There have been a lot—and we mean a lot—of isekai protagonists and characters that all range in different sizes and shapes. Yet, prominently, the main character is an average-looking male/female who ends up being thrown into a new world and then undergoes some strange revelation that they have absurd abilities. Yet there are several isekai that feature main characters who are of the bigger frame and end up losing all of their weight via either being reborn or gaining new powers and then becoming the so-called perfect specimen.

Rudy from Jobless Reincarnation was a heavy-set male, a more recent MC is Yuuya Tenjou from I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in The Real World, Too and you have The Fruit of Evolution’s MC Seiichi Hiiragi eating a fruit and becoming super lean. In many ways, we think this creates the wrong illusion that you need to be super trim and sexy to be a hero when we’ve met plenty of IRL heroes and heroines who aren’t the perfect weight but would still kick butt and be perfect if they got thrown into another world. We think isekai needs to realize there is no ideal perfect image for a hero, you can be a short, thin, and/or big hero. What makes a hero is what actions they do and what beliefs they have!

Do you readers remember Hajime Nagumo’s classmate in Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest, who literally looked like a hero from Dragon Quest? Kouki Amanogawa is one of Hajime’s ill-fated classmates who was transported to this new world and ends up getting the class of Hero and he sure does look like one. Wearing big knight armor and donning a giant sword, Kouki even talked like a righteous hero and it could be almost comical in some ways. The same can be said of the various characters in The Rising of the Shield Hero who all are caricatures of what it means to be a hero.

This is obviously done on purpose but what we loved about both Arifureta and Shield Hero is the MCs in this series, at first, didn’t look overly imposing or over-the-top heroes from cartoons, they looked like plain dudes just given special abilities and in the case of Hajime, yeah, he looks cool but he endured a lot to get that look so he gets a pass. Isekai needs to stop assuming all heroes need to spout out cool one-liners and act high and mighty, they can be average and not super attractive—like Makoto Misumi from Tsukimichi –Moonlit Fantasy—all while still being tough!

While not really an isekai in the traditional sense but with themes of one, look at Accel World’s main man Haruyuki Arita. He’s short, round, and far from tough looking but when he enters the world of Brain Burst and dons the role of Silver Crow, he’s now able to do some unreal special things. Yet, Haruyuki does have to deal with bullies and others due to his form but as the series progresses, he becomes more comfortable with his shape and realizes that he’s still Silver Crow even without the armor.

This is what we want more of from isekai, we want heroes who are similar to us so we can easily form bonds with them and feel even more immersed in the series! Yes, isekai is meant to remove ourselves from the world we know but wouldn’t it be easier when we can relate to an MC and see ourselves as said MC?

We need to make this very clear, no studio, director, or creator is to be blamed for making a character look any specific way. We need to always remember that in the end, anime is always a medium meant as entertainment first and foremost not as a testament to real-world issues or controversies. At the end of the day, anime is meant to be a form of escapism like a good book or a movie, to take your mind away from the real world for just a moment and dive into a new world. That’s why we love isekai, it does that so well by giving us a means of feeling like a character we aren’t and giving us a glimpse of what life could be like if we were magically teleported to a fantasy landscape far removed from our city/country lives.