Trapped in Another World in Anime & Manga.
- In +a no Tachiichi, both the heroine and her best friend are dragged to an alternate world where the people have summoned a Holy Maiden to save them.
- In Aku No Joou No Kiseki, university student Mari finds herself in another world, in the body of a queen. Upon learning that she is unable to return to her original body, and that the queen's bad government has lead to war, Mari decides to reorganize the ruined country.
- In Amagoi, protagonist Sora ends up transported to a fantasy world full of gigantic mushrooms after trying to save his sister from being erased from existense by a mysterious force.
- The main premise of Arata: The Legend; Arata of the Himezoku is transported to modern-day Japan, while Arata Hinohara is trapped in the world of Amawakuni.
- Aura Battler Dunbine, but then it twists it by having all the people from the other world get sent to Earth.
- The Wings of Rean, made by the same director and in the same setting, is like-wise, although both are more like "people from Earth get sent to another world who then get sent back to Earth and then get stuck there with otherworlders."
- Blood Lad: Not only is Fuyumi Yanagi a human girl trapped in Hell, she dies in it. And the story is then focused on bringing her back to life.
- Carol: A Day In A Girl's Life: The heroine is transported to a fantastic world where she must fight against the evil monsters who are stealing the music from Earth.
- In CosPrayers, Koto and the others get stuck in the parallel dimension in the first episode, and spend the rest of the series fighting the forces of evil.
- In Deadline Summoner, Mamoru Onodera, an Otaku fond of RPGs finds himself sucked into a fantasy world filled with monster girls. For reasons unexplained in its first and only chapter, he somehow ends up the master of ten girls who could easily rip him to shreds with their affections—or get him caught in the crossfire of their inevitable fights.
- Occurs frequently in Digimon:
- Digimon Adventure starts with seven kids being unwillingly transported to the "Digital World", a dimension full of sapient creatures somehow created from data in the real world. The kids initially have no idea how to get back.
- Digimon Tamers has the protagonist kids purposefully travel to the Digital World in an attempt to rescue someone, but they are left uncertain of how to return to the real world.
- Digimon Frontier, much like Adventure, starts with a group of kids being transported (somewhat willingly, there is a Call to Adventure beforehand) to the Digital World. Although they don't precisely know how to go back, they are given several chances to, but in the end choose to remain or return.
- Digimon Fusion begins with Taiki answering Shoutmon's plea for help from the Digital World, but he ends up dragging the unwilling Akari and Zenjirou with him, to their great displeasure. The three remain stuck in the Digital World until an enemy attack throws them back home in the middle of the series.
- In Dog Days, the people of Biscotti summon Cinque to help them, but then find that they don't know how to send him back to Earth. This no longer becomes an issue once they find the return spell, with the following seasons instead treating his visits as a vacation.
- Dragon Ball: That Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha! is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: the story of an Ordinary High-School Student who dies and is reborn in the world of Dragon Ball as Yamcha. Having been a big fan of Dragon Ball in his previous life, the protagonist goes on to use his foreknowledge of the manga's events to transform Yamcha from a Memetic Loser into an Adaptational Badass: by the time Vegeta and Nappa arrive on Earth, he is capable of not only defeating the Saibamen and Nappa singlehandedly, but also keeping up with Goku during the battle against Vegeta.
- Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure is a variation in that the other world is an Alternate Universe, one that split based on whether a construction worker threw away Lost Technology or decided to hang onto it. The protagonist can also see glimpses of the other, parallel world for years before finally entering it.
- The Dungeon of Black Company has a NEET Kinji Ninomiya transported from modern day japan to a Magitek fantasy world where he is forced to work for a major mining corporation.
- Dungeon Toilet: Yotaro was transported from modern-day Japan to his current garden-variety fantasy world, though the details of how or why this happened have yet to be elaborated on.
- El-Hazard: The Magnificent World: When Ifurita sends Makoto to El-Hazard, and accidentally sends along Fujisawa-sensei, Jinnai and Nanami as well.
