The My Isekai Life Season 2 anime TV will have Yuuji Sano, Dryad, Proud Wolf, and his army of slimes continuing their adventure. But when will Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life Season 2 come out?
It should be noted that the full title for the anime will be My Isekai Life: I Gained a Second Character Class and Became the Strongest Sage in the World Season 2 (Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life: Dai-2 no Shokugyou wo Ete, Sekai Saikyou ni Narimashita Season 2). But since typing that all out leaves us kinda breathless we’ll just stick with My Isekai Life Season 2.
For the first season, the anime project was produced by Japanese animation company Studio Revoroot, a relatively new company that is best known for the 2019 Babylon anime and the 2021 anime I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level. They also worked with Studio Nut and Production I.G. on the 2018 FLCL Alternative.
As for the future, I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level Season 2 was confirmed to be in production in early 2022.
The first season of the My Isekai Life anime project was helmed by director Keisuke Kojima. This was Kojima’s first time being a lead director although he’s had experience as an animation director for One Punch Man, Psycho-Pass, Hunter x Hunter, FLCL Alternative, and Kill la Kill.
Babylon, FLCL Alternative, and Psycho-Pass 2 director Kiyotaka Suzuki was the assistant director for My Isekai Life Season 1. Keisuke Gotou (Slime 300 character designer) was the chief animation director. Writer Naohiro Fukushima (episode scriptwriter for Eureka Seven AO, Eden of the East) wrote the series composition.
The My Isekai Life Season 2 OP (opening) and ED (ending) theme song music hasn’t been announced yet.
For the first season, the My Isekai Life OP “Mujikaku no Tensai” was performed by Non Stop Rabbit, while the ED “Gohan dayo! Dadadadan!!” was performed by the Japanese voice actors for the slimes or Sura-chans (Hikaru Tohno, Mai Kanno, Haruna Mikawa, Erisa Kuon, Nichika Oumori, and Miharu Hanai).
The first season of My Isekai Life was streaming in Summer 2022 with English subtitles on HIDIVE and Netflix Japan (not Netflix USA, Crunchyroll, Disney+, Hulu, Funimation, or Amazon Prime Video).
The first season’s finale, My Isekai Life Episode 12, will release on September 12, 2022.
The 12 episodes were released as four My Isekai Life Blu-Ray/DVD volumes on September 21, 2022, October 19, 2022, November 16, 2022, and December 21, 2022, respectively.
This article provides everything that is known about My Isekai Life Season 2 (Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life Season 2) and all related news. As such, this article will be updated over time with news, rumors, and analysis. Meanwhile, let’s delve down into what is known for certain.
Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life Season 2 release date predictions: Is renewal unlikely?
As of the last update, Studio Revoroot, Square Enix, SB Creative, GREE Entertainment, or any company related to the production of the anime has not officially confirmed the My Isekai Life Season 2 release date. Nor has the production of a My Isekai Life Season 2 sequel been announced.
Once the news is officially confirmed this article will be updated with the relevant information.
In the meantime, it’s possible to speculate about when, or if, the Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life Season 2 release date will occur in the future.
The My Isekai Life review scores have been much lower than average compared to other Summer 2022 isekai anime such as Black Summoner, Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World, Parallel World Pharmacy, and Uncle From Another World, never mind genre leaders like Overlord Season 4 and reverse isekai like The Devil is a Part-Timer!
A compelling isekai story can start with the usual reincarnation tropes and an overly powerful main protagonist, but the main characters need to be personable and interesting, not boring, and have overarching goals and motivations that lead to progression in character development. The problem is that the personality of My Isekai Life protagonist Yuuji Sano is fairly static since he’s an introvert that aimlessly wanders through this fantasy world without expressing much in the way of emotion. His only tangible goal is to avoid danger, but he ends up being wrapped up in everyone else’s problems.
Yes, we do learn via flashbacks that Yuuji working himself to death in a hostile corporate environment was the trauma that causes him to withdraw from making any personal attachments beyond his tamed monsters. But although audiences learn about this trauma Yuuji doesn’t seem to make much progress moving beyond the person he once was, which is a big theme of better isekai stories like Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation.
