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This Week in Anime - Why Ascendance of a Bookworm Refreshes the Isekai Genre

Gina Szanboti wrote:

maximilianjenus wrote: then it got to the child concubines I don't know about the novel, but in the anime there are no "child" concubines. Even the panel they used in the article showed she said "after my coming of age ceremony." Coming of age means she's old enough to be deemed an adult, so that's all yet in her future. Not that the arrangement isn't still shitty, but all things considered, she could do worse, since she'll be able to have her own shop and pursue her primary interests, and be alive. I think we're so conditioned in this culture to shield children from even knowing about the existence of sex, that people leap to the conclusion that since she's aware of concubines, she's going to be hauled off to the noble's sex dungeon tomorrow.

You realize that the coming of age ceremony is at the age of 7?

It's really awkward the way the kids have to be both so young and also so mature at the same time to meet the demands of the plot -- like it makes sense that Main is a little girl so she has the freedom to work outside the medieval system for a while, but then Lutz has to act like an adult all the time because he needs to be a reliable support to her, and then there's even some pseudo-romantic tension going on there which gets just a tiny bit weird when you remember that she was a college student and he's 6 years old...

One site i occasionally go to for reviews even claimed Darwin's game was an isekai. Of course, they also called Danmachi an isekai.

To me, the odd thing about the extreme proliferation of (the stricter otaku variety of) isekai is that, fundamentally, many of them don't need to be isekai. Take, say, Reincarnated As A Slime, just because it's one of the few I've watched. What does the reincarnation part add to the story? It let them do that scene where he showed the girl who coincidentally also came from Japan her country's future, and allows for some gags involving a blue blob having the hots for humanoid women. And it's an excuse for why he has special superpowers, but not a particularly good excuse; they could have come up with something else. That's about it. That Wise Man's Grandchild one, going by the synopsis, is a story about an orphan baby taken in by an old wizard, who grows up and goes to magic school; except, oh yeah, he was sent here from our world, a detail which seems totally irrelevant.

To me, the odd thing about the extreme proliferation of isekai is that, fundamentally, many of them don't need to be isekai.

Which only means that just because they anime studios pumping Isekai like mad, that does not mean we can pile them up on the "same old, same old" bin.

@EngineeringNerd, regardless if your info is secondhand or not, I would like to ask you to refrain from posting spoilers, as there are a lot of light novel readers such as myself who really want to stay blind going in. The official translation is only in the middle of Part 2, so posting spoilers beyond that would be rather disrespectful.

When I started reading the "review" it sounded like apoor man's mushoku tensei, then it got to the child concubines and main dying and it sounded like a decent clone of it instead. The conflict about recognizing her new family soudns just like it too So I will eventualyl give this a try, most likely soon since the winter season is pretty weak.

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Which only means that just because they anime studios pumping Isekai like mad, that does not mean we can pile them up on the "same old, same old" bin.

I mean. We absolutely can.

hypercapitalism.

That's how well grounded isekai works; bad grounded isekai has a 20+ years old otaku acting like a highschooler, while in medieval style worlds kids should be forced to mature much younger. A similar work has the kids infancy last until they are 5 years old (if theyare lucky) so then they have to start helping around the house/working, that's ignoring that in htier earlier years they were getting trained for their job (learn cooking, to take care of animals, etc...).

I guess isekai is a very different experience if you get started with novels/manga than if you get started with anime, hence why people get so freaked out with slavery.