After reading this comment chain on the daily AQRAD thread a couple of days ago , I thought it would pretty fun to look at a bunch of (mostly dumb) statistics for Isekai anime and so I decided to do this dumb giant write-up.

First Some Disclaimers:

1. All the statistics in this post are based on data from MAL's database , Mal is pretty reliable but certainly not perfect , some entries that should probably be here might be missing because of MAL not tagging them as "Isekai" (Log Horizon for example which totally counts in my book isn't part of the data because of that ) , and some entries' qualification are rather dubious , this also means no "Isekai adjacent " entries like video games or regular reincarnation stories , basically take everything here with a grain of salt and assume some of the figures are slightly off depending on what you count.
2. For the sake of my sanity(and mostly to filter out the endless stream of Chinese shows ) , this data is based only on TV Anime so no ONA's , Movies ,etc. This doesn't have a particularly big impact on results but again , removes some notable examples so keep that in mind.
3. 3.I use the the term "Unique Entries" a lot in this post , it just means I only counted the first entry in a franchise without any sequels, spin offs do count for unique entries.
4. 4. This post has a sizeable section devoted to web novels , annoyingly MAL doesn't have any data regarding web novels (in fact "web novel isn't even a source option) this means that all the WN data here was lovingly hand complied by me (unfortunately mostly by going through Wikipedia articles) , it's very possible some of this data is inaccurate.
5. 5.Mistakes were almost certainly made so if you notice any , do let me know!

1. General\Random Stats:

(The first four parts only count shows that are either airing or finished airing , no Summer 2024 shows)

First of all the question everyone is surely asking themselves , Which Isekai show has the longest title ?

Well the award for longest Japanese title goes to :

Isekai de Cheat Skill wo Te ni Shita Ore wa, Genjitsu Sekai wo mo Musou Suru: Level Up wa Jinsei wo Kaetaat at a whopping 105 characters !

Closely followed by Meitou "Isekai no Yu" Kaitakuki: Around 40 Onsen Mania no Tensei Saki wa, Nonbiri Onsen Tengoku deshita at 103 characters which is technically longer but has less spaces….

Congratulations ?

Ok time for some actual stats:

Overall Unique Entries : 147 , Total Entries Including Sequels : 198

The First show listed as Isekai on MAL is an Alice in Wonderland adaptation from 1983, but that's kind of bullshit so The Real First Isekai is Seisenshi Dunbine also from 1983 ,written and directed by none other than Yushiyuki Tomino of Mobile Suit Gundam fame , truly the man is a pioneer in all genres.

The Average score for all Isekai entries (including sequels) is around 7.09 , with the lowest rated title (by a large margin) being 2014's Conception at 4.59 , on the other side of things the highest rated title is 2021's Mushoku Tensei Season 1 Part 2 at 8.66 , putting it as no.70 on MAL's Top 100 (the only isekai entry on MAL's top 100).

There are 32 Unique Isekai Shows , 42 Including sequels (around 21% for both) , that include the word "Isekai" in their title.

There are 39 Unique Isekai Shows , 52 Including sequels (around 26% for both) , that are also "Reincarnation" Types.

Have you ever thought to yourself " man all isekai are the same , nothing but generic fantasies" ?, well prepare to feel validated when you learn that out of 147 unique entries , only 5 are not tagged fantasy that number ever so slightly increases to 6 out of 199 if we include sequels, those 5 standout titles are:

Battle Spirits: Shounen Gekiha Dan (2009) , Dual! Parallel Lun-Lun Monogatari (1999), Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru (1988) , Sengoku Otome: Momoiro Paradox (2011) and Sonny Boy (2021).

Out of all of these , Sonny Boy is the only show to come out after isekai established itself as a real genre so props for being a real oasis in a desert! , honestly you could probably shift the numbers a bit depending on your definitions for isekai and fantasy but even if the number somehow increased to 20 or 30 isekai really isn't beating the generic allegations (and you should keep this statistic in mind).

2. Before and After "The Boom":

Speaking of isekai "Establishing itself as a genre" , I think that rather than looking at isekai as a whole it's much more useful to look at isekai shows before and after the massive boom the "genre" experienced in the mid 2010's , in which "isekai" as a term actually came to exist , I specifically chose 2015 as the separation point.

Pre 2015:

45 Unique Entries , 58 Including Sequels

2015 And Onwards:

102 Unique Entries , 141 Including Sequels

The Difference is immediately noticeable , in less than a decade you can see the number of shows nearly tripling in size as "isekai" changed from a nameless setting to a "real genre", I will get into how that is distributed across different source materials and how this coincides with the general rise in LN's and WN's in the next section , for now here is how this looks in graph form(Link in case image doesn't work) :

https://preview.redd.it/3bhg428lh69d1.png?width=685&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a7ac20e883167fcbf44e31e9ad1cd478e66d953

Again the mid-2010's increase should be pretty obvious , 2023 wins as the year with the most isekai at 30 shows , although it should be worth noting that this only includes Half of 2024 and it looks poised to surpass 2023 showing a rising trend .

