/a/ - Animu & Mango

Obviously someone needs to deconstruct the Isekai genre.

>We have had mass saturation of genres before. Trends follow the money and all that. But it seems so much more common now that i will visit any scan agreggate site and not a single week goes by without at least 3 new manga with a synopsis of beginning with "MC was a salaryman in the normal world but died and god made him a cheat powered hero!".

New web novel authors start, because they are inspired by popular light novel authors.

The new authors create such a mass of new Isekai that there are bound to be some new "decent" ones every year.

This in turn leads to the web novels being published as light novesl, receiving a manga adaptions, and in some cases getting an anime adaption.

It's an endless cycle. It will only end when there's a new light novel trend, or all Isekai start to flop.

I don't know if there are too many Isekai series, but what I could say is that there are too many Isekai series that aren't good.

The only good one I've seen so far is Konosuba, and soon we'll have Rise of the Shield Hero which is the best revenge born/healing manga I've seen in years.

I don't think there is.

I think that the problem is too much wish-fulfillment isekai, too much "Taken from boring life to another world where I conveniently have all the answers for everything and everyone loves me because reasons" stuff. Shallow shit that's hardly new but has found a new outlet and is infesting it hard.

And of course the worst bit of this is that it directly causes a decline in straight fantasy, particularly when the isekai frame narrative is completely redundant.

>>777887

Doesn't Konosuba already do that?

>>777937

I don't know if Konosuba deconstructs the genre, but is the only good one so far.

Isekais are only good if they are comedies.

>>777937

It's not so much deconstruction as straight-up comedy just using isekai as a base.

It's also one of the only isekai that does pretty much everything right.

>>777937

Konosuba started as a parody of isekai and made fun of all the overused tropes in the genre.

Question, the manga about a jobless guy dying, being reborn into a fantasy world as a girl and becoming the best magician just to be transported back to japan the right momment she was killed on her first life counts as an isekai?

Just readed the first chapter. Was it fun?

>>777940

The game that is based on the setting even got an official translation before the LNs.

>>777937

Konosuba is actually the only isekai anime I've watched. All the other isekai shit that I love is manga or novel. I've heard, from other anons, that some other isekai anime are bad. I wouldn't know. They should just read the manga. It's better.

>>777936

>too much wish-fulfillment isekai

>too much "Taken from boring life to another world where I conveniently have all the answers for everything and everyone loves me because reasons"

This.

The problem isn't isekai, the problem is the writing.

Compare your average modern isekai with The 12 Kingdoms or almost any older isekai.

Modern isekai are almost all JPRG worlds with stats, levels, classes, etc., the writers put no thought into the world building or in consistency, the MC gets everything without any effort, etc.

One of the things that bug me the most is that almost all modern isekai take place in not-Europe but the writer has no idea how old European society worked.

That and "muh evil church and muh oppressive humans". It's boring when good writers do it but when bad writers do it, it 's just non-stop cringe.

>>777945

That's the sad thing. It would be nice if the Neptunia LNs are translated.

>>777953

I would like a Scifi isekai that takes inspiration from The Last Starfighter.

>>777887

The problem with most isekai is that it's nothing but wish fulfillment. They don't know how to make proper conflict for the OC, he gets everything he wants and is very powerful. Granted, there are some exceptions in the isekai department. Konosuba is a good example of isekai. Also, The Devil is a Part Timer is an isekai in reverse where the beings from the fantasy world end up on Earth instead.

>>777940

>>777945

It's funny how so much isekai get translated by LN fans, but the Neptunia LNs get neglected. We need someone to take part in translating them.

>>777957

A Scifi Isekai would be a breath of fresh air to the genre. Just remove the jrpg aspects of it.

>Still no Isekai where the MC plays as a priest/paladin

>At most we get MCs who literally just have all classes

I'm tired.

>>777957

I never really considered it before, but it feels wrong for isekai if the same laws of physics apply to the destination world, which would logically be the case if you were just picked up and transported to another galaxy in the same universe.

>>777880

We're at the ends of the Isekai Era already, chill out.

>>777887

>Deconstruct

Konosuba.

Also, things don't need to be deconstructed, but saturation alone can kill their Era.

It happened with the previously Harem Era, it's happening to the Fräuleinbund genres as well (Touhou, KanColle, Kemono, etc).

It's a matter of saturation. Next and best question is "what's coming up next?".

>>777995

Maybe a series with no girls and just boys doing bro things like Cromartie.

>>777995

>It's a matter of saturation. Next and best question is "what's coming up next?".

There's a decent chance that the next light novel trend is going to be medieval high fantasy.