- Endride has the protagonist get sucked into another world via a magic crystal. It turns out the other world, Endora, is just the inside of his own hollow world and the Endorans historically know of "the surface" even though "the surface" only has myths like Shamballa.
- The Familiar of Zero (Zero no Tsukaima) is the Trope Codifier and Genre Popularizer. On the website Shosetsuka ni Naro ("Let's Become Novelists"), known as Naro for short, Zero no Tsukaima fan fiction became popular during the late 2000s. This eventually spawned a genre of isekai novels on the site, which became known as Naro novels. Zero no Tsukaima fan fiction writers eventually began writing original isekai novels, many of which were adapted into anime shows, popularizing the isekai genre.
- Final Fantasy: Unlimited begins with two Kid Hero siblings being trapped in the Inner World/Wonderland. Said other world is also continually expanding and consuming other worlds, leading to entire dimensions being trapped there as well.
- From Far Away: high school girl Noriko falls into a fantastical world.
- Fullmetal Alchemist:
- In Fullmetal Alchemist, the first Homunculus is trapped in the human world and in a flask, which he admits sucks, but he's not that bothered about it. Later he tries to use the human world to "eat" the entity that controlled him in his world. Ironically, he ends up trapped in his own world, presumable tortured for eternity.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa, in an inversion, Ed and later Al are trapped in our world, having originated from another, where
magicalchemy is fairly commonplace. They end up seemingly permanently trapped on our side of the Gate at the end of the film.
- Fushigi Yuugi: Miaka and Yui get pulled into a mythical world inside a magical book. The same thing happened to their predecessors, Suzuno and Takiko.
- Garzey's Wing: Chris is summoned to an ancient world (well, his spirit is — his physical body remains on Earth) by an enslaved tribe who want him to lead a revolution.
- Subversion: Yukinari from Girls Bravo gets trapped on the planet Seirun in the first episode, but is returned to Earth in the same episode.
- The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach! had Mario and Luigi being summoned to the world of a Famicom video game. This makes it the Ur-Example of the "trapped in a video game" isekai subgenre. This was in spite of Mario not having been established to be from Earth in the early Japanese canon like was the case with the early American canon.
- Even the Gundam franchise gets in on the action with Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE — while the first season of Gundam Build Divers technically counts as "another world", being a virtual MMORPG, this season involves our heroes being summoned to a new "campaign mode" in a World of Funny Animals with a storyline divorced from any of the goings-on vital to GBN, which the heroes of the first season simply couldn't avoid however they tried. As the series progresses, the characters soon realize that this isn't part of the game. Notable in that the heroes aren't trapped in the world, and indeed seriously discuss whether or not they should abandon their quest now that they know the stakes are real.
- This also occurs in Super Robot Wars Compact and Super Robot Wars Alpha with the Argama and its crew, who meet the Dunbine characters there.
- This happens to Tsukasa from .hack//SIGN, with a computer game. However, the show essentially turns common isekai tropes on their head. Rather than being a happy Ordinary High-School Student who becomes all-powerful in the game, Tsukasa is a depressed kid with an abusive father. Rather than the game acting as an escapist fantasy for him, it ends up further exacerbating his depression. When he does gain great power in the game and tries to use it, all he ends up doing is hurting both others and himself. Rather than gaining a harem, he struggles to and finally succeeds in connecting with a group of genuine friends. Hell, at the end, it's revealed that "he" isn't even a boy, as most isekai protagonists are; the player behind Tsukasa is a girl named An Shoji.
- In the Not Safe for Work OVA Hooligan: Quest for the Seven Holy Dildos, a botched science experiment transported the hero Yukito to another world, and he now has to find the Seven Holy Dildos in order to get home.
- In I'm The Only One With Unfavorable Skills, Isekai Summoning Rebellion, Yuto Nakatani and his class are summoned by the Holy Valencia Empire to exterminate the remnant of the Demon King's Empire. When he's injured protecting one of his classmates during a dungeon raid, they decide to leave him for dead.
