Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Maybe It's Isekai (Maybe It's LitRPG)
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 868 |
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"Flum Apricot" seems like it came from the Yoshiyuki Tomino School Of Silly Names. I'd need to know Milkit's last name (if she has one and/or when she takes one) to see if she really qualifies. I'd almost say that the characters in The Villainess Is Adored by the Prince of the Neighbor Kingdom are also trying to qualify but they all cross the bar of "just too silly". There's an art to it, where it has to make you go "this is both ridiculous and does not fit in the world at all", and maybe add some gratuitous English to boot.
Anyway I think the real shame of the isekai/LitRPG boom is how damn similar all those settings are. I mean, I get that Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (and other RPGs) are insanely popular (and perhaps even more popular in Japan) so it works for the unfortunate "my life sucks but wouldn't it be cool if I could live in a video game?" theme that a lot of them have, but there's so many other settings that people could get isekai'd to. Like, I know I'm the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire! from last Spring wasn't everybody's jam, but it felt like a damn breath of fresh air just for sticking it's protag in a sci-fi setting. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2561 Location: Online Terminal |
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I'm glad someone else thought that Roll Over & Die was using Robot Show names.
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Rinhime
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There are a lot this season and I'm not gonna say most of these are good, I did think Easygoing Territory Defense and Noble Reincarnation had entirely different vibes even in just the first episode even if they were as they said very similar setup, especially in episode 2. Noble Reincarnation has a more serious politics vibe while Easygoing Territory Defense is well, a lot more easygoing and silly (outside of the "well I guess I'll just exile my son instead of killing him" scene). Also the slavery stuff felt unnecessary but I didn't think it was a "skin tone" change was an actual change, rather just a dirty boy vs a clean one.
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1769 |
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Now that you mention both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, I think DQ is still incredibly popular in Japan, while Final Fantasy's popularity has decreased, but now that I'm thinking about it, the majority of these iseaki and LitRPG take place in a typical Europe-inspired fantasy world, very reminiscent of Dungeons & Dragons, which itself was somewhat popular in Japan, we have to remember the existence of Lodoss War and the fact that the first Final Fantasy game was practically an unauthorised D&D game, I truly believe that there's an overabundance of fantasy-inspired anime these days, I'd like to see an isekai that takes place in a more futuristic world, and if were talking about JRPGs, maybe they could take some inspiration from other games like Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy VII and VIII, but I guess the appeal of iseaki is that you get transported into the past, to a more mundane world with little to no technology. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 5149 Location: New York |
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The fact that isekai wish fulfillment stories continue to flow like water off a fall speaks to a lot, which is probably why the Masters of the Universe movie is going to be a straight up isekai, since that’s how they expect to reconnect a brand with that modern audience.
You’d think such a genre after all this time would at least invite more twists on the formula. Granted, copyright laws kept that one guy from making the isekai equivalent of The Boys last more than a single chapter (arguably May I Ask For One Final Thing? does a similar deconstruction without indulging too heavily in shallow parody) but the settings are very similar and the archetypes are similar. Which may be something MOTU has going for it. The isekai protagonist ending up on a world of super tech and magic crashing together like a 10 car pileup at least gives the power fantasy a different feel than a stereotypical medieval fantasy setting. |
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sirdano1
Posts: 352 |
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It's been around for over 15 years, the isekai genre has become a staple of anime genres, it's not going away just because you don't like it.
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 868 |
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I don't think anybody's complaining about the genre (well, okay, some people are), they're complaining about how stagnant it's gotten. Like this column makes the joke of with Noble Reincarnation, with like half of them, you can count the seconds until a stat screen pops up. It's just new twists on "I am in a video game and my stats are cracked as hell so now I'm awesome" (I think I'm just a few words away from an actual LN title  ) and even the ones that aren't technically isekai tend to be in a fantasy world where the MC has some sort of cracked stat that makes them super-cool. We are in an anime boom where more shows are being produced than ever, yet every season you can bet on a significant portion of those following an easy to follow (and perhaps worse for viewers, easy to predict) template with just enough tweaks to avoid outright accusations of plagiarism and that's disappointing.
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2553 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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This is why I keep this item in my reaction images folder.
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 3117 |
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I will just add that easy going territory does get into bae building pretty hard on e he arrives to the place,.they should have pulled a youjo senki and started with that chapter then flashback to the genetic birth/banishment sequence. And also,it is very easy to tell it apart from the other ones once Panamera enters the cast for two huge reasons.
Well someone already mentioned evil lord of an intergalactic empire, there's also mobuseka, though that one feels a bit more medieval even though it also has mecha and flying ships, must be the lack of space travel.
There's Isekai serial killer to which is just that, the heroes have gone out of control so the goddess reincarnates a serial killer from earth to take care of them. It's even getting subverted with the likes of Isekai giant oneesama.but most of that is manga/on only. |
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Beatdigga
Posts: 5149 Location: New York |
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Hehe. It’s true though. There’s nothing wrong with the setup of going to another world or time period. It’s a trope older than steam power. But for every Aura Battler Dunbine, Magic Knight Rayearth, or hell, The Black Knight or Alice in Wonderland, there’s at least a few dozen stories based on a stereotypical JRPG. It’s predictable and that makes them boring. Take the premise and do more things with them outside of that one stereotypical setup. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19142 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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There Was a Cute Girl in the Hero's Party also deserves some credit for not going the harem route. By the end of episode 3 there's already at least three entirely independent wannabe-romances brewing. I also like the attention it pays to the aftermath of the "Hero's party defeats the Demon Lord" scenario. The only knock I'd throw against it on the storytelling front so far is that it might actually have been a better concept if it wasn't an isekai. (But I guess that does easily explain why the protagonist had so little racial loyalty.)
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meiam
Posts: 3674 |
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Personally, I'd settle for them actually playing a JRPG, their grasp on basic JRPG mechanic are really poor beyond some vague notion that there are skill and those can have number associated. (iirc the guy who wrote sword art online even admitted to rarely playing game) At this point it feel like the medium is just endlessly feeding on itself, with every popular work spawning dozens of copy. Kinda like what happens when AI start ingesting AI content and throwing out slop. |
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Joe Mello
Posts: 2561 Location: Online Terminal |
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I think there is that but also more. The 13 shows talked about in the column are part of a season slate of 72 per ANN's new season tile page, so in a season where you basically have to spend at least 3.5 hours per day to watch every show, nearly one in five shows are of this genre. It's a large enough pool that if you had cut, say, three isekai from the production slate, not only would the audience not notice, the time and resources that would have been spent on those three isekai could be reallocated to other projects or just saved for later. How many isekai do you think One Punch Man fans would sacrifice to make this past season tolerable? It's a bloated, overworked genre in a bloated, overworked industry. |
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