Yggdrasil, a VRMMORPG, is finally having all of its servers shut down. Momonga, a member of the powerful guild Ainz Ooal Gown, spends the last moments of the game in his base. He’s shocked to find that he’s still conscious as his character when the clock strikes midnight and the servers are officially closed. When he discovers that all of the NPCs in his base have gained a personality of their own, it only furthers his confusion. Momonga decides to take over the world of Yggdrasil and to try and find out if anyone else is living here under similar circumstances.

Overlord and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime both deal with characters trapped in a world that works very much like an RPG, and in the case of Overlord, it is an RPG. Furthermore, both protagonists are trapped in bodies of stereotypically villainous figures in video games: a skeleton and a slime. Despite being in the bodies of stock enemies, they’ve gained incredible power and tend to be more than a match for anybody they encounter. As a result of their immense power, they gain rabid followings and the plot tends to loosely focus on why they’ve been trapped and if anyone else has been trapped in this world.

Bell Cranel is an adventurer and the only member of the Goddess Hestia’s family. While venturing a dungeon to gain experience and level up, he encounters a minotaur that nearly kills him. Thanks to the interference of Ais Wallenstein, another adventurer, he survives the deadly situation. His strong feelings for Ais awakens a unique ability that lets him rapidly level up based on the strength of his feelings, but Hestia keeps it a secret in order to hide him from the eyes of other gods. Nevertheless, Bell’s growing power will make it hard to keep him under the radar for long.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? mimics That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime in the way both worlds work very much like RPGs even if they aren’t explicitly RPGs. They have levels and skills that govern the abilities of characters and magical creatures. Bell Cranel is also gifted with a unique ability in the same way that Rimuru has unique skills that no one else, human or slime, has. Furthermore, Rimuru gains the favor of a powerful being at the start of the series in a dragon, and Bell has the sole favor of Hestia. The big difference between Rimuru and Bell aside from one being a slime and the other a human, is that Bell has a greater learning curve in overcoming his enemies.

Ichirou Suzuki is an overworked programmer who debugs games for a living. When he eventually finds the time to relax and sleep, he finds himself waking up in a world combining the many games he had been working on. In this world, he is no longer 30 years old and he goes by the name of Satou. After quickly wiping out an army of lizardmen, his stats all become maxed out. Satou gains a following as he explores the world he’ll be living in from now on.

Ichirou, like Satoru, isn’t an exceptional man in the real world. Through unknown circumstances, they end up in RPG-like worlds where they are much stronger than anyone else. Their good morals from their previous lives carry on in this alternate reality and they do their best to use their powers for good and help the people they meet. Although Rimuru is looking for other people like him in his world, he’s still somewhat aimless in the same way that Satou is and they both end up spending their time simply enjoying and absorbing every facet of their new world.

Kazuma Satou is a NEET who dies from an acute stress reaction on his way back from buying a game. When he comes to, he stands in front of the goddess Aqua, and she offers him a chance to either go to heaven or reincarnate in a fantasy world. He chooses the latter and is given the option of having one item to bring with him to this new world in his quest to defeat the Demon King. Kazuma settles on bringing in the useless Aqua with him on his journey and quickly realizes that life in this fantasy world might be a lot more mundane than he expected.

Suffering an unexpected death, Kazuma is transported into a fantasy world like Satoru was. This fantasy world works very much like an RPG as well but the way both worlds treat it tends to differ. KonoSuba is a good recommendation for people who want to see a show play with the tropes and clichés of the isekai genre. In this case, Kazuma isn’t as powerful a protagonist as Rimuru is, and KonoSuba ends up becoming a slice of life as opposed to the immediate adventures Rimuru embarks on. KonoSuba is a great show to watch after you’ve gotten a few more traditional isekai shows under your belt.

Touya Mochizuki’s life comes to a sudden end when God accidentally strikes him down with a bolt of lightning. God offers Touya a chance to be reborn in a fantasy world and gives him a wish as he starts a new life; Touya wishes to bring with him his cellphone. In this new world, Touya finds that he has a talent for magic and quickly gathers a group of friends to journey along with him.

Touya may have the unluckiest death of any character we’ve mentioned so far, Satoru included. Fortunately, Touya’s new life is much better than his old one, he’s got a knack for magic in ways no one else in his new world does. Like Rimuru, he gains a following before too long as he sets out to solve the problems of the people he meets on his journey across the world. Touya is a straightforward isekai that should satisfy fans of the genre but does not do anything new in the way that That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime does.

Sakamoto Takuma role played as an overwhelmingly strong character called Diablo and recognized as the Demon King in the MMORPG Cross Reverie. When he wakes up in front of two girls and in the body of Diablo, he immediately resorts to adopting the personality of Diablo to make up for his lack of social skills. The two girls argue that he is one of their slaves, but which specifically, they can’t agree. It turns out, neither of them is his summoning master because his ability “Magic Reflection” activated and they have now become his slaves.

How Not to Summon a Demon Lord follows many of the standard isekai footsteps: Sakamoto is transported into a fantasy world that works like a game and he is skilled in ways no one else in the world is. Sakamoto is somewhat similar to Satoru in that Sakamoto has no social skills and Satoru has never had any sort of relationship with a girl. There’s also the fact that they’ve been transported into the bodies of typically villainous characters but neither of them acts immorally and they actually want to help the people they meet.