Okashi na Tensei

This show takes the standard Isekai tropes and plays them with a level of honesty and groundedness that is hard to come by (and by this I mean any groundedness at all).

There are some concerns about this not being a cooking show, and that there are politics and war instead. I see this as a strength; I appreciated the sort of bait-and-switch of expecting to see a MC living in leisure and doing what they love, but instead seeing them being confronted by the responsibility of being born noble. Desserts are left mostly in the background but they are used as a plot device here ... and there.

I like to think of this as Ascendance of a Bookworm but with desserts instead. That is probably the highest praise I can give an Isekai series.

Overall, this is an enjoyable show. The elements of Isekai that make them bad are mostly absent -- I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't have a big prejudice against the genre.

There’s nothing sweet about the show nor about his reincarnation.

Let's be honest, at first, we surely thought this anime would be that slice of life isekai, where the mc is making pastries and sweets in another world. Just like the "Parallel World Pharmacy" but with sweets and pastry, and with the MC opening a bakery or sweet shop. But sike! It's actually "How a realist hero rebuilt the Kingdom!"

While I don't hate the show for what it was, I can understand why others dislike it for this very reason. The actual story was relatively decent, but it seems to be diverging from its initial ... premise. After all, the show is called “Sweet Reincarnation” for a reason. We were expecting a cooking and baking show centered around pastries and sweets, not another politics and war isekai.

It's a slow burn show with an okayish pace. The worldbuilding is present, although it's a bit shallow in every aspect. Nevertheless, it's better than any other current or previous generic isekai. As we progress through the episodes, we get to learn more about the geopolitics, magic system, and war, all of those funsies details slowly build up.

Strangely, this anime reminds me a lot of “Ascendance of a Bookworm,” but it lacks the unique charm that Honzuki has. In Honzuki, the story is primarily focused on Myne/Main, the main protagonist, and we intimately follow her struggles and journey to make a single sheet of paper for her dream of becoming a librarian. However, in this anime, it seems like the story revolves more around the people surrounding Pastry, the main protagonist. While he faces similar struggles to Myne, every time he tries to pursue his passion, it's constantly hindered by others, whether it's his father, his friend, his brother in law, or unnecessary diplomacy with other fiefs. For God's sake, let him cook for a moment!

All that aside, yet it still lacks baking or making sweets. For a show called Sweet Reincarnation it's incredibly lacking on those thing. I swear I could probably count how many sweets he's made throughout the entire series with just one hand. All I want is just one episode dedicated to making pastry/sweets and with Pas as the main focus, no politics, only sweets and pastries. Maybe a second season would bring justice to this anime.

Anyway to sum it up, it's a fun show about a patissier that reincarnated in another world although slightly a bit lacking in the pastry/sweet department. If you are looking for a foodie show, this is not it. If you are looking for another generic isekai that is slightly better than the others, this would be perfect for you.

Maybe the real sweets were the friends that he made along the way. Seriously, his fiancee's name is Licorice.

Dying from sweets? That's unique...but retracting to the "copy-paste" Isekai formula that's plagued the AniManga industry for years now, that's a lowbrow, bruh.

It's just sad how many authors thought they have a unique premise to the ever so saturated Isekai genre, but forgetting that the premise has to be backed up with the plot, and that's where the entire work is doomed even before the work could get an upstart. Yet, this is exactly the scenario for novelist Nozomu Koryu's only work that is Okashi na Tensei a.k.a Sweet Reincarnation, a perfectly average work that got its start in Syosetu in early 2015, and then ... spawning with the LN with 24 volumes ever before the anime got its start. And yes, if you're thinking of giving this anime a go, please hear me out first before you do so.

So first up, I'm going to spare you the pain of watching a rather mediocre Isekai: this anime describes the VERY definition of the word "misleading" at best. Yes, it features patissierie...food like sweets and pastry to be exact, but most of the time, it's stuck to the very same tropes that we the audience have been and now suffer from in Isekai every season, and Okashi na Tensei is clearly no different from the rest of its contemporaries. Moreover, I'm just sensing that Japan sure doesn't care, and by some perchance, makes the trick to propose old works that only will see anime adaptations years down the road, only to forget that Isekai is the safe cash cow that will make profits even if losses are predicted beforehand.

That said, what Okashi na Tensei does well in is its simple plot of a reincarnated adult-turned-kid who wants to run a business selling sweets, and surprisingly, its characters, whom of which many are references to real sweets in life. Though I will say for the MC that is the bright kid of Pastry Mille Morteln: "Boy, you're in the wrong show! If you want to really make sweets, join Anne from Sugar Apple Fairy Tale, and you two can become child prodigies together to make sweets and build a sweets empire together!" Aside from the copy-paste repeated plot that has Pas (name in short form) fight for his lowly Morteln family by ascending to the likes of bigger kingdoms like the Hubarek family, forcefully getting engaged to the children (because that's a thing that the adults will capitalize on to build the next generation) with names like Petra and Licorice, yeah...give your children unique names so that you can have a sweet marriage when they grow up, I see your game there, ah hah? Aside from the adults having names like Pas's father Casserole, the caveat is that you'll have to see all of the usual BS like kingdom politics and family infighting, not to mention arranged family marriages, just to see the plot progress for Pas to finally make baby steps in his venture to create his sweets kingdom.

It feels like the patisserie segment is only a piece/slice/share of the pie while the usual Isekai tropes are just slathered everywhere else being the filling of the pie, almost like a bonka (apple) pie that is not filled enough, or if it has a bad taste due to the wrong mixtures of fruits and spices. The baking takes at most 5 mins, while the rest of the episodes are all your usual Isekai shtick, and that should say something about either if Nozomu Koryu was a clown or a genius that he/she managed to fool his/her audience into thinking that: "If you want to see some real sweets baking, please read my work...and I promise you that as much as you love reading Isekai and put up with all of its nonsense, the sweets will come and make your time worthwhile." To which I say, it's total BS, it's clear which parts of the story makes the entire work profitable, and it's definitely NOT the sweets portion that makes this show and its original source material, the way it is.

Everything else surrounding Okashi na Tensei is average at best, from SynergySP's art and animation, and even to the music, which I've definitely heard better from sajou no hana (given that it's only Sana), and YuNi's ED is just...kinda annoying to hear after awhile.

If you want shows that aren't complete white lies to its premise, try Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi a.k.a Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill, which I still believe is one very recent show (from Winter 2023) that sticks its guns better, or even Isekai Shokudou a.k.a Restaurant to Another World, which is a rather soothing good time of an Isekai/fantasy show. It's just a shame that all of the Isekai BS we've seen and tolerated for years now, it's happening to unique-but-not-so-unique works like these that has got producers and directors thinking that they have a small gem, but they're diamonds in the (literate) rough.

If only I rather not take this show at face value, then it's a pretty decent show, all things considered. But when you have something like "Sweet Reincarnation" in the name, it's anything but sweet, a total flaccid waste of time.