Forum - View topicWhat's the Point of Isekai? The Cultural Implications of the Genre
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murgleis1
Posts: 44 |
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Great article. Just reiterates why I like Re:Zero so much - it plays a lot with tropes but still tells a compelling story and also pointedly criticizes the very type of "fan" described in the article. Anyone who has been following the anime or Light Novels knows what I'm talking about.
This also makes me look forward to Mushoku Tensei (Jobless Reincarnation), the OG isekai that all of these other stories keep ripping off. It has a great story underneath all the power fantasy silliness. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2529 |
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While the writer seems to want to convince the reader that this sort of fiction has been abundant and has been around literally forever by repeating that multiple times, there is no evidence given. I'd counter that he/we are talking about this now rather than someone having done the same in the 1800's is because this sort of fiction has literally exploded in the last decade or so in terms of volume. It must mean something then right? And indeed it does but that goes beyond just acknowledging that it is popular and came from a fanfic website. Let's talk about what has happened in the last few decades that has left a vast number of people feeling as I mentioned that has fueled the rise of this genre. Otherwise, OK article on the popularity of isekai... |
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Hal14
 Posts: 674 Location: Heart of africa |
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Escapism isn't answered by just one genre. For instance, in western media superhero fiction has and still is a large source of escapist media. Idk, if superhero fiction was ever big in the east but it has definitely reduced like a lot of other anime genres that possessed escapist themes, and nature abhors a vacuum. |
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AsuraTheDestructor
Posts: 466 |
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Tappei Nagatsuki has even said that he's indebted to Mushoku Tensei himself, and that he's been a fan of the series for a long time. |
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1378 |
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Interesting article. ANN has been doing a wonderful job finding interesting viewpoints to present in video form with this series.
It's very nice to see someone track something like isekai to a major source like the "website you've never heard of but have probably seen something adapted from", particularly in service to the question: "in what context was this created in, and what were the circumstances of the creators?".
Isn't the preview image in the ANN banner from one of those "reincarnated as a slime" shows? And the youtube preview image is from the Rem-and-Ram show, I think? |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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The original preview picture here was from Princess Connect. |
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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I think it's a bit of a mistake to see the Gary-Stu-ish storylines of most iseikai and immediately assume that its presence is due to the reader wanting to fantasize about being that character without exploring other factors:
The structure of isekai makes it hilariously easy to come up with a compelling concept, as all you have to do is come up with some assumption in JRPG's or other isekai and then flout it. The "power that seems useless is actually OP" is the most obvious example, but there's also the whole subgenre of finding different types of characters to send back in time, such as yakuza and totally-not-Golgo. That appeal lasts about one chapter, at which point the author needs to keep escalating (often by skewing the "useless" power to the point of being generic omnipotence) and come up with some sort of appeal beyond the premise, which is usually T&A. Most of the writers are amateur hobbyists. While amateur light-novels are generally written with more external motivations than fanfic (being written to appeal to an audience rather than be the author's own wanking material), there's still the lack or experience and seriousness, and some of the same lack of the ability to resist the appeal of just writing themselves into the story to dominate and live out fantasies. This often arises in the now-what phase mentioned in the previous issue. Supporting these alternate explanations are how many of these stories are dropped around the third chapter with comments about how the premise sounded interesting but was immediately made irrelevant and the story became generic pap and the most popular isekai being those that torture the main character or send Truck-kun after a different type of character from the usual otaku. Supporting the conventional explanation is how frequent the main character completely blows everyone's mind with very basic Japanese cooking (almost always fried rice, as I don't think the Japanese know about pilafs and hispanophone dishes), often with the isekai not even having much of a food culture to speak of. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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It’s actually “syosetu.com” (I tested syosetsu.com to see if it redirected but it gave me an article from The Mirror instead, for some reason) |
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H. Guderian
Posts: 1255 |
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This is very simple, yet the article takes many paragraphs to get down to it.
We're told X, Y Z matter in our lives. We see it not pan out. So we wonder what really does matter? Picking up someone out of one world and dropping them in another is the perfect test bed. These shows often heavily rely on the protag stopping and assuming how he/she thinks should apply to the old world. If we're all being taught useless crap, let's put the characters in a setting and see what stands up. Does operating a smartphone actually have any value? How do our modern priorities overlap or contrast? Often times as much ass the modern protag bring back something neat from the future, the people long ago or far away have a corresponding rustic lesson to teach. In short, Isekai is asking if modernity is worth it? We've had these trends before. Kids pilot robots because they bring their idealism to struggles of cruel logic. Each in turn must adopt part of the other to survive. I'm not going to do a series by series breakdown as variants will hold up in all cases. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 2529 |
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For instance, science fiction can be escapist (literally physically travelling to another world) but it can also be used to reflect on and highlight aspects of the current state of our world by way of contrast. Iseaki has been used in those ways too but the recent trend to postulate worlds that are patterned after computer games and frame the "gamer" protagonist as the best, most powerful and generally most capable in that setting I think speaks more to aspects of individual psyche. Superhero fantasy can be used in a related way by having the audience insert protagonist be physically more powerful, capable, valuable to society, etc. And boy, has Marvel demonstrated how that has caught the popular imagination in recent times. Personally, I'd be interested in an article that actually considers why SciFi/Superhero/Isekai and the ilk have grown so much in recent times, how they are related and what they imply about the condition of society. |
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