Isekai is fundamentally an American genre. The first story about a man transported via unexpected death to a fantasy world where he uses his modern technical knowledge to rise within society is Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" and its influence should not be discounted. Ultimately every major aspect of Isekai anime is derivative of American sources.
But wait! says foolish user, Clearly Isekai has other aspects that set it apart. After all, the real kickoff to the current Isekai boom came from Sword Art Online, a Japanese story. However, every aspect of SAO is ultimately inspired by American sources. MMORPGs were invented in America with the first graphical rpg being Neverwinter Nights. Globally the genre was cemented in popularity by World of Warcraft, another American invention. Even the concept of being trapped within Virtual Reality is American, tracing its history back to Laurence Manning's 1933 story "The Man Who Awoke"
Even the fantasy setting is derivative. The entire concept is lifted wholesale from Dungeons and Dragons, including all of its initially distinctive and now utterly rote races and magical spells.
In a final attempt to argue for a Japanese origin, perhaps user contends that Isekai is not merely based on RPGs or fantasy video games in general, but specifically Dragon Quest, which is obviously Japanese. After all, it's a JRPG, the very term has Japanese in its name. And here is the final nail in the coffin, because JRPGs were not even invented by the Japanese. The first turn-based Japanese RPG was The Black Onyx, which was produced by Henk Rogers shortly before he became embroiled in the great Tetris fiasco.
In short, Isekai belongs to America, and they deserve all the blame.
Isekai is fundamentally an American genre...
No real idea, but weren't the Alice in Wonderland books writen warlier?
And Shinju no Nectar Anime when?
Dante's Divine Comedy came before and it's the OG isekai. Noone can dispute this.
I'm of the opinion that accepting Alice in Wonderland as Isekai opens the door to a much larger category than most people would normally consider for the genre of anime as it exists. If it were merely being transported to another world, you could extend it to the Divine Comedy, which is a poor fit.
There are greek myths about entering the underworld that certainly predate the Divine Comedy. This is why it's important to have more restrictions than merely, "goes to another world"
>WoW and D&D are isekai
Go die retard
WoW and D&D invented the magic setting that Isekai most commonly takes place in.
They are if you literally get trapped inside them and are forced to survive in their worlds
>The first story about a man transported via unexpected death to a fantasy world
The idea of heaven was written about well over 2,000 years ago. After we purge shounenspics I think isekaitards should be the next to go.
>cutting off the second half of the sentence
user, surely you can find better holes than this.
Magic doesn't make something isekai.
Which nobody is, so it's not isekai.
I did not say that the two are isekai, I said that the Japanese have used them as the setting for the world that the protagonists are transported to. I would also note that I did not even imply that WoW in particular was a major influence on setting, but rather that it is most responsible for popularizing MMORPGs globally, which is what allowed for the writer of SAO to use these cultural touchstones when creating his VR world.
"Isekai" is barely quantifiable as a genre.
It's a writing gimmick tacked on to other, pre-existing genres. Every Isekai story falls apart eventually because once the premise of "in another world" gradually fades into irrelevance, you're left with a generic story. This is where hack writers lose steam because now they're usually just writing in a bog-standard fantasy world with one thing changed being the origin of the protagonist. Much of what defines a popular Isekai series has nothing to do with other worlds.
Almost all the most popular Isekai stories have concepts that use the Isekai gimmick as a hook to get readers in, then delve into the original premise the author actually cares about. In that scenario, those authors could have easily just written that premise without an Isekai hook.
Isekai is just a trend to get people through the door in a competitive light novel market, no different to harem or otherwise. The literary market in Japan is a result of the cultural and societal norms that make reading commonplace. In that sense, it is actually uniquely Japanese.
Then nothing is isekai because no one get's isekaid irl so isekai can't exist even as a story
Sorry I never played much WoW but where's the part where your character gets transported to another worlds?
You're just a retard, you either don't understand what's being said because you're just barely literate or you're just trolling
>could have easily just written that premise without an Isekai hook
When will the retards finally learn that it's not some functional thing, but rather artistic expression? You could turn like 95% of fantasy into sci-fi and vice versa if you really wanted to, but guess what, the authors don't give a single shit about that "option". Sure, a fantasy author "could in theory" write it as a sci-fi, but why should he? Same can be said with isekai. The author wants to write isekai, so he writes isekai, that's all there is to it.
I think he makes a good point. There's a big chunk of isekai where the protag doesn't even use knowledge from his original world, he's just a fantasy protagonist with a broken power. I think authors thought you had to do the crossover if you wanted to set something in a traditionally isekai world, and then once they realized they didn't you got the influx of """native isekai"""" stuff
All I'm saying is that WoW isn't isekai.
There is literally no one who will disagree with you on that point
Not inherently, obviously not, but if someone walked up to you and blew your head off while you were out at the grocery store and then you just sort of woke up but in the world of WoW then it absolutely would be at that point, for you at least
The Japanese love Alice in Wonderland.
