Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Reincarnated in Another Column
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2366 |
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Andrew Cunningham
 Posts: 521 Location: Seattle |
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Do-Over Damsel is written by a woman for one of the few clearly female-targeted light novel labels so we don't need to worry about male gaze. Honestly it doesn't even seem interested in doing an actual romance at all, just making (not especially funny) jokes about how they get shoe-horned into series (like Nina, which is already forcing it in awkwardly) that don't need them. I'm totally down for pint-sized cannonball punching.
I'd also like to die on the hill of reincarnation in the same world not being isekai. There's no other world! It's just sekai! (Not actually a viable usage.) And again for the cheap seats, litrpg elements are often found in isekai/narou-kei but aren't actually part of the genre itself any more than harems or I dunno, buying slaves. These kind of misunderstandings are pervasive enough without professional writers perpetuating them, even if you're mostly joking. |
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Fluwm
 Posts: 1003 |
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The best part of the seasonal deluge of isekais is reading through the ensuing TWIAs. So much more enjoyable and entertaining than actually watching any of these shows.
That said, as fun as it is to poke fun at these isekais, I think there's an angle here that's unfortunately rarely, if ever, brought up -- the scorn they earn is very much not deserved. At least, not to the extent that even the worst isekais accumulate it. All of these stories are the products of amateur writers effectively writing fanfiction. Not only is it understandable for their work to not be very good, that's kind of... the point of it. Bad isekai anime/light novels don't come from nowhere: they come from the deep systemic failure of the publishing and animation/manga industries. When a web novel is picked up, they have a certain responsibility to the authors to help them improve their work -- otherwise they'll never stop working at the amateur level. Likewise, when adapting a story to a new medium, new creative forces have a duty to alter that story to best reflect the strengths of the new medium. All these bad isekai stories all have the same root cause, I think: an abnegation of professional responsibility across multiple industries. This is a hill that I will die on. Like, it's fun to make fun of That Time I Was Reincarnated As a Slime for being so clumsy with exposition that 90% of its runtime is dedicated to meeting room conversations either describing events that just happened, or describing events that are about to happen... but that's not solely down to Fuse (the author), but the wider industry and culture that's failed them -- and that's why 20 volumes deep, they're still relying the same, amateurish, clumsy techniques. The writers aren't being empowered to improve their craft, and the animators and manga artists are compelled to be so deeply beholden to to the source material that they effectively have no room for their own creative input. It's a miserable, rotten situation for everyone involved.
I think it depends on the story. A "different world" can mean many different things. If it's a reincarnation into a different era, that's a different world all right -- that good ol' "fish out of temporal water" trope. But reincarnated into the same lifetime? Not so much. |
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bassgs435
 Posts: 358 |
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I mean, you say about helping the authors improve and such. But the problem is: these adaptations are done to capitalize on an existing fanbase. Changes just risk you losing the fanbase. Just because these stories are horrible to outsiders, it doesn't mean those who like them shoulod be punished to satisfly outsiders. Quality is very much a subjective thing, anyways. But back to the point: People want stuff faithful to the source, and it's not limited to Narou stories. How many years have Soul Eater manga readers been demanding a new adaptation that is faithful to the manga instead of having to diverge?. Thus, any idea of improvements just risk you angering the fanbase and not getting any new fans to compensate. It's not a worthy bet
This is why adaptations of longrunning material prefer to end incomplete now and push people to continue through the source than the anime original routes seen in older material like FMA 2003, Soul Eater, Pandora Hearts and many older shows. It is the rejection of such changes in the past why now the industry prefers to not do many changes in adaptations. |
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Hal14
 Posts: 712 Location: Heart of africa |
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I second this. Those are their own genre: LitRPG. You didn't mention shangri la frontier or GunGaleOnline, why not? After all those also feature game elements and GGO is a spin-off of SAO. It's almost like there is a nuance to the categorization instead of just calling any show with tropes you dislike Isekai. Like, of course a genre is going to seem massive and unending when you keep expanding the definition to include any new trend you dislike or have grown tired of. For instance. the "Kicked out of the Party" trend of fantasy shows might share some DNA with isekai, but they are typically pure fantasy shows. |
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InfiniteNothingness
 Posts: 187 |
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Find myself deeply agreeing with the majority of what's come before me (not really interested in picking apart the finicky little things I disagree with either since I get it otherwise), from "LitRPG" being its own thing, to the inherently amateur nature and so much unearned derision no matter how much I care for not a lot of these (I say as someone that is receptive to reincarnation and isekai and an awkward fan of the latter), and assorted.
