For some, they escape their tedious, stressful life by coming home and watching a overworked salaryman reincarnated in another world enjoy his new life. For others, they escape their tedious, stressful life by coming home and watching normal anime characters do peaceful slice of life things.
Isekai and the lesser known iyashikei genre may seem like they appeal to two different types of anime fans, but there is actually a lot of crossover between the two genres.
Isekai offers escapism via watching characters literally escape to another world. Iyashikei, or “healing anime,” offers escapism by watching people live the happy lives that you can’t. As these two genres have such a similar appeal, the anime industry has churned out more than a few isekai iyashikei anime.
Iyashikei Isekai Anime
By the Grace of The Gods
By The Grace of The Gods is the quintessential isekai iyashikei experience because it captures the aspects that people enjoy about each genre so perfectly, melding them together in a seamless, enjoyable way.
As these things often go, By The Grace of The Gods follows an overworked salaryman who died and was reincarnated into another world after the gods showered him with their blessings.
As a child in the woods alone, he honed the skill he became most passionate about – taming and raising slimes. Eventually he moves to the city where he befriends and helps a number of local residents, forms the beginnings of a romance, starts a small business, and lightly adventures at his leisure.
No world-saving, no demon lords to train for and defeat, not even an ecchi isekai harem to wrangle – just a guy living a nice, fairly normal fantasy life in another world.
Restaurant to Another World
Restaurant to Another World follows a restaurant in our world that, on special days, opens its doors for residents of another world to come and dine on lovely Japanese cuisine.
Now, while not strictly an isekai anime, it does fulfill every need for the iyashikei fan with a little isekai flair.
Restaurant to Another World is soothing anime in which you devour a series of episodic character stories about otherworlders who come to eat specific delicious things. It is often soft stories where the fantastic-looking food is the real star of the show.
Isekai Izakaya
If there is one thing you can be sure of, it is that whenever Restaurant to Another World is mentioned as a recommendation, Isekai Izakaya is sure to follow because the series are so similar.
Isekai Izakaya follows a restaurant that serves Japanese izakaya food to patrons of another world. However, this series features short-form 14-minute episodes where the focus is more on food and comedy, and less on any deep character stories.
I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level
Part of the charm of iyashikei anime is that often the characters aren’t really doing anything. There’s no plot and much of an iyashikei anime is just watching the characters live their lives happily. However, isekai does tend to have the characters do, if nothing else, some light adventuring.
If you are truly craving an iyashikei isekai about character doing nothing much, then I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level is for you!
In 300 Slimes, an overworked office lady passes away and is reincarnated as an immortal witch in another world. Instead of becoming an adventurer, she relatably builds a house in the country and a lives in seclusion. After a previous life of toil, she only kills slimes to make the money in order to pay for her living expense, then she lounges!
300 Slimes is often about characters that try to challenge the now-max level main character, then becoming friends with her instead. You enjoy them doing slice of life fantasy things, and envy their pleasant, fulfilling lives.
The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent
The Saint’s Magic is Omnipotent is for all the worn down office ladies out there because the main character has the same approach to adventure that most of us would.
The Saint’s Power is Omnipotent follows an office lady summoned to another world to be their chosen hero. However, they summoned two girls, and the prince like the younger girl better – because of course he does. So they pick that girl to be the hero, and our main character is set adrift to do what she wants.
What she want to do, as she discovers, is use her exceptional proficiency at making potions to help people. From there, she gets a low pressure job, meets handsome men, saves the life of a knight commander who sparks a romantic connection, and enjoys her time in a new world.
However, while she spends much of the time doing what she wants, it is worth noting that what she ultimately wants to do most is help people. This does lead her into some more tense situations over time.
Princess Connect Re:Dive
As it is based on gacha game, no one expected too much from Princess Connect as an anime. However, it did end up being an enjoyable standalone product for the pretty fun and relaxing story it told.
Princess Connect follows a rather literal self-insert main character for the audience as he meets the cute, sociable, marketable companions that you can expect from gacha. Together, they form a gourmet guild dedicated to getting good ingredients to turn into good food.
Instead of SSR pulls and action, the Princess Connect anime offers you light character drama and light adventures that always end with tasty meal.