Perhaps Yuuji is supposed to act as a self-insert for Japanese office workers where the audience projects their repressed feelings about their environment onto this protagonist? In any case, Yuuji doesn’t seem to have any goals beyond discovering good food.
Saving the world is almost incidental to his motivations since he’s merely playing the role of good samaritan by helping when he sees need. Speaking of the villains, the Blue Moon cultists maintain the stereotypical “destroy the whole world” tropes. Any time any of these antagonists start to become interesting like the assassins Yuuji quickly catches them and they either freeze to death or commit suicide with the poison pill tooth.
(What was up with that extremely long pause between the assassins in My Isekai Life Episode 7? Was the director seriously trying to convey murderous tension that instead resulted in unintentional humor based on the awkward animation? A combination of music and internal monologues could have made the scene work, but as it was…)
Due to the way Yuuji travels from town to town even the many side characters are not given any opportunity to grow since they’re barely introduced before being left behind. But this is a problem with the story itself since Kino’s Journey and Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina have a similar narrative structure yet manage to create complicated characters in only a single episode.
The biggest character development event for the main cast is Proud Wolf gaining (false?) self-confidence, but the slime gang and the Dryad don’t change beyond gaining new slime types and monster armor. It’s also pretty bad that any attempts at character development are often relegated to flashbacks.
The one interesting twist provided by this generic isekai tale is how the overpowered protagonist essentially acts like a general mustering his troops into battle. Rather than relying on brute force, Yuuji strategized from the rear using his intellect, but even then this unique spin on battle scenes comes off as awkward since he’s using literal RPG menus.
Considering the tepid reaction by anime fans it’s not surprising that the My Isekai Life books did not receive a significant boost to sales. It didn’t make the Top 20 Oricon lists for either manga or light novels. As of May 2022, the series had 5 million copies in circulation when combined.
However, manga sales are only an indicator of an anime series’ popularity in Japan, whereas global streaming revenue is the major factor. Unfortunately, HIDIVE doesn’t provide anything similar to Crunchyroll’s popular anime list to judge the streaming performance.
But we can look to anime popularity ranking polls for guidance. In that case, the individual My Isekai Life episodes often didn’t even make the Summer 2022 Top 20 on a week-by-week basis.
That means the anime sequel will need to be justified by the streaming numbers on HIDIVE. According to Deadline, AMC Networks (which owns HIDIVE, AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now, and ALLBLK) reported in Q2 2022 that its streaming subscribers jumped up by an incredible 46 percent.
The jewel in HIDIVE’s crown for Summer 2022 was stealing DanMachi: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? away from Crunchyroll. And even before Summer 2022 HIDIVE snapped up some of the better isekai anime including Ya Boy KongMing! and Virgin Road: The Executioner and Her Way of Life.
HIDIVE had a very strong set of anime exclusives in 2022, so perhaps those other TV shows contributed to this subscriber growth and thus caused more eyes to watch My Isekai Life? If that’s the case, the only way that My Isekai Life Season 2 could be justified being greenlit by a producer is if the international streaming numbers as a HIDIVE exclusive were unusually high due to the TV show being the only iskeai anime on HIDIVE during Summer 2022.
Given that negative outlook, it’s predicted that Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life Season 2 will not be produced. Then again, we could be surprised since even The Fruit of Evolution Season 2 release date is in 2023 despite the first season being critically lambasted.
Even in that unlikely scenario, the main problem is that the anime zipped through the source material. So it’s likely that more books would need to be published before a second season becomes possible.
My Isekai Life Season 2 English dub release date predictions
Sentai Filmworks has licensed the rights for the My Isekai Life English dub. During Otakon 2022 on July 30, 2022, HIDIVE announced that the My Isekai Life English dub release date was in late August 2022, which means it came out almost two months after the initial premiere on July 4, 2022.
Unfortunately, the dubbing process for HIDIVE exclusives isn’t as fast as the Crunchyroll SimulDub team, which is either same-day or only a couple of weeks behind the English subs release.
