Fellas!
Are you a disgusting, fat slob that’s bullied every day by your school mates, your family, every two bit punk you meet on your way home when trying to help a girl escape from them?
Do you want the body of an athlete and the face of a male model instead? Help is on the way! One word can change your life forever: ISEKAI!
Yes, isekai. If you’re a hopeless nerd with an unattractive physique and people use that to bully you, there is hope. Get yourself a kindly grandfather who leaves you his home after he dies and then, when you’re in the pits of despair, hit your bathroom mirror so hard it reveals a door to a secret room. There you will find another door that leads to another world, which atmosphere is so powerful that spending less than a day there will transform you from has-been to he-man! Juast ask Tenjou Yuuya (pictured above), the protagonist of the far too longwinded titled Isekai de Cheat Skill o Te ni Shita Ore wa, Genjitsu Sekai o mo Musou Suru: Level Up wa Jinsei o Kaeta series of light novels, manga and now anime.
Yes, this is very much the sort of power fantasy where the ugly duckling bullied kid becomes a chadly swan and takes his rightful place among the elites. As with most of these stories, you get the impression that the real outrage is not that there’s a system in which some people can bully others but that it’s this particular person that gets bullied. That Yuuja’s reward for having been bullied is becoming a super stud through no effort of your own, with a bunch of neat isekai powers and items included as well, implies the system works. Just be patient and you too might receive super powers.
What saves it is that Tenjou isn’t out for revenge and still is the same kind person he was from before his transformation. Nor does he effortlessly lose his fear of the bullies that tormented him for so long. This is still a power fantasy, but one I can enjoy relatively guild free.
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