In another world with my smartphone

It’s what it says on the tin, guy dies and gets reincarnated in another world, god apologises for accidentally killing the guy and lets him bring his smartphone (With fully functioning calling and internet capabilities) into the new world.

This one is very heavy on the harem aspect, they haven’t actually done “it” yet though so it’s just a harem lovey-dovey adventure, though I have to admit I really like how the main guy defeats some of his biggest threats by spamming a spell that makes them slip.

*** Kumo desu ga, nani ka?

Classroom explodes and the main girl gets reborn as a monster spider inside a labyrinth/dungeon, she has to survive by eating other monsters, get used to her new form and the new morals and ethics that come with it, eventually topple the dungeon, leave it and meet the rest of her classmates who had been reborn as humans and become heroes.

This is actually one of my favourite light novels as well as one of the first I ever read, it's got a sense of humour that I adore for being just right and not too overbearing while also nailing the character development (if only I could do that…), also it actually has a plot twist that I for one didn’t see coming at all, in a good way.

The new gate

Okay so imagine something similar to sword art online (stay with me, they skip all the doom-n-gloom and poor harem making) but after beating the final boss and clearing the game our main guy instead finds himself in a real deal fantasy world with all his skills from the game as well as some new ones for killing the big bad from the game world.

Focuses a bit on the exploration bit, main guy is really over powered compared to your average dude in the new world, it’s not a harem story, main guy gets a proper relationship with one girl.

Takarakuji de 40 oku atattanda kedo isekai ni ijuusuru

Main guy wins the lottery and gets 40 million yen, uses the money to buy and old house from his parents only to find out that one of the doors is connected to a cave in another world, he then meets the locals and tries to help improve their lives while being confused for the previous person who came through the portal and became deified.

Fairly standard world improvement story, all the stuff he brings from his own world is super effective in the new world.

Dungeon defense

Super smart and manipulative guy beats a dungeon crawling game, the game then asks the guy a question, “What happens next?”. The guy answers that the world will end due to the mana from the dungeon master (demon lords) dispersing and is then thrown into the world of the game as one of the demon lords, specifically the weakest, guy then has to use his wits and skills at manipulating people to survive, climb the ranks of the demon lords, wage wars, and maybe try not to get all of the demon lords killed to save the world if he’s in good mood.

Legend

Guy gets summoned to a fantasy world by the fantasy world’s version of him that happens to be a pretty big deal, the two then fuse their minds into a body made by the fantasy guy, summons a badass pet griffin and an edgy scythe weapon as he explores the world, helps people and does fantasy stuff.

*** Legendary moonlight sculptor

Main guy is the top player of a vrmmo but has to sell his account in order to repay some loan sharks, he gets a fuckload more money than he expected but still has to give the loan sharks all of that extra money as well, he then creates a new character in a new game and uses his experience as the #1 player of tons of vrmmos to climb the ranks of the game and find loads of hidden things, fuck around, earn tons of money and do a lot of things that fuck other people over in the best way possible.

Main guy is super fucking incredibly greedy, will trick people any way in order to make money in the game which can be turned into irl money, takes care of his sister (they’re both orphans) and we get to see all the hidden stuff in the game that only someone with the main guy’s greed and determination would be able to find.

*** Spirit migration

We find a spirit waking up inside a dungeon, the spirit has amnesia and no idea who it is, the spirit finds out that they can posses the monsters living inside the dungeon and starts exploring to further their knowledge, eventually leaves the dungeon and starts traveling with a group of humans.

Not really giving it justice with my explanation, but trust me, I really like this one.

*** Dungeon Seeker

Okay, remember when I said I didn’t like too many gruesome depictions in my LNs? Remember how I said there was an exception? Well this is the one.

Main guy gets summoned as a hero with a bunch of others (possibly his class, don’t remember), due to various reasons the main guy is seen as unfit to be a hero and is sent to a village to live as a villager however is soon tricked into becoming a tribute to the local dungeon.

A dungeon where the first monster you encounter has the same difficulty ranking as the demon lord.

The dungeon employs the strongest and most deranged monsters and the most efficient and deceptive psychological traps, in order to survive here our main guy has to become even more deranged and sadistic than the god that made the dungeon as he descends deeper and deeper, tricks all the way-too-overpowered monsters, breaks through the traps and sometimes meet with the broken husks that were the dungeons previous delvers.

If you’re faint of heart this is not the story for you, but if you’re into the way the human mind and psychology works this will be very interesting.

Death march

Main guy is a programmer who falls asleep while programming a computer game only to wake up in a fantasy world, better yet he’s even got the developer items that were only going to be temporarily added to the game as a way to test if everything works. Nothing big, just a few scrolls that summon meteor showers (which he accidentally uses and ends up killing the dragon god and his entire civilization with, instantly getting him to somewhere level 300) and a few mapping scrolls.

