specific he’ll be possessing the body of Prince Ash, one of the more useless plot-relevant characters in the game, who is also a character everyone else thinks of as scum. From here, readers will get to see just how Retrotaku manages to succeed in spite of Prince Ash’s reputation, how he integrates his knowledge from the game into surmounting seemingly impossible battles, and so much more.

13 Surviving The Game As A Barbarian

Right Up There With Tyrant of the Tower Defense Game in Terms of Quality

In much the same way that Tyrant of the Tower Defense Game managed to capture the tactics and organization difficulties of a hypothetical brutally challenging RTS game, Surviving the Game as a Barbarian does the same thing but with a more Western RPG style or dungeon-crawler-type game.

However, the aspect in which this series excels the most is in the way it introduces so many creative new concepts into an otherwise overdone subgenre of isekai stories. For one, almost all the ‘game mechanics’ that other similar isekai stories usually depend on work completely differently in this story. Two, the main character literally can’t reveal that they’re not who they say they are, as people who get ‘transported’ to this game world and are discovered to be possessing the bodies of others are killed on the spot. And three, the character may play a Barbarian, but he isn’t actually a Barbarian in terms of intelligence, so he uses all sorts of inventive solutions other Barbarians would never come up with. While the light novel has a sizeable amount of chapters, the manwha isn’t all that far along yet, so this may be a bit of an early recommendation, but anyone who has read this story will likely agree it’s more than worthy of an adaptation.

12 Pick Me Up: Infinite Gacha

A Story About Getting Sucked Into The Most Antagonistic Phone Game Ever

And finally, to round out the ‘gamer pulled into their game of choice’ category of isekai series that needs an adaptation, Pick Me Up Infinite Gacha is another newer one that would absolutely do incredibly well as an anime, especially with how popular Gacha-style mobile games seem to be these days.

Granted, at the time of writing this, none of the manwha series turned into anime outside of Tower of God and God of High School have actually come out, so it’s a bit of a risk to adapt, but the cold-yet-kind main character, well thought out mobile game mechanics, and incredibly inventive setup for this ‘isekai’ setting all make Pick Me Up Infinite Gacha a manwha that readers constantly find themselves struggling to pull away from.

11 Record Of Wortenia War

Like Fire Emblem Got Put Into The Isekai Blender

Now here’s a relatively violent series, it’s Wortenia Senki otherwise known as Record of Wortenia War. Usually, in most isekai series, a character is ‘summoned’ to another world and is typically told they need to defeat some demon king or work towards some other ‘grand’ goal. And, 90 percent of the time, the MC just eats it all up and goes along with whatever they’re told. But in Wortenia Senki the setup and initial conversation after being transported goes a bit…differently than usual.

The main character, Mikoshiba Ryouma, was already an exceptional martial artist (taught by his grandfather) in a combat style meant for killing rather than disarming. But, Japan is peaceful, and there’s no need for this mentality or skills in his world. That said, when Ryouma is suddenly transported to a new world, in the middle of eating lunch no less, he’s able to finally put these skills to the test against the very people who summoned him without worrying about modern laws holding him back. After that, Ryouma has to carve out a life for himself alongside a pair of twin captives that he saves not long after he escapes the O’ltomea Empire. The concept alone of the summoned hero immediately killing his summoners and escaping the kingdom that summoned him is interesting enough, but that’s only the beginning of Ryouma’s long journey to making a name for himself as an accomplished soldier.

10 The Golden Word Master: The Four Heroes & The Innocent Bystander With The Unique Cheat

An Isekai Protagonist With An Actually Unique Ability

A surprising new ‘trope’ as of late for isekai series is introducing a protagonist with an ability thats a bit more ‘out there’ compared to the standard isekai cheat abilities. Everyone else is summoned to this new world with obviously overpowered ‘cheat’ abilities like being able to use all types of magic or knowing some advanced sword mastery right off the bat, while the main character has some ‘odd’ ability that seems difficult to make worthwhile in this fantasy world. In Konjiki no Word Master, MC Okamura Hiro is one of the best examples of this.

Unlike other magicks, Okamura has the ability to use something entirely unique to him called ‘Word Magic’ and it basically allows him to assign the ‘meaning’ of words that he writes on anything to whatever he writes it on. The first example the story uses to show how this power works is Hiro writes the kanji for ‘split’ on a large boulder, and the boulder splits in half. Then, he writes ‘origin’ on one of the boulder halves, and the boulder returns to its original form. Because Okamura has such a passion for reading and words in general, the ways in which he uses this power are always interesting to see, which would make this series an interesting read by itself and that’s before getting into all the world-building and political intrigue thats slowly but steadily introduced.

9 Walking In Another World

A Silly Concept That’s Executed Rather Well

Unlike a lot of other series on here that made the list because of how much ‘substance’ they have, Isekai Walking (AKA Walking in Another World) is here because it’s a very simple series that’s always a delight to read. Basically, it follows all the standard isekai tropes such as:

• The Hero is summoned to a fantasy world of magic.
• Each ‘hero’ has absurdly overpowered stats and abilities right away.
• The main character doesn’t have these absurd stats and is promptly thrown out/ignored by those who summoned him.
• Shortly after, they learn to live in this new world and quickly discover that their starting stats and abilities are actually much stronger than they first appeared.

And in this one, the protagonist (named Sora) has something called the ‘Walking’ ability. Basically, with every step, he gets 1 EXP, and with every level, his stats jump up and he gains one skill point to spend on a wide range of shockingly powerful skills. And, to make things even easier, he doesn’t seem to get tired from walking anymore either. So, in just a few short days of walking around town, Sora goes from a feeble human to a relatively strong adventurer. Not only that but everyone in this story seems absurdly nice. So, rather than some standard isekai story about some overpowered MC constantly shredding through fantasy monsters, Isekai Walking is about a nice lad in a wonderful world who actually takes the time to explore and immerse himself in the new world he’s been thrown into. Again, it’s pretty tropey, and doesn’t have a lot of ‘depth’, but it’s fun, and that counts for a lot.

