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As far as people can tell, there actually isn't actually an Isekai without some sort of twist on the formula.
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Jan 11, 2019 17:26
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I just had a weird thought: could Black Lagoon be considered a quasi-isekai?
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Jan 11, 2019 17:52
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Does isekai have standard conventions beyond the whole “transported to another world” thing? Would you consider The Wandering Inn an isekai story, anyone who has read it?
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Jan 11, 2019 17:54
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The Sandman posted:I just had a weird thought: could Black Lagoon be considered a quasi-isekai? It and isekai draw from the same well of a normal guy being fed up with his humdrum life and going somewhere exotic and exciting but isekai requires magical transport to another world or time period, full stop. Black Lagoon is just a fantasy about becoming a badass and falling for a girl who could kill you in 50 different ways.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:02
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7 seeds is isekai
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Jan 11, 2019 18:15
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Jesus Christ is isekai
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Jan 11, 2019 18:28
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Now I want to see "I was reborn as the savior, but my Godfather wants me to sacrifice my life"
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Jan 11, 2019 18:30
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IShallRiseAgain posted:As far as people can tell, there actually isn't actually an Isekai without some sort of twist on the formula. I hear Mark Twain wrote one.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:32
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Cynic Jester posted:Now I want to see "I was reborn as the savior, but my Godfather wants me to sacrifice my life" it has very definite similarities to the otome girl villainess subgenre. avoid the bad end by rigging an escape hatch from your future tomb!
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Jan 11, 2019 18:34
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IShallRiseAgain posted:As far as people can tell, there actually isn't actually an Isekai without some sort of twist on the formula. Yeah; it's always funny when people (like someone in the Slime thread) comment on how a particular isekai's protagonist is "different from that in a typical isekai," when in reality the "typical isekai protagonist" they describe literally doesn't exist, while there are countless ones similar to the one they're referring to. Like, to use the Slime as an example, the poster in question was like "the protagonist is an adult and not a teenager, and isn't on a journey to defeat the demon king, and this is unique," but adult protagonists are extremely common in isekai and I don't think I've encountered a single one that plays the "defeat demon king" premise straight. If anything, the most common premise seems to be "just loving around as an OP person in a fantasy world" (which, contrary to what many people seem to believe, is actually just because the authors aren't good enough to write an actual plot). gimme the GOD drat candy posted:7 seeds is isekai 7 Seeds owns and anyone who hasn't read it should do so.
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Jan 11, 2019 18:59
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Similarly there's an archetypal fantasy cliche of a princess getting kidnapped by a dragon and rescued by a knight, who she marries, which I literally cannot recall ever having been played straight.
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Jan 11, 2019 19:17
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Tunicate posted:Similarly there's an archetypal fantasy cliche of a princess getting kidnapped by a dragon and rescued by a knight, who she marries, which I literally cannot recall ever having been played straight. I was about to say St. George, but did St. George marry the princess?
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Jan 11, 2019 19:37
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Perseus did it. Andromeda was kidnapped by the sea serpent Cetus, then Perseus killed Cetus and married Andromeda. Then that story got retold a few bazillion times in different ways over the past few thousand years. So I guess the stories that all of these WNs are reacting to aren't other WNs, but myths, legends, and fairy tales.
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Jan 11, 2019 19:39
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Ytlaya posted:Yeah; it's always funny when people (like someone in the Slime thread) comment on how a particular isekai's protagonist is "different from that in a typical isekai," when in reality the "typical isekai protagonist" they describe literally doesn't exist, while there are countless ones similar to the one they're referring to. Read the worst anime thread for some 
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Jan 11, 2019 19:40
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I mean, aren't there some older isekai stories that play it straight? But they're not hip and new so nobody pays attention to them?
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Jan 11, 2019 19:52
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Tunicate posted:Similarly there's an archetypal fantasy cliche of a princess getting kidnapped by a dragon and rescued by a knight, who she marries, which I literally cannot recall ever having been played straight. dragon quest 1 is pretty much that
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Jan 11, 2019 20:03
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Tunicate posted:Similarly there's an archetypal fantasy cliche of a princess getting kidnapped by a dragon and rescued by a knight, who she marries, which I literally cannot recall ever having been played straight. Sleeping Beauty? I mean Maleficent turns into a dragon in the disney version so its not EXACTLY the same but thats old enough to set the standard.