But I also want to mention how oddly mean-spirited so much of this column felt? Like, I intellectually get it and emotionally understand after subjecting myself to enough of the same, there's a lot of cookie-cutter writing and reliance on templates and the works, I'm just a little, how do I say. Raising my eyebrow and the assertions made towards creatives as an outlet for exclusively worst impulses and nothing else — unless when it is good actually, even though they can similarly be inspired by something as familiarly generic and welcome as "that kickass feeling when you get challenged in a tough game". Of course the aforementioned would be pointed to as an example the rises above the chaff, not unlike Aoi Yūki Tiny Spider Simulator, with the matter of execution even mentioned in the article. So when I see an unfunny remark about palates or whatever I just roll my eyes. Not due to offense, but knowing I've seen better from the reviewer in question and that you don't need to make odd jabs to criticize industry failings. At any rate this is like the third time recently I've seen Do-Over Damsel mentioned in a worthwhile enough light for me, so I guess I'll give this a shot. Hopefully the animation holds up well enough, Nina already left me feeling a little deflated and content with the manga, except I'm not sure I've got the same eagerness here for its LN (manga, probably). |
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Fiachna
Posts: 1 |
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Beyond a doubt, Loner Life in Another World is a terrible anime. It's beyond generic, the characters are dull (the designs are at least okay, but that's about it. Haruto is supposed to be dull looking by design). It's doing an awful job of telling a story.
The light novels are the complete opposite. They're not remotely generic. You do still have the whole stats and skills thing, but the writing is so much more unique. Haruto spends a lot of his time rambling, in ways that are a mixture of hilarious and exhausting, and the other characters have more personality and more chances to grow. He's not simply OP, though because of his intelligence/weirdness he finds ways to use his "bad" skills that are powerful. But it's a long process and comes with consequences. Even when he's powerful, he's a glass cannon. The show screws the whole thing up. In the very first episode he's not just supposed to nod at God and move on. He berates him to the point of tears in the novels! It's far more interesting. I have no idea why they cut that out, it's a great characterization moment and sets the tone. The anime seems to be following the manga, which is far more sanitized and meh than the novels, but it's worse even than the manga. The novels are far far better, and I strongly encourage people to try them and ignore the anime. Haruto is the kind of character you either love or hate (his rambling and rants are hilarious to me, but I can see others finding it infuriating). But what he's not is generic, and either is the story. |
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King Chicken
 Posts: 128 |
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That's one of the biggest strengths of anime. You rarely have any kind of showrunner come in and say how much they hate the source material and say their TV show adaption is going to do nothing but ride on the popularity of the name but because they're not talented enough to make their own work stand out. Far too often I see some Netflix or Amazon or Hulu or HBO Max show come out and say the guy in charge never read the original books or played the game a show was based on. And it always ends up showing in their work. And rarely does it ever succeed with new audiences. Not every show needs to be for everyone. That's the beauty of anime: it can target specific audiences while the rest of the industries are chasing ways to try to market everything to everyone and create the blandest output possible to the lowest common denominator. The great thing here is if you don't like a show you can just not watch it and find one of the 50+ other shows airing in the season that might be more your fancy. |
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 547 Location: Poland |
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I think Narou-kei is better term than just LitRPG, because some Narou genres aren't that much about RPG as about certain common themes of subsets of Narou stories. It's true though that calling them "honorary" or "native" or whatever isekai is simply completely wrong, and I expect people writing to serious publication to not continue those errors. We can't start calling every tropey fantasy story "isekai" just because that's the most popular genre on Narou.
I will disagree strongly with some previous posters about them not deserving the scorn. While it's true that much of the fault is on the publishers for doing cheap and easy way of taking what is basically fanfiction, but of general bland RPG fantasy setting, full of newbie writers that happened to be lucky enough to get popular with their trite web novel with Gary Stu MC and only twist spelled out in the title, the whole field is pretty rotten, full of increasingly obnoxiously incestous writing tropes. It's like most those writers don't even bother to read anything except other Narou stories, and it really shows in the writing. It's becoming, or maybe it already did, its own cesspool full of convenient slavery and Rance-lite MCs, because hey, several other novels that got popular on Narou had them, so why not use it as well? It reminds me of getting bored with the USA superhero genre dominating the comics, to the point I mostly dropped USA comics, despite many good not-superhero also being released. Too similar content released mostly for insular fans, who keep clamoring for and buying more of the same. And no, the potential better world in which editors are helping authors improve isn't in any way punishing anyone. The whole idea is nonsensical, because those stories are constantly being changed anyway, between WN, LN, English translation of LN, manga usually based on LN, but often with big changes, anime that often adapts manga rather than LN, and almost never WN, the whole claim that anyone is robbed of anything is simply bogus. I still remember the arguments about Mushoku Tensei's Paul and whether he once committed rape or not, with various sides often having read different versions of the story, some of them clearly sanitized spoiler[it was as close to rape as possible in WN, given that he pushed for it, she only didn't resist hard because he was supposed to marry her soon anyway and he intended to take her virginity and flee without marrying her as revenge on her father, which also predictably wrecked her own life], yet people were still arguing that since they've read the English LNs (most sanitized version) they can claim the anime subtitles were badly translated. It's just that changes in publishing LN don't go enough to actually improve it, and manga adaptation changes are more adding about fanservice and about taking lazy way out with pages of text that are hard to adapt than about any actual improvement, though I've seen some manga adaptation that do make original LN slightly less icky and gross. I also don't believe in comparing faithfullness to Soul Eater manga and to web novel that is almost interchangeable from any other in the same subgenre, except with sometimes less or more teenage slave waifus than average. |
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Eilavel
Posts: 134 |
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You've basically absolutely nailed everything about the current trend. Really, they're producing them because they sell. Why would they be editing or improving them much? Anime/Manga/LN are very commercial operations (although I guess I would say leaning so hard into a limited market is short termist, but thats business). Plus, what, they improve the writing techniques so we have less magic meeting room time inbetween slave wives and one sided beatdowns by the MC? The problems with technique are not the highest on the list of issues with a lot of Narou material. Honestly, I'm not of such refined tastes I can't enjoy some of the wish fulfillment stuff despite its basic nature, but not only arethese problematic elements becoming more and more common as they all read each other, but the fanbase generates so much apologia for some of it. Part of why its a shame is because it puts quite a low ceiling on the possible audience for huge amounts of the industries material. Though on adaptations, as I recall Spiders adaptations basically cut huge amounts of content to just be all spider. Which is probably an improvement that could be seen more often. |
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Cho_Desu
 Posts: 238 |
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I'm thinking they probably meant to say "Are those various Persona anime adaptations technically let's plays?" Since that was the topic they were discussing (i.e. how some of these anime feel like we're just watching someone play a video game).
