By the Grace of the Gods

神達に拾われた男 (Kami-tachi ni Hirowareta Otoko)

5.6(1)

OtakuDen

7.0(132,363)

MAL Score

Ranked #5094

Popularity #1106

Fantasy
Slice of Life
Isekai
Iyashikei
Reincarnation

Episodes: 12
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Oct 4, 2020 to Dec 20, 2020
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Living alone deep in the woods, young Ryouma Takebayashi spends his days in peaceful seclusion, nurturing an unusual collection of slimes. Though still a child, he’s remarkably strong and shows an exceptional affinity for magic—gifts granted after three gods reincarnate him, offering a fresh start after a difficult former life and a single wish: to finally appreciate life’s small wonders.

Three quiet years later, Ryouma’s solitude ends when he comes across a band of soldiers and helps them care for an injured companion. Grateful, they invite him to accompany them to a nearby town and pay a visit to the local ducal household. Accepting the offer, Ryouma steps beyond his forest home and begins discovering the wider world for the first time.

Otaku Consensus

By the Grace of the Gods succeeds when treated as a deliberate comfort-isekai: Yuuji Yanase’s direction and Maho Film’s gentle presentation favor routine, kindness, work, and found-family warmth over escalation. Its strongest appeal is the rare isekai adaptation that makes slime research, service work, and emotional recovery feel like the point rather than the downtime. The recurring criticism is equally clear: viewers looking for narrative momentum often find it too slow, too frictionless, and overly protective of its protagonist.

Why You Should Watch

Watch By the Grace of the Gods if you want an isekai that removes the usual stressors: no grim survival loop, no revenge fantasy, no constant boss-rush plotting. It scratches a similar itch to Flying Witch or Restaurant to Another World, where the pleasure comes from systems, hospitality, craft, and people behaving decently. The appeal is unusually specific: slime taming is treated less like a battle gimmick and more like a practical science, while the “Work” and “Found Family” elements give the show a steady, domestic rhythm. If you enjoy fantasy worlds where economics, service labor, and small acts of competence matter more than power-scaling debates, this is one of the cleaner 2020 examples of iyashikei isekai.

Key Characters

R
Ryouma Takebayashi(VA: Azusa Tadokoro)
Ryouma is the rare isekai lead fans discuss less for dominance than for emotional gentleness, practical curiosity, and the almost therapeutic satisfaction of watching him turn monster-taming into useful everyday work.
E
Eliaria Jamil(VA: Yuuki Kuwahara)
Eliaria functions as the show’s warm social counterweight, giving the series much of its found-family texture without forcing the story into high-drama romance or rivalry.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Maho Film’s adaptation commits to an iyashikei tempo, using low-conflict scenes of work, care, and community-building as the core experience rather than as breaks between action set pieces.
2
The series’ AniList tag profile is unusually telling: Isekai and Magic both sit at 91%, but Found Family is nearly as prominent at 90%, signaling that the emotional structure matters as much as the reincarnation setup.
3
Kazuyuki Fudeyasu’s series composition emphasizes repeatable routines and service-oriented problem solving, which is why the show is often praised as cozy and criticized as slow for the same reason.
4
Hiroaki Tsutsumi’s music supports the comfort-anime identity with a soft fantasy atmosphere instead of pushing for epic adventure cues, matching the show’s slice-of-life priorities.
5
Its reception is sharply tied to expectation: positive reviews call it enchanting, endearing, and soothing, while detractors focus on the lack of major conflict and the feeling that everything resolves too easily.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: The anime ran for 12 episodes from October 4, 2020 to December 20, 2020, placing it in the Fall 2020 season as a compact single-cour adaptation.
Fun fact 2: The source is credited to Roy for the original story, with Ririnra credited for the original character designs; the anime’s character designs were handled by Kaho Deguchi.
Fun fact 3: Yuuji Yanase directed the series, while Kazuyuki Fudeyasu handled series composition, a pairing that shaped the adaptation around calm episodic progression rather than aggressive plot compression.
Fun fact 4: On AniList, the series holds a 68/100 score and 1,735 favorites, while MyAnimeList lists it at 6.95 from 132,363 votes, reflecting a widely watched title with a dedicated comfort-viewing niche rather than broad critical consensus.
Fun fact 5: The credited production team includes Satoshi Shibata as art director, Aki Watanabe as color designer, Yukina Nomura as director of photography, Masanori Tsuchiya as sound director, and Hiroaki Tsutsumi as composer.