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Jan 11, 2019 20:25
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Its played straight, just in a goofy way with a bimbo princess, but Dragons Lair has that exact plot
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Jan 11, 2019 20:27
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Keep in mind that the vast majority of WNs don't get translated and have very few readers in their original language. What we read is like the top 1%.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:01
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Motto posted:dragon quest 1 is pretty much that Yeah If you wanna know what the original flavor is of all the japanese fantasy tropes that are made fun of and played with, its dragon quest 1. It literally has the hero set out to find the princess, and then defeat the evil lord. It all stems from there, even Final Fantasy 1 does different stuff, like the technologically advanced lost civilization and the weird time loop.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:18
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Metaworld Chronicles is a pretty good english language isekai novel. A 30 year old asian-australian businesswoman wakes up as her teenage self in a parallel, modern magi-tech earth. The story starts off in Sydney but eventually moves to Shanghai and starts dealing with politics between paranoid communist wizards, scheming western mages and arrogant 21st century wuxia clans. Features excellent, in-depth world building, an interesting magic system, and secondary characters with understandable motives and actual personalities. I'm posting it here even though it's english language because fully half of the story so far has been set in early 2000's china, but with magic.
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Jan 11, 2019 22:50
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Argas posted:I mean, aren't there some older isekai stories that play it straight? But they're not hip and new so nobody pays attention to them? Magic Knight Rayearth at least got as far as the "defeat the bad guy and rescue the princess" part while appearing to play the premise straight, although things went off the rails immediately after that.
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Jan 12, 2019 03:45
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Cynic Jester posted:Exalted is your best bet for out of the box flavor, with a core resource being named Essence and so forth. im (slowly) writing a pbta hack for xianxia cultivation shenanigans (core principle, the fastest way to cultivate is to steal poo poo from seniors, the second fastest way is to be shockingly lucky, followed at a distance by actual work) specifically because there's no good trpg for it
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Jan 12, 2019 05:25
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Jester Mcgee posted:This is a bit off topic, but I think this is the best thread for it. Does anyone have any ideas for systems to check out if I’m looking to run a Xianxia tabletop game? I was thinking Exalted maybe? Exalted is kinda... like, for the longest time the joke was that the best way to play Exalted was using any system other than Exalted. 3rd Edition is a lot better, but it's still a very, very heavy-weight system with a lot of things you need to keep track of and lot of moving parts. It's not something I'd choose to build something else on top of unless I was very interested in replicating that exact gameplay experience. I'm drawing a blank on what else to recommend, though. Like Cynic Jester says, there are a bunch of Wuxia-themed RPGs (I've got a soft spot for Legends of the Wulin, personally, but that has its own problems), but I can't think of any that have the sort of verticality you'd want. Actually, this: Cynic Jester posted:cultivation as a core focus. sparks a thought: in Xianxia the magic kung-fu is often secondary to the accumulation of power. Achieving enlightenment by meditating of the nature of rocks is the story and the goal of the story; using that enlightenment to break someone's teeth is just the celebratory fireworks. So, would you better able to capture the nature of the genre if you built on something where self-development through revelation and self-actualisation was the central game mechanic? Is there a game like that? I think Chuubo's is somewhere along those line, though, uh, I still haven't gotten around to reading that one so don't quote me on that. Disregard this if you are just after the magic kung fu. Exalted is mostly about magic kung fu and the moral dilemmas resulting from magic kung fu. (e: for a while now I've been imagining this Xianxia card game, a Mario Kart-style race sort of thing where the goal is to reach the end of the cultivation track first and most of what you do is think up cunning ways to screw over the other players using the Treasures and Opportunities you've drawn at random from the decks). Argas posted:I mean, aren't there some older isekai stories that play it straight? But they're not hip and new so nobody pays attention to them? Well, what are we calling "isekai"? Portal fantasy is much older than the current LN/WN craze and plenty of them play it straight. Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Narnia- I'll count Peter Pan too, why not. More recently in anime and manga you've got things like Twelve Kingdoms or Fushigi Yuugi (I think? I think there may be an entire subgenre of shoujo along these lines, but I'm only vaguely aware of it). And Escaflowne, Now and Then, Here and Now, .hack//SIGN, just off the top of head. We tend not to call any of these "isekai", though. The stories we do call isekai, this most recent batch, tend to be self-consciously isekai, and I think that self-awareness makes them necessarily parodic. Meaning: no isekai play it straight, because if they did, they wouldn't be isekai. Telsa Cola posted:Ill give it a go, I guess what Im really looking for is something that deconstructs the genre. Honestly, I think this refusal to take themselves seriously is one of the primary reasons the genre is so loving bad. I like To Be A Power (and wish it would update more often  ), it's pretty great, but have you ever noticed how the protagonists of these stories almost never seem to care that they've been suddenly alienated from everyone they ever knew or loved? How being suddenly inserted into radically different cultures and contexts never seems to cause more than superficial problems? Have you ever thought about much depth that robs from these characters? They're contextless ciphers, lacking an emotional connection to anything (which is the point, of course).
KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jan 12, 2019 |
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Jan 12, 2019 06:21
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Avulsion posted:Metaworld Chronicles is a pretty good english language isekai novel. A 30 year old asian-australian businesswoman wakes up as her teenage self in a parallel, modern magi-tech earth. The story starts off in Sydney but eventually moves to Shanghai and starts dealing with politics between paranoid communist wizards, scheming western mages and arrogant 21st century wuxia clans. I read it because somebody strongly recommended it and its actually really bad. The protagonist is a spoiled rotten Mary Sue. I had read the story up to the point where we are supposed to feel sympathy for her, because she is only getting a massive inheritance from one side of her family and she has to move out of a mansion into a luxurious apartment instead. This is a setting where most people live in absolutely horrible conditions. Nothing is actually a threat to her, not only is she super-powerful, she can summon a god like being when things get really tough. She never has to do anything clever because she can just murder everything. Everybody either completely loves her, or is an enemy. I must admit the setting has some potential for an interesting story, but the protagonist completely ruins it. Her being from another world also barely factors into the plot. Supposedly, the series leans into her being a psychopath at some point, but it must be really deep into it. I really should have dropped it earlier. IShallRiseAgain fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Jan 12, 2019 |
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Jan 12, 2019 06:52
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atelier morgan posted:im (slowly) writing a pbta hack for xianxia cultivation shenanigans (core principle, the fastest way to cultivate is to steal poo poo from seniors, the second fastest way is to be shockingly lucky, followed at a distance by actual work) specifically because there's no good trpg for it In any accurate cultivation system, the best builds will have all stats as dump stats except luck, and maybe charisma (for scamming).
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Jan 12, 2019 07:07
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Argas posted:I mean, aren't there some older isekai stories that play it straight? But they're not hip and new so nobody pays attention to them? Not within the web novel realm, no. Isekai aren't really doing a twist on other isekai; they're doing a twist on a Dragon Quest-esque plot. I mean, you can technically use the label to describe stuff like Escaflowne or whatever, but isekai WNs aren't really referring to that sort of thing. edit: The LN Grimgar could be said to play it straight, I suppose. There's no demon king, but it has the protagonist just fight monsters and stuff instead of there being some big twist. I should check if the licensed version ever had more translated, since I genuinely enjoyed that (and up until what I read, which was the 5th volume or something, the protagonist still hadn't become really powerful, so it displayed astonishing restrain for a title of its genre). I wish there were more LNs like Rokka no Yuusha (and that Rokka no Yuusha would actually be finished someday  ), because it's a seriously solid and kickass fantasy story (that also features a non-OP protagonist who is actually an interesting character). It's probably not a coincidence that almost all the genuinely good and "professional quality" stories are LNs instead of WNs.Re:Zero is probably the best plotted fantasy story I've read that originated as a WN. It has some Dumb Anime poo poo(tm), but it makes up for it by having a well thought-out plot/setting that doesn't give me an "the author is just making up poo poo as he goes along" feeling (the overwhelming majority of WNs give me that feeling). The author has a really great sense for creating exciting/tense scenes; a lot of stuff happens during the 4th arc that it's really easy to imagine as some awesome season finale or something in an anime. The characters are also extremely distinct and it's very easy to imagine how they look/speak/etc. edit2: Whoa holy poo poo, a bunch of Grimgar was actually officially released! Volume 10 is apparently up for pre-order. That's really good to hear, since it's one of the few not-poo poo stories from this genre. edit3: And even Rokka no Yuusha has through volume 6 released! Man, I'm happy I actually bothered to check. Though it's deeply depressing that it seems like the series is never going to be completed, particularly after some of the later cliffhangers. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Jan 12, 2019 |
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Jan 12, 2019 07:43
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IShallRiseAgain posted:I read it because somebody strongly recommended it and its actually really bad. The protagonist is a spoiled rotten Mary Sue. I had read the story up to the point where we are supposed to feel sympathy for her, because she is only getting a massive inheritance from one side of her family and she has to move out of a mansion into a luxurious apartment instead. This is a setting where most people live in absolutely horrible conditions. Nothing is actually a threat to her, not only is she super-powerful, she can summon a god like being when things get really tough. She never has to do anything clever because she can just murder everything. Everybody either completely loves her, or is an enemy. I must admit the setting has some potential for an interesting story, but the protagonist completely ruins it. Her being from another world also barely factors into the plot. oof, that's unfortunate. the first 10 or so chapters i read weren't bad, by wn standards.