We can also look at MAL popularity figures to see the demand for isekai is definitely there by comparing it to some other vaguely defined genres .

The average MAL popularity of Isekai released from 2015 onwards is around 1250 (which for comparison is around what a pretty popular seasonal would be) , for the 74 (non kids) Mecha shows from the same time it's 5510 and for the 425 "School" shows released at the same time it's 2435 , basically isekai has gotten very popular in the last decade.

3. Source Material:

Let's look at how all of that is distributed across the source material for these shows , and how a very specific type of source obviously dominates the post boom stats:

Pre 2015 :

Manga: 10 Unique , 13 Including Sequels

Light Novel : 6 Unique , 10 Including Sequels

Novel , Book and Card Game (Separate Source Types ) : 2 Unique

Visual Novel : 3 Unique

Game : 5 Unique , 6 Including Sequels

Original : 14 Unique , 18 Including Sequels

Other : 1 Unique

A pretty balanced selection overall , The Frirst Isekai show to be based off a Light Novel also appears here in 2004's Kyou kara Maou!

2015 And Onwards:

Manga: 8 Unique , 15 Including Sequels

Light Novel : 80 Unique , 108 Including Sequels

Novel and Visual Novel (Separate Source Types ) : 1 Unique and Including Sequels

Game : 4 Unique , 5 Including Sequels

Original : 3 Unique , 5 Including Sequels

Other : 0 Unique , 1 Including Sequels

Web Manga : 5 Unique

Originally Web Novels (Not Counted Into The Overall Number) : 75 unique , 106 Including Sequels

Yeoh Light and Web Novels made it big from 2015 onwards , Light Novels went from making up roughly 17% before to 76% after , Web Novels went from not existing at all to consisting of over 2/3 of all isekai , this massive rise really coincides with the general meteoric rise of LN and WN adaptations in the mid-2010's often attributed to the success of shows like Sword Art Online and websites like Shōsetsuka ni Narou , websites for self publishing novels , making story writing and reading very accessible and popular , Narou is also the reason behind the infamous long LN titles as the website does not have descriptions for novels .

I would do score compressions between the sources but for the most part they are all very similar , at around 7–7.15 , with the exception of post 2015 manga adaptations which sit at around 7.40 however the sample size is very small and rather notably includes a bunch of seasons of Slime which probably inflates the score.

4.Web Novels:

Web Novels make up a huge part of the current isekai landscape , Narou is of course the most famous example but it is not the only website to get works from it published and animated , here's the distribution within isekai (if a work was published on more than one site it's included in the data for both hence the number discrepancy ):

Narou : 69 Unique , 99 Including Sequels

Arcadia : 3 Unique , 7 Including Sequel

Kakuyomu : 4 Unique and Including Sequels

Novel Up Plus and Alphapolis are sitting at 1 and 2 (with sequels) respectively , Korean website KaoKaoPage also gets a single inclusion thanks to Raelina.

The first Isekai anime to be based on a Narou Novel would technically be Log Horizon in 2014 ,however thanks to MAL not counting it as an isekai the first entry from this list to originally be a Narou/WN is GATE in 2015 closely followed by Overlord 3 days later.

At this point I would also like to talk about isekai as a "genre" , Throughout this write-up I call it a genre at multiple points but theoretically isekai should only be a setting , so why is considered a genre by so many?, Well the web novel numbers explain that pretty clearly , most of these stories grew up in the same environment , around the same time ,inspiring each other and by extension ending up with all the same tropes and story structures ( hence the fantasy statistic ) , this becomes more apparent when you take a look at what is often called "native isekai" aka regular fantasy with all the same tropes that isekai stories tend to have , in reality of course people are basically saying "Fantasy written on a Web Novel website in the last few years" .

Of course this isn't meant to say that all web novels are bad or generic , just that a good majority of them share so many traits that they have effectively created a new "genre".

5. Looking Into The Future:

Finally let's look at what isekai has to offer in the near future.

There are at least 34 upcoming isekai shows , the actual number might be higher thanks to untagged MAL entries , of these 27 are LN adaptations , 6 are Manga(4 regular , 2 web ) , and 1 Suicide Squad Isekai is based on Comics\Original (Technically already aired when I wrote this but whatever) , with 7 of them slated to air Summer 2024.

Out of these 34 , 29 were originally web novels(25 Narou , 2 Kakuyomu , 2 Alphapolis) , however quite a few of those are sequels.

Like it or not looks like Isekai and more noticeably Web and Light Novel adaptations are here to stay.

personally after writing this I've had enough of isekai for a lifetime , if you got to this point , thanks for reading this massively long analysis of one of my least favorite genres 🙂 , and one again if there are corrections to be made be sure to tell me and I'll fix them!