- In I'm Standing on a Million Lives, Yotsuya and two female classmates are suddenly sent to another world where they must work together to battle for their lives. Since Yotsuya is a lone wolf, this isn't easy for him.
- In Interspecies Reviewers, while the protagonists themselves are from the world itself, it's mentioned in a conversation that people from the Modern World are being sent to the fantasy world of the series, though the only importance of this so far is that people have tried and failed to replicate their tech.
- In the Land of Leadale follows a young woman on life support who is known in the MMORPG Leadale as Cayna, a powerful elven mage. Then one fateful day, a power outage hits the hospital where she is being cared for. As a result of the machines keeping her alive losing power, she dies in the "real" world and awakens in the world of the game 200 years in the future.
- Kagome from Inuyasha in the first few episodes. Afterward she's able to go between the other world and her own at will. She willingly leaves her world behind, knowing she can never return home, to live with Inuyasha in his world in the series finale.
- Isekai Quartet transports characters from Overlord (2012), KonoSuba, The Saga of Tanya the Evil, and Re:Zero to an empty modern Japanese high school... just as their respective protagonists were getting used to living in the fantasy worlds they were already reincarnated into.
- Ixion Saga DT centers around a normal gamer from Earth who after accepting a request from a female character in a video game, gets sent into a fantasy world called Mira. He ends up stuck with a young princess and becomes part of her honor guard when all he wants to do is go back home.
- Jewelpet Kira☆Deco!: the Kira Deco 5 travel to Jewel Land on an asteroid and stay there until their quest is concluded. Slightly different from most examples in that they're there willingly.
- Jura Tripper sends no less than 15 people to a planet where humans and dinosaurs co-exist.
- The Keeper Wants to Build a Zoo in Another World, so He Tames Monsters has a zookeeper travel to a fantasy world and start building a zoo for monsters like hellhounds.
- In Leda: The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko, Yohko is transported to the Magical Land of Ashanti, where she becomes the leader of La Résistance.
- Legend of Himiko: Himiko and her schoolmate Masahiko are transported to the magical kingdom of Yamatai, where they have to fight alongside a resistance force to overthrow an evil empire.
- Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout: The main characters were forcibly teleported into a fantasy world inspired by RPG, full on with characters having stats and skills, and can't leave until the Demon King is dead. It's later revealed that there are 12 goddesses, all of which are choosing heroes to put them through the same thing.
- Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi: After the first episode, the heroes fall from world to world, each one based on one of the main characters' geekish hobbies.
- Magic Knight Rayearth does this to Hikaru, Fuu and Umi, when Princess Emeraude summons them to the magical world of Cephiro to become the Magic Knights and save it from ruin. The first half of the story later reveals a rather cruel twist: Emeraude actually summoned the girls to Cephiro so they save the land by killing her.
- Rayearth OVA inverts this. Clef sends the rest of the people of Earth to another plane to keep more people from being killed.
- Ginta of MÄR actually makes the willing decision to go to the other world (after wordlessly making sure his love interest is unable to follow him), and once there is overjoyed to find that getting back isn't going to be easy.
- Although it is never confirmed, it implied that Nanashi is actually Joker from Flame of Recca with amnesia. Joker was last seen disappearing into a black hole after getting stabbed, and Nanashi was found wearing Joker's clothes and with the same wound. And it is noted that Nanashi and Ginta smell alike.
- In Mask Of Zeguy, the heroine Miki is attacked by mysterious warriors, and finds herself trapped in a world of monsters and madmen who plot the downfall of Earth. In order to save both worlds and return home, she must locate the mysterious Mask of Zeguy.
