The funny part is the way Isekai is used now has been around in Japan for decades, but even going further back the old school Isekai were just an adoption of a style do story telling from eastern European stories into a Japanese style.
Those old eastern European stories go back hundreds of years. It’s funny to watch tropes people think are new in anime show up in old ass stories from like the Ukraine region decades before anything remotely close showed up in manga or anime.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I did not know it was a show either, yeah ok I’ll check it out!
Yeah I also find it strange that isekai is treated as like… any kind of a new thing.
Maybe some precise or specific mechanic of ‘magically/technologically transferred into an entirely new world’… is somehow some kind of distinct thing…
But like, humans have been telling stories where someone is moved into an entirely different realm, that plays by different rules, and those rules basically transform them directly… for quite a long time.
Alice in Wonderland?
Tron?
The Wizard of Oz?
Dante’s Inferno?
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court?
Peter Pan?
… and that’s just ‘western’ stories.
Its like literally the archetype for an escapist fantasy story.
Not trying to knock the genre by any means, its wonderful to have tales that give you a kind of fundamental ‘the world could be different’ sort of idea… but it is silly when people act like its some kind of groundbreaking concept.
darthelmet@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I think the distinguishing feature of the newer “isekai” genre is just how trashy they all are. :P
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Well, its possible to do an isekai story without also doing a harem story, but, given the birth rate crisis, I guess it makes sense.