If you’ve been watching anime regularly in the last decade or so - and especially if you’ve watched in the last five years - you’ve probably heard the term isekai at one point or another. There were 47 isekai series released in 2021 and 2022 alone, as well as many popular series released in recent years, such as The Rise of the Shield Hero, Re: zero, KonoSubaAnd Lordfall into this genre.
Regardless, it’s not often that you hear about isekai in a positive light. There is no shortage of YouTube articles and videos that call the genre rubbish or have titles like “why I hate isekai” and “why isekai sucks”. You can throw a rock and find someone who is tired of watching isekai anime overflowing with the seasonal lineup. Social media is full of posts berating the lack of creativity and overcrowding of titles in this genre, as well as ridiculing the often long and silly titles of some series, such as Reborn as a vending machine, now I roam the dungeon (Yes, this is a real series, I promise.)
But of course, if there are both old and new isekai series that are popular with viewers, it can’t be a completely bad genre, can it? What causes isekai bad taste in people’s mouths, and is it really justified?
What is Isekai?
To answer these questions, it is important to first understand what an isekai is. Isekai translates to “another world” or “another world” and covers a genre of fiction in which a character enters an unfamiliar world and must learn to survive. Most often, the character is transported to a fantasy or virtual world or some sort of parallel universe as a favored hero or powerful warrior, although many recent series play on this trope by making the character a villain, an inanimate object, or something else. unimportant character. The genre can also be divided into two subgenres: isekai tennis (transferred to another world) and isekai tensei (Reincarnated in another world.)
Isekai can be combined with a number of other anime genres, including comedy (I’m Boy Kongmin!, The devil works part time), drama (Now and then, here and there, The Rise of the Shield Hero), action (Wanderers, twelve kingdoms), and even romance (I’m a villainess, so I tame the final boss., Vision of Escaflon).
While the isekai genre has generated a lot of discussion lately, it has long been present in anime and manga. 1983s Aura Butler Dunbine often considered one of the first isekai anime, in which a young man named Shaw is taken to the medieval world of Beeston Well after a serious car accident. 1986s Super Mario Bros.: Grand Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! this is one of the first applications of transfer to video game worlds in this genre.
There is also 1996. Inuyasha, a series still popular and praised to this day, considered one of the first examples of isekai as it follows Kagome who falls into a well and finds herself in the Sengoku period. In the early 2000s it was Now and then, here and therea 1999 series about a boy named Shu who tries to protect a girl from a mech attack and ends up transported to a dystopian world where war has devastated the land.
There were few noteworthy isekai throughout the 2000s other than the beginning Sword Masters Online as a web novel in 2002 and 2004 Familiar ZeroMoving into the 2010s, we saw light novels like The Saga of Tanya the Evil (2010) Mushoku Tensei (2012) and Re: zero (2012) hit the scene - all of which received anime adaptations in the later years of the 2010s - and Sword Masters Online received an anime adaptation in 2012, which cemented the genre’s place on the map in subsequent seasons.
This brings us to today! To be honest, there have been far too many isekai released in the last five or so years to cover them here, but to put it in numbers, there were about 80 isekai series released from 2018 to 2022, and 2023 shows no signs of slowing down. . This actually brings us to our first problem with the genre.
Genre Saturation
At first glance, 80 doesn’t seem like such a big number, does it? That’s about 16 a year, and hundreds of anime series come out every year! However, when you start to really dig in, the number becomes overwhelming. For example, in 2022, about 26 isekai series premiered. This is out of 186 anime television series in a year, excluding ONA (Original Network Animation). This means that about 14 percent of all anime released that year were isekai.
It’s a pretty hefty piece! That’s why a lot of people get tired of this genre; there are simply too many of them, and they appear too quickly, and not all of them are winners. Disappointing seasonal cast full of titles including “In Another World” and “Reincarnated” that seem like unoriginal copies of the genre’s main series: KonoSuba, Re: zero, Mushoku Tenseietc.
However, a big part of why this glut exists is because the isekai formula works. Isekai essentially explores concepts that people like, such as the connection between the past and the present, the feeling of insecurity in a new place, and the idea of getting a second chance at life. The isekai genre, like most works of fiction, allows you to get away from the ordinary. The heroes of the new world are nobody in their home world. The powerless are now strong. These ideas make this genre enjoyable, but when you see it being done the same way over and over again, it loses its luster. And when will you start adding general features of the genre? Well, it rolls even faster.
Paths give and paths take
Anime in general is filled with unpleasant tropes. Over time, you will learn what you have to put up with and where your lines are in the sand. Isekai, as a genre, is very similar! Except there are some trails that are so bad they are hard to avoid.
There are several common reasons why isekai is a terrible genre. One of them is the super strong hero trope. Often the protagonist in an isekai series comes to their new world with abilities and powers that are, frankly, incredible. They can easily overpower enemies from the start, so what’s the point of watching? This power ensures they win and basically ensures that the minor characters traveling with them never get any development. This particular look gives most isekai a very one-dimensional feel, and many viewers are put off by the lack of development and growth it evokes.
The other is the harem trope. Many isekai use this instead of the standard romantic plot; some good examples Eighth son? Are you kidding me?, Familiar Zero, In another world with your smartphoneAnd King from now on, but there are actually so many people who use this trope that you can have years of content if you like it. While this doesn’t bother some viewers, it annoys others that the protagonist is almost immediately surrounded by people who want his hand (among other things) with zero development or real romance. As with a strong protagonist, the harem image often leaves the series little room for development and real exploration of the characters and their relationships, taking the easy way out.
Carbon copies
Of course, there is also a medieval setting. Most isekai take place in typical medieval Europe (and if not in this, then in some kind of general virtual reality). This image leads to what is perhaps the biggest criticism of the genre: the lack of originality. Isekai really made a splash in the anime adaptation Sword Masters Online in 2012, and over the years there are more and more of them. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right?
This idea led to these very general, formulaic series that did nothing but glut the market for a genre that was originally an interesting form of escapism that still managed to have unique stories, characters and ideas, and unfortunately these carbon copies were not copied from the best. They repeat aspects of the genre that audiences have grown tired of.
Memes!
However, no matter how bad something is, no one can help laughing at it. Isekai has given us quite a few popular anime memes, most notably “Truck-kun”, which refers to the usual isekai trail where the protagonist is hit by a truck and that’s how he dies to get to another world. However, there are plenty of memes that make fun of how similar many series are to each other, how gaudy protagonists manage to get a harem, and how isekai titles are often insanely long and betray the entire plot.
So what is it about isekai that annoys people? Well, basically that’s how the genre is now overflowing with the anime industry as a whole. People get annoyed that it looks like there are two isekai from a different genre series for each. It doesn’t help that many of the isekai series that have come out are poorly filmed, based on well-trodden tropes, and do nothing to differentiate themselves. Does this mean we have to throw out the whole genre? No! There are many isekai that are really funny, exciting and entertaining to watch. We just genuinely wish there were fewer isekai for a while. Just to give yourself a break.
Source: Collider
I have worked as a journalist for over 7 years and have written for many different publications. I currently work as an author at Daily News Hack, where I mostly cover entertainment news. I have a great deal of experience in the industry and am always looking to learn more. I am a highly motivated individual who is always looking to improve my skills. I am also a very friendly and personable person, which makes me easy to work with.
