Isekai Quartet: A crossover between Overlord, Konosuba, Re:ZERO, and Tanya the Evil.

Nah, All of these Isekai are the best of their genre..

Its why Kadokawa chose them.

Watch Symphogear

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand here we go with the arguments about quality...*sigh*

The storm has now resided, the wolf now rests.

You can't say they are best of their genre just because you like them though.

I mean, Knights and Magic, Overlord and Tanya the Evil aren't "good by isekai standards", they are badly written by both isekai and normal standards really at least from my point of view.

I'm not going to have argument on quality, but I'm gonna note that popularity doesn't mean they are good.

Having Re:Zero along them just makes it weird because Re:Zero makes fun of genre(and those three indirectly) and turns the whole protagonist power fantasy on its head by making it torture porn for the character

But yeah, you can say Kadokawa chose them because they are the most popular of the genre, but I won't accept "The best of the genre" as reasoning since its just blatantly not true. Though argument about that would be argument about subjectivity I guess which nobody really wants to have because art arguments are hard to do because its hard to prove objective qualifications of quality when it comes to something judged subjectively

Edited by SpookyMask on Oct 8th 2018 at 7:54:22 PM

Yeah Overlord and Knight & Magic are pretty badly written. Tanya has potential, but purely on anime I can't judge how much it lived up to it and it never gave me reason to try novels.

So yeah only Konosuba and Re-zero are good enough in their genres.

You talk so much of subjectivity yet you sure make your opinions sound very objective, as if it's "wrong" to define quality based on what other people measure. How do you measure "quality" isekai in your definition, I wonder. And what do you even constitute as a "quality isekai" if you even have one?

Edited by knowmenot101 on Oct 8th 2018 at 6:29:58 AM

Hmm, so you won't accept my opinion as subjective because I acknowledge that my opinion IS my opinion?

That seems kinda backwards.

Either way, I don't want to get into full essay mode here, but I can sum it up in this way: As I said before, RE:Zero makes fun of protagonist power fantasies. Knights & Magic, Overlord and Tanya the Evil ARE protagonist power fantasies. Its also why I say they don't have good writing even by isekai standards, none of those three are original. If you remove mecha/evil ovelord/WWII witch nazi part, its essentially same story of someone getting transported into setting where they immediately become the biggest fish. Knights & Magic was particularly ridiculous because apparently magic is just programming sot his mecha otaku guy just becomes the greatest mecha pilot pretty much first time he gets to pilot without learning curve even though he didn't pilot any vehicles in his previous life. Overlord and Tanya the Evil both get into the "Main character is the villain" with different take, but both are pretty much same story of main character doing something horrible and nobody being able to stop them because they are just that much more powerful than anybody on opposition. There is no real tension in Overlord or Tanya the Evil because you know they can't lose even if you want them to lose.

In otherwords, one of the good isekais here ins pretty much anthesis of half the isekais included. Whether main character is hero or villain doesn't really matter from power fantasy escapism angle.

Now granted, as I said it is mostly my opinion. Out of those two Tanya the Evil seems to have more going for if you like bleak and dark series while Overlord is just straight up edgy, but I don't really like bleak action shows with war crimes and such soooo yeah.

Tanya can't lose within the timeframe of the anime, but it's a given that she's losing the war in the end. That and her real loss is constantly being stopped from actually achieving her goal of avoiding fighting and being forced to keep acting the holy warrior just to not die. IIRC she actually has more of a challenge in fights later on. No matter how many fights she wins, she's still losing in the important battle.

Overlord? Sure, it's a straight-up power fantasy. So what? That doesn't make it badly written. You might not like the concept but that doesn't mean "it's bad".

And all four of them are various takes on "protagonist gets amazing powers and in another world".

Re:Zero: you have an amazing ability. It's used to torture you.

Kono Suba: you could have had an amazing ability. Instead, you picked someone that is strong enough but an idiot.

Youjo Senki: you have an amazing ability. You don't want it and using it just makes things worse on you.

Overlord: you have an amazing ability. You're pretty unsuited to being an evil overlord and really don't understand your subordinates. Also, you're a skeleton.

Edited by RainehDaze on Oct 9th 2018 at 9:18:38 AM

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I'd say something about them is badly written considering how lot of Tanya the Evil and Overlord fans comment on internet like "Omg they are so badass heroes" when they commit genocide. I'm not even kidding there. I think something has to be wrong if that is what some fans take away from them

Edited by SpookyMask on Oct 9th 2018 at 11:30:19 AM

It doesn't matter how well something is or isn't written, it'll get "fans" like that which completely miss the point.

It's basically a rule of fiction: if someone does something remotely badass, they'll get fans that whitewash any and all misdeeds.

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Either way, I want to stop the posting in this thread about the subject, so I just put the criticism part in private message because at this rate someone else just pops up to disagree and conversation goes on forever

I don't know about Tanya, but Overlord pretty clearly catter this kind of audience. I mean hell, he attack peacfull tribe of lizardmen, enslave them and few chapter later they practicaly worship their conquerors.

