The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

The Forsaken Saintess and Her Foodie Roadtrip in Another World

Rin Takanashi is a working adult, around thirty years old, who is into camping and tabletop role-playing games. She was summoned as a saint to another world with a beautiful high school girl, but her "Motor House" (Camper Van) and "Survival" skills were deemed garbage by the prince, and she was instantly exiled. Rin discovers that her skills are actually useful in special environments, and she decides to continue her hobbies of solo camping and cooking in the other world. Using her skills to summon her dream camper van, she sets off on her own foodie road trip and meets wonderful companions along the way.

The Forsaken Saintess and Her Foodie Roadtrip in Another World is based on the light novel series by author Yoneori and illustrator Akane Nitou. The anime series is streaming on HIDIVE on Mondays.

This premiere was… OK. I like the idea of having a fantasy Isekai that almost immediately has none of the tension of one. This series isn't about a grand prophecy or taking out the demon king. If anything the opening minutes of the episode go out of its way to establish that the protagonist Rin is sort of just here by mistake and along for the ride. Her casual demeanor about being trapped in this world looks like it's shaping up to be a slice of life camping anime in a fantasy world. I will give the series credit that it is at least a little bit more original then what else is out there, even if it does still fall into a lot of familiar territory. I could see myself watching this over half of the shows that I've already aired so far.

The way that Rin's skills work regarding survival and sensing things has a lot of practical applications. Her just camping out and doing things for the love of the game is cute and keeps the stakes relatively low. Plus, I like the developing relationship that she seems to be forming with Ville. The idea of driving an RV through a fantasy series is a very funny visual and really hammers home the fact that a lot of these grand epics are kind of trivialized by the most convenient of modern day technologies. This is a series that's probably on the same level as Reborn as a Vending Machine without being as ridiculous. I could see this as being a cozy time and I definitely wasn't bored by it, but I definitely wasn't impressed by it either.

To be perfectly clear right up front, there are only two words in the title of this show that I give a damn about. “Another World” is one of the prime red-flag phrases that alert me to incoming slop of the most tedious order. The “Forsaken Saintess” trope is one that I would honestly be happy to never see out in the wild again; I would even be happy if we could at least get a solid ten year moratorium on sappy Cinderella stories about the poor meek girl who gets bullied by all of the nastiest meanie-weenies in the whole-wide world. The “Foodie Roadtrip” part of the title, though? That, I can get behind. Food is great. Road trips are fun. If The Forsaken Saintess and Her Foodie Roadtrip in Another World can just prioritize the one aspect of its premise that doesn't instantly inflict me crippling heartburn, then maybe there is hope for the series, yet.

One major relief is that our protagonist, Rin Takanashi, is not the quivering waif that the “Forsaken Saintess” part of the title might imply. This is more one of those situations where Rin got isekai'd to this generic fantasy world and was immediately dumped by her summoners since her powers were no good, which has left her with plenty of free time to just amble around the countryside and enjoy good food. We've seen this exact same setup before, but whatever, I'm just happy that we didn't have to spend an entire episode watching Rin get dumped by her boyfriend, locked into a cupboard by her wicked stepmother, and tarred-and-feathered by her secretly evil twin sister. It's a real shame, though, that the “Another World” element of the series is just as lazy as with 99% of the isekai anime being made today. You'd think that fantasy authors would actually want to create an interesting and unique setting filled with all sorts of crazy and impossible sights, but the anime industry would have you believe that most fantasy fans actually hate the concept of creative world-building.

Anyways, the point of this series is clearly just to give our generally likeable main character the chance to drive around her magical Winnebago with her new “draghoul” friend, Vil, and that's a decent enough hook for The Forsaken Saintess to work with. The pair make for a cute duo, with the both of them having an easygoing chemistry that is genuinely pleasant to see unfold in their little chats about camping, cooking, and life in a fantasy world. The OP makes it clear that plenty more friends will be joining up on this road trip, so I'm curious to see if the supporting cast continues to work so well together.

