The "Slow Life Fantasy" is a story about a fantasy hero (very often an "Isekai" with an everyman who is summoned, reincarnated or otherwise Trapped in Another World) that, rather than immediately racing off to adventure or to become a Hero, instead settles down into a nice, quiet life of either leisure or fulfilling work, ignoring all past and present stress and conflicts.
As with more conventional Stock Light Novel Heroes, the protagonist may still have a Unique Protagonist Asset or New Life in Another World Bonus which makes it just that much easier for them to live such a carefree life. However, they will still either passively or actively avoid any major adventure — they may still join the local Adventure Guild or help the local townsfolk with problems, but Saving the World? Fighting the Big Bad? No thanks.
While the subgenre is not exclusive to Japan, one possible reason for the sudden popularity is the explosion of the Salaryman and Office Lady lifestyles within the nation, and the increasing issue of Karoshi (過労死 — literally, "death from overwork"); to wit, "dying from overwork" is the #1 cause of death for reincarnated heroes of these plots (sorry, Truck-kun, you've been laid-off). Many of these stories are aimed at either adults currently trapped in such a lifestyle, or young people who dread their turn at it. This Sub-Genre is thus somewhat of a rejection of one of Japan's most core tenets: that hard work and self-sacrifice are inherently good. It also relates in a roundabout way to Capitalism Is Bad, with commonalities with the antiwork movement
and the Chinese concept of "lying flat".
Some see these stories as escapist Wish-Fulfillment that lets people dream of something good waiting after what seems like an unfulfilling life of meaningless and endless toil, while more cynical audiences see the subgenre as, at best, sidestepping the problem and, at worst, justifying it, since the protagonist is "rewarded" with a much better life, even after death. Another concern is that the anime industry (itself known for overworking its employees) is cashing in on the very genre that critiques it by adapting many light novels and manga with this premise to anime.
NOTE: To qualify for this trope, the protagonist must try to avoid a violent or adventurous life as much as possible, although hunting/killing monsters or stopping petty crime is fine. In the event that the plot finds the hero anyway, and they have no choice but to accept or resign themselves to the call, then the work stops being about this trope unless it's just a temporary shift.
This trope is an increasingly common overlap between the Stock Light-Novel Hero and Stock Light-Novel Everyman (combining the fantastical origins or powers of the former with the mundane lifestyle of the latter).
See also Extraordinary World, Ordinary Problems and Iyashikei, in which there is no greater conflict to ignore for a relaxing, easy life. The protagonist of a Slow Life Fantasy story is typically a Heroic Neutral.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Isekai Cheat Survival Meshi has very little conflict and no battles despite taking place in a fantasy world where the main character Yuu has reincarnated into. Instead, the series focuses on Yuu finding ingredients to prepare delicious meals for the people he befriends.
- The Keeper Wants to Build a Zoo in Another World, so He Tames Monsters is about a zookeeper who stumbles into a fantasy world and decides to create a zoo for creatures like hellhounds. He has some adventures in the process, but they're incidental to his goal as an Animal Lover, and he tries to prevent other adventurers from harming the "monsters".
- Kemono Michi stars Genzo, a pro-wrestler called "Animal Mask", who is summoned to a fantasy world during his last match before retiring to pursue his dream of opening a pet shop. He discovers that the reason he was summoned was to slay the "demon beasts" that plague the local kingdom. However, being a consummate animal lover, Genzo instead escapes and takes jobs at the local Adventure Guild to tame the various demon beasts rather than kill them, as the world he's summoned to has no concept of "pets" and thus his dream is that much more important. He takes no interest in the overarching conflicts between heroes and villains, and even when a Maou is summoned to fight him, it turns out to be his rival and opponent of his last match, Manchurian Ogre ("MAO"), which more or less results in the two settling things with a normal wrestling match.
- Magic Artisan Dahlia Wilts No More follows the adventures of a modern-day woman who dies from overwork and is reborn in a fantasy world full of monsters, magic, and adventure. Her goal is to become a Magic Artisan (a craftsman who invents magic-imbued tools and material) to bring the comforts of 21st-century Earth (like water heaters, blow-dryers, and portable cooktops) to her new home.
