"Ey, so we saw that these IP's are pretty popular, what if they collaborated with eachother so that we can give eachother exposure and we can make more money of from eachother?"

This mentality is nothing new to anime. The Fate franchise has been doing big collaborations for a decade now. Gacha games constantly collaborate with big IP's, even manga artists occassionally make chapters for eachother featuring eachothers manga characters. It is one of the most expensive and timeconsuming but most fanpleasing way to make money. It just doesn't cost money to create these collaborations, the licensing of popular IP's is very hard and expensive too. This is why we don't see full on collaboration projects like full-length shows or movies, these are mostly reserved for collaborations between IP's owned by the same company.

So one day, Kadokawa, a company with a stupid amount of IP's under its name thought: ".... oh we like money." And greenlit Isekai Quartet.

That's right, four of the most popular Isekais in anime ever, Konosuba, Overlord, Re;Zero and Youjo Senki, teamed up together to create one massive (?) collaboration anime. The plot follows all kinds of different characters from these four anime get teleported to school and are forced to take classes with eachother. With so many different kinds of colors of personalities together, ofcourse tons of hijinks ensue. The story stay mostly light, with brief moments of mystery about why the characters are all here.

Like my review description said, this anime is pandering as all hell. Characters intermingle and go off from eachother, and the cleverness of the comedy doesn't really evolve beyond what you would expect in fanfiction. There are some surprising matchups that work surprisingly well together, like Fiore and Beatrice. But in the end, the main characters of the four shows get the most screentime because, well, they are the main characters. And I personally really enjoyed the relationships between Kazuma & Subara and Ainz & Tanya.

Let's discuss serious negatives of this anime: When you ask the detractors of this anime, you will hear the main reason that they don't like this anime is because it is cheap and doesn't really take advantage of its premise.

The cheapness is definitelly hard to ignore. The artstyle is very chibi, a big departure from the 4 respective anime. Due to this simple artstyle, the animation is also really simple. Some actions scenes look alright, but this anime is far from a powerhouse in production, which is not really a bad thing. The main focus of this anime is its comedy and characters, so better production values would only distract from those aspects. What also feels cheap is the animes runtime, which is only half a full episode (12 minutes). For an anime with as much potential as this, only giving 12 minutes each episode really leaves little room to make all kinds of enjoyable interactions. I personally don't really mind this runtime, since making it longer would probably make the comedy fall flatter on its face.

Now for its potential, which in theory I think is not taken more advantage of. Interactions that could be gold, like the Emilia and Megumin interaction (both characters are voiced by the same person), are just not taken advantage of from some strange reason. Instead, the anime does less skits and more big stories, a problem that only gets worse in season 2. I also feel like the main cast of Youjo Senki is not fit for this anime. I love Tanya and I am surprised that the other Youjo Senki characters have some good moments (they are actually better then in the main show), but they feel so tame compared to everyone else, being mostly used to be the straight man in each situation.

You know, all these criticisms don't actually matter all that much. Because in the end: It is just amazing to see my favorite characters interact with eachother. When this anime hits with its comedy, those hits are multiplied by ten for just the neatness of having my favorite characters do them. I can actually compare this anime to Konosuba the most, with how it really feels as a sitcom at times (maybe that's why the Konosuba characters have the best moments in Isekai Quartet).

All in all, I love this anime, even if it is flawed. It is pandering as hell and the pandering works for me. If you enjoy any of the anime featured in this show, check Isekai Quartet out.