5 Best Kingdom Building Isekai Anime, Ranked

Highlights

• Isekai anime offers various subgenres, with kingdom-building being a rare but impactful one.
• Tsukimichi exemplifies city-building in isekai, showcasing expansion efforts and protagonist influence.
• Realist Hero fails to fully utilize its kingdom-building theme, but is still worth watching.

As with most themes, isekai comes in many shapes and sizes, to the point of featuring smaller subgenres. For example, villainess anime have become very popular in recent years; meanwhile, “stuck in a game” shows have been around for nearly isekai’s entire existence. Despite covering quite a few big names, kingdom-building isekai anime is one of the rarer subgenres that, at most, might produce two series per year.

While they might not be particularly common, these types of stories tend to leave long-lasting impressions, particularly due to emphasizing their protagonist’s influence on their new world’s political climate rather than just highlighting their physical or magical strength. These adventures often overlap with power fantasies to an extent, and they regularly feature expansive casts of characters. Let’s take a look at the best kingdom-building isekai anime.

Honorable Mentions

• Farming Life in Another World – This delightful harem anime has all the hallmarks of a kingdom-building story, albeit on a smaller scale due to focusing on a village.
• Re:Monster – While very similar to kingdom-building stories, Rou is the leader of a mercenary group rather than a nation. Nevertheless, this anime is a fine option for this type of story.
• The Twelve Kingdoms – Packed with political intrigue and fantastic world-building, this classic story is an easy recommendation for isekai fans. That said, Youko is stepping into an already-established kingdom, forcing her to learn to live up to her role as a queen. It is more about maintaining a kingdom than building it.

As long as they are fairly large-scale endeavors, isekai anime that focus on cities will be considered.

5 Tsukimichi: Moonlit Fantasy

Subspace

Technically, Subspace is not exactly a kingdom or nation, but it is an extensive land with an ecosystem, natives, and a diverse population. Makoto, Tsukimichi‘s protagonist, also plays a direct role in morphing this space, twisting an empty void that was created by his ally, Tomoe, to capture her enemies. Set in an alternate reality that is cut off from the rest of the world, Subspace rarely interacts with other empires, which limits the show’s potential for political intrigue synonymous with kingdom-building anime.

That element aside, Tsukimichi does a great job of highlighting Makoto’s efforts to expand Subspace as a haven for Demi-Humans who might not have anywhere to go in a world dominated by hyumans. The protagonist even stages interviews to determine whether a species would be a good fit for Subspace’s current climate.

4 How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom

Elfrieden Kingdom

On paper, How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom should be the definitive kingdom-building isekai anime; after all, it is essentially named after the subgenre. Unfortunately, the series is somewhat of a mixed bag that, arguably, does not quite manage to make the most of its potential or premise, largely due to offering political challenges and solutions that are (usually) too simplistic to hold much weight or intrigue.

Nevertheless, Realist Hero is worth a watch if someone wants a slower-paced story revolving around a protagonist whose strength is mental rather than physical. Due to poor management by its previous summoned ruler, Elfrieden Kingdom is left in rough shape that could easily spell its eventual doom or subjugation; fortunately, the royal family summons Kazuya Souma, who happens to be able to guide them through his Earth-based knowledge. Before long, he becomes Elfrieden’s king, setting the kingdom on the path to recovery and rehabilitation.

3 Log Horizon

Akiba

Technically, a city builder rather than a kingdom builder, but
Log Horizon
still qualifies as it examines Akiba’s place in the wider world.

Log Horizon has become an oddly difficult anime to recommend, at least as a whole. Seasons 2 and 3 are, frankly, not very good, and they suffer from poor pacing, uninteresting stories, and a bloated cast that takes the spotlight away from interesting characters like Shiroe. However, season 1 represents the isekai genre at its best, telling a (relatively) grounded story about a large group of players who find themselves stuck in an MMORPG.

Rather than just being a power fantasy about curb-stomping enemies, Log Horizon focuses on the players’ attempts to adapt to the world’s laws, regulations, and political relationships, with Akiba serving as their main hub and city. The protagonist, Shiroe, spends most of his time trying to improve Akiba’s standard of living, which involves blending MMO conventions with realistic requirements to function as a society within an established culture.

2 Overlord

Sorcerer Kingdom

Born out of the Great Tomb of Nazarick’s ambition and under Ainz’s accidental guidance, the Sorcerer Kingdom is officially created at the end of Overlord season 3, setting the stage for a fairly quick expansion during the subsequent cour. Although it takes a long time to reach this point, the story builds towards the Sorcerer Kingdom for virtually its entire run. Nazarick’s Floor Guardians spend their time gathering information and influencing organizations, all to ultimately establish Ainz – the Sorcerer King – as the ruler of the world.

Once the kingdom is created, Ainz sets a general objective to build a utopia for everyone, regardless of their race. While human citizens are certainly lower in the pecking order than Nazarick’s residents, they are allowed to exist fairly freely as long as they do not disrespect their superiors. Season 4 dives quite a bit into this universe’s politics, shining a light on human nations that find themselves having to navigate around a new kingdom run by powerful creatures that can demolish cities without breaking a sweat.

1 That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime

Jura-Tempest Federation

Considering their starting point as a slime, Rimuru speedruns the nation-building process, with the Jura-Tempest Federation becoming official roughly 15 episodes in the anime. Beginning with wolves and goblins, Rimuru initially created a safe village for demi-humans, which eventually spiraled into a nation that was home to all types of monsters. This was an unprecedented move in this world, and it naturally attracted the attention of neighboring kingdoms.

While extremely powerful and more than capable of wiping out human armies, Rimuru’s goal is to live in harmony with other domains by establishing mutually beneficial relationships. That proved to be possible with a few small nations; however, bigger kingdoms like Falmuth opted to wage war against Jura-Tempest, a decision that came with steep consequences for the invaders. More so than every other isekai anime, That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime shines a bright spotlight on Jura-Tempest’s residents, highlighting their day-to-day lives as they exist within this kingdom created by Rimuru. The Slime Diaries specifically focuses on this aspect.

Spring 2024’s season 3 is almost entirely devoted to exploring Reincarnated as a Slime‘s political climate and volatile relationship with other kingdoms, which involves a lot of meetings, battles fueled by misinformation or manipulation, and power struggles.