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I'd also like to offer a meta explanation in addition to escapism being popular. With so much anime having been produced and made available on-demand to consume

I'd also like to offer a meta explanation in addition to escapism being popular. With so much anime having been produced and made available on-demand to consumers there is a need to stand out and be novel - in both a creative and a business sense. Alternate world storylines seem perfectly suited for this. Anime produced today needs to compete with all the anime produced over the last ~50 years. Whereas anime produced in the 90's only had to compete with ~30 years worth of anime before it. And even then, much less was produced by the industry as a whole back then.

FooBarWidget 3y ago
Maybe. But I'm not convinced. Isekai is so widrspread these days it may as well be the default genre, it can't be called novel anymore. Any novelty would have to be found in the particular way they do it, e.g. reborn as a virus or reborn as a vending machine. And I disagree that it competes with 50 years old anime. Most people don't tend to watch old stuff, which they feel is stuffy and outdated. The story and writing could be great, but the pacing is different from modern standards, and the visuals can sometimes feel awful. I argue that only a very select group of people is interested in watching and revering old stuff. This is why reboots work.
- BitwiseFool 3y ago
  Understandable. When I say compete with I mostly mean "be distinct from", or at the very least "not the same as" rather than viewership numbers. Unless they are specifically rebooting something, as you mentioned.
sparkie 3y ago
I think this explanation is a bit of a stretch. Isekais just recycle the same ideas ad nauseam. If it were about creativity, they could do a lot more. You're given a blank slate to create a whole new world and mythology surrounding it, but your protagonist barely leaves the town to explore the world. Which series does this describe? Guy gets hit by a truck, reborn in a medieval-european-esque world where he joins a guild and does menial tasks like collect plants and kill goblins to level up, but this happens rapidly due to superpower which took no effort to gain. It's kind of like the MMORPG grind but without the grind. Instead of playing 20 hours/day, you see the character progress in 20 mins/week. The side-characters are as bland as NPCs. MMORPGs suffer a similar problem: There's so many of them and there's not a whole lot of difference from one to the next. The mangaka are typically young men who grew up playing these games and not getting out much, so it's no surprise their limited experience of the outside world also limits their ideas. Perhaps a source of the problem is the business side of things: The studios are basically forced to fit a story into 13 episodes which leaves little room for actually creating a memorable experience. 24-26 episodes used to be the norm but is now the rare exception. The studios don't want to take risks so they'll only adapt popular manga. Or maybe the consumers just have shorter attention spans, so you make the character go from level 1 to 1000 in the first few episodes to try and hook the audience, then revert to slow-pace. The iseakais that are genuinely creative (cough 12 Kingdoms) get dropped.

FooBarWidget 3y ago

Maybe. But I'm not convinced. Isekai is so widrspread these days it may as well be the default genre, it can't be called novel anymore. Any novelty would have to be found in the particular way they do it, e.g. reborn as a virus or reborn as a vending machine. And I disagree that it competes with 50 years old anime. Most people don't tend to watch old stuff, which they feel is stuffy and outdated. The story and writing could be great, but the pacing is different from modern standards, and the visuals can sometimes feel awful. I argue that only a very select group of people is interested in watching and revering old stuff. This is why reboots work.

BitwiseFool 3y ago
Understandable. When I say compete with I mostly mean "be distinct from", or at the very least "not the same as" rather than viewership numbers. Unless they are specifically rebooting something, as you mentioned.

sparkie 3y ago

I think this explanation is a bit of a stretch. Isekais just recycle the same ideas ad nauseam. If it were about creativity, they could do a lot more. You're given a blank slate to create a whole new world and mythology surrounding it, but your protagonist barely leaves the town to explore the world. Which series does this describe? Guy gets hit by a truck, reborn in a medieval-european-esque world where he joins a guild and does menial tasks like collect plants and kill goblins to level up, but this happens rapidly due to superpower which took no effort to gain. It's kind of like the MMORPG grind but without the grind. Instead of playing 20 hours/day, you see the character progress in 20 mins/week. The side-characters are as bland as NPCs. MMORPGs suffer a similar problem: There's so many of them and there's not a whole lot of difference from one to the next. The mangaka are typically young men who grew up playing these games and not getting out much, so it's no surprise their limited experience of the outside world also limits their ideas. Perhaps a source of the problem is the business side of things: The studios are basically forced to fit a story into 13 episodes which leaves little room for actually creating a memorable experience. 24-26 episodes used to be the norm but is now the rare exception. The studios don't want to take risks so they'll only adapt popular manga. Or maybe the consumers just have shorter attention spans, so you make the character go from level 1 to 1000 in the first few episodes to try and hook the audience, then revert to slow-pace. The iseakais that are genuinely creative (cough 12 Kingdoms) get dropped.