The following contains spoilers for Episode 6 of My Isekai Life, "Infiltrating an Ominous Village," now streaming on HIDIVE.
My Isekai Life is a Summer 2022 fantasy isekai adventure that, at times, feels like a serious story with ominous threats and tense battles. At other times, it embraces its whimsically silly side -- and arguably, the anime is better off with the latter. Isekai and humor mix well, and Episode 6 of My Isekai Life helps prove that.
Overall, My Isekai Life doesn't really hold up as a serious isekai anime, especially not when compared to Summer 2022 rivals like Overlord's fourth season or the reverse-isekai The Devil is a Part-Timer!. Instead, My Isekai Life truly comes alive when it explores off-beat ideas while roaming its vast fantasy world -- and that includes gourmet lunches at the local diner.
In Episode 6 of My Isekai Life, Yuji the wandering slime master continues to explore the mystery of the sudden winter at Ricaardo and the secrets of the strange town of Messias. He makes serious headway here, discovering an underground facility with his slimes in tow and exploring every square inch of it. Inside, Yuji and his slimes discover high-tech machinery designed to work with magic -- all part of the local cult's plan to ruin the landscape with an artificial winter via magical stones. Yuji makes sure to shut down the entire operation, and in the process, My Isekai Life taps into its greatest strength -- sheer unpredictability and creativity. Yuji may be a boring OP hero, but at least the world around him is full of surprises. No one, not even Yuji, expected to find such advanced tech here.
Episode 6 also humorously concludes Yuji's side quest to eat the finest meal in the world. Once the cult is obliterated and Ricaardo is thawed out, the grateful townsfolk give Yuji what he really wants -- an Angus cattle and Rishia herb stew. An entire crowd watches as Yuji loses himself in this stew's amazing flavors, imagining a whole slide show of ingredients from wheat to cows to green herbs. Then he collapses in joy, salivating at the thought of this amazing meal and its flavors. This is My Isekai Life's attempt to make Yuji more likable with humor, and it finally works. Yuji is as stale and predictable as isekai heroes can get when he's fighting serious battles, so goofy, off-the-wall scenes like this one are more than welcome. They give the show a little flavor.
It's not yet entirely clear whether My Isekai Life will be a "serious" isekai title or whether it will gradually become even sillier and embrace whimsical creativity to keep the story going. The anime has elements of both, what with Yuji's food quest and the sinister threat of the blue moon, but ideally, the anime will lean toward dry comedy in the coming episodes. As a serious isekai title, My Isekai Life simply cannot compete with more established titles, and it has too little to offer in that department. But neither should it become a wacky parody like Konosuba.
Instead, My Isekai Life could find its footing as a dry satire of the isekai genre, embracing the creative randomness of Yuji's adventure to delight fans and keep them guessing. This is every anime fan's chance to treat the isekai genre like a true sandbox and abandon plots in favor of carefree exploration. Not even Re:Zero or Overlord can do that.
However, based on the next episode's preview, My Isekai Life is about to get serious again with the blue moon cult menace and two powerful new villains who may challenge Yuji in the upcoming Episode 7. The show is trying to build tension with these two new villains, but if Yuji can massacre the blue dragon of delight all on his own, these villains should be no threat at all. My Isekai Life is poised to hold itself back by trading its best strength for another attempt to be serious and cool, and it probably won't pay off. Anime fans will find out for sure next week.