General Isekai Thread

I dunno if I'd attach a huge deal of importance to returner vs isekai in Korea vs Japan. Both countries have both stories in significant numbers and occasionally blur the two together. The two story types also frequently follow the exact same beats.

Most of which can't be found during Korean military service.

My God, ROK military IS an isekai world!

agreed, but the thing is those tend to be glossed over or handwaved for various reasons. Including the whole "power fantasy" aspect.

And it also doesn't help that some settings tend to have analogs for internet (usually magictek or outright magical^note Not limited to isekai. In fact the use of phones and the subsequent implication of infrastructure to facilitate it feels like a black swan trope that I think even took OSP by surprise) or that magic could feasibly cheat in food that is both delicious and nutritious even compared to modern day grub

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jun 1st 2023 at 7:44:47 AM

What is OSP?

Overly Sarcastic Productions a literary commentary and history channel. Red, the literary commentator, cites this site a lot when talking about tropes in literature.

Edited by reppuzan on Jun 5th 2023 at 7:08:44 AM

So I recently read an original Isekai manga called Samurai in Another World aka Isekai Samurai and enjoy it.

The protagonist is Ginko, a young girl who was trained to be a Samurai by her father and was taught that dying in battle was the greatest honor a Samurai could have. During the end of the Sengoku Period where Ginko participated in the final battle that would decide whether Tokugawa Ieyasu becomes the new Shogun, Ginko believe this is the battle where she will honorable die in battle since she's part of the army that opposes Tokugawa. However, she gets knocked out after a bullet hit her headband, only to wake up and find all of her comrades dead and she was the only survivor. Depressed that her honorable death was denied, she tries dueling other wandering samurai but she's just too strong for them.

While praying to Buddha one day, Ginko prays to have a strong opponent that would finally kill her, which Buddha answers and sends Ginko to a fantasy world with magic and monsters. While Ginko is at first confused, she happily accept this new world since there are a lot of dangerous monsters and demons that threatened the people of this world which she can fight and hopefully die in battle.

I think The One Within the Villainess manga might have just became my benchmark for peak Otome Game Isekai stories. Safety spoilers: It amazing how despite appearing to start off as the standard Villainess Reincarnated setup Remilia manages to be a remarkable (and downright terrifying) protagonist all while maintaining the core of what Emi sought for her. The sheer devotion she has for Emi never fully erases how downright manipulative Remilia is, making it abundantly clear this is the same woman who would gladly end world in her original storyline. Meanwhile while Emi gets taken out of role quickly or the situation being presented as a straight bodyjacking, the sincerity of actions makes a heartwarming foundation as to why Remilia loves her so much. Everything involving the gods manages to captivating to the point it I want it to be it’s own story. Honestly the few issues I have don’t even feel like actually downsides, though that might be me getting caught in the high of the story. This one of those manga I’d love to see adapted, but simultaneously worried that it wouldn’t get the treatment I think it deserves.

I agree that it's probably up there as one of the best otome isekai, but I feel like its short length poses an issue with adapting it. You'd need a lot of padding to get even 1 cour out of it, though I suppose there's enough for maybe a half cour. The side-stories in the novel after the main story add a lot of characterization and are practically as long as the main story itself, but ultimately are unnecessary and would just bog down the pacing of Remilia's tale if it were added in the middle.

Ah, crap. I succumbed to what is probably one of the most common pitfalls of all isekai writers.

Basically, my webnovel's main character - specifically, the military force that he commands as a four star commander - has now became so obscenely powerful that there is pretty much no longer any opponent that can remotely pose a threat to him and his forces. XP

I knew this day would come eventually, but actually realizing it hits different.

The solution there isn't so much to make a force able to challenge them in a powerscale way but to make whatever conflict that occurs entertaining. Not so much an "if" they'll win but a "how" they'll win.

Go with video game logic and have them depowered!

@Cross

At this point, I see an anime announcement as more akin to a death sentence for a series since every series I've loved and wanted to see one of has gotten an absolute garbage one, been overtly despised and hated(often for no real reason), faded into oblivion, or some combination of the three(or all three even) to the point I can no longer enjoy them since it just reminds me of the negative feelings. Absolutely amazing series though for sure and.

