Long time readers will not be surprised when I say that I really kind of love the isekai genre. Even when faced with pretty ordinary to terrible series, I still kind of find the basic premise of isekai intriguing enough to keep on trying. What I have found though is that it is a field saturated by male protagonists and so it is really great when I come across an isekai anime with a female lead.
Even better when that lead turns out to be a fun character.
I will point out that having spent quite a bit of 2020 on apps reading manga and light novels, I’ve found that there are actually a lot of female main characters out there that have just never made it into anime form. Hopefully a few more of them do and 2021 has so far been a great year for brining female leads to isekai anime.
And given how many isekai anime there are it would be great to see a wider range of protagonists taking centre stage (not just females but just a wider range of personality types with different objectives).
As always, I’d love to know who you would have picked so be sure to give some shout outs to your favourite isekai anime with a female lead in the comments below.
Though I have deliberately left out anime like Spirited Away because it is a movie and not a series and I’ve also left out choices such as Shiro from No Game, No Life as she’s sharing the lead with Sora, when he isn’t overshadowing her.
Isekai Anime With A Female Lead No. 5: Ascendance of A Bookworm
Those who have followed my blog for a long time will know that Ascendance of a Bookworm didn’t click with me immediately. Largely because out female lead, ‘Main’, just didn’t work for me. I found her whiney and a little bit selfish and it was really kind of hard to get behind her.
Fortunately, she goes through quite a bit of growth and the support cast are pretty solid. By the end of the first season I was pretty much sold on this and it is definitely an isekai anime with a female lead worth watching, not just because they are hard to come by but because it offers a slightly different take on the isekai genre.
One thing I particularly loved was that they didn’t race through Main’s childhood and while she has the memories of an adult, she very much faces the limitations of a child throughout the series and while Jobless Reincarnation takes a similar path, Main and her journey do offer something a little unique.
Isekai Anime With A Female Lead No. 4: I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level
A recently finished anime, I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years is not only an isekai anime with a female lead, but it is an isekai anime with a pretty much exclusively female cast. The very few males who appear in the story at all are very much bit characters who largely don’t even get names and the cute female cast definitely dominate the screen.
While the plot of I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years isn’t exactly a strength with the anime choosing a more slice-of-life approach, there are magical fights strewn throughout the series and even an episode with a fighting tournament so while it isn’t quite the same kind of power fantasy usually thrown up by isekai stories there’s still plenty to enjoy.
Azusa, as a female protagonist, starts out in an interesting manner and it is great that her past life continues to exert influence on her choices. While it would have been nice to see a little more development from her, she’s still a pretty awesome example of a female lead in an isekai anime.
Isekai Anime With A Female Lead No. 3: The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent.
I’ll be reviewing The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent in its entirety very soon and I’ve already posted my first impressions of the series. For an isekai anime with a female lead they’ve really given us an interesting female lead. Sei is inquisitive, smart, and on finding herself in another world and not being picked to be the saint (initially at least) she sets out to find something to do to feel useful.
All the way through the series Sei works hard and even on being declared the saint remains hard working and dedicated to improving herself, not so that people will be amazed by her, but to give herself a sense of self-worth.
When you throw in a romance story that is very much straight out of a fairy tale, you have an isekai anime with a female lead that manages to provide a solid female character but doesn’t feel the need to have her forego a beautiful romance just to prove she can stand on her own.
I’d definitely love to see another season of this anime.
Isekai Anime With A Female Lead No. 2: Didn’t I Say To Make My Abilities Average in My Next Life
Didn’t I Say To Make My Abilities Average in My Next Life was an anime that had the advantage of my going into it having already read some of the light novels and thoroughly enjoyed them. While the anime itself is fairly mediocre, as an example of an isekai anime with a female lead, Average really does what it needs to do.
Mile is a really fun character to spend time with and she’s really stupidly overpowered and could probably give most male isekai protagonists a run for their money in terms of who has the most cheat abilities. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t work for her success, but it does mean that a lot of her work is around playing down her extraordinary abilities.