Ascendance of a Bookworm
When an isekai anime isn’t about becoming an adventurer, you can be sure that you are in for a fulfilling iyashikei story. That is exactly what Ascendance of a Bookworm offers from its bookish main characters’ adventures in medieval book-making.
Ascendance of a Bookworm follows a bookish nerd crushed to death by her own book collection in an earthquake. She is reincarnated the daughter of a soldier in a fantasy land. However, books are expensive to produce and therefor only the wealthy can afford them.
Instead of discovering magnificent powers or becoming an adventurer, the main character in Ascendance of a Bookworm decides to make books, and make them in a way so that more people can afford and enjoy them.
Not only is Ascendance of a Bookworm a pleasant anime to watch, but it can also be a surprisingly educational anime on the arduous task of book-making.
Campfire Cooking in Another World With My Absurd Skill
As prevalent as food is on the more soothing side of isekai, you could easily say that eating good food is one of the key tenets to living a happy life. However, unlike Restaurant to Another World or Isekai Izakaya which are fully focused on food, Campfire Cooking in Another World melds food a little more with isekai adventure.
In Campfire Cooking in Another World, the main character is summoned to another world. However, unlike his peers who have better combat abilities, his only special ability is being able to access a Japanese grocery and buy things from his previous world.
Sent away to live as he pleases, he ends up befriending a powerful beast with the delicious prowess of his cooking. From there, the pair wander the world, cooking delicious Japanese meals and making money from his companion killing new monsters that he wants the main character to cook for him.
Farming Life in Another World
From cooking in another world to the next natural step, Farming Life in Another World follows the daily life of an man who decides to be a farmer with his new isekai life.
After dying, the main character wants to live a simple life, so god blesses him with a handy multi-purpose magical farming tool, overpowered strength that he rarely uses, and plops him out in the forest.
Unfortunately, Farming Life in Another World does come with one potential caveat for interested isekai iyashikei viewers.
As he builds his farm into a homestead and then into a thriving village, it is unambiguously a giant harem village of mostly women that all just love the main character.
While Farming Life in Another World is great for its simple life vibes, interesting village expansion story line, and occasional food focus – it is still a harem isekai. Although, the Farming Life in Another World anime does snip out all the more egregious ecchi moments from the light novel to keep the series more family-friendly.
The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash
As The Weakest Tamer starts with the main character’s parents in another world coldly running her five-year-old self out of town to perish in the woods, it does feature a little more drama than the usual more pleasant isekai iyashikei. However, despite its small moments of drama, The Weakest Tamer has the right vibe.
In The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash, the main character is reincarnated into a new world as a child, with their former self only a small voice in the back of their head. In this world, each person is given a star rating to their abilities that will decide their profession and how good they will be at it. When she is accessed, the main character is a monster tamer, but has no stars. Labeled a cursed being, she is ran out of town.
Eventually, she is fully chased out of the woods nearby and decides to travel the world. There, she starts to find peace as well as people who will accept her despite the fact that she has no star rating.
While it may be an isekai, The Weakest Tamer is all about discovering things you want to do in the world and living happily while doing them.
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear
In truth, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear is more aligned with a traditional isekai adventure in that it has more action than most other series on this list. However, it is action done cutely in an overpowered costume, so it gets its iyashikei from the moe.
Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear is one of those VRMMO isekai anime stories where the main character plays the game, and then is in the game for real. As her MMO of choice is dangerous, it is the catalyst that forces the main character to fight in a cute bear suit because it has the overpowered stats she needs to survive.
However, while the bear suit may bring you in, this series balances action and more soothing slice of life activities by making the main character so overpowered that most fights are over in the blink of an eye.
Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools
In a similar vein to The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent, Dahlia in Bloom is about an office lady who never found her passion in life finding a passion for making magical devices in her new life.
However, Dahlia in Bloom does start off with a bit more drama before the main character decides that she needs to live for herself and follow her own desires. After a few bumps in the road, you settle into watching a confident woman explore a job that gives her energy as well as forming a healthy building romance after suffering an unhealthy betrothal.