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Jan 12, 2019 07:52
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the twist of grimgar is that the party is incredibly weak and vulnerable. it's not even a power fantasy, really.
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Jan 12, 2019 07:53
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Gromgar barely qualifies as isekai, though. Yes, the adventurers are transported from the modern world to a fantasy setting, but they lose literally all knowledge of who they were and nearly all understanding of things other than what they learn from their fledgling adventuring career. The fact that they’re from modern Japan is ultimately irrelevant, at least as far as the anime covers. They are basically blank slates that gain skill and setting knowledge at the rate the audience does.
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Jan 12, 2019 08:50
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blastron posted:Gromgar barely qualifies as isekai, though. Yes, the adventurers are transported from the modern world to a fantasy setting, but they lose literally all knowledge of who they were and nearly all understanding of things other than what they learn from their fledgling adventuring career. The fact that they’re from modern Japan is ultimately irrelevant, at least as far as the anime covers. They are basically blank slates that gain skill and setting knowledge at the rate the audience does. I disagree. As often as not an Isekai coming from Japan has no actual relevance to the plot. In fact, that they come from somewhere else is often not that important. Grimgarr actually has the fact that they come from somewhere else being very important, and as such it's more Isekai than many Isekai.
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Jan 12, 2019 08:55
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blastron posted:Gromgar barely qualifies as isekai, though. Yes, the adventurers are transported from the modern world to a fantasy setting, but they lose literally all knowledge of who they were and nearly all understanding of things other than what they learn from their fledgling adventuring career. The fact that they’re from modern Japan is ultimately irrelevant, at least as far as the anime covers. They are basically blank slates that gain skill and setting knowledge at the rate the audience does. The bolded seems to be true for most isekai that don't have "using modern knowledge in a fantasy world" as a premise, though. And Grimgar at least keeps the previous life as a source of mystery (with a sort of unstated implication that it's Relevant in some way). People from Earth are also their own social class of sorts. The biggest difference between Grimgar and other isekai is simply the tone. Almost everything else that is typically called isekai has an overpowered protagonist and/or a light-hearted tone. I also think that the simple fact that LNs have actual editors results in the content being considerably more "professional" in its quality. When I try to read most WNs, I can't shake the feeling that I'm just reading some random fanfiction that the author is making up as they go along. This obviously isn't to say that other better authors don't also make things up as they go along, but there isn't the same keen sense of "it is obvious that the author is just writing whatever random poo poo they think would be cool." This is actually one of the things that makes Kumoko stand out among other WNs - the author at least obviously had a general sense of where they wanted to take the plot.
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Jan 12, 2019 09:52
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IShallRiseAgain posted:I read it because somebody strongly recommended it and its actually really bad. The protagonist is a spoiled rotten Mary Sue. I had read the story up to the point where we are supposed to feel sympathy for her, because she is only getting a massive inheritance from one side of her family and she has to move out of a mansion into a luxurious apartment instead. This is a setting where most people live in absolutely horrible conditions. Nothing is actually a threat to her, not only is she super-powerful, she can summon a god like being when things get really tough. She never has to do anything clever because she can just murder everything. Everybody either completely loves her, or is an enemy. I must admit the setting has some potential for an interesting story, but the protagonist completely ruins it. Yeah, she's an absurdly lucky protagonist with bullshit magic powers, but I like the way the story handles it and how it fits into the world building. She knows her powers are bullshit, and the people around her know her powers are bullshit. She spends a lot of time in the latter half of the story being poked and prodded by magic-scientists trying to figure out how her bullshit powers work. Many of her friends and allies are just people who recognized that her bullshit powers will turn her into a god when she grows up, and they want to use her or get on her good side. Others worry she'll go insane and have to be put down. The people around her have their own motives and personalities, they aren't simply driven by blind adoration or irrational hatred. That said, the setting is by far the best part of the story, and well worth the price of admission. The author does a good job of building the world into something that feels substantive, probably because it's based on the real world. quote:Her being from another world also barely factors into the plot. quote:Supposedly, the series leans into her being a psychopath at some point, but it must be really deep into it. I really should have dropped it earlier.
