Basic Trope: Ordinary person gets transported to another, fantastic realm.
- Straight: Kenta, an Ordinary High-School Student, finds his Real Life world turned into the Medieval European Fantasy world (with a side of Wutai) of Arizelle.
- Exaggerated: Kenta finds himself transported to different fantastic realms on an hourly basis.
- Downplayed: Kenta finds himself in an Alternate Universe, marginally but noticeably different from his own.
- Justified: An experiment from the villainous organization ADEC kidnapped people from other worlds into their own world.
- Inverted:
- It turns out that the world was originally Arizelle, and ADEC turned it into the Real Life world.
- Flics, a wizard from the magical world of Arizelle, gets stuck in Manhattan.
- Kenta travels to other worlds regularly, but at some point becomes trapped in his own world.
- Kenta finds his mind unpredictably shunted between two worlds with no apparent time passing in the gaps between often with jarring timing like in the middle of a sword fight to a math test and back again.
- Kenta enters Arizelle willingly. He can go back home whenever he wants.
- Subverted: Kenta thinks that he's ended up in some other world, but is actually on an unknowing Journey to the Center of the Mind.
- Double Subverted: ...But once he emerges from his mind, he finds out he's stuck in a strange, unrecognizable land.
- Parodied:
- "Aw, damn." Kenta said. "On Monday, it was the mirror sucking me in. Today it's a dimensional rift in my closet..."
- Arizelle is half satire of the genre as inhabitants are pissed off at the constant flood of entitled NEETs mooching, lazing around, and a worrying tendency of walking in on women in compromising situations at best or serial sexual harassers at worst. The other half closer to playing straight aesop involves trying to get those freeloaders to try and contribute in everyday work and the importance of unglamorous jobs.
- Zig Zagged: Kenta opens up that forbidden door in the basement and ends up in a strange world. But there's something familiar about the place, despite the strangeness. Furthermore, he always felt like an outsider in his "real" world while this world makes a strange kind of sense. There's also this rumor about a lost kid, and the dates match up to the day he was found by the cops without a family...Does he really belong in the world he came from, or is the strange place his real home?
- Averted: The adventure takes place in the same reality as the protagonist.
- Enforced: "No one's gonna believe this stuff could happen in our world. Pitch him down a rabbit hole or something!"
- Lampshaded: "Hey! How'd I get here? (looks around) Aw, hell. Now I'm gonna have to find a way back."
- Invoked: Somebody in the other world cast Summon Everyman Hero.
- Exploited: Kenta's Genre Savvy enough to take advantage of Strange World's rules and take it over.
- Defied:
- Kenta acquires some kind of device, relic or knowledge that allows him to close inter-dimensional portals; he's way too comfortable in his own dimension to risk himself getting caught in one of those annoying psychedelic vortexes!
- Upon entering the Rift, I noticed the place was filled with fantasy cliché's. I turned on my heel and walked out.
- Discussed: "Kenta, ever notice no one comes to this reality willingly?!"
- Conversed: "Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Tropers, ever notice how the tropes that gave us Wonderland and Oz become the gifts that keep on giving?"
- Deconstructed:
- Unaware and unfamiliar with the new world's customs, Kenta keeps digging himself deeper while struggling to adapt to the situation. Since most people are unaware that he's a Fish out of Temporal Water — and those who do learn of this tend to think he's just plain nuts — he finds precious little empathy, making it even harder for him to survive.
- Since no one knows or cares about Kenta since he literally appeared out of nowhere, this gives certain morally dubious elements an easy target to abduct right off the street for nefarious purposes (abuse, torture, enslavement, unethical experimentation, etc.)
- Conversely, some ill-intentioned individual could have purposefully yanked him (and possibly a lot of other people) from his world without his knowledge or prior consent for the express purpose of the directly above, or to be an unwilling soldier forced to fight for a cause that doesn't concern him.
- Being utterly convinced he's in some kind of Wish-Fulfillment Power Fantasy, Kenta causes no end of problems that no sane or intelligent person would because he can't be bothered to think for five minutes. Provided there's some kind of antagonist or destructive conflict, he might even cause more damage to the world around him than the bad guys or negative periodic occurrences themselves.
- The world Kenta is transported to has entirely different physical laws, which proceed to tear him apart.
- The method by which Kenta is summoned draws the attention of earth-based entities and provides clues that lead towards the discovery of dimensional travel. Arizelle is subsequently visited/colonized/economically dominated by Earth.
- The alternate universe can't comprehend humans, making Kenta an Eldritch Abomination.
- It was purely coincidental that Kenta ended up in Arizelle instead of any other world. There is no way for him to retrace his path back to his own world, and any attempt to return home would probably just leave him stuck in a different world.
- Kenta winds up getting very sick from arrival to a world his body has absolutely no immunity to. If he dies he may spawn an outbreak. If he survives he will become a walking pandemic who appears to not be sick with the new disease at least.
- Reconstructed:
- The massive difficulties he faces make it all the better when Kenta manages to survive, adapt and endure.
- The invading humans are blindsided by Arizelle's magic and monsters, meaning that the natives are at a Mutual Disadvantage with the technologically-advanced but magic-poor humans. Countermeasures by other nations curbs the more warlike aspects of each world, which leads to an uneasy peace, trade, and unprecedented advancements for both.
- Played For Laughs:
- Kenta, The Cynic who thinks Idealism Is For Kids, winds up in a Sugar Bowl.
- Kenta is a Totally Radical Surfer Dude who ends up in a Medieval European Fantasy kingdom. Hilarity Ensues.
- A hilariously evil Super Villain is trapped in the Sugar Bowl.
- Played For Drama:
- (verge of tears) "I wanna go home. I hate it here."
- Kenta ends up siding with the villains in exchange for a quick return home.
- Kenta becomes a Death Seeker or is Driven to Suicide.
- Played For Horror: Arizelle is a merciless, cruel, Crapsack World. It is so bad that the earth life of an average Child Soldier would be a sizeable improvement, given the cruelty of nature and gods let alone its inhabitants. Anyone no matter how unprepared or vulnerable could vanish without a trace to be dropped off to this hell at any moment.
- Implied: Merchant Lord Kenta was mentioned to have appeared mysteriously and have strange mannerisms. He has strange modes of thought that enable him to drive a One-Man Industrial Revolution. He is either a genius far ahead of his time or from another world and using advanced knowledge.
Back to Trapped in Another World.
