General Isekai Thread

Well, Tanya's getting a movie.

@Elfen Lied Fan

Yeah that crossover ain't happening. Different publishers and the such. Now a crossover with different Kodansha properties IS possible though.

Tanya got that movie a while ago, its finished its Japanese cinema run. The news is that the movie is getting an English language release with a limited theatre run (in the US at least. Other territories... uncertain).

Edit for typo

Edited by KnightofLsama on Apr 20th 2019 at 10:09:28 PM

That iseaki attorney manga got it's last chapters translated. The ending wasn't too bad considering the series got cancelled.

Last bonus chapter of Observation Record just came out. No Just As Planned occurred. Clearly, Bertia was just too cunning for our naive prince to notice her true nature.

...Overall, it's probably one of the weaker villainess isekais out there. I mean, excluding the ones that are flat out unreadable.

Endo and Kobayashi's Live Commentary on the Villainess is turning out pretty good so far. The moral of the story is that tsunderes are just too good for this sinful world and the gods must step in to save them.

Experiment time! I want to see what tropes or themes and whatnot appear most often in Isekai works. So if anyone wants, go ahead and throw out the names of manga, light novels, or anime - good, bad, and WTF - along with what tropes or cliches I should keep an eye out for and I'll give them a look, then come back here to share what I've found about the trends in Isekai.

Well, the typical tropes depends on the isekai genre you're looking at. Like the villainess isekai often does either the perspective flip to show that the villainess has a shitty upbringing and the heroine by contrast has led a blessed life or does a different sort of perspective flip by making the heroine turn into the entitled git who thinks the world revolves around her. Fantasy isekai often run on RPG mechanics but only occasionally have a satisfying justification as to why. The kind of isekai I typically read have someone that is The Hero but they aren't the protagonist and are typically written as well meaning but stubborn and frequently an obstacle to the people who really get things done.

Also, Korea seems to have its own spin on the villainess isekai where the protagonist reincarnates as the daughter of some crazy emperor. She acts all cute and disarming to protect herself and manages to redeem him through fatherly love even as the girl continues inwardly treating him like a psychopath.

Incidentally Endo and Kobayashi continues to be cute. But beware Sieg, Finne has been tripping those yuri flags. She even has an Onee-sama now!

Edited by Arha on Apr 25th 2019 at 10:52:17 AM

Ah, One Day I Became a Princess. That one's pretty amusing. I especially like the contrast between the protagonist's Deliberately Cute Child Daddy's Girl act and her inner thoughts where she fears him as a murderous psychopath.

Edited by M84 on Apr 26th 2019 at 12:08:14 AM

Well, that's one, but there's also Daughter of the Emperor and They Say I Was Born a King's Daughter off the top of my head.

I've been catching up on My Death Flags Show no Sign of Ending recently. The translation pace and releases have slowed greatly, but it apparently hasn't been abandoned yet.

That sounds like a fun subgenre to put a character like Cagliostro from Granblue Fantasy in. She's an ancient genius alchemist who turned herself into a cute girl after deciding that sounded like more fun than continuing to be an old guy. Think Tanya, but not evil, and voiced by Sakura Tange.

Edited by RedSavant on Apr 25th 2019 at 12:33:11 PM

I remember saw somewhere there an Isekai about a guy got stuck in a game with his mom.

^^^ From how the translator talks about it, it seems like the writer isn't terribly interested in continuing due to not having much of a fanbase. That's probably why the chapters are so infrequent.

@Parable

shut-in NEET gets transported to another world, becomes overpowered, gains a harem and is always right. there, i summed up the tropes that appear in most isekai. anyways, to throw out some titles:

• Re Zero
• Kono Suba
• In Another World With My Smartphone
• The Familiar Of Zero
• Light Novel/Overlord
• Sword Art Online
• Log Horizon
• How Not To Summon A Demon Lord
• The Rising Of The Shield Hero
• Knights And Magic
• Isekai Shokudou
• Isekai Izakaya Nobu
• Arifureta From Commonplace To Worlds Strongest
• Kenja No Mago
• Now and Then, Here and There
• The Vision of Escaflowne
• Aura Battler Dunbine

Edited by MABfan11 on Apr 26th 2019 at 9:47:18 PM

Kind of funny how the very first item on your list basically takes the piss out of the typical tropes of the isekai genre.

Yeah, basically none of that applies to Re Zero at all aside from the transporting part.

Also depends on how strict you are with the definition of shut in NEET. The protagonist of Overlord, for example, does have a job and friends... technically. And I think the protagonist of Escaflowne was just a normal girl. Isn't Kirito in SAO actually some super awesome dude IRL as well?

I know the Escaflowne girl turned out to be very, very wrong about some extremely important things. And the protagonist of Overlord is pretty much always wrong.

Don't know a lot about most of the others.

Edited by Arha on Apr 26th 2019 at 3:15:20 AM

Is Ainz always wrong? Reading the novel i didn't got that impression.

He's a horrible judge of character. He's always morally in the wrong. And while he always 'succeeds' it's only because of someone else's plan and he rarely realizes that he managed to somehow outdo much smarter characters through sheer blind luck. As to his own goals, they are so staggeringly petty that whether he's 'right' or succeeds is pretty much totally irrelevant. Like giving the girl with mean eyes a magic bow as product placement. Did that even work? I don't know, who really cares anyway?

Edited by Arha on Apr 26th 2019 at 3:52:14 AM

It didn't work.

x6 of course Re:Zero is the first thing i list, it's my favorite isekai and one of my favorite anime ever

Edited by MABfan11 on Apr 26th 2019 at 11:13:52 AM

The fact that he always succeeds only because of someone else plan or just sheer luck doesn't take away the fact that he always easily succeeds. And also that he has One Hit Spells and Time Stop, which makes it all more easier for him to win everything. The fact that he is supposed to be "lonely" isn't really tragic or bad, as he basically has the world to it's knees before him.

But he's not succeeding at his goals, he's succeeding at Demiurge's. Ainz himself doesn't understand his vassal's plans and is off working on his own ridiculous pet projects all the time. I guess he succeeds at those too but, again, they're so amazingly inconsequential that it's clear you're not really supposed to take them seriously. His actual important desires are things he constantly fails to achieve, such as finding his friends or actually leading Nazarick rather than being dragged around by his minions.

His minions at Nazarick is so fanatically loyal to him (with some even harbouring crush or love towards him) that it doesn't matter either way. Hell, there is no danger of anyone from Nazarick turning on him, especially with his benevolent attitude toward them. The New World people consider him a god and considering how "the strongest of the New World" fare against him, he is unchallenged. The rest is unimportant, like "oh poor Ainz, he is soo lonely" even through he literally surrounded by people worshipping him and ready to kiss his feet and skeleton ass, plus women, who fall in love with him for little to no reason.

The only thing capable of harming Ainz is, naturally, a gag character. With Konosubas Aqua easily harming him with low tier spells he should be immune to.