The isekai genre has taken a hit in recent years. For many, the term has become inextricably linked with storytelling shortcuts, male power fantasies, villainesses, and other tropes that have become so paper-thin from overuse that you can practically see through them. But older anime fans will tell you that this wasn't always the norm – without getting into an entire literary history of the genre (including portal fantasies), suffice it to say that in the 1990s, isekai stories looked a lot different than they do today. Many of them were aimed at a primarily female audience: Magic Knight Rayearth, Fushigi Yûgi, From Far Away, Red River, and, of course, The Twelve Kingdoms. And if you've read or watched any of those series, you'll know that 90s isekai often had teeth.

The first volume of Fuyumi Ono's seminal series The Twelve Kingdoms absolutely does, something that's only underlined by the fact that Seven Seas' new edition divides the story into its original two volumes. Tokyopop originally translated and published the series during its first incarnation, and their edition used the combined version to put the entirety of the Shadow of the Moon, Shadow of the Sea storyline into a single volume. Seven Seas' edition uses a completely new translation and features new illustrations as well, and while my copy of the Tokyopop edition was sadly destroyed during a flood, my assessment based on memory is that this is a better translation. But while the decision to use the single rather than combined editions may make sense from an economic perspective, it is undeniably a little frustrating that this book ends without any resolution whatsoever, especially since Youko is in dire straits throughout.

The story opens in our world, where high school student Youko is struggling through her daily life. Her naturally reddish hair makes her a target at her school (mostly of adults), her parents are incredibly strict, and she always ends up feeling less than. Her world is turned completely upside down when a strange blonde man turns up at her school, telling her that she has to go with him. Keiki is big on urgency and orders and short on explanations, leaving Youko more frightened than anything. She ends up going with him, but the two are separated, and Youko awakes to find herself washed up on the shores of a strange land. Eventually, she learns that this is the Kingdom of Kou and that, as an outsider (or Kaikyaku), she is persona non grata. She also learns that although people do wash ashore from her world, none of them have ever returned.

One of the greatest strengths of this book is the way Youko herself is written. While the worldbuilding is interesting and delivered without infodumps, the character writing for Youko does a remarkable job of showing her slow growth. Youko's not an indestructible figure laden with cheat abilities. She's a scared teenage girl desperately trying to figure out her new situation and to adjust her worldview from a student in a peaceful modern country to the outside in a largely Medieval land. There are dangerous monsters that will eat her and people who wouldn't think twice about killing her. She can't just call the police; she has to protect herself in ways that are uncomfortable – like wielding the sword that Keiki thrust upon her. The realization that she can't even pawn that job off on someone else because no one else can draw the sword only makes things worse.

This all means that while the plot of the book is Youko trying to evade those who would hurt her and possibly find Keiki (or anyone who won't turn out to be secretly evil), the drive of it is Youko herself. Her struggles move the action, her thoughts shape her experiences, and because she's such a typical teenager who never dreamed of being snatched out of her world and dropped into another one, the story has a very different feel from a lot of modern genre works. While I could see some readers finding Youko to be a bit much – she's scared and unhappy for most of the volume – Ono still makes her feel very relatable, especially when the reflections on her blade show her how her friends (or “friends”) and parents are handling her disappearance. In some ways, seeing them cope is the real trauma for her, because she's forced to see things she might not have suspected…or simply hadn't wanted to acknowledge. It's a crash course in growing up.

Youko's inner fears are vocalized by a mysterious blue monkey she sees outside of her visions, and this is probably the clunkiest aspect of Ono's writing. While the idea makes sense, the monkey head ends up feeling too on the nose as he taunts Youko. We already know that she's susceptible to outside pressure from the scenes of her at school and then her later betrayals by people in Kou whom she thought would help her. The monkey head isn't needed to drive this idea home, and even though there's a nonzero chance that he's a manifestation of her psyche, it might have worked better or just as well to have Youko having those conversations with herself as she appeared in Japan – which is rather different from how she looks in Kou, something that will be significant later.

Still, The Twelve Kingdoms' first novel is excellent. Although unrelentingly heavy, it sets up a fascinating world and characters, and the writing and translation are very good. Whether you read the old English editions or missed them, it's worth picking this up, because you don't have to be an isekai fan (modern or otherwise) to appreciate a book this good.