this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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This is a way for shitty writers to justify infodumping in their story. If your main character doesn't know shit about the world he just got put into, you can justify every other character dumping a huge load of setting and world building down his ear canal. Instead of, like, trying to mix that info naturally into the story, which also avoids the "as you know, John..." trope (where character A explains something to character B that they already should know), but requires effort and skill on the part of the author.
I suspect there's also lots of demand from people that are stuck in the same routine for years and like to day dream that something exciting is going to happen in their life sometime.
The first isekai a lot of people were exposed to was Sword Art Online which, initially, had closer ties to the real world with a scenario that could (in theory) actually happen. Most recently, though, most isekai have abandoned the "it could happen in real life" angle, leading to crazy farfetched stories.
I hate to say it but one of the most recent ones, about the MC coming back as a vending machine, is really good.
Also Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain 1889 and John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs 1911.
...what? Is this a real thing???
Yep, it's basically a meme considering how absurd but it's pretty good, nothing ground breaking though
https://myanimelist.net/anime/52619/Jidou_Hanbaiki_ni_Umarekawatta_Ore_wa_Meikyuu_wo_Samayou
I'd say the first things I've seen with the concept were probably stuff like Neverending Story, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and possibly random cartoons long before that.
For Anime, Fushigi Yugi and Escaflowne I both saw before SAO. Maybe Dual! Parallel Trouble too.
I tend to count stuff like .Hack and SAO as VR not isekai myself, as your body doesn't really get stronger in the real world, and usually your life in the real world isn't as affected either. For the ones who have that pining for a real adventure, I prefer permanent changes to "it was all a dream or might as well have been because their are no material changes."
Some people forget isekai is pretty old. For late 80s and 90s kids, Digimon and Inuyasha are isekai (well Inuyasha is closer to portal fantasy but isekai on its own is a sub branch of that).
Hell, Spirited away is isekai, and i can bet most people watched that before SAO. SAO just happened to be the most popular isekai at the time that isekai became mainstream and abundant.
It is a wish fulfillment fantasy most of the time, that's why I really appreciate series which go out of their way to deconstruct that aspect of the genre, like Re:Zero or Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari. Especially Re:Zero, which shows what would actually happen if you put a shut-in NEET loser otaku into a fantasy world.
Just play video gamea like the rest of us losers.
That reminds me of Hideo Kojima’s writing. So much exposition and info dumping in his games. And a lot of it is just non-sense. I think he learned that style of story telling from reading manga. In comics and manga speech bubbles are cheap while drawing action scenes is expensive. hence the over use of exposition in manga. Lots of Japanese writers think you can copy that style of writing for the screen. Even Japanese live action movies are often like that.
Something really annoying is that they make an isekai, in it they could make anything in their new world, right? 95% of the time it's the most generic, cookie cutter mmo fantasy world with levels and game mechanics.
Another things is when they spend sometimes multiple chapters explaining the most obvious things, like there's an adventurers guild, it had the same rank system as any other isekai, they probably get their power level measured, etc etc.
It makes me sad, because there are good isekais, but most of them are just really lazy.
Is this connected to the larger whole media/fiction obsession with multiverse writing? As that's the popular trend these days.