A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring
When anime needs to make something disarmingly cute, they have a tried and true recipe for it – add a little kid or two in there. However, if you are looking for comfy childcare anime, Raising Kids While Adventuring may not be that.
Raising Kids While Adventuring is certainly about an isekai’d new adventurer who finds two twins in the woods and takes them in. However, he is not so much “raising them” as he is adventuring with them.
As the two children are wildly powerful alongside the god-blessed protagonist, they don’t exactly have to worry about much danger on their adventures. Instead, you get moments of cute kids being cute as well as a casual plot about trying to figure out who these two kids are.
Fluffy Paradise
For stressed out people, the most unbelievable thing about some isekai anime is that they reincarnate into a world after dying from overwork and actually want be a hero or some other stressful destiny.
What if you just want to pet animals and do nothing?
Fluffy Paradise is about an overworked woman who died, was given the chance to pick her abilities in a new world, and declared that she just wants to pet fluffy things!
So she is reborn the third daughter of a noble lord and given an ability that makes animals – even wildly powerful mythical ones – immediately like her.
That said, while Fluffy Paradise starts off fluffy enough, it does get a little deeper into not-so-fluffy politics as things go on.
Sweet Reincarnation
While Sweet Reincarnation, a series about a pastry chef who reincarnated in another world who still wants to just make pastry, is very much a food isekai anime, it also happens to provide a satisfying isekai experience outside of its food aspect.
Instead of sacrificing isekai concepts for more food focus, Sweet Reincarnation forces the main character to grow strong, make friends, and help his newly-appointed baron father improve their small territory. With things like sugar and fruit being difficult or expensive to import, the main character is motivated to help his small village thrive in order to bring the wealth that will help him acquire these things.
However, that does mean that Sweet Reincarnation is often more about kingdom management than it is about making sweet treats.
Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon
Isekai has recently ran out of standard stories that meet the bare minimum of quality in order to be adapted to anime. So instead, they have started to further indulge the popular isekai hook of isekai anime that follow humans reincarnated as non-human things.
Reborn as a Vending Machine is currently the most extreme instance of this, but it is actually a pleasantly comedic anime.
Reborn as a Vending Machine follows a vending machine otaku who is crushed by a vending machine and reincarnated as one in his next life in another world. The series bends over backwards in the the most enjoyable way to try to make the concept of a vending machine in a medieval fantasy world viable.
You watch the main character solve his electricity needs, then address mobility, then you get to watch him enjoy performing his duties as a vending machine with stock he can rotate to fit the needs of the patrons in wherever he is at the time.
As you can expect, Reborn as a Vending Machine is not an anime you will enjoy if you think too hard about it. However, if you just switch the part of your brain responsible for critical thinking off for bit, then this series is great to just relax with.
Drug Store in Another World: The Slow Life of a Cheat Pharmacist
The full title of Drug Store in Another World: The Slow Life of a Cheat Pharmacist is a little bit misleading. It makes the main character seem like some sort cheat or scumbag, but really, Drug Store in Another World is as pleasant an iyashikei anime experience as any.
The series follows a man who uses his skill at making potions to become an apothecary in another world. He ends up living with a beast girl and a ghost that cutely haunts his shop. Together, they run their pharmacy and help the town.
Drug Store to Another World is one of those isekai series where it is just an endless cute string of him creating medicines and other helpful things from our world with magic, and fantasy residents just being awe-struck by how useful those things are.
I Shall Survive Using Potions
While its title makes you think this series will be more about chugging potions to survive action, instead I Shall Survive Using Potions is a surprisingly peaceful iyashikei-type story about dodging obligations.
I Shall Survive Using Potions features an office lady reincarnated into another world with the special power granted by the goddess that accidentally killed her to make any potion she can think of. Being your standard overworked office lady, the main character just wants to live a nice quiet life.
Unfortunately, as her potions are so high quality and helpful, this makes her the constant target of nobility that wants to secure her power through forcing her into their service.
Much of I Shall Survive Using Potions is the main character settling into a town, helping people with her potions, attracting too much attention, and then fleeing in the night to start over again somewhere else.
Do you have more isekai iyashikei anime recommendations about living happily in another world? Let fans know in the comments section below.