I had a hard time knowing what to rate this episode, honestly, since it doesn't excel in very many ways beyond the dynamic that Rin and Vil share. The art is okay. The direction is workmanlike. The music…exists? I think? I'm inclined to give it a flat two-and-a-half stars, since it doesn't come anywhere close to satisfying my foodie instincts as Iron Wok Jan! does, but because our heroes do make for a decent pair of pals to chill out with for twenty minutes, I'll throw in an extra half-star. Why not? Some of this season's isekai are so goddamned terrible that I feel obligated to reward the shows that don't have me despairing for the state of the human as a species.

Somehow this episode has been spying on my sister and I. Deep into our combined Stardew Valley and British murder show phase, we joked about a farming sim where you could fish up a dead body. That's basically what protagonist Rin does right off the bat here – she's happily trying to catch tasty milk trout, when instead, she reels in a limp male form. Forget raining men, she's fishing them.

He's also not dead, which is a good thing even if it ruins the in-joke. Vil is simply starving and half-drowned, and Rin can handle that, because she's both an incredibly competent human who worked as a caretaker and because she's been summoned from our world to the fantasy one this show takes place in. Probably my favorite thing about this episode is that we get all of the isekai nonsense over with in short order: Rin mentions she was summoned and then summarily dumped because a cute high school girl was summoned at the same time. Now she's hanging out, doing her favorite thing, which is camping, and enjoying the sweet survival skill and magic camper van that were her isekai prize. It takes about five minutes, total, and I am here for that.

While I wouldn't call the rest of the episode “thrilling,” it's also a nice change from the usual fare. Rin is an adult with the ability to take care of herself and a willingness to just roll with the punches. Vil is sympathetic to her plight, delighted to have met her, and happy to explain anything that needs explaining without condescension. I know that “nice” is a mealy-mouthed sort of word in this context, but that's what this show is. And I have to say that I probably appreciated its niceness more than I ought to have – there are no power plays, mewling heroines, or cartoonishly evil bad guys; just two adults doing their thing and hanging out. Plus the theme songs assure me that there'll be a cat with wings, and I'm very excited about that, and not just because of the Ursula K. Leguin books.

So long story short: this is a nice episode. The characters are likeable and not too bland, the powers aren't stupid, the isekai patter wrapped up quickly, and there will be a flying cat. You could do worse.

It's badly animated slow life isekai slop… for women! That's right, The Forsaken Saintess and Her Foodie Road Trip in Another World runs in B's-LOG COMIC, which has 99% female readership of an average of 22, per Wikipedia. There are plenty of isekai with female protagonists, including this season's All Works Maid, but most of them still run in publications aimed at a male audience (other than the occasional villainess series). Finally, we get our own anodyne, unimaginative fantasy wish fulfillment for ourselves. Yay?

The nicest thing I can say about this show is that it eschews most of the nastiest tendencies of the genre. It doesn't have a mean bone in its body, focusing instead on Rin chilling out in nature in her camper van that provides everything she needs to live comfortably outdoors. I also commend it for finding a way to make the exposition relatively natural: Rin catches a man on her fishing line, and the two talk about their situations. Imagine that! If there's a character who doesn't know what's happening, you can explain the plot to them and the audience at the same time!

Sora Tokui plays Rin with a degree of shrill pep that I suspect may drive much of the intended female audience away; she feels more like a mobile game character than an adult woman in a strange situation. She describes how she was teleported into the woods to die without a trace of upset or shock. She's also incurious about the world, since she doesn't seem interested in what's happening outside of Vil's party makeup, but maybe we'll get to that later.

I doubt there will be much “later” for me, however, because I was bored stiff the whole episode. EMT Squared, the studio behind the eye-burningly garish I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons, has missed once again. The animation may not be the least competent of the season, but the character design has a doughy quality that makes it hard for me to buy Vil as an attractive man. Considering this is a food series, you'd hope that they'd at least put effort into making the food look appetizing, but alas, the fish dishes featured in this episode looked more like they were carved from wood than an edible delicacy.