3 ms·
The Isekai genre goes deep, very very deep. Anime adaptations only really cover the often good and/or mainstream series. If you start digging into Isekai manga
by m4rtink 6y ago
The Isekai genre goes deep, very very deep. Anime adaptations only really cover the often good and/or mainstream series.
If you start digging into Isekai manga, there at least one order of magnitude more works to choose from. Then if you look into light novels, there is even more stuff, again with just a fraction getting manga adaptations.
But the real breath of Isekai are web novels - that's where most of the current hit novels started, on websites like "I'll become a novelist" (https://syosetu.com/ https://syosetu.com/) where people just type away their fantasies with minimal friction, one chapter at a time and often with lots of direct feedback from the community.
That can result in even more original/crazy ideas being explored, such as:
- What if you were transported to a fantasy world with your solar powered camping vehicle ? (Himekishi to Camping Car)
- What if you became your game character in a fantasy world that has a different gender (female) and is a total glass cannon ? (Alice Tale)
- Whats more fun than raiding dungeons ? Running them! (Lazy Dungeon Master)
- What if there is stable gateway between the other and the modern world and you can go back and forth ? (quite a few series actually, even some mainstream ones like Gate or Isekai Shokudo)
- Fantasy is nice but steampunk and heavy industry is even better! There are quite a few rather non-mainstream series that introduce robots and guns into an Isekai setting. Yet there are others that set out to industrialize the whole thing as including building stuff like railroads.
- What if magic was just a foreign language or alphabet the locals aren't good at but you are, as it's your native language ?
- What if you are the only one who can see the GUI in an Isekai world ? Nothing better than meeting a famous aristocrat with "class: vampire" blinking above his head telling you about mysterious kidnapping cases in the vicinity. Or "goblin shaman [invisible]" floating in the air of dark cave. (Skill Takers World Domination")
- What if due to some mistake no one person gets reincarnated as a son of poor aristocrat but 3 - a high school student, a salaryman and Nobunaga ?
- What if you actually got reincarnated to the buggy mess of an MMO you helped to develop (Death March) ?
- What if a modern Aegis cruiser or even the full Japanese archipelago (including some disputed islands, no less ;-) ) gets transported to an Isekai ?
Really the possibilities are endless. There is definitely a lot of repetition and series that frankly are not any good (especially between web novels, thanks to the same zero entry barriers that enable so much creativity in the first place) but there are many gems to be found if you search a bit. :)
- livueta 6y ago> Aegis cruiser Destroyer! But thanks, I laughed really hard at the realization that Zipang is indeed an isekai of sorts. Thanks to that show, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daqing_Oil_Field https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daqing_Oil_Field is one of my favorite historical counterfactuals.
- m4rtink 6y agoActually, there is a real isekai series with an Aegis class destroyer going to another world other than Zipang: :) https://www.novelupdates.com/series/rune-troopers/ https://www.novelupdates.com/series/rune-troopers/ Yes, that's an elf, an Aegis class destroyer and a dragon on the picture. ;-) I haven't read this series yet but it seems to be doing good with 10 light novel volumes out so far. :) While I haven't seen that that yet but an Isekai series based around a nuclear submarine would be cool. Being nuclear powered it could be rather independent from the now missing modern infrastructure. They could also include dramatic elements such as the submarine hiding underwater during a nuclear Armageddon only to surface later to find out they have been somehow transported into a world of swords and magic instead of the radioactive wasteland they have expected. Not that it would make it any less dangerous and their adventures any less epic. ;-) BTW, tracked down the Japanese-island-chain-in-Isekai as well: https://www.novelupdates.com/series/nihonkoku-shoukan/ https://www.novelupdates.com/series/nihonkoku-shoukan/ "Basically, the Japanese version of Island in the Sea of Time. For clarity: The summoned area of Japan are the four disputed Kuril Islands, Japan Home Islands, and Ryuku Islands"
- krapp 6y agoCan we just get away from the otaku-pandering JRPG fantasy world archetype, already? I feel like Konosuba and Re-Zero should have ruined the premise for all time. I know the Japanese love them some Dragon Quest but enough is enough.
- ronsor 6y agoAs long as pumping out isekai stories continues to be profitable (and the target market which is otaku enjoys them), they will continue to proliferate.