Thrown into a foreign land with no memory of their previous life, a group of strangers must try and survive in a brutal world filled with dangerous monsters.
While the strong quickly band together, the weak are left to make a patchwork group of their own. Slowly but surely this group becomes fighters, finally earning enough to survive each day.
This is one of those low-key isekai anime that barely fits because it only lightly nods at it. However, its charm is not in the isekai, it is in how the characters actually need to struggle. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, head on down below.
Anime Like Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash
For Fans of Dungeon Crawling
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
In the fantasy city of Orario, there is a massive labyrinth underneath it. For brave adventurers, glory and fortune can be found within. In order to tackle the challenging monsters inside, adventures join guilds of strong gods and goddesses.
However, for newbie adventurer Bell Cranel, no good guild will have him, except for Hestia, a goddess with no followers. Together they team up to grow strong and find glory.
Both Grimgar and Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon focus on adventuring-based worlds where the main characters are the the unwanted underdogs. In the beginning, both anime have the main characters be pretty weak and they focus on them growing into proper adventurers.
The big difference, aside from the god-based guild system in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon, is that Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon got more seasons. Both the sole season of Grimgar and the first season of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon are about the main characters becoming competent. As such, Bell doesn’t suck so much in every season afterwards in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon, which I imagine the party would enjoy if Grimgar got another season.
It is also worth noting that Grimgar is more oriented towards the emotional aspect of struggling, whereas Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon is a bit more encouraging for the main character. There is a lot less tears and loss.
Log Horizon
Thirty thousand Japanese players of the popular Elder Tale game all log in to explore the new update of their game, only to discover they are unable to log out.
The story focuses on the socially awkward college student Shiroe, a master strategist in-game, and his friends as they try to navigate their new reality.
Although Log Horizon is about being stuck in a VRMMO, it not only maintains a similar art style to Grimgar, but a similar focus as well. Both anime are about the main characters adapting to their new and difficult reality, though Log Horizon has the characters still know a bit about their world. The struggle for those in Log Horizon is more about adapting physical ability to character ability.
While Grimgar has an element of strategy, because the main character is a strategist in Log Horizon, it is often very strategy-oriented. This also means Log Horizon kind of gets lost in long moments of dialogue, though.
Made in Abyss
The Abyss is an enormous cave system and the only unexplored place in the world. No one knows how deep it goes, but generations of bold adventurers have descended into it.
In the town at the edge of The Abyss, an orphan named Rico dreams of raiding, as her mother did before her. One day while exploring the murky depths, she meets a boy, who turns out to be a robot, kicking off the start of her epic adventure.
Although Made in Abyss isn’t an isekai and doesn’t even take place in the same sort of fantasy world, both series are characters exploring their mysterious and dangerous worlds. They delve deep into labyrinths where they not only uncover magnificent finds, but they also suffer tragedy as well.
Perhaps what these series have most in common aside from their passion for dungeon crawling is their passion for emotional drama. Made in Abyss, though it doesn’t look like it, is peak emotional trauma, particularly once it delves into the deeper layers.
Goblin Slayer
A young priestess fresh out of the temple is excited to start her life as an adventurer. On her first day, she joins an adventuring party to go slay some goblins.
However, like so many young adventure parties before them, they underestimate the goblins. It ends with two dead, one viciously raped, and the priestess saved from fate by a man whose only mission in life is to slay all the goblins.
While Goblin Slayer made itself seem edgier than it actually was by having a brutal slaughter and goblin-led sexual assault in the first episode, it did set the tone that adventuring was dangerous in that world and people had a very real possibility of dying, not unlike you find out is the case in Grimgar.
While Grimgar is very lightly isekai, both take place in a medieval fantasy land where adventuring is a thriving profession. The main characters take jobs and spend time focusing on doing them. The big difference is that Goblin Slayer, unsurprisingly, is all focused on slaying goblins.
Considering how much they got shamed by goblins in Grimgar, they could have used a goblin slayer. Joking aside, both series really emphasis how dangerous these low level monsters can be sometimes.
For Fans of Struggling in a Fantasy Land
Full Dive – The Ultimate Next-Gen Full Dive RPG Is Even Shittier than Real Life!
Rather average high school student Hiro Yuuki obtains a copy of the full dive RPG game called Kiwame Quest. This game is uses the pinnacle of gaming technology to create an experience as close to real life as possible.