8 Welcome To Japan Ms. Elf

Just Entirely Too Adorable of a Read

Welcome To Japan, Ms. Elf is also pretty separate from other isekai (much like many of the other series on this list) in the sense that it’s not a power fantasy, and it’s not gross with its fanservice, it’s just an adorable romance/comedy isekai series. Additionally, this series also technically counts as both a regular isekai manga as well as a reverse isekai manga, as the MC constantly goes back and forth between worlds. There are a couple of key reasons why this series manages to separate itself from all the rest.

Firstly, the main character, Kazuhiro Kitase, only travels to the other world (AKA isekai world) in his dreams, returning to modern Japan when he wakes up or when he’s ‘killed’ in the other world. Secondly, the slowly blossoming romance between Kitase and Maribelle, an elven Spirit Sorceress from the other world, never stops being cute. Third, the story spends more time showing Maribelle’s reactions to modern Japanese food and technology than Kazuhiro’s reactions to fantasy food and magic in his isekai dream world, which is just so funny to see in an isekai series.

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6 Survival Story Of A Sword King In A Fantasy World

A Comedy Series Where The Protagonist Literally Got Too Swole

Survival Story of a Sword King in Another World is a roller coaster ride of a story. What starts out as an interesting yet incredibly dark concept where the MC is basically trapped in an endless loop of life-or-death battles, quickly turns into an action-comedy isekai series with an ever-expanding cast of hilarious characters. It follows a man named Ryu Han-Bin who has just finished his mandatory military service and is finally back home ready to relax and settle down. But, as soon as he sits down in his apartment Ryu is suddenly transferred to another world. But, before being thrown into the ‘actual’ fantasy world he was summoned to help, Ryu is brought to a ‘tutorial’ universe where a series of pop-up prompts (called a Guideline) introduces him to the tutorial that’ll help him reach a certain base level of strength to survive in this new world.

The problem is that his Guideline malfunctions and Ryu doesn’t get taken out of the tutorial after he defeats the tutorial mob. In fact, he doesn’t get out of there for an absurd amount of time, all while being forced each day to fight an enemy relative to his current strength, which keeps growing with each kill as Ryu keeps getting stronger. By the time Ryu finally does manage to leave, he’s a completely different person physically with a ton of trauma to boot. So, it’s even more impressive that the series manages to pivot from this traumatizing Berserk-esque start to a more classic (yet still pretty unique) comedic isekai format.

5 Yakuza Reincarnation

What If Your Mob Boss Grandfather Became A Fantasy Princess?

Yakuza Reincarnation is a relatively recent isekai manga series, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. An old, hardened Yakuza elite is caught in a trap by one of his closest ‘friends’ and killed and starts to go through the process of being reincarnated in another world, as all isekai protagonists do.

But instead of being reincarnated in a younger male body to relive life at his ‘prime’, his soul takes over the body of a princess running away from her own kingdom that has betrayed her. Suddenly, he’s gone from a 60-year-old man’s body to a frail and physically weak young girl. And, while this sounds like it’ll be pretty scummy in terms of fanservice, the story primarily uses this contrast between the MC’s soul and their body for comedic purposes. This is absolutely a series that most people read more for the art and combat scenes than they do for the plot, though the way this series approaches elves, magic, and superhuman abilities is interesting enough for most people to follow along with the story anyway.

4 Dungeon Reset

A Manwha With a Protagonist Who Is Essentially a Quality Assurance Tester For a Real Life Dungeon

Dungeon Reset is a webcomic/manwha about humans who are suddenly pulled to another world, or ‘dungeon’ to fight for survival at the hands of some mysterious puppeteer. The protagonist, named Dawun, is thought to be dead at the bottom of a spike trap he fell into on the first floor and is left behind by the rest of the players as the Dungeon magically resets itself.

However, Dawun survived despite the system thinking he was dead, and this caused him to become a sort of “glitch” in the system, allowing him to exist outside the rules of the game. From there, this isekai manga story involves Dawun’s steady progression of learning new skills (all of which appear useless, at first), grinding up these skills until they become useful, moving on to the next area, and so forth. It’s a very interesting concept where watching an MC advance in unique ways while living outside the standard ‘rules’ many isekai stories tend to force their characters into (and annoying the animal ‘mascot’ that runs the whole game) is more entertaining than the actual survival game itself. Basically, imagine that during something like the Hunger Games, there was just some guy living his life just outside the arena where the Hunger Games takes place, and no one seemed to mind or stop him from doing whatever he wanted.

3 A Veterinarian In Another World

A Great Read For Those Who Like Intricate Worldbuilding

A Veterinarian in Another World isn’t exactly a typical isekai setup, which readers will notice is a pretty common theme for all the series on here, but it also isn’t quite an atypical isekai either. Kazami Shingo is reincarnated in a fantasy world, not as some slime or spider, but as a normal human who has all his previous life’s knowledge of his profession as a veterinarian. There are a couple of other series like it (such as Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated In Another World As An Aristocrat) where an MC with a hyper-specific skill, specialty, or profession gets pulled into another world exactly because of this expertise, and a Veterinarian in Another World is one of the best examples of this.

This is a story perfect for people who always wondered about the more mundane aspects of fantasy-world creatures. Plenty of viewers wonder if dragons live in stables in fantasy stories or if harpies build nests. And, this series usually goes even further than answering those questions and even brings fantasy biology into the mix, which just shows how much the author cares about the finer details in world-building.