- Melo Melo Melonpan has a short story about a gamer sucked into a Dragon Quest expy, then (being that this is an H-Manga) he realizes the NPCs don't have Barbie Doll Anatomy and functionally robotic humans that repeat the same programmed lines ad nauseum he proceeds to have sex with EVERY woman in the kingdom including, but not limited to his in-game "mother," potential party member, a nun, a mother right in front of her son in the town square as she walks, and the queen and princess while completely ignoring the mission. Unfortunately or fortunately for him, his real-life mother thinks he merely left the game on again, turning it off and stranding him there forever.
- The plot of the Monster Rancher followed the adventures of Genki Sakura, a very hyperactive boy who wins a beta disk of "Monster 200X" (which has the same properties of the real MR game) in a video game tournament. No sooner does Genki start it, than he is transported inside the game, finding a real world of monsters inside.
- Mujin Wakusei Survive involves 7 Ordinary High School Students and a robot cat getting stuck on another planet.
- The Sorcerer's Curse arc of Mythic Quest revolves around everyone in the world being deposited in the dimension created by the MMORPG Mythic Quest with no way out and no extra lives.
- Naruto the Movie: Road to Ninja features the titular character and his teammate, Sakura, being sent to an Alternate Universe by Tobi.
- The Negima! Magister Negi Magi manga has Negi and a group of his student get stuck in the Magic World after Fate destroys the gateway between worlds.
- In Nito's Lazy Foreign World Syndrome As Hidako Masamune was about to commit suicide, he and his classmates are summoned to the Kingdom of Gray Belka to fight against the Demon Lord and his army. When they learn that he possesses the class of "Healer" which id considered to be the weakest class, they decide to dispose of him instead.
- Now and Then, Here and There: This is an exceptional example of this trope because the creators threw out every convention associated with it from episode 1. Shu sees a strange young girl sitting on a smokestack on his way home from school and goes to meet her. As he is introducing himself, he and the girl are attacked by people teleporting in from the distant future in pursuit of that girl. True to the genre Shu picks up a stick and fights to defend the girl. He immediately gets his ass handed to him and both he and the girl are dragged forward billions of years where Earth is a dying desert planet orbiting a sun in the early stages of nova. What follows is a relentless thirteen-episode trip through the ninth ring of Hell.
- Panzer World Galient: At the climax of the story, the main character and all his friends and allies were transported to another planet. As they were trapped in that world, they had to fight the Big Bad and find a way back to their homeworld because that planet was about to blow up.
- In Queen's Blade Grimoire, Alicia is a magic swordswoman from Gainos who finds herself in Mel Fair Land, which resembles Wonderland from Alice in Wonderland. Nobody knows how to return her to her home, so she decides to join the Queen's Blade tournament, hoping that winning will help her get home.
- In The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World, Tougo Asagaki is the Red Ranger of the Kizuna Rangers who seemingly dies saving his friends and the world from the nefarious Ender King. Instead of dying, he finds himself in a fantasy world... with all of his Ranger powers intact. He quickly uses these abilities to climb the ranks of adventurers until he runs into the wizard Idola Avorn, who ends up recruiting him as hired muscle to help with her research while he tries to find a way home.
- Long-running shoujo series Red River and Ouke no Monshou both feature this trope, a girl from modern day trapped in Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt respectively.
- RTA Sousha Wa Game Sekai Kara Kaerenai ("The Speedrunner Can't Return From The Game World") is a tongue-in-cheek take on this type of story, where a guy summoned into the world of Another Verse by a Summon Everyman Hero ritual is a speedrunner who manages to use his encyclopedic knowledge of the game and its bugs and glitches to his advantage, but also causes all sorts of trouble.
- In The Savior's Book Café Story in Another World, a powerful entity claiming to be God chooses a thirty-something woman named Tsukina to be the next savior of a fantasy world. Not wanting that kind of Power Fantasy, she instead uses this fresh start (and the various powers he gives her) to start a Book Café.