Isn't the RTS series of Warcraft kinda GATE:JSDF but instead of generic fantasy world connecting with modern Earth, they instead connect Gates with the Orcs?
>Americans yet again create cancer
D&D neckbeards think muh make believe game is influential
Do you have an argument here?
>Americans create something
>it has huge potential
>foreigners squander it
>America gets blamed
>repeat since 1776
>However, every aspect of SAO is ultimately inspired by American sources.
So what? All your examples are in service to this terrible point. If a child scribbles an imitation of the Sistine Chapel, does that make Michelangelo a bad painter? Who are the people funding the isekai boom again? A market doesn't thrive on creators writing to themselves. It's not up to the writers to have standards.
>I'm of the opinion that accepting Alice in Wonderland as Isekai opens the door to a much larger category than most people would normally consider for the genre of anime as it exists
If Alice in Wonderland isn't isekai, nothing is. Is it being a dream enough to disqualify it for you? Because every other element is textbook. And isekai light novels don't actually end, they just milk reused plot points forever, so who knows how they're supposed to conclude.
I really don't think it's textbook. The only thing Alice in Wonderland really shares is ending up in another world. It doesn't have any of the levelling or leveraging of modern technology in a less civilized world. It's not an action or political book. It's mostly a series of absurdist fables, which just doesn't parallel very well with Isekai.
what about otome villainess isekai
Isekai is a writing trick that lets amateurs skimp on characterization.
Probably more derivative of British literature, but still certainly derivative
D&D didn't influence shit, all role-playing games are inherently derivative
Daily reminder that "the MC is transported into another word" is no more a genre than "the MC goes to high school." If you try to be an anally-fixated autist and actually enforce this definition, you'll have to claim some absolutely brain-damaged things like "Konosuba is an isekai, but its Explosion spin-off (where Megumin is the MC) is not an isekai, or "SAO isn't an isekai."
The real definition of isekai is "dungeon-crawling fantasy with vidya mechanics," or even more simply, "a SAO clone," because SAO becoming a hit is makes up literally 100% of the reasons isekai is a thing now.
There's plenty of folktales about getting transported to the world of faeries or immortals in both Eastern and Western culture that predate your example.
Before writing a wall of text, using your brain should be a prereq, lest you write all that for nothing.
>The real definition of isekai is "dungeon-crawling fantasy with vidya mechanics
Explain this then
As I've stated repeatedly throughout this thread, and I thought made clear in the initial post, defining Isekai merely as a person going to another world is insufficient. That does not do a good job of defining the genre as it exists.
>When will the retards finally learn that it's not some functional thing, but rather artistic expression?
This is only true some of the time.
If you're on Volume 2 of an Isekai story and that aspect of the protagonist no longer has any bearing on the events taking place, it's clearly not an integral part of the author's vision, it's just a cheap and easy way of having a protagonist who's a fish out of water but not entirely clueless. That's basically it.
If you can't define a genre clearly, then it's probably not a genre. When you say "Isekai" you are simply referring to a narrative device.
We like to use labels like Harem and Shonen as shorthand terms for certain kinds of manga, but when making an actual anaylsis of media it's important to understand that Harem is just a device used in a Romantic Comedy genre, whilst Shonen is simply a common demographic for an Action or Adventure genre.
If you take the "isekai" out of many Isekai stories, you're left with a comedy/romance/adventure story, because it's just something stapled on. For actual genres, you typically can't really take those genres "out" of the story or it ceases to exist as a narrative.
I clearly defined isekai in the opening post, autists like you just can't help themselves in their quest to add unnecessary ambiguity, though.
And if you woke up in a world made out of cheese it'd be isekai too.
What's your point? Going to another world makes a story isekai?
Yes. That's literally what isekai is, that's all it is
Isekai or 異世界, which literally translates to different world
Is Jesus an Isekai protagonist
>In short, Isekai belongs to America, and they deserve all the blame.
I thought that you were a burger and I was wondering why would you want to take the blame for isekai.
>total lack of reading comprenhension
>The real definition of isekai is "dungeon-crawling fantasy with vidya mechanics,"
You were doing well up until here. A lot of the stuff that's gotten anime recently has had vidya mechanics so animeonlys just assume that all isekais do.
>D&D are isekai
It can and has been.
Nigga Adam and Eve were isekaid right out of eden.
Cant go past that.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Buddhism did the reincarnation/isekai genre first.
The difference is that western Isekai is actually good.
Name 1 good western Isekai.
Harry Potter
Not a isekai.
Narnia
Not good.
user please stop reading harems. Its corroding your mind
This is not a SJW friendly site.
>Believing Narnia is in any way "good"
Phantom Tollbooth is Isekai, pretty good book.
Not Isekai because hell is a place in the natural world in Dante's canon and purgatory/heaven are just dimensions part of the natural world.
Alice in Wonderland is a dream.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is the original isekai.
Why anyone haven't mentioned yet that Neverwinter Nights came out the same year as SAO