As far as I read it, there is practicaly noone who would chalenge Ainz belief and morality (or lack of thereof). Ainz is right even if he is wrong. Innocent people are inconsequential.

I mean look on for example Tsukibro, Makoto is also desensitized overpowered protagonis who can kill thousand without batting eye, but it's not alright just because he is mc, rather it's properly adressed, explored and target of character development. Ainz character development is basicaly only progress from letting evil hanchmen do dirty job to do it himself.

Edited by Tenzen12 on Oct 9th 2018 at 10:51:21 AM

Cater. One "t"

But there is a certain appeal to watching a character's descent in villainy (and Ainz is a villain by now, there's no two ways about it. Even if you want to dismiss what he did to Foresight and the other workers pressing his personal Berserk Button what he did on the Katze Plain cannot be excused.)

Edited by KnightofLsama on Oct 9th 2018 at 10:28:19 PM

Isn't LN basically tells that Ainz (whatever his methods are) "brings peace and prosperity"? As far as i'm aware his evil deeds often handwaved as "Necessary Evil", which is one of the problems with Overlord. Also the mere fact that no one from the fanbase gives a damn about Foresight (expect Arche) already gives a hint what is most important to majority of the fanbase. I remember going to Overlord fan forums and reading a lot of comments how these fans hope that Ainz would torture Foresight, because they dared to attempt to deceive "poor Ainz".

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Oct 9th 2018 at 3:41:15 PM

Yes, I agree it has certain appeal, but even in these you are not suppossed cheer for them. Sometimes it comes with message or aesop, other times with one protagonist falling to dark side you get new heroes rise at same time to chalange him and make it right.

Actualy chalange itself is important part, What makes this kind of story appealing is strugle which we can identify with, so even when the hero fall, we can understand how and why it happened and even symphatise with.

That said I don't think Ainz actually changed through the story, no strugle or character development. He always was capable of doing such massacre, but he didn't before simply because there was no reason. There was no hesitation no Moral Event Horizon to be crossed. He simply did what was natural in that situation. I think Overlord could be great story if it provided some kind of Hero Antagonist to balance Ainz villanious protagonist, but Ainz is not suppossed be stopped or even challanged, which I think is real problem of these novels.

Edited by Tenzen12 on Oct 9th 2018 at 3:39:55 PM

I enjoy it because of the characters. The action's nice and all, but in that regard I think of it as something closer to slice of life.

And eh, Ainz has changed. He's grown into the role of an Evil Overlord even if he still doesn't seem to get exactly how nuts his subordinates are.

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That's only means that Ainz is an idiot. "All-Mighty Idiot" so to say, who everyone for one reason and another think is "Super Duper Genius" and overall omnipotent god.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on Oct 9th 2018 at 5:06:22 PM

The most blatant example of why is Shalltear. To everyone else, she's a nutjob. To Ainz? Well, he's got some other concerns regarding her. Mostly they're a lot more restrained around him. Add in that he was just a salaryman who played the game a lot rather than some sort of genius and this is what you get: someone who's largely in the dark about the worst of what they get up to.

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I always felt he either didn't care enough or even simply didn't want know rather then being dumb.

Demiurge in particular was designed to be the most evil genius-y devil possible, and all of the NPCs look up to him as a godlike genius and therefore act rather more good. He was just a salaryman, even if he's now got minimal emotions and is an evil skeleton. It's not hard to see how he'd miss some things. For instance, the whole "sheep" thing (I think it's more explicit in the written versions?) Demiurge thinks Ainz is humouring the phrasing to dehumanise the humans. Ainz thinks he's talking about actual sheep, or maybe monster sheep, because why would one of the floor guardians be lying to him?

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Umm, no, he really is irresponsibly dumb about lot of things

The anime skips over most of it, but the reason he's good at magic is because he had an adult baseline + a child's learning capacity + years of training + being utterly obsessed with his goals while not caring about anything else except as a means to an end (that is, he's basically a Moral Sociopath and has been called out on it).

The novels and manga also have less focus on Eru beating people in fights, and more on delving into how the technology works (e.g. in the anime he seems to effortlessly invent a new kind of staff that's gun-shaped and more powerful than older models, while in the LN he just wanted his staff to have an ergonomic grip because he has small hands). And on that I appreciate how he sucks at practical mecha design, needing a whole team of engineers to turn his concepts into something usable.

It was handled way better than Wiz Biz at least.

Edited by Prime32 on Oct 9th 2018 at 11:58:50 AM

I didn't watch Knights and Magic anime, I read the manga <_< The manga isn't really much better just because its mecha magic nerdout session

Guys, this is gonna be a comedy, not a serious show. Let's just wait till the damn thing comes out and see what kind of silly fun it brings before we freak out, alright? I'm personally thinking it's gonna be hilarious.

That being said, I do have mixed feelings about Overlord, even if I've mostly enjoyed the anime so far.

We have our first promo.

The storm has now resided, the wolf now rests.

Second preview!

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6zeov6?fbclid=IwAR12MX3LoB_JKVwdgtbcOoUqZ2Z4NlaVjiL1CJTe-6JF9YyV6wor7ay-s9M

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