It's not much harder to write than Isekai, and can contain the exact same elements without any issue.

>>778005

>Everything I read

*Every time I read

Fixed.

>>777980

That's basically just Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

>>778008

Would stuff like Macross or Gundam count as scifi Isekai?

>I was just an ordinary student until all of a sudden I had to take refuge in a spaceship and now I'm traveling through space fighting a war against impossible odds

>>778005

>Also, aspiring authors need to write bad fiction in order to learn how to write good fiction.

As an aspiring author, I agree with this notion. At the same time, I'm not sure if Japan is the healthiest market for self-improvement.

People like to emulate their 'biggest success' and rarely stray very far from the thing that brought them fame and fortune, and since the Japanese will throw fame and fortune at actual garbage, promising authors are likely to (and are already) emulating actual garbage.

Also,

>Everything I read a chapter of Ascendance of a Bookworm, I want to write a list of all the problems with it.

D&D ruined Japanese perceptions of historic Europe and derived properties like Dragon Quest don't help. I've been pleasantly surprised that Ascendance of a Bookworm has at least vaguely fleshed out the setting with historical properties, even if it comes together to make something painfully ahistoric.

>>778012

>I'm not sure if Japan is the healthiest market for self-improvement.

>People like to emulate their 'biggest success' and rarely stray very far from the thing that brought them fame and fortune,

I don't think that this makes Japan different from other places.

>>778005

>The filter of time. We tend to forget the bad stuff.

I don't think that's all there's to it.

I honestly don't know any 1980s-1990s era isekai that were as terrible as the once they pump out by the truckload today.

I believe it's more likely that the pop literature industry in Japan wasn't big enough back then to allow shitty writers to get published, that and the internet didn't exist so no shitty self-published webnovels.

>Ascendance of a Bookworm

Ironically one of the best and worst of isekai.

It tries to be realistic and down to earth but the author has done no research to actually succeed.

I mean, the MC makes money by selling people what are essentially wooden sticks.

>>778012

>D&D ruined Japanese perceptions of historic Europe

It's not just Japanese perceptions, most westerners think exactly the same all peasants were poor, dirt farmers with only brown and dark brown clothes.

It's also not d&d's fault, this shit started long before RPGs existed.

>>777941

Even if you removed the "isekai" elements, Konosuba would still be fucking hilarious

>>777947

Not counting Konosuba, there's maybe 3 good Isekai's total depending on your taste.

>>778005

Your post is 90% correct, except that haremshit will exist eternal, ruining plenty of otherwise good concepts/shows.

>>778010

I think one of the hallmark features of isekai in the sense of

>I know something that nobody else does

And that really plays off and works well with worlds where technology is "earlier" than modern day: medieval fantasy The protagonist goes in and has all this common sense knowledge that we all take for granted, but applies it in some place where nobody has ever heard of it before and does great things with it. Kazuma "invents" the kotatsu, for example. When the world is "future", sci-fi, and everybody knows more than we do in modern day, the dynamic is really changed and the protagonist doesn't have that same role anymore. They go from an agent of change and progress to someone caught along for the ride. I'm not saying this is bad, infact it's classic to have an everyman that's just as lost about all the sci-fi technobabble as the audience is, but I don't feel like that embodies the isekai genre specifically.

>>778031

>the pop literature industry in Japan wasn't big enough back then to allow shitty writers to get published,

The 80s were the height of their bubble. They had money for everything. Their manga sales numbers easily eclipsed the modern numbers.

I'm not very familiar with anime/manga from that era, but I was told that the majority of the OVAs from the time had horrible writing.

>>778036

Although I just remembered the case of Demolition Man where "future sci-fi" was so liberal and cucked it took a no-nonsense shooty guy who wipes with paper to actually get anything done, so I suppose it's still possible.

>>778049

In the same sort of sense, there's the Replicators from Stargate. The advanced Alein race was unable to win any battles against the self-replicating machines until they started asking the advice of humans, because they aliens didn't have the "crazy" factor to make effective plans against them.

>>777996

>>777999

>cromartie

>medieval high Fantasy

So we're just going back in time ~20 years?

>>778061

Wait until I blow you mind by pointing out that GATE is just Stargate fanfiction.

>>778069

I actually haven't gotten around to GATE yet due to how shitty the anime looked and having a manga backlog that's like half of madokami.

>>778070

I liked it, but it's a show where there's only maybe 3 instances of the characters being in remotely any sort of danger. It's a lot of modern military absolutely shitting on fantasy armies.

>>778036

>but I don't feel like that embodies the isekai genre specifically.