Unfortunately, while the sights, smells, and sensations are very realistic, it does make it a difficult game to beat. For players, their real life abilities are reflected in game and being hit also leaves serious wounds on your character that hurt and heal slowly.
It is not a game for casuals, but with a supreme sense of accomplishment on the line for beating it, who could say no?
While Grimgar is an isekai anime about people sent to a fantasy land, Full Dive is a VRMMO anime where the main character can log in and log out.
However, like as an adventurer if you die, you die for real in Grimgar, Full Dive also has that element in the game. If you get hurt, you get hurt for real. This makes the game not only hard, but dangerous.
While both series are for those who enjoy the struggle of adventure, Full Dive also has a bit of intrigue that it is following about the game itself.
Re-Zero
When Subaru Natsuki goes out for a midnight snack run, he suddenly finds himself transported to another world. As a bewildered teen in a land of swords and magic, he wanders around and ends up attacked by thugs.
After being saved by a mysterious woman, he agrees to help her get back something that was stolen. Unfortunately, it ends in both their deaths. With his dying breath, he finds that he possesses the power of revival, escaping his death by the repeating the last few hours.
I feel the most apt way to compare Re:Zero and Grimgar is to describe them both as “go to a fantasy world, try not to die, die a lot.” However, whereas Grimgar has the necessary emotion surrounding the inclusion of death in a fantasy series, Re:Zero undermines that slightly by having the main character able to rewind time somewhat after death to attempt to avoid it.
However, while Re:Zero can occasionally cheese its way out of a dead end, that doesn’t mean it negates any brutality. Both Grimgar and Re:Zero love their brutality and all the raw emotions that go with it despite how they look.
I’m Standing on a Million Lives
Bored with the world that surrounds him, loner Yotsuya Yusuke is one day transported to a new world with two girls from his class.
There, he finds out that they have been playing a game with ten increasingly difficult rounds. After beating each round, they get to pose a question to the game master before heading back home.
On this, the third round, Yusuke finds himself excited for the first time in a long time, only for his battle class to be rolled as a weak farmer.
Together with his teammates, they struggle to survive and move forward or face certain death.
Both Grimgar and I’m Standing on a Million Lives take a non-traditional approach to isekai by making the characters have to really struggle for everything they get.
In Grimgar, it keeps things real by making the characters need to get actual experience to fight better, but I’m Standing on a Million Lives is more that the main character is held back by the class he rolled.
However, while both series really accent the struggle of everything, I’m Standing on a Million Lives does end up more like your standard action isekai fantasy anime where the main character eventually becomes OP.
For Fans of Unwanted Misfits
Ningen Fushin – Adventurers Who Don’t Believe in Humanity Will Save the World
Nick, Tiana, Zem, and Curran are all adventurers who have been pushed away, betrayed, and trampled on by their peers.
One night, these four paths cross in a tavern where they air their grievances to each other as well as the hobbies they took up to take the sting out of the way they were treated.
After a long night of drinking, the morning brings with it a bright idea – they should make their own adventuring party!
Together, they agree to team up, with everyone watching the group finances and an agreement to never interfere with each other’s hobbies outside of their jobs. However, for four people who find it hard to trust others, they now have to adjust to working together.
Like the party in Grimgar is weak either physically or just difficult to deal with, Ningen Fushin also follows a group of misfits that end up together. This time, they have all been betrayed in the past and now have trust issues.
While in Grimgar, the party must improve their personal abilities as well as their teamwork, the lack of teamwork is the only issue in Ningen Fushin. Outside of that teamwork issue, they are otherwise very skilled.
Konosuba
On his way back from buying a new game, Kazuma Satou died a pathetic death.
However, he awakens before the Goddess Aqua who gives him two choices – Go to heaven or reincarnate into an actual fantasy world. Naturally, the gamer picks the fantasy world.
Now, Kazuma must deal with defeating an evil demon king, useless party members, and paying living expenses.
Both Grimgar and Konosuba follow rogue-class main character that are with a party of people that no one else wanted to party with. However, they differ in one very crucial way – tone.
Grimgar treats the situation seriously and dramatically. Konosuba goes the exact opposite direction and makes it into a comedy.
Outside of that, both series are about those rejects going on adventurers. While Konosuba is 90% comedy, it does have that 10% serious action on occasion while adventuring, though be prepared for it to be punctuated with a joke.
The Rising of the Shield Hero
The stories tell of four heroes summoned from another world – the sword, spear, bow, and shield heroes who will prevent calamity. With darkness bearing down on them, the Kingdom of Melromarc summons these heroes from modern day Japan.
