Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Are This Season's Isekai Anime Any Good?
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Saeryen
Posts: 964 |
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In the same vein, would you say PriPara and AiPri are also VRMMO (though idol VRMMO rather than RPG)? |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18399 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Technicalities. Overall, yes, SAO isn't a true isekai series, but its Aincard arc fundamentally is, and a case could be argued that its Alicization arc has both isekai and reverse-isekai elements. Besides, a title doesn't have to be part of a genre to have a big influence on it. For instance, Science Ninja Team Gatchaman wasn't a mecha or Giant/Super Robot series, but it still had a big impact on that genre. (It introduced the concept of combining vehicles, among other things.) |
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 537 Location: Poland |
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SAO may be cruel to secondary characters but MC rarely struggles, and quickly gets friends and hot girlfriend and a harem. Main may be happy, but AFAIK she's more like MaoMao from Apothecary Diaries - a weirdo whose priorities are different from average people. Naofumi gathers a harem and is powerful, isn't he? Isekai and other Narou JRPG-style fantasy - which I'd argue is better kind of name than falsely calling everything isekai just for having Narou male-oriented fantasy tropes - tropes mainly involve standard male power fantasy, if main guy gets harem and adoration of his friends and lovers, and his enemies are often ugly, dumb and comically evil, and eventually humiliated by the MC, then it's full of Narou tropes. |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1174 |
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I don't like talking about a lot about MT since I don't watch it, however, I wanna point out that Alice in Wonderland is, indeed, the most famous isekai there is and yes, John Carter is an isekai too. "Isekai" just means "Summoned hero", its a setting as old as the world itself, numerous are the histories of the hero who goes or gets transported to a weird place: The Odyssey, Gulliver's Travels, The Divine Comedy, Flash Gordon... name a culture and they will have a tale about the hero going into the Underworld either as a test or to recover a loved one. Old school "Hero's Journey" where the MC needs to proof his value, but isekai at the end of the day.
- SAO: Technically yes, but, no, the concept its there but at the end of the day its still a game not another world, besides, I am sure many people would like to be in Kirito's place with a hot rich girlfriend and a house in the middle of the forest next to a lake. - Main being happy here and there doesn't mean she is happy with her situation, by the end of season 3 she is a glorified recluse, unable to see her new family, sad because she cannot apologize to her OG mother and now she needs to become this rando's daughter and keep playing with the rich and powerful when she just wanna make paper and pizza and if she leaves she dies. - Shield Hero is 2 plots in one, is both an isekai and expelled from the hero's party and, quite frankly, neither is well thought, the fact that the writer needs to perpetually write the other heroes as morons in order to artificially create conflict says it all. |
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sirdano1
Posts: 301 |
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Yeah, nah, SAO isn't an isekai.
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Nipasu
Posts: 117 |
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I had to stop watching Re:Monster because it was making me uncomfortable.
7th Prince and the Villainess show Sentai is dubbing right are are okay. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11555 |
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Run faster?! Wouldn't that make it, you know, dead? |
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Piglet the Grate
Posts: 738 Location: North America |
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A really great isekai would involve ordinary people transported into a fantasy world where they would participate in an epic quest or similar extended plot line - oh wait, I just described Fushigi Yûgi which is the high point of isekai as far as I am concerned. |
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pip25
Posts: 175 |
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I fear we've been scraping the bottom of that metaphorical barrel for years now, actually.
This on the other hand made my day. Pure poetry. |
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Shay Guy
Posts: 2253 |
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This got me thinking of what I believe was the first big genre trend to take over the anime industry -- giant robot anime in the '70s. Mazinger Z starts airing in 1972 (very nearly 40 years before SAO S1), it's a smash hit, and within a year and a half the first of its imitators appears. And the peak of this phenomenon? During the second half of 1976, there were… drumroll, please… a whopping eight mecha anime on the air.
Yeah. Eight. And two years later, it was down to three. (Hell, before that, in May 1978, Toushou Daimos was the only one airing.) Gundam 0079 was only the 25th giant robot anime ever. That's what passed for a major phenomenon in the anime industry of the 1970s. And today, my Narou anime spreadsheet -- tracking a trend that started with Log Horizon in 2013 -- is up to over 100 anime that have been released over the past decade (plus more in the works), most of which are either isekai or draw from an "isekai-adjacent" pool of story trends that have little to do with what makes a good novel series or TV series, and can even be actively antithetical to what makes for a compelling narrative in both forms. And even writers working outside the webnovel field have been hopping on the bandwagon. …Ironically, I think the actual licensed Final Fantasy isekai manga is one of the better titles. Even the way it gives its hero Libra as a special isekai power feels better-used than the bulk of isekai that just throw something like that in.
Well, yes, but he only drank part of it, so not right away. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber
Posts: 2487 |
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Oh, this is neat (and of course you have a Narou anime spreadsheet ). Have you looked at them compared to the total number of anime titles produced in those periods? To control for the total number of anime in general being much larger these days, I mean.
Huh, never heard of it (EDIT: ahhh, just barely predates my introduction to anime). I'll have to check that out. I was idly trying to figure out what isekai I could recommend to people unreservedly, and the only two that I summoned off the top of my head were Re;Zero and The Twelve Kingdoms, which surprised me, given how massive the genre is. |
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Eilavel
Posts: 127 |
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Rudy is a standard Narou type hero. In what ways does he become a better person? He becomes less of recluse, able to interact with the world and get stuff done. That is, he overcomes those personal failings that stop him enjoying his own life; the failings would stop him being a classic narou protagonist. He does so fairly trivially. Does he stop commiting sexual assaults or overcome his perverse sexual desires? Does he avoid, for example, serious moral failings like kidnapping or slaving? No, not at all. Rudy story isn't about being a better person because he doesn't overcome things because they are moral failings (and lasting consequences for any of them? laughable.). He overcomes only those things that are an obstacle to him becoming a cool wish fulfillment fantasy protagonist. Its not a morality tale, its a wish fulfillment one; what we might consider his worst vices essentially aren't once he is powerful and cool enough for everyone to forgive them. He overcomes being a shut-in to self-actualize; he doesn't learn virtue. To be clear, I don't care if people like Mushoku Tensei. I don't care if people like redo of healer! Entertainment doesn't have to meet a high moral standard at all. But the conceit that Rudy is a clever character study who faces real struggles ect ect is just not accurate. he's ultimately one of the most powerful people in the world with multiple wives; his course is not different from your standard isekai protagonist. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter
Posts: 24093 |
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I thought isekai translated into English as "other world." I don't speak Japanese but the google translator I just used gave me that answer. |
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Saeryen
Posts: 964 |
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I tried to connect something I liked to the topic at hand by raising the question as to whether PriPara and AiPri counted as isekai. I got completely ignored and that kind of stings.
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Essedess
Posts: 93 |
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I find it funny, and a bit sad, that all you focused for 7th prince was the fanservice. It has the best battles, the best OST, and the best MC of all isekai this season. But as always, people judge a book by its cover. Your loss, but episode 3 had the best fight this season, going to DBZ levels of literally throwing Desturcto Discs, then getting shitty loot after winning the boss fight as it it was a Bethesda RPG. So he packs up the dungeon chest itself in his Bag of Holding while the dungeon crumbles. So yeah... you all are missing out. And yeah, the MC is a bit of a psycho. Like Goku, all he wants is a good fight to test his magic, everything else be damned.
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