Throw in a cast of adorable female characters who support Mile and really you have a very female friendly isekai anime that still manages to have adventure and fight sequences that are pretty fun to watch.
Isekai Anime With a Female Lead No. 1: My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom
A style of isekai story that I’ve found a lot in light novels and manga is for female characters to be reincarnated within video games or romance novels they were reading. And quite frequently appearing as the villain or antagonist of the story, if not a minor character who is killed off, leading to a central conflict of finding a way to change the story and survive.
My Next Life as a Villainess is one such story and I will admit, the anime was a great deal of fun. More fun than it really should have been, and largely this was thanks to the brilliant female lead, Catarina (Katarina), who is just such a fun character to spend time with.
For an isekai anime with a female lead, Villainess manages to actually provide a nice balance of male and female characters, provides some tension and conflict, has a focus on fun and romance, and never takes itself too seriously. It’s kind of the perfect binge watch experience and hopefully season 2 lives up to the same standard.
That’s my top 5 isekai Anime with A female lead – What are yours?
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
Also going for the old… I think of Haibane Renme as isekai.
My mind immediately went the same direction as RiseFromAshes, to the old-school isekai heroines like Hitomi from Escaflowne and Arusu from Tweeny Witches. Of course I watch very little of modern isekai, no matter who the lead is.
Does Tanya from “Tanya the Evil” count?
Tanya would count though I never did get into that anime.
Oddly enough I feel like the female protagonist in an isekai had it’s original hey-day back in the 90’s. Magic Knights Rayearth (3 of them in one show!), The Twelve Kingdoms, and Fushigi Yuugi were all pretty big titles at the time. Granted, they were marketed as adaptations of popular shojo stories, vereses how modern isekai stories are. There was more emphasis on the romance and action, verses the selling point of a new world. Probably why I enjoyed those titles too.
Honestly, as much as I dunk on isekai with no real reason, it’s nice to see that there are some more interesting variations then just ‘average dude goes to a new world where he’s no longer average’.
More variations would be good and it has been nice to see more female protagonists recently. Looking forward to more isekai anime in the future.
Well, there is that Spider show.
The protagonist in the other slime show is technically a guy to start. Then as a slime does he even have a gender? But now he presents as female when in human form and doesn’t have any issues with it. So I am going to say so Great Rimiru now counts as a female.
I thought Rimuru didn’t jave a gender.
Spider could be a good pick. I haven’t watched much of the anime yet but I liked the books.
It didn’t. But it absorbed a woman and takes on a young version of her form when it wants to look human. That counts as 50%, right?
I’m not sure I could manage a top 5. Not because I can’t think of 5; I’ve seen all the ones on your list. Of those, Villainess is easily my favourite, too. Then, Saint. The I’d have trouble deciding between Bookworm and Avarage Abilities, with Killing Slimes coming in last.
I wonder if Bofuri counts as an isekai? It’s like the being-trapped-in-a-game sub-genre, but without the being trapped part.
In any case, my number one is obvious: Twelve Kingdoms. Three kids (two girls and one boy) get isekaid and they have wildly different fates. The protagoinists story is especially great, but she also has to deal with the fact that she’s been comparatively lucky with her support structure (especially Rakushun). It might be time for a re-watch.
I kind of feel Bofuri isn’t isekai largely because the characters in the world are all from Earth and they know they are in a game and that they can leave whenever they want. So it lacks a lot of the elements of what makes something isekai with characters being thrown into the deep end in a place they can’t leave and frequently on their own. Then again, that’s just kind of the convention. Isekai really does just have characters in ‘another world’ so Bofuri could count.
I still haven’t seen Twelve Kingdoms. It has been on my watch list forever, gets recommended frequently, and I just never get to it. I’m not sure why. Probably because I’m secretly worried it won’t live up to all the positive things people have said about it over the years.
This is definitely my favorite genre!! Wish there were more with female leads but for more I’ll watch ones like Spirit Chronicles or Wise Man’s Grandchild 😊