15 Good Isekai Anime With No Harem

Having an isekai adventure with a harem may be “the dream,” but maybe you don’t want the dream. Who said it had to be your dream, anyway?

Maybe you just enjoy the idea of isekai anime. The idea that one day you could escape your dreary life and go somewhere exciting where you would be powerful and free. Maybe you would find love there, but you’re not greedy enough to demand multiple beautiful love interests. No, you would be content with just the one, or even none if you had other pursuits that you found more fulfilling.

Even before isekai anime became all the rage, harem anime remained fairly popular. Cute girls sell anime, or rather, cute girls sell merchandise! However, if you don’t want your isekai anime to get bogged down in banal harem shenanigans, check out these isekai anime with no harem.

Best Isekai Anime With No Harem

Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement

An isekai anime having a female main character does not mean that the show won’t have a harem. Reverse harems can be just as prevalent, albeit often aren’t as obviously structured.

Regardless, Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement often utterly skips the concept of romance, something that is exceedingly rare in female-led isekai anime, to have the main character explore every opportunity to make some money.

As she can travel back and forth between the modern world and an fantasy world, she often makes money by introducing goods from modern Japan, but does so in a way that doesn’t draw too much suspicion.

Saga of Tanya the Evil

You may think that Saga of Tanya the Evil is an isekai anime without a harem because the character is a little girl, and that is true, but it is probably more because of her personality. There is absolutely zero chance of a reverse harem popping up anytime in her life.

In Saga of Tanya the Evil, a shrewd and ruthless Japanese salaryman dies, gets in a bit of a tiff with God, and is put on the path for humbling by being reincarnated as a little girl with immense magic in a land deep in a World War I-era conflict.

Due to her magical abilities, she is placed in the military at a young age. Her magic and the fact that she still has that shrewd mind of a Japanese salaryman allow her to survive and thrive on the battlefield.

That “the Evil” they tacked onto the end of the title isn’t superfluous either, Tanya will throw mountains of lives at an issue if it provides the best path to her desired goal. There is no gaining friends and being a universally beloved hero in this brutal war. She is just trying to get a cushy desk job on the back lines while God keeps throwing wrenches in her plans.

The Faraway Paladin

Aside from the briefest of nods to reincarnation, The Faraway Paladin is more fantasy anime than isekai anime.

It follows a main character born as an baby and abandoned in the forest. He is found and raised by three undead guardians who teach him of the deities, swordplay, magic, and what little they know of the world as it was several hundred years ago.

Eventually, the boy grows up and leaves his guardians to go discover more of the world with his only eventual traveling companion being male or children.

Furthermore, The Faraway Paladin maintains a rather serious and often mysterious tone, which would make a harem horribly out of place in this particular isekai anime.

Reincarnated as a Sword

The on-the-nose title of this isekai anime tells the truth of it. A guy was reincarnated as a sword. At first, he was pretty adept at defeating beasts without a wielder, but eventually does need one to pull him out of the ground.

While his chosen wielder is a catgirl, a solid harem starter if not required member, she remains his only wielder. Reincarnated as a Sword is about the two of them traveling and gaining power together. There are really no other companions so often what you get is a proud dad-growing daughter sort of dynamic between them.

Ascendance of a Bookworm

While Ascendance of a Bookworm often seems like the type of show that will turn into a romance, and possibly a reverse harem, Myne has one great love in any world – books.

Ascendance of a Bookworm is often espousing Myne’s love of books and follows her in her adventures in making them more accessible to people other than just nobility.

As she is often a sickly girl, Myne doesn’t really have the stamina to start managing the emotional feelings of a bunch of needy young men.

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady

The isekai protagonist in this very long titled girl’s love isekai anime is an openly gay woman, I feel like if she were a touch more of a degenerate, she would indeed start a female harem.

However, Anisphia’s attentions are ninety percent aimed at using magic to make items she remembers from her previous life and ten percent aimed at one singular love interest.

As this is a girl’s love isekai, Anisphia is allowed freedom because she is a princess, but people still think she is an oddball for her obsession with he magic inventions. In a more private setting, her romantic interest in woman is also seen as odd. So, she is not beloved by everyone like the usual isekai protagonist. It actually makes this an excitingly new take on isekai in many ways.

Life With an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout

This long-titled comedy isekai anime is allergic to harems.

Life With an Ordinary Guy follows a pair of best friends who get isekai’d by a goddess. However, much to the dismay of his woman-hating best friend, the main character is gender-bent into a woman!

After that unique hook, the anime is really the same generic isekai adventure plot of going to defeat someone. However, the meat of the show is comically shipping romance between the main pair, and the woman-hater being horribly dismayed by every aspect of it.

