General Isekai Thread

It's definitely a struggle to get past the MC's frankly shitty mindset when it comes to women. I know I couldn't stomach it for long.

Edited by M84 on Feb 7th 2020 at 7:48:08 PM

Well, sexism is a part of most isekai stories due to japan outdated mindset in that regard.

Well, and because most isekai's primary goal is wish fulfillment for the magazine's target demographic - heterosexual males - which means female fanservice, whether that means the MC's main/first companion happens to be a cute girl, or the MC just getting laid non-stop.

The level of Misogyny some of those authors displays is just shocking.

The worst aspect is that it doesn't improve over the years, but actually gets worse.

The loudest of isekai fans are to blame I think. Considering that many of these sexist novels sell good enough, so that many writers continue to do that.

That's the thing. It's hard to say it's a loud minority when the novels sell like hotcakes - and so much of it is just baked into the culture anyway.

I mean, it kinda mirrors the otakufication of anime to a certain degree doesn't it? Wasn't/Isn't there a problem with anime and manga pandering more and more to the hardcore otaku culture crowd because they're basically whales who would throw money at the screen as long as they got their fetish fix?

Edited by GoldenKaos on Feb 7th 2020 at 2:07:27 PM

It's definitely reached Running the Asylum levels, yes. Sometimes that's great - like with shows like Shirobako or Eizouken Ni Te Wo Dasu Na!, which are love letters to the industry - and other times it's not.

Normalization doesn't help. Maybe the majority of fans aren't sexist tools, but because there isn't much in the genre that isn't sexist, they just accept that as a normal part of the genre and ignore it. I know I've read manga with an eye-rolling amount of fanservice before, when I'd prefer them without. I found a couple isekai that were crazy sexist (one was a rape/revenge fantasy, one was a sex slave fantasy) and gave up on them very quickly, but they did have some interesting elements that someone else might be more interested in.

And again, due to the genre's popularity right now, we're seeing all the bottom of the barrel stuff. If that NTR one gets popular instead of just being "random isekai #7864325" then I'll be worried.

Destruction Flag Otome Spinoff: Okay what was the point to making it a spinoff if you're going to make Katarina do exactly the same things for exactly the same reasons? And then have everyone react to her in pretty much exactly the same ways? Yeah I guess it's in character but it's also really boring.

The only reason I can think for this to exist is if the author realized he screwed up the relationships and is using this as an excuse to have Katarina be less disruptive to the dynamics around her so you can have pairings like Mary/Alan and then give her her own love interest.

So its hard mode in name only? How boring, and i was considering reading it if it was a bit more interesting since Bakarina actually has a reason to panic unlike the main series where she's just being daft.

Honestly my issue with a lot of destruction flag stories is the fact that the whole plot would be resolved if the heroine just used her brain and acted like a decent person, that's why I ended up liking tensei oujo (where she works to make things more convenient for her and attempt to get with the guy she likes) and shini yasui (where the bad ends are actually beyond her and she's severely lacking in info due to not finishing the game) more.

Hell even Burikko had the decency to give the heroine bad ends she couldn't control, and burikko is fucking terrible

Burikko really is awful, isn't it? Literally the only interesting thing in it was that one character was strongly implied to be a toddler dropped into the body of an older child with no idea where she was or what had happened to her. But it never properly explored that and instead we got the creepy stalker Achilles successfully forcing the protagonist to marry him or whatever.

Yes, I've pretty much gotten bored of this kind of villainess story. It's too by the book so even when the characters are entertaining it's just really stale. You know what's going to happen right from the start. For the genre to be interesting it really needs to go off the rails in some way. I mean, I guess at least the heroine is still nice rather than the total cliche of simply flipping the two roles but... that's just not enough. When you have your basic vanilla villainess story like this there's basically nothing to differentiate Katarina from a shoujo protagonist except that she's an idiot.

Honestly, I think that's why I like stories like The Abandoned Empress a lot more because it's actually pretty easy to miss that the MC could be considered the "villainess" in someone else's story. I don't think I even realized it there until I heard some spoilers where the isekai'd girl - not the protagonist - noted that she had seen her experience there as being like a cheesy novel where the MC was the obstructing rival. The MC herself is doing her own thing for her own reasons.