Literature
- An A Ranked Adventurers Slow Living: The story begins with The Hero Aldred and his adventuring party having fulfilled The Quest, achieving glory, and then going their separate ways. He decides to retire to a countryside village he once visited and live peacefully as a farmer and hunter. Unfortunately, his former bosses have other plans for him.
- Myne, the protagonist of Ascendance of a Bookworm, wants nothing more than to continue the lifestyle she had before her reincarnation in another world: spending every waking hour reading books. However, she landed in a poor family in a world that averts Medieval Universal Literacy alongside still having quite expensive paper and ink. She also turns out to have a condition that requires some combination of a lot of money and ties to nobility to treat, so she's soon on a double quest of making her own books and getting herself out of poverty to keep herself alive. Past a certain point in the story, her position entails participating in situations more typical of a more adventuring-oriented story as a Support Party Member at least once every few months.
- Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided To Live A Quiet Life In The Countryside: Exactly like it says in the title, D-Rank Adventurer Red was exiled from the Hero's party during her quest to defeat the Demon Lord, so he opens up an apothecary in a small village and dedicates his life to making medicine and running a successful shop with the A-Rank adventurer Rit. Though Red appears weak due to his D-Rank status, he's actually a Genius Bruiser that easily defeats even B- and A-Rank adventurers with little effort. While at his village, he constantly gets drawn back into conspiracies and conflicts involving the demons and other villains, but he remains adamant that (despite his strength) he will not get drawn back into the human/demon war and just wants to live with Rit in peace and quiet.
- In Beware of Chicken, Jin Rou is a person from the modern day who finds himself in the body of a cultivator in a medieval China-esque fantasy setting. He immediately leaves the sect he's a part of to avoid the political intrigue, backstabbing, and over-the-top superpowered battles to retire to a quiet life as a farmer. Unbeknownst to him, his use of qi in growing the plants used to feed his livestock has given his farm animals self-awareness and a desire to impress him, resulting in them becoming superpowered qi cultivators.
- Black Summoner: Protagonist Kelvin is the Hero of Another Story to a party of stereotypical JRPG heroes summoned to this world by the same goddess. Unlike them, he's not terribly interested in battling the Demon King and chooses instead to make a quiet life for himself in the world, hunting monsters for the Adventure Guild to pay the bills. He only once involves himself with the heroes when they happen to cross paths—and that because he's a Blood Knight who thought it would be fun to fight them (and because their mutual goddess Melvina, one of the members of his harem, asked him to check their skill level and offer some pointers).
- By the Grace of the Gods: Ryoma was a Japanese Salaryman who passed away from overwork and was offered a chance by three gods to be reborn in a new world as a child. He takes the offer and begins living alone in a forest, taming slimes and training them to do simple tasks. He is later found by a noble family that adopts him and finds that his extraordinary work ethic (which he retains from his prior adult life) and skill at commanding and cultivating slimes make him an extremely productive member of society. The premise gets somewhat deconstructed when it's revealed that his mind is slowly regressing into that of an actual child, meaning that he would be unfit for any grander adventure even if he wanted to try it.
- Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill: 29-year-old salaryman Tsuyoshi Mukohda finds himself summoned to another world by accident, alongside four Stock Light Novel Heroes. Unlike the other summoned heroes, all he wants to do in the new world is travel around to various places, avoid trouble, and sample the cuisines of the world.
- The Conqueror from a Dying Kingdom: A good portion of the beginning of the story is this trope. Yuri wants to follow after his father and raise birds on their ranch. When asked by a Queen what his life goal is, he answers he wants to build a house by a lake, live with the one he loves, fish, plant flowers, and relax while reading. However, The Call Knows Where You Live and he is forced to become The Conqueror.
- Cooking With Wild Game: Apprentice chef Asuta Tsurumi finds himself in a fantasy world where the food culture is backwards compared to Earth, and instead of adventuring, starts a food revolution by introducing cooking techniques.
- Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody: Ichiro Suzuki, a chronically overworked game developer, takes a nap in his cubicle after a long shift and wakes up in an endgame area of the MMORPG he had just been working on. Despite maxing his character level by wiping out the map with a cheat code he'd just added, he chooses to take it easy as the traveling peddler Satou, only getting involved in the world's problems when they interfere with his business and/or sightseeing.