In theory, yes. But in practice, clearly not. You just about always have to get far away from the world of Narou to find an innovative or unique fantasy anime. Changing one or two small plot or character elements does not make a story fresh. It's just a slight variation. |
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CreativelyFwrd
Posts: 6 |
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I do not get the appeal of sitting around complaining about light novels and anime you don't like every week and bemoaning things. There's way too little time on this Earth to be doing that. Focus on stuff you do like instead. You guys will all be much happier for it. It's better than expecting a successful and popular genre to suddenly change overnight.
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Fluwm
Posts: 1003 |
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You're not wrong, but I have a hard time not empathizing with these writers. They're trapped in an environment that actively inhibits their growth. The people that could be helping them, that have a professional duty to do so, aren't. Just in terms of the WN-to-LN pipeline, it's abundantly clear that few, if any, of these writers are working with editors. There doesn't appear to be any revision occurring. Any editing occurring is simply copy editing, which isn't the same thing -- it's professional malpractice. This is why, at best, so many LNs feel like second drafts -- they are -- and why, at worst, just the same thing copy-pasted. And as I think we've seen hints of here, I think this is largely the result of a culture of fear that's built up around toxic fandoms. People who like to scaremonger about showrunners out to deliberately sabotage their own work out of some thinly-veiled derision of the source material (something, to my knowledge, that has not once occurred outside the fantasies of conspiracists). But it's not like, even within these conditions, we don't occasionally see the odd adaptation unafraid to take chances on improving the work they're adapting (on the subject of isekais, The Eminence in Shadow leaps to mind as a great example); nor is their any shortage of ostensibly by-the-book adaptations that are also pretty crummy (just ask any Mizukami fan). The simple fact of the matter is that anyone involved in any creative pursuit, even an adaptation of someone else's work, needs to be free to make it as good as they possibly can -- their best effort. That's how we get success stories like the Twelve Kingdoms adaptation, which greatly expanded upon and improved the novels' already great story (particularly with Yoko's second arc); that's how we got such venerated classics of the genre as Ghost in the Shell and Trigun. Hell, even those old Toei shows responsible for the big international anime boom in the 90s did so in large part thanks to animators ready, willing and able to put their own spin on the material -- hell, Toei's Sailor Moon is a radically different animal compared to Uehashi's manga. I guess my issue is that I think the ire being directed at the authors is misplaced, as I view this more as a systemic problem with the industry. I'm firmly of the opinion that there's no such thing as a bad story, only the bad execution of a story. And if we ever want things to improve, we'll need to first see a change in the culture, not the addition of any number of uniquely talented writers to Narou. |
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juaifan
Posts: 145 |
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I think the reason there's backlash when this topic pops up is because going off some of the comments here and whenever this topic pops up what some people seem to actually mean when they say an adaption should improve an existing work is is they want it to remove all the narou/litrpg elements they don't like such as slavery, fanservice, harem, or MCs like Rudy and Rance to name a few. As if working more closely with an editor will result in them being told to not have any of that stuff in it rather than something like improving the pacing and flow since adapting a book or manga into an anime requires changes: especially web novels and light novels with tons of exposition text and infodumps in them. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4608 |
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I'm hoping this was a mistake and meant to say "Are the various Persona anime adaptations technically isekai?" Persona does involve character from our world hopping into a different one to do the whole Persona thing, so that is at least a decent question. In that regard, I would say no, but it does sort of emphasize that you can share elements with different genres without being part of it. It's the kind of thing we see more and more with the Game Awards when people argue about whether a nominee fits a category. There are some where I could say that I at least understood why they were included, most that are very obviously part of a genre, and some where I wonder if the judges had very different ideas of what constitutes a genre than the general public. |
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