For otaku Naofumi Iwatani, unfortunately he is labeled the shield hero, the weakest of the group. Worse yet, betrayal sees him labeled as a criminal and outcasted.
With hatred and vengeance consuming him, he sets forth to grow strong.
While the adventuring party in Grimgar take their rejection pretty well since everyone just kind of moved on, The Rising of the Shield Hero has the main character not only rejected by his peers, but falsely accused and criminalized for a crime he didn’t commit. It instill a deep sense of rage and mistrust that would permeate the series for quite awhile afterwards.
So while Grimgar has the unwanted adventurers just doing their best and sort of failing sometimes, The Rising of the Shield Hero has the main character buy fellow adventurers and, motivated by rage, become skilled quickly so he soon eclipses everyone else in skill.
Handyman Saitou in Another World
Handyman Saitou has always been a kind of unremarkable man. He worked a thankless handyman job where the company prioritized profits and clients often dismissed his work as too simple to be worth paying for.
One day, Saito is transported to a fantasy land where he takes up with a group of adventurers who, despite having some slight dysfunction of their their own, make his skills feel valuable!
Both Grimgar and Handyman Saitou focus on – at least – main characters that are unskilled at combat. However, while everyone is equally unskilled in combat in Grimgar, the adventuring party is otherwise made up of people with more emotional flaws in Handyman Saitou.
Regardless, both series follow reject adventuring groups as they dive into a dungeon for profit and become more competent as a team.
That said, Handyman Saitou starts off as a comedy, enjoys a pretty great serious arc, then fluctuates between seriousness and delightfully dark comedy.
For Fans of Emotional Fantasy Stories
WorldEnd – What Would You Do At The End Of The World?
It has been five hundred years since humanity went extinct at the hands of the mysterious beasts that roam the land. Now the surviving races have retreated to floating islands in the sky out of reach of most of the beasts. However, there are ones nimble enough to put these people in danger.
A small group of young girls, a race called the Leprechauns, are now raised as the only ones that can wield ancient weapons to fend off invasion by the beasts, but it often requires them to sacrifice themselves and they don’t often live to see adulthood.
Enter Willem, the last surviving human woken from his slumber and sent to watch over these girls, still feeling the sting from the final battle where he lost everything five hundred years ago.
While WorldEnd isn’t an isekai like Grimgar is, it does take place in a pretty standard fantasy world. However, like Grimgar, they don’t necessarily tell the standard fantasy story.
Instead, both series focus on characters struggling to often just stay alive in which become really emotional tales full of love and loss.
Jobless Reincarnation
After being chased out of his NEET nest, a man instinctively saves some teens from an oncoming car and is killed. He is reborn as Rudeus Greyrat, a baby and new first born son of a local knight.
Finding he has great potential for magic, Rudy vows to make the most of his new life even if he is still a perverted otaku on the inside.
While Jobless Reincarnation is prone for a bit more degeneracy, both it and Grimgar tend to focus on the darker realities of a fantasy world.
However, while Grimgar is about the struggle of the adventuring party, Jobless Reincarnation has the main character be pretty great at most things. However, it has a rather dark plot that it follows.
While Grimgar tries its best, Jobless Reincarnation really goes above and beyond in terms of the quality of the world it creates. It is so interesting and detailed that you endure the weird sex stuff that the main character gets into.
86
For years, the Republic of San Magnolia has been at war with the Giadian Empire. They were constantly plagued by their hordes of unmanned drones until the government created an unmanned solution of their own, finally able to wage their war without casualties.
However, that is not quite the truth. The “unmanned” combat weapons are actually used by those of the 86th sector of the Republic, but they are not considered even human.
This is the tale of both Shin, an 86er and battle commander, and Lena, their sympathetic handler who remotely commands the detachment from inside the city.
You will want to note immediately that the 86 is a sci-fi story and not the isekai-tinged fantasy setting like Grimgar is. However, if you enjoyed the dramatic and emotional tale where the characters didn’t immediately win and had to endure a lot of pain – then 86 is for you.
Grimgar does well to craft an emotional and struggle-focused story in the crowded fantasy setting, but 86 goes above and beyond. As it’s sci-fi world felt different enough from reality to technically be counted among fantasy, it feels worth mentioning because it is so good at sucker punching your emotions.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash? Let fans know in the comments section below.