- The Devil is a Part-Timer!: The work's premise is a humorous inversion; the protagonist is the Maou who once terrorized a fantasy world but finds himself stranded on Earth with low power reserves. Finding himself enjoying life here, he resolves to stay and live the normal life of a part-time worker. However, this trope becomes ZigZagged when The Hero follows Maou to this world and asks if he just plans to live a normal life. Maou proclaims that his plan is to somehow work his way up the ladder at his fast-food job and gain enough influence to Take Over the World. However, he remains a normal human in the finale.
- Drugstore in Another World: Reiji Kirio, a Japanese salaryman, gets Trapped in Another World and starts a drugstore, where he learns how to treat all sorts of magical and unusual ailments plaguing different people and fantasy races. The story is almost entirely without violent conflict and is more about the wacky hijinks of the main cast of loveable goofballs.
- Farming Life In Another World: Machio Hiraku was an ordinary salaryman until he died from overwork. After receiving (more than a couple) blessings from the God of another world, he reincarnated to make the most of his new life by living a relaxing life as a farmer.
- His Dark Materials:
- After John Parry ends trapped in Lyra's world with no way to go back home, he took the name of Stanislaus Grumann and became a scholar specialised in the Arctic world.
- Likewise, after Mary Malone ended up in the Mulefa world, she started to settle down and studied the ethnology of the Mulefa and the biology of her new world, until she again met Lyra and Will, and came back.
- In the Land of Leadale: Keina Kagami was a girl permanently confined to a hospital bed who was already practically living in a VRMMORPG. After dying as a result of a power outage at the hospital and waking up as her maxed-out Player Character Cayna permanently—inexplicably about 200 in-game years after the servers were shut down—she takes to Walking the Earth with little grander motivation than to reactivate the towers of the other twelve Skill Masters, and builds a normal life for herself in the game.
- Isekai Walking has the tale of main character Sora, who is summoned with six others for the stated purpose of fighting and killing a newly resurrected Demon King. Since his stats and initial skill are clearly not glaringly obvious at being good for battle, Sora is summarily dragged out of the castle and dumped on the streets, a bag with two gold coins, and left to his own devices. Although he does sign up with the adventurer's guild, battles are rare, and he prefers to just explore the world and try to find his place in it.
- I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level stars Azusa, a salarywoman who dies from overwork in her mid-20s and is offered a chance to be reborn in a new world by a goddess. She takes up the offer on the condition that she is allowed to be immortal. After settling into her new life, she spends the next 300 years living a modest life and getting no more exercise than killing 25 slimes per day. However, it turns out that doing so accidentally maxed out her level, making her the strongest being in the world, and causing all sorts of problems as other warriors come to challenge her or people come to ask her for help. Azusa, in the meantime, simply wants to continue to live her nice, cushy life.
- My Lady Just Wants to Relax is a combination of the Slow-Life Fantasy and the "Reborn as Villainess" Story. A modern Japanese salarywoman dies from overwork and finds herself reincarnated as Ronia, the villainess of the romance Web Serial Novel she read. She attempts to prevent her downfall by being an Extreme Doormat, only to find she still gets exiled anyway. However, Ronia takes her exiled life in stride, since this is the first time in two lives she can finally, well, relax. The novel is mostly about her time as a cafe owner on the borderlands, where she mingles with various beastkin and spirits. As an equivalent to adventuring in Isekai written for males, Ronia is no longer interested in romance.
- Parallel World Pharmacy: The protagonist Kanji was a world-renowned pharmacist who died from overwork but finds himself reborn in another world where medicine is still heavily steeped in superstition. Using his Past-Life Memories and medical knowledge, he sets out to open his own pharmacy in this world and teach people the benefits of modern medical knowledge.
- Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship!: Takahiro Satou woke up as his Player Character in his favorite Elite Dangerous clone. He takes work as a mercenary with the Mundane Wish of earning enough money to buy a planetside house so he can drink carbonated beverages again, and actively works to avoid any deeper entanglements with The 'Verse's major factions.