You could always make the MC extremely well versed in "old" technology people think is too dated, then have their minds blown when he designs ships and makes perfect clones with outdated tech that they have been pursuing for decades with their fancy sci-fi magical rocks. Think of every common ability we can do now but all those science fantasy worlds have a hard time with.

>>778073

It's Japanese masturbating to how awesome their military force is. The novel it's based on had actual casualties for the Nips.

>>778079

>the novel it's based on had actual casualties for the Nips.

That would definitely have made it a lot better, but I did enjoy the pure cathartic joy of watching helicopters decimate an army of evil barbarians and shit.

>>778079

>You could always make the MC extremely well versed in "old" technology people think is too dated,

No need for any plotholes about old tech beating new tech either.

Introduce a resource shortage or a collapse of infrastructure and suddenly the old tech is incredibly useful.

>>778036

>common sense

>Kazuma "invents" the kotatsu

You see this is why most isekai fall apart unless they are comedies, then you don't need logic.

The writer has no common sense or knowledge about the things he's writing about when the entire premise is based on having an MC that has both.

Kotatsu for example were invented because of how Japanese houses are build, in a European setting this isn't going to be the case.

A good writer would make the modern or foreign common sense a hindrance and not an advantage. This way you can even make an overpowered character have hurdles to overcome.

>>777880

just me or "girl who falls from the sky and its not human fells in love with MC" genre is no longer being used

>>778036

One of the first major Isekai is John Carter, a series of novels and comics dating back from 1911 about a dude from Earth that gets teleported to Mars and because of lower gravity he becomes super strong. I haven't read the novels, nor the comics, but from the little that I saw it was part fantasy, part sci-fi. A more sci-fi Isekai, would be Farscape(quite a good show), about a modern day astronaut gets sucked into a wormhole and finds himself into another part of the galaxy and maybe even in a different time period and is in the middle of a galactic war between the Peacekeers, who are anything but keepers of peace, and the Scarlans(?). He is not smarter than any of the other aliens, and the show constantly makes fun of how weak humans are, but he has the human spirit which helps him prevails. He is also a huge geek, and will quote random TV shows or comic book characters, knowing that nobody else gets the reference. A scene that I like, is when he had to distract some space pirates/investors and he goes to them asks them if they ever heard of K.F.C. that John is one of the few people in the galaxy that knows all the 11 secret ingredients.and that rare information is very valuable. There's even an episode where John's alien allies reach Earth, and the show becomes a reverse Isekai.

>>778106

>Scarlans

Scarrans

Also worth noting that Crichton gained a "superpower" from going through the wormhole, which acted as the main drive for most of the plot.

>>778137

So just like Isekai anime. What did he get? I didn't get too far in the show

>>778140

Nothing from the wormhole itself, but because he had been through it a group of advanced aliens scanned his brain, sympathized with his plight, and implanted the secret of how to create wormholes into his unconscious. He spends most of the series trying to unlock that knowledge, while running from the villains who want to take it out with a ice cream scoop.

I'm pretty sure it also lets him sense wormholes and fly through them without turning into jello, but it's been a long time since I watched the show so I might be a little off on that.

>>777966

My main complaint is that huge majority of isekai novels lack any sense of narrative tension. You don't have to worry that the MC might screw up sometimes or that a story-important character suddenly dies in gruesome way. The exceptions like Dungeon Seeker are the epitome of edginess, so I can't win either way.

>>778277

How is the light novel for dungeon seeker?

>>778277

Re:Zero does narrative tension pretty good and the MC fucks up a lot

>>778106

You're forgetting the one that started it all; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. There's a couple things I've noticed that what Mark Twain did that these japs don't do:

1.The main character isn't layman but a proficient expert in a field.

In Twain's book the main character is a supervisor of a colt weapons plant. In short he's a shift manager of a machinist plant. Jin one of the few isekai manga i liked the MC is a brain surgeon.

2.The MC is mistrusted from the get go.

The MC get's captured by a knight and only by wit's (and a convenient asspull memory) does he escape excution. Only after with his skills from his trade that he gains trust and resources.

3.The MC is constantly fighting against other factions who believe that his craftsmanship is a threat to their power rather a 'demon king'.

This is more down to earth and makes the conflict a lot harder to solve instead of MC using his bullshit powers, since he is fighting society than an army. Because if he fights too hard the whole world will be against him.which is exactly what happened in the book and he lost

>>778342

The majority of media in the West that could count as Isekai typically has a justification or gives them a definite advantage then puts them in situations where they have to earn their fantasy ending. Den a Heavy metal story gives him this awesome body that would make any Anon from /fit/ proud but he's still forced to ally with someone equally as powerful as the antagonist in the movie and in the actual magazine and after when it spins off into it's own thing his inexperience as a boy gets him way over his head in many cases.

