Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Are This Season's Isekai Anime Any Good?
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2945 Location: Email for assistance only |
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That is a fair point. I didn't give a lot of context in my initial point, so I'll elaborate a little. By "barely relevant to this column" I meant that the series itself isn't discussed within this column by the authors. It instead focuses on mostly new shows for the season (likewise, Konosuba is also not discussed very much). As the poster above me stated, Mushoku Tensei has been done to death in the ANN forums. The pros/cons are always the same even if the individuals posting about it are different, so both the criticism and the defenses have gotten exhausting for staff and commentators that are active in here. It always comes down "Rudy is a sex criminal and the narrative doesn't engage with that fact/treats it like it's comedy/it's a symptom of misogynistic wish-fullfilment" vs "this is a redemption narrative/actually what he did is fine for X reason/the worldbuilding." It would just be nice to contain those conversations in either the episode review thread or the series' discussion thread as much as possible so folks can talk about other shows without it dominating the discussion everywhere. |
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Terraziel
Posts: 57 |
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Whilst entirely accepting the point, given that none of the shows from the article were popular enough to get reviews it's not much of a surprise that discussion turned to...well, anything else. Personally i think we should go back to litigating what we mean by "isekai". Someone up thread called Escaflowne isekai, and whilst the story clearly, factually, is, i would never have associated it with "isekai" as a term. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18199 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Escaflowne is unquestionably isekai, and no amount of mincing about semantics gets around that. Now, if you want to classify it as "old-school isekai" to make a distinction between titles like it, Magic Knight Rayearth, and The Twelve Kingdoms and the Narou-powered style/content trends that have dominated the genre over the last several years, I'm fine with that. Really, the only problem here is that some have attached a lot of baggage to the term "isekai" based on prevalent recent themes and story elements. But that doesn't change what it is as a genre. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23781 |
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Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, "isekai" is simply Japanese for "other world." So if a show has a character from our world transported to another world - regardless of how he/she/them is transported or for what reason, it's isekai. Being trapped in a video game, regardless of what kind of world the game portrays, does not seem to me to be isekai although I would accept "isekai-adjacent" as an indentifier.
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Terraziel
Posts: 57 |
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See I think some of the baggage is inevitable, if not necessary, to keep the term useful. If i were to ask for people's favourite Isekai how many are going to think of Spirited Away? Similarly if i ask about Reverse-Isekai are people thinking of any of the numerous Mahou Shoujo shows where something comes from a fantasy realm to ours? Probably not. |
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doomrider7
Posts: 92 |
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Many likely do, but they know their audiences don't. Ever wonder why in so many romcoms the MC is an angst filled put upon loner? Same thing. My only question is if there was any rape or cannibalism in RE:Monster because that's kind of its thing. |
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 265 |
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I mean, isn't it still another world, really? Maybe said world is man-made, but if you're trapped/cannot go back and especially if there's a classic "if you die in the game you die for real" thing going on with the game, then I'd say there's hardly a difference between it and the days of old. The only difference is the similarities to video games and stuff like the (ever-prevalent in modern isekai) stat screens. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23781 |
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Aw, come on, can't you just accept my proposed "isekai-adjacent" compromise???
But seriously, if push comes to shove I can live with "trapped in a video game" shows being called isekai for the reasons you note. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18199 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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None that's been shown so far. (There's a strong implication that the former happened prior to the MC coming into the picture, but the actual series content avoids it.) |
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Saeryen
 Posts: 899 |
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All the baggage that comes with the term “isekai” nowadays is why I like to specifically speak of shoujo isekai. It existed before the boom of the villainess subgenre (which I love, because we need more anime and manga that cater to demographics other than cis males, and the villainess works are providing exactly that), and a lot of the SAO-esque stuff came after titles like Fushigi Yugi. And I hate that shoujo often gets ignored when talking about isekai. Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits is one of my favorite anime ever and a lot of people don’t include it in isekai lists. And then we have excellent modern manga like The Water Dragon’s Bride which have yet to be animated.
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doomrider7
Posts: 92 |
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[A lot of additional commentary exclusively about MT, which the EIC specifically requested be moved to another thread, has been deleted here. We don't take kindly to being blatantly ignored when we make requests like this. - Key]
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Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 566 Location: North America |
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Fixed your post by adding one word (shōnen). We have found something else, anime made for adults and not for teenage boys looking for a self-insert fantasy. |
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light turner
Posts: 122 |
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Most of these titles are seinen and not shounen so they're already for adults. Re:Monster, New Gate, Mushoku Tensei, Banished Former Hero... their manga adaptions all run in seinen magazines. So your gotcha about being an adult who only watches adult stuff doesn't fit here. Presumably that's why they have adult content in them to begin with. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1395 |
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^The original assertion is just baldly wrong, though. There is no singular "target demographic" for anime. An entire medium cannot have one. Acting like a single subgenre - itself largely proliferated by a single source in the Narou site - is indicative of all anime is just straight up incorrect, and something I don't think even the most ride-or-die isekai fans would believe. It's like saying somebody who doesn't like live-action DC comics movies is "no longer the target demographic of movies".
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Saeryen
Posts: 899 |
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This is why I watch mostly shoujo stuff, as I said. They still make anime for my tastes, including isekais like the aforementioned Kakuriyo. On that note, I do wish Water Dragon's Bride and some of the much older shoujo isekai manga would get animated. |
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