- Downplayed in The Saint's Magic Power Is Omnipotent. The eponymous Saint is initially misidentified, which leaves protagonist Sei Takanashi—formerly an overworked Office Lady likely headed towards karoshi—at loose ends. She gets a job as an alchemy researcher and takes it easy, helped along by her herbology hobby from Japan. The mistake is eventually discovered because her potions and healing magic are so much stronger than anyone else's, but even after having to take on the responsibility of being the Saint, she still manages to spend the bulk of her time doing the more relaxing work of growing medicinal plants and making potions and cosmetics (and making goo-goo eyes at Captain Hawke).
- The Savior's Book Café Story in Another World has an all-powerful being claiming to be God summoning a 30-year-old woman to act as the magical savior of another world. Instead of all of the usual monster-slaying heroics associated with isekai, she uses The Power of Creation to open her own Book Café.
- Slow Life in Another World (I Wish!) has it right there in the title. Japanese salaryman Itsuki Shinomiya croaks seemingly from exhaustion, is offered a New Life in Another World Bonus by a goddess, and picks skills with the specific intent of having a relaxed and financially comfortable second life as a self-employed alchemist in a Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting. All the problems he gets involved with are purely local in origin, though he interacts several times with an entirely different "drifter" named Hayato, a much more stereotypical Stock Light-Novel Hero who acts as the Hero of Another Story.
- In Steelflower by Lilith Saintcrow, Kaia Steelflower is a sellsword in a Standard Fantasy Setting whose only ambition is to earn enough, and live long enough, to retire as a tavern keeper. At one point an old acquaintance recruits her to a rebellion against the king on the basis of a prophetic vision that she would be "his luck", but she and her companions bail on him after fighting in one battle and spend the next book quietly wintering overseas.
- In Take Two, a rich and famous bass guitarist named Breck is doing a gig when the concert is suddenly attacked by otherworldly samurai and he leaps into a shadowy portal to escape. There, he winds up in Another Dimension called "Gotham" which looks somewhat like our world, except that the technology is a few decades behind and the population is a mix of both humans and creatures from other worlds like Beast Men, Shapeshifters and so forth. Also, the trusty bass guitar he brought with him is now a Talking Appliance Sidekick. Once there, his only major concern is to find a way back home, but in trying to do so, he winds up spending the night with an attractive waitress named Claire as he tries to find a way to make a living. Further, a powerful interdimensional smuggler offers him a high-risk, high-paying job, Breck turns the offer down. One character even asks him if he intends to become a Hero, and Breck scoffs at the idea. However, it's quickly revealed that the woman he's living with is a succubus, and this has numerous ramifications — for example, in Gotham, all demons are either enslaved or killed on sight and a succubus like Claire is in extremely high demand. Also, it's revealed that Breck is dying — a problem rendered moot when he learns that Claire's succubus abilities can permanently suppress his terminal symptoms. Thus, when a group of bounty hunters out Claire as a succubus, Breck has no choice but to agree to take the smuggling job so that he can buy Claire as his slave, both to save her and keep himself alive, planning to start his life over in Gotham.
- Subverted in Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs. Protagonist Leon Fou Bartfort wants to lay low and live quietly, but his efforts to get himself out of the otome game's plot keep backfiring and getting him greater fame and rank—which in part means he theoretically has to seek a bride of higher rank, and therefore higher likelihood of being a Blue Blooded Alpha Bitch instead of a Nice Girl he can get along with (his home life is hell because of his father being stuck in a similarly loveless marriage). Fortunately, he manages to get the best of both worlds by the end of volume 3 by winding up in a polyamorous relationship with both the game's common-born Player Character and its villainess, a duke's daughter who turns out to be a much better person than the game made her out to be.
Podcasts
- The premise of Hello, from the Magic Tavern is that host Arnie fell through a portal from our world into the magical fantasy land of Foon, but while he claims his goal is to get back home, he spends most of his time hanging around in a tavern hosting a talk show podcast and getting to know people in the area. He repeatedly refuses the call to fight the Dark Lord, and his lack of effort in getting home becomes a Running Gag, as co-hosts often claim he hates/abandoned his wife and daughter, despite Arnie's pleas to the contrary.
Web Original
- Mother's Basement made a video about various types of isekai, and two of the possible categories he proposed ("Hangout Isekai" and "Karoshisekai") are specifically centered on this genre.note