Edited by doomrider7 on Aug 2nd 2023 at 8:53:43 AM

^^^^ So what you're saying is that the Japanese?^note I remember the admiral is an American but I actually don't know much of anything else so if it's WWII I assume it's Pacific theater against the Japanese were secretly being backed by aliens all along and the only way to fight them off is with card battles?

You can also go with the Superman approach, where the drama comes from not if the protags survive, but if they succeed in protecting their not as powerful companions (villagers, love internsts, etc), or a more political ploy where brute forcing it would just play into the villain's hands they are forced to hold back.

Or you cna just take the other Superman approach but I presume that you are so far into writing the story that the audience will see it for the Ass Pull it is.

One option could be to simply give that overpowered isekai-MC the time to decide what he wants to settle with at the very end of his endgame in this world.

How many achivements, how much he wants from his life, what he wants to accomplish before the inevitable "game over" comes for him at last at the end of his story.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Aug 3rd 2023 at 8:56:40 AM

Yup, that's what I'm trying to achieve - at the very least make the battles feel as spectacular as possible.

Sadly enough, though, the main character is a naval officer and there's only so many ways you can describe naval battles, especially ones involving aircraft carriers.

Oh well, I wrote myself into a corner, but what other option do I have besides writing myself out of it.

Well, you said it's a military thing, not a personal power thing. Maybe have their enemies steal their technology/bomb their supplies or whatever? I haven't read your story, so I don't know why your MC's faction is overpowered.

Having a sudden betrayal from within usually pisses off readers, though.

Oh, nothing too complicated, it's just by the virtue of MC being the supreme commander of, well, what is quite possibly the single most powerful navy in human history ^note The original history's commander AND the Chief of Naval Staff was another admiral, but explaining how THAT came about IS complicated during the World War II.

I don't think I mentioned this here, but writing (what is pretty much) an actual isekai story made realize importance of the couple of the typical isekai tropes. Just to name one, whenever the main character is doing something amazing, it IS pretty important to have other characters react to the feats.

The allies should feel either jealousy or admiration, and the Axis-I mean, the enemies should feel terrified of the MC. Doubly better if the MC's allies either struggle or utterly get trashed by a villain...only to have the said villain get completely stomped by the MC later. Even better if the said allies express, either explicitly or implicitly, how the MC made it look so easy.

Am I just describing The Worf Effect and Character Shilling? Probably, yeah.

sounds like if GATE was Allied propaganda instead of JSDF propaganda tbh

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 5th 2023 at 5:29:56 AM

You could simply make the opposition to the protagonist stronger so that it doesn't matter how obscenely powerful the protagonist is, there's still greater heights to reach. Like how in Dragonball Goku is incredibly powerful, but he's not O Ped because what he's facing at at least his equals but often are at least a bit stronger than he is. Yes, your protagonist should be powerful, but not significantly more so than what he fights if not a bit below.

Just don't do what I've seen a lot of bad Isekai do. That is make the protagonist O Ped so he has to spend a lot of time away from his allies so the bad guys can target them instead. It always ends up going the same way. The O Ped protagonist and the secondaries split up for some reason, the bad guys attack them, then the secondaries hold off the bad guys until the secondaries are just barely alive so they can stall until the O Ped protagonist can get to them and effortlessly thrash the enemy.

In fact, if you're going to have an O Ped protagonist make the secondaries not too far behind them so if a situation like the above does come up, they can at least hold their own if not win against the bad guys even without the protagonist around.

Edited by immortalfrieza on Aug 13th 2023 at 5:06:40 AM

I have a question. How common is it for Isekai protags to get over candied (that is to say have too many traits that glorify them) nowadays? Is it still the same as it ever was?

Yes. Yes it is. I am sorry if you suspected that would be going away anytime soon.

Is there an Isekai where somebody is a fan of a game, dies, and then comes back as the game? That feels like a story idea somebody would have done.

You mean as the game itself? Because there's several instances of reincarnating as a character of the game.

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 15th 2023 at 4:06:27 AM

Yes, the game itself.