>>778073

What really made the GATE anime shit was when it stopped doing that too. The first cour was mostly

>evil bad guys show up

>military comes in

>completely wipes the floor with them

which was fine, nothing mind-blowing, but it worked.

Then the second half tried to be something else, the MC was dealing with daddy issues elf for half the season and fucked off on a trip, meanwhile the rest of the cast was doing shonen-tier politics while trying to manufacture situations where the army wouldn't have such a ridiculous upper hand.

>>777880

Isekai haremshit power fantasy is my jam. I'm the exact reason why this genre is still popular.

>>777887

A narrative deconstruction of a genre is to tell a story that pulls the tropes of that genre apart and puts them together in a way so that anyone who consumes that media understands the ins and outs of that genre. Not "do a dark and edgy version of that genre" the gormless idiots who pretend like the new Eva movies are any good like to think.

And with that definition, Isekai Smartphone is a deconstruction. A boring and lazy one, but a deconstruction none the less. By playing the tropes as strait forward and simply as humanly possible without any twists or wird hooks, you can watch/read it and know exactly what an Isekai is, and are able to point out what aspects you like or dislike in it.

Konosuba is not a deconstruction

Overlord is not a deconstruction

RE:Zero is not a deconstruction

They're Isekai stories with a twist. They do nothing to let you see how the parts of the genre work, only use those parts to tell a good story.

>>778426

Death March is the deconstruction. Every time the MC show up somewhere he looks up the map to quickly fix "demon lord under the city", "demon cults", etc... so he can enjoy his sightseeing tour and the local food during his vacation.

Every single one of the tropes in isekai are something I always wished for more of. I always wanted more of "guy like you and me is in MMO world out of sudden" and "hunting ugly monsters with cute girls".

But then isekai becomes the new hot thing and I fucking regret it, because it's mostly garbage.

>>778489

So all of this is your fault.

You monkey's pawed this shit. Your wish came true but in a terrible way.

>>778342

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was released in 1889, while Alice in Wonderland was released in 1865. Sadly I haven't read the book, I just saw some movie adaptations when I was little, all I know is that it has a cute girl in a magical land.

I'd argue that the first Isekai, would be Dante's Inferno.(14th century), unless the Greeks wrote Isekai as well.

>some dude wakes up in a mystical forest

>has to travel through hell

>he is guided by the Gods the spirit of the Roman poet Virgil

>he must defeat the Demon Lord Satan

>to reunite with his childhood friend Beatrice

Sure I am simplifying things a lot, and even if you don't want to consider Dante's Inferno an Isekai, Alice in Wonderland is older than A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

>>778610

In Norse tradition isekai was so common that they had to come up with a name for the creatures that were left in the place of their stolen children.

The term is "changeling".

>>778613

It's good to know that all eras want to escape.

>>778613

Changelings are just babbies/toddlers who've gone through a traumatic event, resulting in equally massive epigenetic change. Doesn't really have anything to do with isekai. t. Cleve

>>778644

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeling

>>778431

Death March is another deconstruction, not the only one. And at it's core it is only really deconstructing the super-powered and gre savvy badass yet still perfectly relateable to the target audience protagonist trope. It definitely doesn't tear apart the haremshit side of it the way Isekai does with the princess character just being all like "yeah, we're just gonna have to be his harem girls, deal with it".

>>778325

Nope. Because he is guaranteed to jump back to the last checkpoint every time something goes terribly wrong.

>>778281

Check for yourself. I don't like the setting, don't like the characters and don't like the MC. Lots of avoidable senseless violence for the sake of violence and overly exaggerated drama. I'm genuinely surprised that his romance arc with the thief girl Ami hadn't ended in extremely bad way yet.

>>778106

>>778342

Isekai as a genre has risen out of authors who have immersed themselves in (digital) RPG culture. Since it's a hobbyist, amateur, and startlingly new "genre" (only being formalized now, in the current era), it's associated with poor writing and shallow plot, taking the form of wish fulfillment.

Quag Keep as a book was written by an author who immersed herself in early (tabletop) RPG culture. Since the book was written from the position of a hobbyist, Norton let herself present something amateurish and novel, a book with (relatively) poor writing and a (relatively) shallow plot, taking the form of wish fulfillment.

If an individual of the year 2007, wanted to know what would go wrong with Isekai as a genre, the unfortunate pinnacle of wish fulfillment, they could have read a book from the year 1978 to find out.

