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Week 10

Isekai! I'm actually very familiar with isekai, since it's the hot manga craze right now. I read quite a handful of them and The Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is one of my favorites. I think it's because it handles the reincarnation much less like a "self-insert" of the author's self, and it's more about this man turned slime and how he's starting to govern a whole country on his own.

Another favorite of mine is So I'm a Spider, So What? It's about a girl who was killed in her class, but is reincarnated as a spider.

These two are my favorites of the isekai genre so far not only because the web novels started early on in the isekai boom so they're less like the "mainstream" isekai now, and they're quite unique. The spider isekai focuses a lot on our MC's struggles being a weak spider, and fighting and growing into a stronger spider. It deals a lot with healing, getting damaged, and being a (giant) spider scaring everything off later on. I feel like Slime Tensei also is similar, because it doesn't glamorize these isekai as much, even though they're really fantastical situations. I feel like a lot of newer isekai these days are really just the author self inserting themselves into what they want because they don't like their mundane life and want to escape. I'm honestly not very interested in these latter ones, because a lot of the time they fall to the same stereotypes--personality-less protagonist, harem of girls, etc etc.

Also I want to make a point that Sword Art Online (which I dislike to note) is like, one of the first isekai in my opinion. Hataraku Maou-sama is also similar to a reverse isekai. These two were earlier than the isekai trend, but I think they shaped the future isekai genre.

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