Or Eliza the Impaler being like "Well whatever so this was an otome game, don't know shit about the game, gonna play feudal lord now." You can see the otome game sort of playing out in the background but she just doesn't get it. At all. And it's actually surprisingly funny for such a grim story.

Edited by Arha on Feb 7th 2020 at 12:59:18 PM

>Eliza the impaler

That is quite the title.

Also Burikko at least had super good art. Its a damn shame the artist hasn't done anything else cause she just brings all the characters to life.

Edited by Mami on Feb 7th 2020 at 8:20:06 PM

does she do an idol act too?

What else are you gonna call someone who thinks What Would Vlad Do?

x8 There's definitely a line to cross somewhere when a series starts relying on Otaku tropes rather than utilizing them.

Last Boss: First appearance adjustment. Lol.

Seems Ruphas will have to remind some people why she's the number one.

Against who, Sol? The big neighborhood kitty cat will probably come save the day.

You know I do think Isekais would improve if there were mentor figures around. The reason is because mentors are usually used to help the protagonist improve, instead of letting them have everything on a plate. The protagonist actually has to start out small, but with the help of the mentor they can make it to the top. Seriously, I could see an iskeai protagonist living as an apprentice under his mentor's roof, where he learns a certain craft discipline of that world and eventually becomes honed in that ability. Also they could still get love interests by forming relationships with women/men in the town he/she lives in. Also he and his mentors can go on adventures with one another, depending if they are adventurers or craftsmen.

The mentor figure could even be the one who summons the hero to another world, because things are dire and the world is in need of a new hero. He/she could even try to train the hero in secret, while keeping him out of sight from The Big Bad and his forces.

Cautious Hero did that, I remember, even if said mentor was just a goddess who found herself completely unprepared to deal with someone so weird.

I would be pretty okay with it if that became the new trend in isekai - that, or possibly people sharing knowledge from their original world, as long as it's not like "hey, here's how you do everything, I am amazing, lick my boots". But I imagine that actually learning a craft isn't really the kind of thing isekai writers or readers are very interested in.

The first arc of The Faraway Paladin is the protagonist being mentored in secret. To a lesser extent, there's also The Wise Grandson and Maken no Daydreamer. All three feature Nice Guys who suffer from imposter syndrome.

Mushoku Tensei has the protagonist being tutored for a while (and his tutor becomes a recurring character), but only after he's already spent a while figuring out magic for himself (during which he inadvertently became a master of Simplified Spellcasting because no one told him there was an easier way of doing things).

Does Benno in Ascendance Of A Bookworm count as a mentor figure? He's the protagonist's business partner, an ambitious merchant who is hungry for her new product ideas but frequently yells at her for her lack of common sense, and sometimes gets mistaken for her father.

Benno definitely counts, as does the priest in second arc. They both guide Maine through her ambitions since she's ignorant of the world

Then again Bookworm actually seems to be about making sure the main character works to earn her goals. And again that's why I think more isekai's need mentors, so that the characters work for their goals. Not all isekai stories need one, but some definitely do.

You know how people talk about reverse isekais. I was thinking how about a common teenaged or 20 something peasant boy from a medieval fantasy land is transported into our world by some means. It would be fun to see him have cultural shock at some of the mundane things in the modern world we take for granted or even has mannerisms that would be expected of his social class. Along with the fact that he probably lives where raids are a thing and monsters could come at you, so he wouldn't be used to that relatively peaceful life in a first world country.

And of course food, if the medieval fantasy land is based on medieval Europe then he would probably never had eaten a potato, tomato, or any other new world food before so his reaction would be probably of glee. That gives me an idea that he actually tries making food that would be found in the medieval period, which much to everyone's surprise tastes better than they expected and not as bland as television often makes it seem.

Also the main character would actually be surprised about whoever he's staying with has a private bathroom. Mostly because in the Middle Ages the most common form of was public bath housing. Seriously, Japan needs to incorporate that aspect into their Medieval Fantasy series because they love bathhouse episodes, so that historical aspect could be justified using.

Probably has to go through an arc where he has to learn how to read, since he's a peasant and probably never really learned it.

Edited by firewriter on Feb 9th 2020 at 10:41:50 AM