There is certainly some charm in watching a hero go out there and defeat a demon lord in a big flashy battle, but sometimes you just want to see… All the other things characters do in a fantasy world, you know?
While not all town management anime about building and managing a kingdom is set the “medieval-style” fantasy world that is so common in anime right now, town management in any setting has the same allure.
Sometimes the most likable character is the guy who cares about everyone around him and actively tries to make sure they are safe and are able to thrive. If only world leaders and CEOs could be a bit more like that these days.
If you are looking for anime about building a kingdom or at least managing a town, then give these anime recommendations a try.
Town Management Anime
Farming Life in Another World
Farming Life in Another World is the only town management anime that features the main character making a village from nothing. Before him, there was only a really big tree and a forest full of dangerous animals.
You watch him go from house and small garden to fully thriving village over the course of the anime series as he expands to shelter and support the outcasts that all come to live in his village.
Farming Life in Another World has everything you want in a cozy isekai anime. It features the satisfaction of building structures, growing food, eating food, and producing products. However, since his village is almost exclusively female, it has that sort of comical harem vibe to it, but does at least skip the ecchi.
Chillin’ in My 30s After Getting Fired From The Demon King’s Army
After getting kicked out of the demon army by the jealous son of the previous general he had been serving, Dariel is set adrift into the human word. After saving a girl, she takes him back to her floundering village. From there, Chillin’ in My 30s After Getting Fired From The Demon King’s Army is very much about him improving life for the village and the human kingdoms.
Instead of him turning his back on the demon kingdoms that raised him, however, Dariel actually works to find more peaceful solutions of co-existence between them. As such, problems in the story are often about nullifying threats while also finding solutions that would be beneficial to both sides.
The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt
The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt is a series about failing upwards and being pretty unhappy about it.
The series follows a prince who inherits a deteriorating kingdom from his father, and seeks to sell it so he can retire in leisure elsewhere. However, as to not be strung up for treason, he is trying to manufacture plausible reasons to sell the kingdom out, like losing key battles or economic failings.
Unfortunately, while he is clever enough to come up with and put plans into action – he doesn’t fail. In fact, he often ends up improving the kingdom instead as his plans to fail end up failing.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an isekai anime where a salaryman dies and gets reincarnated as a lowly slime. As he is a creature and not a human, he ends up befriending a series of fantasy beast races.
As beast races are traditionally oppressed and used as fodder in almost all fantasy anime, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime depicts them as pretty beleaguered by human kingdoms and adventurers. So he starts building a village and a kingdom where they can live in peace.
For a good chunk of the series, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is about Rimuru dealing with threats to the kingdom and occasionally fostering new allies for it. However, as the series goes on, the series does start to focus more of Rimuru’s personal battles and less on the kingdom-building aspect.
Dr. Stone
A good chunk of town management anime are set in fantasy worlds because that is the easiest setting for it. However, Dr. Stone, while a fantasy series in a way, is set in the far-future of Earth after society crumbled due to everyone being turned to stone. Well, almost everyone.
The series starts out about two boys getting cured from the stone paralysis by just the right forces of nature falling into place. They then move through the early inventions of humanity as they build a stable base for themselves.
Later, they discover a village of more primitive humans that all spawned from astronauts that were not on Earth when the petrification happened, which they quickly befriend and join.
Dr. Stone is very much about detailing the advent and invention of civilization. It follows a genius main character as he re-invents things he needs to improve civilization as well as work towards his ultimate goal of being able to mass-produce a cure for petrification.
Dr. Stone is very much one of those educational anime, but with all the shounen vigor and occasional battles that makes those series so addictive. Like Food Wars, but with science… And occasionally also food.
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom
Unlike other isekai anime where the hero is summoned to another world and becomes a hero destined to fight against a demon lord or something, How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom takes a different approach.
In this series, an economics student is summoned to another world where the king swiftly engaged him to his daughter and abdicates the throne of his failing kingdom. Instead of heading off for a life full of battle and adventure, he dons the cloak of realm administration to try and turn his kingdom’s fate around.
Instead of saving the people from evil threats, he is doing something arguably more noble – saving them from starvation and strife. Watch him as he manages finances, improves the economy, and builds political alliances that help his kingdom thrive.
Kamikatsu – What God Does in a World Without Gods
After being sacrificed by his father, a cult leader, a boy wishes that he would be reincarnated in a world without religion. He gets that wish, in a way, and immediately starts to use his knowledge of the modern world to improve the small village that he ends up in.
That is a pretty standard way to start a town management isekai anime, but Kamikatsu isn’t a standard town management isekai. It switches between being serious and being a degenerate sexual comedy. Some things also happen that makes it become less about improving the lives of villagers, and more about managing a cult religion of his own through all the scummy manipulation that he can bring to bear.
