Comedy is usually a pretty essential part of isekai anime. After all, isekai is built on the now well-worn backs of escapism and wish fulfillment, and people love to laugh. So even the most hardcore and serious isekai anime takes little light-hearted time-outs to enjoy a few comedic shenanigans.
That said, not all isekai anime can be called “comedy isekai” anime. True comedy isekai anime is dedicated to the jokes, and usually not so much to the plot.
Whether it is parodying other isekai or just in love with comical gags, comedy isekai is almost all jokes. If you are looking to unwind, escape, and maybe enjoy a little chuckle, give these comedy isekai anime recommendations a try.
Best Comedy Isekai Anime
Konosuba
Konosuba was, and I say this with no factual data to back this up, one of the first comedy isekai anime that was more dedicated to jokes than adventure. The fact that it is about an isekai adventure that goes so comically awry endeared it to fans early. The fact that the jokes were actually really good has kept it as the pinnacle of comedy isekai anime, and the among the pinnacle of isekai anime overall.
The series follows an isekai adventure where everything goes wrong. The main character accidentally dies heroically even when he didn’t need to. He reincarnated with a goddess as his companion, but she’s useless. He gets an adventuring party, but while they are powerful in specific ways, they also have major flaws as well. It makes it so that even the smallest task ends up in unexpected and hilarious places every time.
Combatants Will be Dispatched
Comedy isekai anime is subversive anime. It subverts the classic isekai tropes and twists them into something amusing. Combatants Will Be Dispatched twists things up by following a cog in an evil world-conquering corporation. Having conquered the world, they aim at conquering the universe so they send the main character to another world to conquer it in their name.
Since they don’t have high hopes for his success, they send a more talented but similarly disposable android with him. Together, you watch the pair conquer a standard medieval fantasy-type world by being scummy and kind of comically failing upwards. Essentially, they end up saving the kingdom from the Demon King that threatens it so that they could conquer it later with less resistance.
As this shares an author with Konosuba, you can expect certain kinds of comically flawed characters and typical isekai situations that go awry for comedy.
The Devil is a Part-Timer
Although a reverse isekai, The Devil is a Part-Timer hooked us with its comedy. After all, who doesn’t want to see a demon lord in our world without his powers and having to work a part-time job at a McDonald’s parody to pay his rent?
Watching him do mundane things with a the passion and verve of a demon lord is amusing, and that is what brings you in. However, as the series goes on, it does meander into serious arcs that distinctly resembles a more serious isekai plot.
Cautious Hero – The Hero is Overpowered But Overly Cautious
There are a number of comedy anime that lean on one very specific joke. Cautious Hero leans on the joke that the isekai main character chosen by a goddess to be her chosen isekai main character is very strong, but irritates her by feeling the need to over-prepare for every situation – major battles, minor kerfuffles, even imagined scenarios.
Now, the innate problem with one-joke comedy anime is that humans are stupid, easily bored creatures, so the joke gets old after awhile. However, Cautious Hero keeps it interesting by not just having a main duo with amusing chemistry, but introducing a number of different deities into the mix. In his quest to over-prepare, the main character breaks the confidence and sometimes the minds of these gods and goddesses, thus introducing new jokes into the mix.
Furthermore, Cautious Hero dares to do something different. It dared to take its titular joke and punch you in the gut with it. Yes, this series is 3/4ths a comedy isekai anime and a serious isekai anime right at the end, but it works perfectly.
Cautious Hero is actually an isekai anime you don’t want to sleep on. It puts people off with one note title, but it delivers through its great characters and comedy.
Uncle From Another World
When even making gag and parody comedy anime gets exhausted, you have to try new things. Uncle From Another World is a series that tries something new.
It follows a main character whose uncle wakes up from a 17-year coma. During that time, he was having an isekai adventure, but came back with his magic powers still intact.
After that, the anime is him recounting his various adventures, such as people thinking he was an orc because he was so ugly or how he didn’t understand the concept of a tsundere. Outside of that, you also watch how his nephew exploits his uncles’ magic powers for fun and profit.