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Jan 12, 2019 11:36
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If Grimgar is isekai then so is Haibane Renmei.
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Jan 12, 2019 12:34
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Harry Potter, the highest grossing isekai.
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Jan 12, 2019 13:16
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Shanakin posted:In any accurate cultivation system, the best builds will have all stats as dump stats except luck, and maybe charisma (for scamming). the idea is that's true equally for all the players so they don't really have stats; their attributes are just 'how they specialize in dealing with problems' and are determined entirely by the particular bullshit powers/op items they have
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Jan 12, 2019 13:39
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Spoken like a scrub who wont immediately find an all powerful magic mirror artefact that duplicates other treasures and explodes enemies' butts. (and then turns into a trusted scamming companion)
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Jan 12, 2019 13:49
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Avulsion posted:Yeah, she's an absurdly lucky protagonist with bullshit magic powers, but I like the way the story handles it and how it fits into the world building. She knows her powers are bullshit, and the people around her know her powers are bullshit. She spends a lot of time in the latter half of the story being poked and prodded by magic-scientists trying to figure out how her bullshit powers work. Many of her friends and allies are just people who recognized that her bullshit powers will turn her into a god when she grows up, and they want to use her or get on her good side. Others worry she'll go insane and have to be put down. The people around her have their own motives and personalities, they aren't simply driven by blind adoration or irrational hatred. I agree the setting of Metaworld Chronicles is really cool. I would almost give the series a recommendation just based on that alone. It's clear the author has put a lot of time into dreaming it up and making it tick, it's pretty cool. I think calling her "absurdly lucky" is overstating it a bit though. There's a grim bit in the first few chapters where she's super weak and seems destined to never be able to be more than a magical office/factory worker - but it's followed up by a lengthy "training montage" for lack of a better term that springs her into being "relatively powerful for her age" - I never felt like the process of her getting stronger was a weak point of the story. It felt earned enough. Plus, it would be boring if she was just fastening magical rivets to magical plates in a factory somewhere or whatever it is that the lowly dregs of magical society do, right? Plus in the later bits her soul eating power is a drug addiction/crushing moral dilemma/necessary evil/attractor of friends and foes all rolled up into one. It makes for interesting reading and introduces an interesting arc to her character that I, at least, am looking forward to seeing the end of.
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Jan 12, 2019 14:04
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Autonomous Monster posted:Exalted is kinda... like, for the longest time the joke was that the best way to play Exalted was using any system other than Exalted. 3rd Edition is a lot better, but it's still a very, very heavy-weight system with a lot of things you need to keep track of and lot of moving parts. It's not something I'd choose to build something else on top of unless I was very interested in replicating that exact gameplay experience. I've been reading through the source book and I'm getting the feeling that it's way too crunchy for a good Xianxia setting. One of the things that sticks out to me the most about Xianxia is that going for broke is almost always the right choice, it's a race to see how extreme a character can commit to whatever they are doing, and a system that requires people to make smart choices, as oppose to badass choices, wouldn't work.
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Jan 12, 2019 17:33
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Jester Mcgee posted:I've been reading through the source book and I'm getting the feeling that it's way too crunchy for a good Xianxia setting. One of the things that sticks out to me the most about Xianxia is that going for broke is almost always the right choice, it's a race to see how extreme a character can commit to whatever they are doing, and a system that requires people to make smart choices, as oppose to badass choices, wouldn't work. Then somebody is gonna have to do some PbtA work because thats pretty good at letting people do cool poo poo, but I don't know if there's any games specifically built around xianxia that use it.
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Jan 12, 2019 18:45
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