Tsukimichi – Moonlit Fantasy
In a twist, a boy finds out that his parents were from a fantasy land and traveled to modern Japan to live in peace. He ends up going to the world they came from only to be told by the goddess of that world that she finds his face repulsive.
Flung to the far ends of that world with only minor blessings from her and major blessings from Earth’s deity, the main character ends up beating and befriending two very powerful beast women. This leads to him founding a village for, not just their beast tribe followers, but all the beleaguered and oppressed beast people in the world.
Tsukimichi is a more comical isekai anime about a protagonist that wanted to be a normal isekai protagonist, but ended up being the champion of beast people by accident. While the series is dedicated to more than just jokes, he often leads his village like a guy who didn’t actually want to be in charge of a village full of creatures.
High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even In Another World
I think that some of the more charming town management anime are series that get pretty deep in the details. You want to see how they make things happen, but High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even In Another World isn’t a series for people that like the small details.
This isekai series follows, not one protagonist, but a whole group of prodigies that are transported to another world in a plane crash. They then set forth to use their prodigious talents to improve the world without completely wrecking medieval society with modern knowledge.
They almost immediately do just that, though.
While this series does focus on them using their talents to improve people’s lives, it isn’t so focused on showing you how they do that. For example, it isn’t long before they – characters stuck in a horse and wagon medieval world – create a car with little to no detail on how they manufactured all the various parts that one uses to make a car.
It’s no Dr. Stone, but it can be fun if you don’t think about it too much.
Log Horizon
In a very Sword Art Online situation, Log Horizon is about the players of a VRMMO that log in to play, and can’t log back out. Now they are stuck there. However, unlike Sword Art Online, when they die, they don’t die in real life. So there is less threat, and it allows the players to have a little more freedom.
As Log Horizon follows a strategist, he often organizes activities in order to better the situation of players in the area. This does mean it can get a little low on action later on as it focuses more on game economics, though.
Overlord
Overlord is about a guy who ends up in the body of his MMO character after the servers were shut down. Suddenly, he finds the NPCs of the world alive, including the NPCs created by his guild members to serve their powerful guild. Kind of by accident, he and his guild NPCs start to conquer the world with their might.
Similar to That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Overlord is about sort of accidentally becoming a leader, and often just going with it. Sometimes things happen in the world, and his guild NPCs praise the main character for setting them into motion as part of a master plan, when really he didn’t do anything at all or even have a plan. Regardless, the series is often about managing his minions, and later, other people under his rule.
Amagi Brilliant Park
Amagi Brilliant Park is a bit different from the rest of the series on here, and may not be strictly applicable.
This series follows a boy who misunderstands a girls’ request as a date when she really wanted him to help her manage a theme park. He ends up with the job of bringing customers back to a waning theme park that is actually staffed by creatures from another world that harvest magical energy from people having fun.
Like many other town management anime, Amagi Brilliant Park quickly becomes about various plans and schemes to improve – not the town – but the amusement park.
Maoyu – Archenemy and Hero
As Maoyu is about a hero rushing into the Demon King’s Castle and having the demon king be a demon queen that wants to start dating him, you might expect Maoyu to be more of a romance anime. While it is indeed a romance, the focus of the series is actually more on making various moves to end the war that is both hurting and supporting the demon and human kingdoms.
This series is about making changes in trade and agriculture so that the economy of both realms is not supported by a bloody endless war. So you watch the demon queen make various moves with the hero supporting her in those endeavors. It is a lot more about kingdom management than you would expect, especially since she is often making moves in the human kingdoms rather than her own.
Utawaremono
Utawaremono starts off rather mysteriously about a man with a mask he can’t remove ending up in a small village without any of his memories. While the series does eventually get around to solving that mystery, before it does that, it is about improving and managing the village that saved his life.
When he is nursed back to health, the small village is in a difficult spot. The oppressive kingdom slaughters innocent people with war on the horizon, but more pressing is an angry god is also looking to take a little vengeance as well.
As mysterious amnesiac protagonists often do, he uses power he didn’t know he had to save the village, and they make him their leader. Instead of necessarily improving their lives, he makes moves to improve defenses that will ultimately help save their lives from all the violent problems that seem to be blooming in the world around them.
I’m Quitting Heroing
What does a hero actually do after defeating the demon lord in a fantasy anime? I’m Quitting Heroing suggests that they are forced out of human society due to their overwhelming power and decide to go help rebuild the tattered army of the enemy that they just beat.
This is one of those series where humanity is the real enemy and the demon queen actually had more noble motives for waging war on humanity than usual. As such, the hero improving the army and strengthening it can only really be seen as a good thing.
While this series focuses on a lot of administrative tasks that come with managing and building an army and outpost, it can be surprisingly dark with some of the character back stories as well. It keeps it from being one of the more light-hearted comedy-focused kingdom building anime series.
Do you have more town management anime about building a kingdom? Let fans know in the comments section below.