The Dungeon of Black Company
It is hard work to make a scummy character likable and funny, but The Dungeon of Black Company makes a good attempt at it.
This series follows a NEET who, after saving enough money to be a layabout for life, gets sent to another world where he is enslaved by a medieval mining company in a fantasy land. Determined to be a layabout again, he pursues any and every means to make some cash. This means doing some terrible things, but the series makes a joke out of everything.
Kemono Michi
Every isekai needs a unique hook, right? The hook in Kemono Michi would have been that the main character was a pro wrestler. However, the actual hook is that the main character is a main character who promptly shirks heroic duties to go start a pet shop for monster creatures that the kingdom wanted him to go slay.
Like Konosuba, which shares an author with Kemono Michi, the comedy in this series comes from its comically flawed characters. They are likable, but not exactly heroic. Furthermore, the main character may be passionate about animals, but is terrible at running an actual business. As such, he spends more time petting furry wolfman bellies than he does keeping the shop afloat, leading to typical comical poverty.
Life With An Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout
In the same vein as many comedy isekai, Life With An Ordinary Guy With An Obnoxiously Long Title focuses on an isekai adventure gone terribly wrong. This time, the main character is gender-bent into a woman and isekai’d with their best friend who hates women.
The primary joke here is around their relationship. The woman-hater is overpowered, and constantly has to save his womanized friend. It puts them in comical ship-baiting moments despite no one really wanting to have that dynamic.
This series occasionally nods to a plot, but it knows what it is and lets itself get lost in the silliness of every situation, often poking fun at classic isekai tropes.
Handyman Saitou in Another World
In the beginning, Handyman Saitou does something kind of unique. It sets itself up as an isekai where it is just mostly a bunch of situational silly skits following adventuring groups, one of them being the isekai’d main character’s somewhat lackluster group.
However, right in the middle, it brings all those characters you see in the skits together for what is actually a serious battle.
After that, you might expect it to be a serious isekai anime, but it goes right back to being a comedy isekai after the battle is done, though now with a more linear, focused plot. The biggest change it makes is that the comedy takes a big step towards dark comedy, though only for that particular arc.
That’s Handyman Saitou in Another World. It is a comedy anime that has some actually amazing jokes, but takes brief little breaks to have serious moments that are still injected with some not unwelcome levity.
Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill
There are a few potential comedy isekai anime I left off this list because they were probably best described as “pleasant” rather than “comedy.” For example, By the Grace of the Gods has funny moments and minimal action or plot, but is more about the main character just enjoying slice of life activities and breeding slimes. It’s pleasant.
Campfire Cooking in Another World is one of those isekai anime – because it is pretty much just about traveling and cooking – that might be better described as being pleasant, but it definitely angles towards comedy more often than not.
His companions are so overpowered that they stomp any chance for serious action and the main character is really just good at cooking. The comedy comes from people reacting to his ridiculous feats and his delicious Japanese cuisine.
If you are looking for rapid-shot gag comedy anime where the jokes never end, Campfire Cooking in Another World is not that. However, it is a pretty pleasant anime that makes a lot of time from some reoccurring silliness.
Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi
This series is an older anime, before “isekai” was really popular enough to be a genre. Furthermore, while it has serious tones, particularly later on, this anime is a comedy, and a big fun parody comedy to boot.
In Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, a pair of kids are transported to a series of ever-changing worlds based on the otaku interests of the male main character. While he is thrilled to be in these worlds and explored them, his childhood friend just wants to go home.
While they are exploring these worlds, they are feeding you parodies of everything from martial arts anime and noir detective movies to old school RPGs. Of course, being not dictated by the standard isekai formula that runs rampant today, the reason behind this gets a little deeper than usual which does sort of kill the comedy.
KamiKatsu: Working for God in a Godless World
The unfortunate thing about KamiKatsu is that it plays itself like a serious anime just enough to make people expect it to be. This makes the frequent moments it zips away for ecchi degeneracy and comedy kind of grating if you were expecting it to be diligent with its more inventive isekai plot.
