Terrible Writing Advice

Terrible Writing Advice is a series of videos, mocking various tropes in stories, with the author giving mocking advises to people.

Here is the latest video:

I knew he would eventually get to ripping at isekai.

labelling good works 'isekai' at this point feels insulting

Isekai is just fun to say. Isekai is just portal fantasy, but Western fans have adopted it as a loan word.

What exactly count as Isekai? Does going back in time and change the past, thus created an alternative universe that you are now stuck in it count as Isekai?

No, Isekai is Japanese for "another world". In Japan the genre is marked by someone dying and waking up in another world, or suddenly being teleported there. More often than not, they have no way to get home.

The problem with the genre is that it's very cookie-cutter. While the fantasy worlds may change the beats stay mostly the same xcept in a handful of series like Re:Zero, Overlord, That Time I Was Reincarnated As A Slime, and Kono Suba.

And Mushoku Tensei, but only because it standardized the formula that a lot of series after it copied.

Re Zero and Konosuba's authors are best dfriends with Mushoku Tensei's author, too.

The basic idea of Isekai is basically Trapped in Another World. This would encapsulate older anime such as Digimon Adventure and Inuyasha(not Yashahime though) and even non Japanese works such as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz.

However genres have more identifying conventions then their premises, and int he case of Iseaki it is specifically the take of an everyman who wind sup in another world in some form (usually as a reincarnation, sometimes literally), who then proceeds to adapt to their circumstances.

However as the TWA video points out such works are usually laden with Power Fantasy elements and general Wish-Fulfillment for otaku, resulting in some bad politic at times. Whether it be Shield Hero or Redo of Healer's outright misogyny, Master of Ragnarok's take on Slavery or the tendency to have nymphets in the harem (the aforementioned MOR has no less than 3, one of which is enslaved to the protagonist), and the trappings of Tanya the Evil's world. Giving the genre a deserved bad rep as a regressive power fantasy. another issue it has is that it never really innovates on itself instead being the same ol' story with a different coat of paint, different waifus and different gimmick, but this time it it makes jokes about its conventions which of course runs into the issue of what happens when you shing a spotlight on your Necessary Weasel. Also worth nothing is that thegenre was popularized by Sword Art Online, which is a somewhat odd genesis given that SAO takes palce inside a VRMMO instead of an actual fantasy world and makes the genre even more derivative and shallow by making it come off as The Theme Park Version of an already mediocre series, that said the SAO influence does show in the form of the fantasy worlds being RPG Mechanics Verses.

As always Sturgeon's Law is in play which means there are prolly some isekai works that would be far better than that. (I think Ascendance of a Bookworm fits into that category, as would western cartoon Amphibia, and bot notably don't have male protagonists).

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Feb 17th 2021 at 4:06:32 AM

Isekai has become so defined by its problematic tropes outside of the "Transported to another world" bit that Redo of Healer - which has all those problematic issues and then some - got included in that list despite not having the "transported to another world" part.

Yeah xD Redo of Healer is...a thing.

I mean, the protagonists of both it and Shield Hero are justified in their misogyny, but Redo of Healer goes WAAAAAY beyond what Shield Hero does. Shield Hero is fine with just having her humiliated. Redo is...wow.

In contrast with Redo, Shield Hero goes out of it's way to show tons of women who are not like Malty.

Edited by firewriter on Feb 17th 2021 at 8:13:38 AM

I been reading some Isekai and Otome Isekai from outside Japan and it strike me how difference they are. Probably because they cater to audience with difference type of fantasy compare to the one from Japan. Take Otome Isekai for example, while the one from Japan usually play to the meta aspect and de-fang the villainess right away, Korea one either focus in the fantasy of been a seductive villainous or the MC living in a story, focus in the characters and romance aspect. I can't said that every works in those 2 countries are like that but there certainly a trend.