Handyman Saitou in Another World

As Handyman Saitou in Another World is about, as the title says, a handyman in another world who possesses all the power of your standard handyman, it seems easiest to give him a harem. However, this isekai anime doesn’t play out like that.

Saitou earns the admiration of his party with his handyman skills, but he really isn’t a spectacular hero. He is just trying to live a happy, fulfilling, and pretty normal life. Since he lacks combat skills, few girls are going to glue themselves to him. However, he does have one girl in his party who has a romantic interest in him.

In the Land of Leadale

This VRMMO-based isekai anime features a girl who enjoyed playing an MMO in the hospital before she died. After that death, she found herself in her character, in that MMO world, 200 years after she played it where there are now mysteriously no other player characters.

The basic premise sets up a nice mystery, and it is pretty interesting getting to watch her meet her “children,” or the NPCs that she created. However, throughout the series, she is as nice as you would expect any isekai protagonist to be, but she also maintains a rather unexpected level of detachment from everyone.

You never really feel her get too close to anyone, even her children. As such, she doesn’t really posses the ability to attract a devoted harem.

So I’m a Spider, So What?

The main character of So I’m a Spider, so What is, in fact, a spider and was, in fact, a female before that anyway.

No one wants to be in a spider’s harem.

No one even wants to hang out with a spider.

As such, what you get in this isekai anime is a scrappy girl slowly growing and evolving her combat skills and species purely so she doesn’t get cannibalized in a cave full of infinitely more dangerous creatures.

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash

While Grimgar only drops a spare few hints that it is in fact an isekai anime, there is no question that it has the fantasy adventure part of isekai nailed.

However, instead of Grimgar following strong or destined heroes, it follows a bunch of weaklings that nobody wanted to party with. They form their own party and try their best to grow their powers and teamwork.

Grimgar is a slow fantasy anime. The characters struggle for a long while, and even suffer devastating losses. It takes time for them to even get adequate at fighting the lowest level creatures. When your days are constantly full of struggling to get by, you don’t have time to manage a harem.

Drifters

Drifters isn’t like your standard isekai anime, mostly because it was made before isekai became so wildly popular.

In Drifters, you follow a historical samurai who was, upon being killed in the Sengoku Era, isekai’d to a fantasy land by a mysterious being. There he meets other historical figures from Japan and abroad as they wage conflict.

Unlike other isekai anime where the main character is noble and heroic, in Drifters, most characters are some degree of psychopathic. The main characters in Drifters are warriors, and they decide they want to fight, so they start a war.

There are women in Drifters too, but they are often similar to the men in personality. They aren’t exactly the type to submit to being in a harem, much less being in love.

The Dungeon of Black Company

Certainly a scumbag main character is not someone who can’t have a harem, but in the rampant wish fulfillment of isekai anime, usually harem kings are nice young men since everyone likes to imagine themselves as nice young men. Kinji in The Dungeon of Black Company is not a nice young man.

Kinji is a NEET who, through shrewd money management, finally got to the point in his life where he could lounge forever only to be isekai’d into another world and forced to toil under a harsh black company that prioritized profits over people.

Instead of becoming a hero, Kinji desires to go back to his leisurely life by using exploits to gather enough money to do so. So, instead of gathering a harem, you watch him struggle and wield his cunning in comic misadventures in an effort to get some cash.

No Game No Life

While it would be easy for No Game No Life to take a step off the path and land waist-deep in harem, there are a few things about the main characters that prevent that. The most notable is that the male main character is very attached to his stepsister, as she is to him. They have a sort of codependent relationship in which if they are separated, both parties kind of metaphorically break down into a useless heap.

While the male main character has an interest in women, a harem is not for him. Instead, in No Game No Life, you find the main characters take most joy not in flesh, but in games. Every dispute in the isekai world of No Game No Life, from who does the dishes to who rules a nation, is decided by the outcome of a game.

The cleverness that No Game No Life wields, as well as its comedy, has made it a beloved staple of the isekai anime genre.

Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill

Campfire Cooking in Another World is a food anime. The main characters has no useful battle abilities, and the only unique thing he has is being able to buy ingredients from Japan via an online grocery store to use in a fantasy world.

The food he cooks provides powerful buffs to those that eat it, and everyone finds it absolutely divine. Both of which seem like a good recipe to attract a harem, but mostly he just uses his skills to start a business and provide offerings of food to his very hungry legendarily powerful Fenrir companion and a series of deities.

Campfire Cooking in Another World remains a great food anime and a pretty soothing slice of life isekai in a world where it would have been easy to turn it into another ecchi harem isekai for sales.

Do you have more anime recommendations for fans looking for good isekai anime with no harem? Let fans know in the comments section below.