The isekai genre is known for producing all sorts of main characters from expert gamers to those given another lease on life in a fantasy world. Our MC for Trapped in a Dating Sim—Leon Fou Bartfort—is quite different. Leon in his previous life was playing an otome game for his sister, which still makes little sense, and ends up dying after playing for too long and falling down the stairs in his weakened, starved state. Now trapped in this otome game which he mastered, Leon comes to grips with being reborn in the game he hated and makes it his mission to just stay as a mob character—someone who isn’t part of the main story—which goes terrible. Thanks to his previous knowledge, Leon unlocks a bunch of money and tons of special equipment, and like most isekai, becomes extremely OP rather quickly. This in turn causes his school life to be quite different than he imagined and his way of dealing with it is quite hilarious.

Leon isn’t the typical hero and can be quite cruel. This dude revels in being mean to the pretty boy princes he ends up knowing—who are the MCs of the game world—and equally enjoys watching them suffer. This might make Leon sound like a four-letter word we won’t say but ironically it makes him a fun character to watch. Leon is honest with his feelings and watching him deal with the world he’s been trapped in rarely gets boring.

Trapped in a Dating Sim is what we consider a “safe” isekai anime series. Despite having an original MC and a unique premise the rest of the story and characters feel similar to other isekai stories. You have your girl who is cute but suffers from an inferiority complex, in this case, that would be Olivia and you have your princes who literally follow the concepts seen in most otome stories. We know this part was made intentionally but watching them say things like “we will one day beat you” and “you’re not as good as us” is just kind of eye-rolling inducing. Watching Leon do the usual save a bunch of girls, save the kingdom, get OP, and have girls falling for him but he’s too stupid to realize, makes Trapped in a Dating Sim too cliché.

For spoiler reasons, we won’t say who Marie is—she’s the girl trying to take over Olivia’s place as the female lead—but it should be very obvious especially when Luxion—Leon’s partner machine—reveals how similar Leon and Marie are. There are a lot of these “obvious” plot points that happen in Trapped in a Dating Sim and when they occur and when nothing is revealed by episode 12 you’ll find yourself groaning quite often. We know stories like this are notorious for yelling out plot points that won’t be revealed until a possible season 2 but this happens almost too much in Trapped in a Dating Sim and it can almost be made into a game to spot how many obvious narrative moments are seen in Trapped in a Dating Sim…and you’ll get annoyed seeing them.

TDS #3
Many of us here at Honey’s Anime have played our fair share of otome games, dating sims, and VNs and we’re never surprised to see what comes out of them. Yet, Trapped in a Dating Sim seems to kind of forget that it is an otome game. There are way, way too many elements in this series and it borders on the surreal when one minute Leon is flying an air bike to beat the princes and then an episode later is wielding a shotgun to beat down some air pirates. Trapped in a Dating Sim would only make sense if it was insulting the otome genre—which is possible—but it can be a bit too ridiculous at times even for that possible joke.