Since this LN focuses on the whole “Discovering the unknown” I can’t really say much more without spoiling a bunch of stuff, but honestly there’s not much more to say, if you don't get the gist of it by now I don’t think you ever will.

***Re:monster

I’m pretty sure tons of you know about this, I mean, I’m pretty sure this is where the whole “Re:____” naming thing even started.

Main guy lives in a world where people have super powers, his is to get stronger when he eats stuff as well a learn to do things that whatever he ate could do, now in a normal world this doesn’t do much unless you’re willing to partake in cannibalism however when the main guy get’s killed by a yandere (I think?) and gets reborn as a goblin(probably where this started as well) in a fantasy world where monsters exist it becomes one of the strongest abilities ever.

Lots of gore and sex.

***Tensei shitara slime datta ken

This is probably also one that lots of you know about, we’ve probably all gone through a phase where we actively sought out slime reincarnation stories at some point, and this I would say is definitely the most successful and famous of the bunch.

Starts off with the main guy already dying, joking about how he should be a great sage due to being a 30yo virgin as well as wishing he didn’t have any blood since he was dying of blood loss, due to this he is reborn as a creature without blood, a slime, with a skill that greatly improves his growth and magic prowess due to claiming to be a great sage.

Main guy/girl/thing then walks around the cave he found himself in, meets a locked up dragon that he absorbs inside himself to release it from his chains (he doesn’t kill the dragon, the dragon comes back out later as a friend), discovers he can get skills by eating monsters and starts exploring the new world, meeting friendlies and un-friendlies, waging wars and making a giant city.

***Lazy dungeon master

Main guy gets summoned to another world by a dungeon master after the dungeon master won a raffle, however due to a mistake with the contract that the dungeon master forced on our main guy the main guy instead becomes the new master of the dungeon.

“What a pain, I just wanna sleep…” pretty much sums up our main guy as he not so much struggles to survive as he struggles to keep a comfortable, rich and lazy life despite all the heroes, demon-lord wannabes and superior dungeon masters that keep coming and rudely interrupting his sleep.

***Knights and magic

Main guy works at an office and is secretly a huge mech/gundam fan. Main guy dies and gets reborn in a fantasy world that just so happens to have giant magic powered mechs. Main guy starts training in magic from a young age so he can enroll in a school and become a knight pilot thing, however after discovering that due to him being only half the height of everyone else in his class he is unable to find a knight robot that fits him he decides to learn how to make them himself.

*** Tate no yuusha no ariagari (The rise of the shield hero)

Main guy gets summoned to be a hero in a game-like fantasy world along with three other, each of the heroes has a different weapon with our main guy getting a shield. Things seem to be good however shield bro is soon betrayed by the royalty that summoned him due to the religion of their country saying that the hero of the shield is the hero of the demi-humans and this world is completely racist against demi-humans. Shield bro now has to use hiw wits to survive in a stramge world with no one backing him as he has to gather enough power to survive the plots from the royalty as well as attacks from monsters.

I said before that I don't really like stories that try their best to make the life of the protagonist be a living hell however this is an exception as it's not afraid to let the protagonist actually win every now and then, and later on be able to take revenge on the people that wronged him in a proper way. Not really thinking I'm doing a good job at explaining it but TL;DR this LN does a fucking great job at being incredibly satisfying to read, every time that shield bro won or succeeded I felt legitemately happy.

The man picked up by the gods

Main guy finds himself in a white room with a god saying that main guy has died and that he'll be rencarnated into a world of magic, due to various reasons main guy eventually finds himself living alone inside a cave while studying slimes and their evolutions while using various of the different kinds of limes to improve his living conditions, such as putting a certain type of garbage eating slime inside his toilet etc.

Eventually a group of people find the cave he's inside, and subsequently him, and he decides to tag along with them back into civilisation with his slime (numbering a couple hundred I think) where he becomes a beast tamer/adventurer/bseiness man as he uses his slimes to create various kinds of stores.

Also when he met other people he realized that he was in fact very much better at magic than everyone else.

Oh, and also he has most of the gods o this world on speed dial.

Much like almost everything else on my list this is a chill reincarnation story of a guy that can go through life easily.

Tsuki ga michibiku isekai douchuu

Main guy meets one of the many gods of earth from japanese culture and is told that he hs to go to an alternate world as payment from his parents after they fled from that specfic world some twenty years ago.

Main guy agrees since if he had said no one of his sisters would have been picked in his place. (and also due to how nice the god was) However after arriving at the new world and meeting up with that worlds goddess he is thrown away into the wastelands by the goddess due to being "too ugly" for her, this is when he starts his journey to survive, which is very easy for him since he was given a couple of powers by the god from earth as an apology for having to go to another world.

He then meets up and joins forces with a dragon that can read peoples' memories and become a periodic drama otaku from seeing our main guy's memories and a giant immortal regenerating spider and many, many more.

I know the premise starts out like one of those perma-suffering stories but surprisingly it isn't enough to make it unreadably, imo it's just right.