The isekai anime subgenre has become something of a punchline among anime fans, especially thanks to Truck-kun. For whatever reason, these transparent power fantasies and exercises in wish-fulfillment almost always started with the protagonists getting run over by a truck.
Popular as Truck-kun is, they’re not the only way to get isekai’d into another world. Isekai is a lot older than some anime fans may realize and as a result, there are countless ways to be reborn in another world that don’t involve vehicular manslaughter.
10 Play A Video Game
Truck-kun aside, playing a video game is undoubtedly the most well-known way to enter an isekai world. This usually happens unexpectedly, with the isekai hero finding themselves stuck in the game’s world during a casual match. Conveniently, the game they enter is the one they’re most familiar with, thus making them overpowered upon entry.
Obviously, the most famous modern video game isekai are Overlord and Sword Art Online. Other game worlds include Log Horizon (above), My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom!, No Game No Life, and more. .hack//SIGN stands out not just for deconstructing the gamified power fantasy, but by predating the gaming isekai boom that Kirito started in Castle Aincrad.
9 Wake Up From A Nap
Isekai worlds are almost always the kinds of worlds that only exist in dreams, and this isekai starting point takes this to heart. Here, all an isekai hero has to do is sleep in their homeworld and when they wake up, they’ll be in an entirely new place. Details of their past life could be revealed, but all that matters is that they woke up in their dream world.
Grimgar Of Fantasy & Ash and Outbreak Company don’t even set things up, just having their isekai heroes wake up in a strange new world with barely an introduction. Meanwhile in Death March To The Parallel World Rhapsody (above), overworked game developer Satou takes a well-deserved deep sleep but later wakes up in the game he was working on.
8 Read A Book
In anime and general fiction, reading is one of the truest classic ways to begin an isekai adventure. When it comes to anime, Fushigi Yuugi (above) is the definitive example of an isekai starting at the library. Here, Miaka Yuki flips through the old Chinese epic “The Universe of the Four Gods” before finding herself in the middle of its political and romantic intrigues.
While it’s not as ubiquitous as it once was, the isekai book is still a dependable plot device for anime. Despite being a modern isekai title that follows a JRPG’s internal logic, The Rising of Shield Hero starts with Naofumi Iwatani reading the titular book. Similarly, Märchen Mädchen opens with Hazuki Kagimura finding a portal to a fantasy kingdom hidden in the bookshelves.
7 Find A Door To The Other World
Sometimes, the best solution to a problem is the easiest and most obvious solution. In anime like Bleach, Restaurant To Another World, and others, entering another world is easy because there’s a literal door waiting to be walked through. Helping matters is that if these doors aren’t gigantic, they’re glowing with so much magic that they’d be impossible to miss.
A variation of the isekai door is a portal or warp gate. While visually different, these doorways still serve the same purpose and are usually randomly found by the isekai heroes. Examples of this include a portal to Hell in Blood Lad, the ancestral well from InuYasha (above), a pillar of light in The Vision Of Escaflowne, and more.
6 Die A Brutal Death
Truck-kun running over people may be one of the most hilariously violent and oddly specific ways to start an isekai, but it’s far from the most dangerous method. In more extreme cases, an isekai hero dies a violent death before waking up in another world.
This is played for laughs in Didn’t I Say To Make My Abilities Average In The Next Life?! and So I’m A Spider, So What? where the isekai hijinks are fate’s way of making up for the heroes abrupt deaths. Drifters and That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime (above) are the opposite, where the main characters die horribly in their worlds before waking up in a kingdom of knights and dragons.
5 Wait For Someone To Summon You Into An Isekai World
One of the easiest ways to start an isekai anime is to have the hero be summoned into the other world. Usually, this happens on a mundane day where said protagonist is literally doing nothing. By virtue of existing or just sheer dumb luck, they’re deemed by an unseen force as another realm’s savior and are promptly whisked off to adventures.
Examples include The Familiar Of Zero, The Hero Is Overpowered But Overly Cautious, Kemono Michi: Rise Up, and others. The most extreme instance of inaction being rewarded with fantastical escapism comes from Re:Zero (above). Here, Subaru finds himself in the kingdom of Lugunicia after he walked out of a convenience store and blinked.
4 Poke Something You Shouldn’t
Like reading a book, touching an artifact is a classic way to thrust an isekai hero into a new world. While more uncommon than widespread, this is still a reliable way to start an isekai anime, though there are some modernizations and variations. Endride sticks to tradition, where a curious Shun Asanaga touches a crystal before he’s thrown into Endra.
Isekai Quartet (above) is a modernization, where four different isekai anime casts slap a button that isekais them into a Japanese high school. Similarly, The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser Of Einherjar, throws Yuuto Suou into a Norse-inspired world after he belittled an urban legend by taking a selfie with an ancient mirror.
3 Get Bullied In A Bathroom
Usually, the gateway from the normal world to the other side would be dignified or grandiose. This isn’t the case for these two shows, where the isekai protagonists find themselves in another world after getting tossed about in a bathroom. This is one of the strangest isekai entry points ever, and it’s a pity that more isekai anime don’t use it.
The harem anime Girls Bravo (left) starts when Yukinari Sasaki gets kicked into a bathtub for saying something dumb and finds himself in a world predominantly inhabited by women. Meanwhile, in King From Now On! (right), Yuri Shibuya gets his head dunked in a toilet by bullies. Instead of the hospital, Yuri wakes up in a fantasy world where he’s actually next in line for the throne.
2 Be Rude To God
Technically, The Saga Of Tanya The Evil starts after an unnamed salaryman gets run over by Truck-kun’s cousin, Train-kun. However, the only reason why he was killed by said monorail was because Being X (basically God) let it happen. Just before his body connects with the subway, the salaryman is given a chance to repent by Being X – which he smugly declines.
Because common courtesy is either beneath or foreign to him, the salaryman renames his savior after a mathematical variable and logically deduces that it’s a fraud. Understandably infuriated, Being X lets the train kill the salaryman before reincarnating him into the young girl Tanya in the worst isekai possible: an alternate history where the World Wars were fought with magic.
1 Get Hit By Garzey’s Goose
On paper, Garzey’s Wing is a by-the-numbers old-fashioned isekai: Chris Chiaki gets summoned to the fantasy realm of Byston Well when, one night, he drives near an ancient shrine. However, what makes this so-bad-it’s-good classic stand out is that Chris gets thrown into his isekai adventure after a giant goose flies straight at him. It has to be seen to be believed.
Even better, the goose hits Chris so hard that he wakes up naked in another world. To be clear, the goose doesn’t bring Chris to Byston Well, but yanks his soul to the fantasy world while leaving his corporeal form on Earth. Upon arrival, Chris’s spirit is blessed with the power of having goose wings (aka Garzey’s Wings) magically bolted to his ankles.
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