The series follows a boy, sacrificed by his father for their cult religion, who ends up in a world with no religion. After he gets himself into a situation, he is aided by the god he was sacrificed to, but as she has no followers in that world, she is pretty weak. You then watch him manipulate people into joining his religion with scummy tactics as he struggles not to be wiped out by a larger force.
It is best if you go into KamiKatsu not expecting anything serious because you will get situations that seem pretty dire, but also have earmarks of ridiculousness all around them, like gender-bending a knight and making them defend the town from powerful foes in increasingly degenerate outfits.
This is one comedy isekai anime for people that really enjoy degenerate ecchi comedy since that is often what it turns to when it needs a laugh not based around how bad its CGI creatures are for no reason.
The Fruit of Evolution: Before I Knew It, My Life Had It Made
The Fruit of Evolution is what I would call a “daywalker” – a half-breed – of an isekai anime. It has some moments that are just so ridiculous and legitimately hilarious that endears itself to you, and then it has moments where it attempts to wheel it back into a serious and generically bland “isekai action anime with a harem and OP main character” that physically repulses you away with how painfully average it is.
It is a weird place to be for an isekai anime since it pleases fans of neither serious action isekai anime nor fans of silly comedy isekai anime.
Still, the fact that it gets so ridiculous with its actual animals evolving into anime girls and joining his harem that it merits consideration. The first season merits consideration, at least, the second season is what you would call a “series killer” with how poorly done it was.
Tsukimichi
Similar to The Fruit of Evolution, Tsukimichi is a bit of a half-breed where at times it does commit itself to serious isekai-seeming adventures and most moments outside of that are actually comedy. However, unlike The Fruit of Evolution, it never seems to be taking itself seriously, so neither should you.
In this isekai adventure gone awry, the main character discovers that his parents were actually from a fantasy land and traveled to our modern world to start a family. He goes to the land where they came from, but the goddess of that world finds him just repulsively ugly. She flings him to the far outskirts of the world with the only blessing being that he can understand beast tribe languages. Fortunately, the god of Earth gives him a few more blessings that make him wildly overpowered.
As the series not only has an OP main character, but two OP female companions, you can’t really focus much on serious action. They go in and curb-stomp any problem in two seconds. This means the comedy comes from the destruction they cause and how every actual human in the world finds the average-looking main character just horrifically ugly.
Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?
When I mentioned Cautious Hero above, I mentioned how “one joke” comedy anime are fun right up until the joke gets old. Cautious Hero found other jokes to keep things fresh, but Do You Love Your Mom leans exclusively on a single joke.
The joke is that a guy is isekai’d into a game world with his mother, but while he is pretty average, his doting mother is extremely overpowered and overprotective. While it was fun to meme about the MILFsekai, the joke may grow stale for some over time.
My One-Hit Kill Sister
Like Do You Love Your Mom, My One-Hit Kill Sister leans on the same one joke to a similar effect. This time, the series focuses on a boy who was iseka’d to another world. However, he finds himself incredibly average, and in his darkest hour, his older sister appears like a summon with incredible abilities and stomps anyone that even dares look at her little brother the wrong way.
While the series introduces other quirky characters into the mix that also love the main character, this series always returns to the singular joke of “big sister OP and is really into her little brother” to varied effect.
Isekai Quartet
Isekai is a unique genre in that every plot of each isekai anime is united by a singular factor – someone transported to another world. As such, it means you can actually pluck out any main character and put them in another isekai anime, and you’d have still pretty much the same story.
Isekai Quartet is a comedy isekai anime that kind of works on that premise. It plucks up the main or major characters of a large number of popular isekai anime series, and puts them in a school!
This is a series of gags and parody where the comedy comes from watching the characters interact with each other outside of their shows. It is a must for those with a lot of isekai under their belt, though the characters are limited to the very popular isekai series.
Do you have more comedy isekai anime that you enjoy? Let fans know in the comments section below.