- The H-manga A Sister for Each Season is an inversion since the male lead gets his harem composed of four princesses, but they teleport into his world over a period of several months. Since his Extreme Libido can overcharge their magical abilities, by the end of the story the more magical savvy sisters are able to use their powers to so all of them can come and go between their worlds as they please and introduce him the rest of the royal family.
- The main plot of the hentai, Slave Warrior Maya, where a young woman is magically sent to another world and then tricked into undressing so she can be sold into slavery.
- Spider Riders plays with this, Hunter never seems to feel like he's "trapped" in the Inner World. The reason he ended up there in the first place is because he went looking for it!
- Historical fantasy shōnen manga series Sengoku Strays involves a girl from a modern era trapped in the Sengoku Era.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Sonic X begins with Sonic and his friends (and Dr. Eggman) being transported to Earth from a parallel universe. He figures out pretty quickly that the Chaos Emeralds can get them back home, but nobody actually bothers until it's discovered that their continued presence in our dimension is causing the two universes to merge, and unless they go back, time will eventually cease to flow in both of them. Unlike most examples, the story actually continues after they do make it back home, with the third season taking place in Sonic's world as he battles a new threat called the Metarex.
- In the adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2, it's revealed that Eggman was actually born on Earth and got transported to Sonic's planet somehow.
- Strange Dawn shows two high school girls being transported into an unknown world populated by chibi-sized humans.
- In Tamagotchi: Happiest Story in the Universe!, Kikitchi gets trapped in a book called "The World's Happiest Story", about a man named Happy who is doing everything in his power to actually be happy.
- In There, Beyond the Beyond, protagonist Futaba is taken to a fantasy world due to a case of Mistaken Identity. In order to get back home, he needs to reunite the Amaranthine with her master.
- Those Who Hunt Elves do so because the elves hold the secret to the spell that will return them to Earth.
- In Thumbelina: A Magical Story, Maya gets trapped in her mother's dream world and the only way to return home is to find a way to wake up her mother. To do this, she must travel to a far away southern land to talk to the Crystal Prince, who will help her reach home.
- 'Tis Time for "Torture," Princess: Parodied in Chapter 49. The Hell-Lord, Princess, and Ex all get trapped in another world ruled by a malevolent Evil Overlord called the Black Monarch. As the Hell-Lord explains to the Princess and Ex, in the two hours between his and their regaining consciousness, he'd already Curb Stomped everyone and their overly excessive Power Levels to save the parallel world. They then return to their own world and the chapter ends with everyone getting ready to play basketball.
- In The Titan's Bride, Koichi, an Ordinary Highschool Student, is transported into the mystic world of Eustil which is inhabited by giants, elves and dwarves, where he becomes the bride of giant prince Caius Lao Vistaille, the future ruler of Tildant.
- In Trip Lovers, Yasuda Yutaka is sucked through a portal on his way home from work and ends up in another world. Five years later, he's happily running an okonomiyaki shop in this new world.
- Same author as Deadline Summoner, Eita Touga of 12 Beast becomes the saviour of Live-Earth by Aero dragging him through a portal against his will. While she can send him back, the power required is so absurd that if he actually wants to get back alive, he'll have to save the world first...
- The Vision of Escaflowne: A rare example of the other world not being treated as another dimension of some sort — they get stuck on an invisible moon, just past the actual one.
- Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun is about a young human boy Iruma who is adopted by (sold to) an eccentric elderly demon and wrangled into attending high school in the Netherworld... where humans are considered a rare delicacy. Iruma has to attend school while keeping the spotlight away from himself and hiding his humanity so he doesn't accidentally befall an unfortunate fate. Which is not helped at all by his new "grandfather"— who happens to be the principal of said school— parading Iruma around as his adorable liddle grandson.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- A couple of these in the anime-only "Duel Monsters Quest" and "Virtual World Arcs". In both cases The Big Five trapped the protagonists in a video game as part of their plot to take over Kaiba Corp.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters's main plot is Yugi and his friends being trapped in the Capsule Monster world and working to find a way home.
