Forum - View topic

The Mike Toole Show - Old School Isekai

Lol, I always thought Aura Battler Dunbine was about a heroine named Dunbine, like Battle Angel Alita or something. Actually, it sounds interesting now... I might finally have to check it out.

Why do today's anime fans considered isekai a new thing now when the genre has been around for decades? It's just baffling.

This is yet another time where only looking at the anime side of things gets a really good quality manga-only series overlooked with From Far Away (which Viz did put out in its entirety! But is now OOP Crying or Very sad ) The amount of time Noriko spends in the real world before going off to the fantasy world is approximately as long as we see Subaru spend in the real world before he gets moved to the fantasy world (it's like, 3 pages, maybe less). But From Far Away also addresses something that I feel like a lot of other isekai gloss over: Noriko, our magic heroine from our world, literally cannot speak the language. Viz's translation did a great job showing this as her speech gradually gets better over the course of the series, which I think is pretty awesome. Noriko also has zero super powers. She's prophesized to bring about the downfall of the entire world, but she doesn't want to and has no idea how to stop it either. What she DOES have is a genuinely nice attitude and personality that is infectious. She's a genuinely likable character that you want to root for, and damn, if that doesn't feel rare enough sometimes! And she has good chemistry with Izark, the main guy (who is also a sky demon, prophesized to end the entire world), who starts out cold (though not a jerk, a distinction that I feel like a lot of series fail at), but you know they're going to be the main couple in the end anyway. But fortunately, they progress slowly and organically. It's just a really good isekai series with two really good main leads that deserves to be read more!

Lol, I always thought Aura Battler Dunbine was about a heroine named Dunbine, like Battle Angel Alita or something. Actually, it sounds interesting now... I might finally have to check it out.

Isekai is as old as dirt. Or at least as old as Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland Some people seem to think isekai is something new, or has to be based on a light-novel to be considered an isekai. Chances are a lot of haters love isekai stories, they just don't consider them isekai.

There is only one heroine in Dunbine, and her name is Marvel Frozen.
What did Tomino mean with this name is left up to the interpretation of the viewer.

Really, most of the blame for that falls on Watase herself (and/or the publishers) for keeping the manga going past an obvious/natural conclusion point. Volumes 14-18 had a strong tacked-on, quasi-fanfiction feel to them, and that's what the first two OVA series were based on. If the manga had ended at Vol. 13, AKA the end of the TV series, it wouldn't have been that much of a loss. Eikouden, otoh, was the true anime-original travesty of the franchise.

In the book, a Yankee engineer from Connecticut named Hank Morgan receives a severe blow to the head and is somehow transported in time and space to England during the reign of King Arthur. After some initial confusion and his capture by one of Arthur's knights, Hank realizes that he is actually in the past, and he uses his knowledge to make people believe that he is a powerful magician. He attempts to modernize the past in order to make people's lives better, but in the end he is unable to prevent the death of Arthur and an interdict against him by the Catholic Church of the time, which grows fearful of his power.

A nerdy teenager finds a "green meteorite" and puts it in his rock collection. During a lightning experiment, the orb hurls the boy into the world of Neverwhere, where he transforms into a naked, bald-headed muscular man called Den, an acronym for his earth name, David Ellis Norman. After getting a nearby article of clothing to keep anyone from seeing his "dork" hanging out, Den witnesses a strange ritual, rescuing a nubile young woman who was about to be sacrificed to Uhluhtc. Reaching safety, she introduces herself as Katherine Wells from the British colony of Gibraltar. While she demonstrates her gratitude with sexual favors, they are interrupted by the minions of Ard, an immortal man who wants to obtain the Loc-Nar for himself. He orders Den to get the Loc-Nar from the Queen, who performed the ritual. Den agrees and infiltrates the palace, but is promptly caught by the Queen, who offers leniency if he has sex with her. He complies, thereby distracting the Queen while the raiding party steals the Loc-Nar. Den escapes and races back to rescue Katherine from Ard. Recreating the lightning incident that drew him to Neverwhere, he is able to banish Ard and the Queen. Den's voice-over has him suspecting that they were teleported to his mom's house and she will be surprised. Refusing the opportunity to take the Loc-Nar for himself, Den rides with Katherine into the sunset content to remain in Neverwhere. As for the Loc-Nar, it rises into the sky and lands on a space station where it is picked up by someone.

Another aspect I don't like about them is the ones where the misplaced character wishes to return to drab old home instead of the wonderful new world, the "Oz" conundrum.

I was always meaning to get into Red River too, but at the time it was hard to find copies of it, being a longer series and the older volumes went OOP pretty fast, it seemed. I was always surprised when I saw the "EXPLICIT CONTENT" stamp on it, since well, Fushigi Yuugi sure had a lot of stuff that really pushed those boundaries (for a western rating, that is). Did you ever check that one out? I was always curious on how bad it actually got, to deserve that rating.