>>778801

While it is true that most recent Isekais, involve game worlds, especially RPGs an MMOs, a parallel world doesn't have to be a game world in order for it to be an Isekai, as the word just means "other/parallel world". Hell, Inuyasha is an isekai, as well as all the examples of western Isekai that have been posted ITT.

>>778342

What is the name of the isekai with the brain surgeon?

>>778610

The Man Who Came Early by Poul Anderson was written as an antithesis to all the magic time traveler books like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The story boils down to a ww2 american soldier sent back in time to 10th century iceland and is basically a complete fuckup at just about everything. Despite being an engineering student he basically fails at all of his projects because he might know 20th century concepts and practices, but he doesnt understand the 10th century reality he is now in.

>>778882

I don't know about brain surgery, but Isekai Pharmacy has an expert doctor/chemical engineer.

>>778709

>It definitely doesn't tear apart the haremshit side

It sort of does sure his companions are all girls and they all want a harem, but he has nearly 0 romantic interest in them. In fact he seduces and has sex with other girls and even prostitutes. Then after a while he then find one girl he likes which isn't his companion (and he still go back to her every day since he can bend space, which his "harem" isn't even aware) and decide to be with her (hence setting on the path to become a god).

So yeah it has harem shit in it because it's a trope which the MC accepts halfheartedly (while repeatedly scheming on ways to NOT increase it) because there are worse fates than hanging around with beautiful girls all day...

It doesn't go all the way but it still does it.

>>778943

And now what's the name of that isekai with that one Spaniard taking out an entire civilization with a minuscule band of bros through technological superiority, germs, intrigue and the power of prophecy?

>>778951

Shingeki no Conquistador?

My Little Aztec Empire Can't Be This Cute?

>>778005

>Unless the existence of media items you don't like but are not forced to consume somehow comes with downsides for you, no.

It does have a downside for me though. If the only thing making money is Isekai, the only thing that gets made is Isekai.

>>779014

>If the only thing making money is Isekai,

Which is not the case.

> the only thing that gets made is Isekai.

Hence, this is also not the case.

Thus,

>It does have a downside for me though.

is a factually incorrect statement.

>>779020

Last year's seasons were dominated by isekai type titles.

>>778868

Frontier movies don't have to be Cowboys & Indians, they just tend to be because that's the most popular and archetypal example.

I pointed out Quag Keep precisely for this reason:

>most recent Isekais, involve game worlds, especially RPGs an MMOs

Even if there were precursors like A Connecticut Yankee and John Carter (both fantastic books), I think Quag Keep is probably the easiest comparison, falling into many of the same trappings that Japanese authors are throwing themselves into headlong. The rest are counterexamples, demonstrating creative or interesting ways to handle parallel worlds and even impromptu abductions, while Quag Keep is almost exactly what I'd expect when picking up a fresh new translated LN.

>>779027

If you mean to say that YOU only cared about the isekai type titles, then I can't argue with that.

If you really think that there was an overwhelming number of isekai type titles, then you need a reality check.

Daily reminder Re:Zero is shit, and the worst thing about it isn't Subaru.

>>778951

Now that is something I want to read.

>>778943

>>778882

Now that could be interesting to see, especially because, if I'm not wrong, japanese people were TOTALLY against surgeries and found modern western medicine barbaric.

>>778913

Nice job stripping the context out of the comment to argue past the point.

>>779035

I meant in terms of sales.

>>777981

I wish that a series had the gumption to have a companions that never understood the MC's language. I see it mostly in Manga but I'd like anime with truly alien settings and no universal translation handwave.

>>779091

>>779092

But can you truly consider it an Isekai if you still have to pay japanese property taxes for your shop?

>>779094

Can you show me those statistics?

>>779496

>a literal shitposting isekai manga by the writer of Teekyuu

I want it to become an anime right now. At this instant.

>>778069

It's not, it's a /k/ recurring thread: Cold War Infantry Company VS Roman Legion.

>>779632

> it's a /k/ recurring thread: Cold War Infantry Company VS Roman Legion.

Man, the austism on those thread must be legendary...

>>779676

Also the Japanese had violated the post war constitution in Gate. The plot and world building is heavily flawed.

>>779683

There is no legal or moral reason to adhere to a constitution that you were forced to sign under duress.

And aren't they changing it right now? I don't think it's as unrealistic as you make it out to be.

>>779784

After 70 years of that constitution being the basis for your legal construct, it is unwise to just pull it out from underneath.

Making amendments to it is the prudent course of action.

>>778610

I would consider it a reverse Isekai, as Dante has the least knowledge and must rely on those who are used to hell to show him around. The only thing he actually has is current news, which isn't much of a weapon over the damned.

>Is there too much Isekai?

I'm still in this world, so no.