As such, it’s predicted that the My Isekai Life Season 2 English dub release date will be at least a month after the initial premiere.
My Isekai Life manga, light novel series compared to the anime
The story for the TV show is based on the My Isekai Life light novel series by author Shinkoshoto and illustrator Huuka Kazabana. Shinkoshoto is also known for writing The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest light novels, which were also adapted into an anime TV show.
Japanese publisher SB Creative’s GA Novel imprint began publishing the light novel adaptation in May 2018. As of July 24, 2022, the book series was up to My Isekai Life Volume 11, which means the series could be ending relatively soon since the light novels are based on a finished web novel.
The My Isekai Life web novel was initially launched on the self-publishing site Shousetsuka ni Narou back in October 2017. The web novel version ended in February 2020.
In September 2018, Shinkoshoto teamed up with artist Ponjea to create the My Isekai Life manga series. Serialized in Square Enix’s Manga UP! magazine, it’s up to Volume 17 as of August 10, 2022.
Unfortunately, no North American publisher has announced an official English translation of the light novel. However, Square Enix began releasing the My Isekai Life manga’s English translation in 2022. As of December 13, 2022, the English manga will be up to Volume 4.
In adapting the story, Studio Revoroot apparently decided to skip past the generic isekai introduction arc and the info dumping about world mechanics that is typical for this type of wish fulfillment story. The manga was similarly faster-paced in comparison to the light novel, but it didn’t just skip to the big climax of the first light novel!
In that regard, the My Isekai Life anime adaptation is remarkably similar to The Strongest Sage with the Weakest Crest anime. In that other TV show, the story skipped the introductory chapters in a rush to reach the moment when the main character gained his true potential. The big difference is that the My Isekai Life anime used flashbacks based on the introductory chapters to fill in the gaps in the audience’s knowledge of the characters when there was relevance to the current context of the plot.
As for the characterization, both the manga and the anime featured the emotionless OP protagonist and his cute slime buddies. Yuuji is slightly more snarky in the manga, but he rarely cracks a smile or shows much emotion. It’s basically like Isekai Smartphone, minus the harem, and the slimes replace the smartphone (and mechas and all the other craziness). But book readers claim the tone of the writing in the My Isekai Life light novels is remarkably different from the manga and anime.
The anime also did a fairly poor job of explaining why Yuuji’s Sage abilities allowed him to go into negative MP and then drain his HP to convert his life force into magical power. On Twitter, the author explained this issue.
“It’s a magic that consumes violent magic power…” he tweeted. “There are games where you can still use magic even if your MP is negative, though your HP will decrease…”
Other than skimming the worldbuilding of light novel Volume 1, the adaptation pacing was fairly normal for the middle of the season. The first 3.5 episodes adapted the first two light novels up through the climax in the blue dragon fight, but from there the anime adapted each book at a more conventional rate of three episodes per light novel.
While this adaptation pacing resulted in an uneven beginning it was arguably a wise move by the anime studio since the best stopping point for the first season was in the Blue Moon of Salvation Church story arc. After all, simply ending with the not-just-an-oversized-lesser Red Dragon fight would have left all that buildup of the cult just hanging.
The big problem is that the final three episodes also outright skipped most of the plot since My Isekai Life Episode 10 began skimming the story to put the emphasis on Father Steyl, Walter, and the coming of the Dragon of Black Ruin. The differences were so stark that the anime felt like an abridged version of the manga by this point.
This meant the anime skipped various beast fights, the rescuing of the tamed monster Slibird from the cockatrice, and the ancient history and demise of the Sage Tamer Reliol. The anime even skipped the team-up with the intelligent and human-friendly dragon Baolzard!
In manga Chapter 27, it was only after this dragon battle that Steyl appeared again and revealed how he founded the Blue Moon Church in his youth. The ending of Episode 9 corresponded to manga Chapter 19, so the anime skipped ahead by 8 whole chapters!
Unfortunately, the season’s finale, Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life Episode 12 was a combination of heavily condensing the source material and an anime original ending.
That means it’s impossible to say whether they will attempt to reconnect to the source material for making My Isekai Life Season 2. Stay tuned!