Forum - View topicINTEREST: Short Story Contest Bans 'Traveling to an Alternate World' Fantasy
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2126 |
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Thanks! I thought it was something like that; I remember reading it in a blog post.
Really, really, really not an applicable comparison. It's one contest that's barring the single most overdone genre in Japanese amateur fiction today. Everyone's still free to flood SnN with their I-died-and-am-now-a-magic-vending-machine stories. Heck, this year, one of them got a paperback release after four months. The whole point is that they don't need a spotlight.
Don't waste your time. I've read like eight volumes and the story doesn't recognize this as bad behavior. He still couldn't be more of a creeper if he was green and hissed. Mushoku Tensei distinguishes itself from its imitators in how it takes its time getting to things, and maybe in how the in-story TUEEE justification follows some kinda internal logic (not that "anyone's magic would be as strong if they practiced that much as a toddler" is less artificial as presented), but at the core it's the same "try again with an intellectual head start on everyone else, use magic and also get a harem" fantasy. I mean, the moment it's mentioned polygamy is a thing (when the pregnant maid issue is resolved), you know where it's going down the line. Also, it basically blows everything up out of nowhere at the end of volume 2 because the author realized the story wasn't going anywhere. Total LOLWUT plotting. I mean, it does keep things going for several volumes, but it's like the premise of a whole other series got shoved in there. |
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Spike Terra
 Subscriber Posts: 359 Location: Maryland |
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Thanks for the advice, for what it's worth I liked the premise and from what I have read the world's backstory sounded pretty cool. |
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Amuris
Posts: 69 |
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Well, Mushoku Tensei covers a long period of time, about 25 years of his life, in detail, though 25 volumes. The point is that he starts out as a terrible person and grows out of it slowly by his experiences. I can't say he's ever punished or called out for being a creep. In a lot of ways, it softens, in others it's the same. At the very least, he doesn't feel disgusting at all as an adult, unless you count things like carrying your wife's panties with you so other women think your gross as...well...gross.
So, you probably won't find him creepy after he develops more, but it's a long enough story that 8 volumes in is still pretty early.
Your pretty early in. The antagonists are starting to gather but aren't displaying their roles or how they play yet. It isn't TUEEE because of the scale. The MC is only a big deal to the general populous. The conflicts in the story only revolve around the worlds strongest beings who out-class him. He isn't the type of protagonist that solves things with power either and he'll get most things done by asking for help. Anyway, he only seems strong early on because he isn't doing anything important yet. |
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stilldemented
 Posts: 232 |
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This is really about oversaturation of a certain genre flooding the market.
The biggest issue with most isekai stories is that they all have the same Chapter 1. If you've read enough of it, the only real difference is syntax and methodology from piece to piece. Neither of which are engaging enough to prompt someone whose read this story a thousand times to pump on through. A lot of it just ends up reading like obligatory genre fanfiction. It has gotten to the point where even the meta has been written to death. This isn't so much about restricting fiction as it is encouraging creativity. The market is saying that they've seen pretty much all they need to see from isekai fiction at the moment and challenging authors to write something fresh. So I completely understand. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Take back control of our anime! It is not that we dislike these fantasy worlds, it is just that we would prefer that more of them did not enter our anime series. We propose an Australian-style points system whereby (ad nausueum). |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14766 |
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It's just a rule of thumb for this contest against whatever current fad in order to be different.
It's like a fanfic contest with no vampires when vampires were the craze. Or TV execs asking for submissions that's not reality TV when reality TV was the fad. Nobody has a problem with those, so this shouldn't be an issue here. Though technically, the writers can still try to sneak it in - they just have to be extra creative about it, instead of being out-and-out obvious taking the easy way. So it forces them to think outside the box. |
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Chagen46
 Posts: 4377 |
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My problem with these kinds of stories is that they're just an unnecessary addition to a fantasy story. If you want to write a fantasy story... just write a damn fantasy! You don't have to do an isekai story.
I can understand the "it's easier to introduce the reader to the world if the protagonist isn't from it" angle, and the desire to do a fish out of water scenario, but you can do that in a regular fantasy too. Just have the protagonist hail from a different land--a novel I'm reading currently does that and it works fine. |
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Amuris
Posts: 69 |
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speaking of which, I always liked Star Ocean's method of storytelling. They avoid the need of introducing an amnesiac or offworlder for exposition by including the fine details of things in a glossary. You can get the general idea of what the characters are talking about and the world from their conversations. If you want to know more, read the glossary. That way, they can have more appropriate protagonists. Star Ocean 4 was another galaxy trotting adventure where earth was ruined and they were looking for a new home using tech they learned from another race of homeless aliens. The mc was the captain of one of the exploration ships, rather than some clueless kid that needed everything explained to them. ...maybe writers should try alternate forms of exposition, rather than "mc ask a bunch of questions because he don know shet." Of course, I think the real problem is that most of the writers aren't skilled enough to write a mc that differs too much from themselves, so they all have to a guy with all their own traits. |
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Alabaster Spectrum
Posts: 528 |
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Friend just pointed this out to me. I'm both amused and surprised that any publisher in Japan would try to limit this trend in any capacity and agree it's gotten ridiculously played out now. It basically just shows they're trying to be a little more serious about making this a writing competition CHALLENGE and not just a purely commercial thing. Honestly didn't know Japan had that in them anymore, especially the publishing industry.
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