Since Solo Leveling is such a popular and straightforward fantasy action anime, it’s easy to compare it to similar titles to see what either one does right or wrong, or better or worse. Some of the comparisons might catch fans off guard, such as stacking up Solo Leveling against Campfire Cooking in Another World With My Absurd Skill, but the comparison works. There aren’t many dungeons or fight scenes in Campfire Cooking, but that’s what anime fans love so much about it.
It’s true Campfire Cooking is a proper isekai anime while Solo Leveling is only loosely similar to isekai, but this isn’t about which series does isekai or fantasy the best. What makes Campfire Cooking the best isekai-style anime of 2025 in Season 2 is the fact that it presents a more charming, meaningful, and refreshing view of masculinity in anime. Both of these anime star male leads are quite powerful and skilled in what they do, but it’s Campfire Cooking that will actually make anime fans feel good about it.
Campfire Cooking Shows a Male Provider, Not a Violent Power Fantasy
Some anime series are ready and willing to refine, tinker with, or even subvert or question traditional depictions of both masculinity and femininity. To be sure, modern anime are slowly and surely rethinking the role girls and women play in fiction, particularly in shonen, where girls can be much more than token love interests or excuses for raunchy fan service. The likes of Nobara Kugisaki, Power the fiend, and Ochaco Uraraka are at the forefront of this gradual paradigm shift, and it’s a robust topic worthy of discussion. The depiction and handling of female characters is always worth discussing, but the male half must not be overlooked, either. It’s tempting to think manhood and masculinity are already figured out in anime, doubly so in action anime, but that simply isn’t true — and Campfire Cooking proves it.
While there’s no need to harshly shame Solo Leveling for this, it’s true the anime takes the easy route by reducing masculinity to sheer action and bold, emotionally blunted dialogue as Jinwoo Sung shines as a badass aura farmer. There’s nothing particularly terrible about Jinwoo, and fans may commend him for fighting for the sake of his sister and mother, but the fact remains that like too many other male leads, Jinwoo expresses masculinity almost entirely through action or destroying things. Such stories make fans think of the male gender as the violence gender while femininity is the exclusive domain of support and healing, but the boundaries are not so rigidly defined, nor should they be.
Just the way more and more anime girls are taking up arms alongside the boys as worthwhile action stars, more and more men are showing a far gentler, more nurturing side of masculinity, one that needs to be seen even more often. Campfire Cooking didn’t invent this concept, since plenty of male characters in other manga and anime also express themselves as non-violent nurturers. In the recent context of 2025 fantasy anime with isekai flair, though, it’s Campfire Cooking and its male lead Mukoda who show that being a real man is about lifting others up with domestic skills, and not just fighting monsters.
This is refreshing and important on many levels, such as how Mukoda’s focus on cooking and the power of friendship gives fans a break from constant action in male-led fantasy or adventure anime. There’s an underrated need, and indeed a sometimes overlooked longing, for capable male leads who exercise their masculinity and their own personality or goals through non-violent, selfless, and nurturing actions. Case in point, and to justify Campfire Cooking’s title, Mukoda is a man who leads the anime entirely through his cheerful efforts to treat Fel, Dora, and the others to delectable food as he cooks and serves anything he can imagine.
Other fictional and real men have made a name for themselves as cooks before, including Soma Yukihira in Food Wars!, but the Food Wars! anime is competitive cooking coded as shonen action, while Campfire Cooking is a more meaningful story of a charming man whom everyone respects as a gentle provider. It’s a refreshing change of pace, to say the least, and may also set a good example for viewers. It’s simplistic and possibly problematic to suggest men and boys can only be valid as fighters or self-absorbed lone wolves, but it’s inspiring to show how real manhood is about supporting a biological or found family in nurturing — and tasty — ways.
Campfire Cooking Checks Some Underused Boxes in Isekai and Fantasy
Mukoda is cooking with Sui the slime nearby.Image by studio MAPPA.
Another angle to describe the delights of Campfire Cooking is how the anime approaches the familiar isekai formula in off-beat ways. The fantasy setting in Campfire Cooking and the idea of chef protagonists are both familiar in anime, but they don’t often overlap as they do in Campfire Cooking. Anime fans have seen other isekai where the lead has an unusual skill or mission, such as Myne making her own books in Ascendance of a Bookworm, but cooking is universally loved and respected, since everyone needs to eat — and often love to. That makes Mukoda’s culinary adventures in Campfire Cooking such a strong angle for how an ordinary fellow like him can make a name for himself in a realm where monsters and fantasy heroes are the rule.
Fantasy is more often about defeating the demon lord, powering up as a hero, saving the world, and other “big picture” approaches, but there must still be room for the gentler pursuits. Cooking and food are often afterthoughts in fantasy aside from jokes about hobbits wanting second breakfast, but Campfire Cooking and its kin are built differently. In this anime, fighting isn’t necessary or even desired, but the world of cuisine is a ripe stomping ground where Mukoda may shine in ways that Rimuru Tempest and Ainz Ooal Gown cannot. It may also be part of the reason why the loosely similar anime Delicious in Dungeon is such a hit right now, with these anime viewing monsters not as ways to level up, but as ingredients ready for harvest in a new kind of escapism adventure.
Dining and Cooking