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Captain Invictus posted:She's the one saying stuff like that, not the rest of them, but I guess it could be the case. Like you said, the concept of no food culture is weird as hell, especially given the rest of the detail given to them in the chapter, but I suppose we'll see. It'd certainly be disappointing if that's the case, it'd be a waste of the nice artwork. It seemed more like they did have a food culture, just one that believed that the way they cooked was the only way to do things and prioritized that over trying to find alternatives. The known recipe keeps them alive, and they view that as enough. It wasn't that no one ever considered removing the scum, they thought the scum must contain important nutrients so you have to keep it in there. It's still somewhat contrived, but not as much as no culture.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:07
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Has there ever been an isekai where their food is better than Japanese food?
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Jul 20, 2019 02:12
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Clarste posted:Has there ever been an isekai where their food is better than Japanese food? Of course not, Japanese food is A1 super best in all of the world!
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Jul 20, 2019 02:13
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To be fair, soy sauce is amazing.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:15
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Kwyndig posted:Of course not, Japanese food is A1 super best in all of the world! yeah, and even if it's not japanese food, they'll take it and make it japanese! like...putting corn and...mayonnaise, on pizza. yeah.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:30
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Cooking with Wild Game does the fantasy cooking a lot better than anything else I've seen. It has a very believable reason why food culture is so regressed (it is mostly regional and stems from various socio-political issues). The MC sticks with fantasy food ingredients and tries his best with whatever the extremely poor can afford, while dealing with prejudice both within and outside his adoptive tribe. The manga isn't that good, though, as a lot of the series is about character interactions and the manga tosses all of that out the window to condense the story.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:31
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Paracelsus posted:It seemed more like they did have a food culture, just one that believed that the way they cooked was the only way to do things and prioritized that over trying to find alternatives. The known recipe keeps them alive, and they view that as enough. It wasn't that no one ever considered removing the scum, they thought the scum must contain important nutrients so you have to keep it in there. i'd respect these types of stories a lot more if the protagonist did that "let me show you savages how to cook" thing and they all thought it tasted like poo poo. that's cultural differences, "i never considered making the food taste good" is just lovely
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Jul 20, 2019 02:32
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About the only one of those I bought was eel in Nobu, because they prepared it in the restaurant in a completely different way than the peasants did (and the way the peasants cooked it sounded legitimately awful as a way of prepping fish).
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Jul 20, 2019 02:38
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Kwyndig posted:About the only one of those I bought was eel in Nobu, because they prepared it in the restaurant in a completely different way than the peasants did (and the way the peasants cooked it sounded legitimately awful as a way of prepping fish). Jellied eel is an actual thing in British cooking, actually. One thing I like about Nobu is that it shows that the fantasy world actually does have its own food culture, it's just not anything like Earth's because they're using medieval-era logistics.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:44
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I would think the main advantage modern cuisine has over ancient cuisine is the abundance and variety of spices from international trade. However, except in cases where the MC is physically bringing in stuff that knowledge wouldn't help them at all in an isekai.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:47
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Clarste posted:I would think the main advantage modern cuisine has over ancient cuisine is the abundance and variety of spices from international trade. However, except in cases where the MC is physically bringing in stuff that knowledge wouldn't help them at all in an isekai. Yeah, pretty much. As much as I like food isekai, Nobu's the only one I can read any more because I can't really suspend disbelief for most of them nowadays. 'Raising Children While Being An Adventurer' has kind of become my touchstone for how badly food stuff gets handled in these things, because reading the scene where the protagonist convinces people that rice can be cooked and eaten by humans made it very clear that the author knows literally nothing about how rice is grown or what it looks like when unprocessed.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:56
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Yeah, I kind of don't like it when isekai centered around food has the MC going "Let me show you how to cook REAL food" because it feels condescending to a degree and also, kind of lazy in terms of world building, like the Isekai Cafe series where the lady MC also ends up in a world where people have no tastebuds and haven't developed in the culinary arts despite being a mash up of magic pseudo Victorian fantasy land. Isekai Sisters is pretty good because while the MC is a good cook, there are several moments where she's introduced to other foods from the fantasy world she's staying in and it's also considered delicious Tondemo Skill is pure adventuring fun with the MC, his big godmod big dog and powerful good boy slime mostly eating his food that's made from monsters and it's definitely not high-brow cuisine by any means. He keeps his skill of ordering stuff on the magic internet a secret so he's not taken advantage of for the modern crap he's able to buy in order to make his meals. In Isekai Restaurant, it's reflected more in the light/web novel, but the fantasy land does have its own food culture that develops although it is heavily influenced/inspired by the restaurant the fantasy characters go to. Still a more subtle force of nature than all the customers treating the chef/owner like a food god or something. Compendium fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jul 20, 2019 |
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Jul 20, 2019 03:01
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ninjewtsu posted:Something I liked about grimgar was the little background commentary it was doing on the role of goblins in games/isekai stories. Being a low level enemy, "hero(s) kills a bunch of goblins to get stronger and also pay the bills" is a pretty expected direction for things to go, but grimgar made a point of showing that the goblins weren't mindless monsters. They clearly were sapient with a civilization and could communicate with one another (not sure if their weird screams were actual language, they seemed to mostly communicate with each other nonverbally) and later on several goblins got pretty well humanized, showing them playing chess with one another and even feeding animals in an eyecatch image. The main characters were clearly aware of this too: even 6v1 in a fight they were obviously going to win they're all incredibly awkward about attacking and make a personal note that the goblin was fighting for its life, one of them even gets freaked out by the feeling of his sword going through flesh the first time the goblin gets wounded. And at the end of the fight, as they're walking home, the protagonist notes that they didn't even make enough off of it to pay for their living expenses for the day - essentially, they just ambushed and gangstabbed a hobo for pocket change. And while its subtext, the next episode or so has them dealing with the emotional fallout of having killed an intelligent creature. All in all, I found the overall theme of "hey, this 'low level hero runs around killing goblins for cash' is essentially a horrifying act of genocide" really fascinating. I also like that, even much later in Grimgar after the party has improved a bunch, things still stay grounded and the main characters get owned if they gently caress up and let themselves get attacked by more enemies than they can handle (which, for small enemies, is a pretty strictly limited number that is usually something like "2 on the tank, 1 on Haruhiro, Yume, Ranta, and maybe Merry, but no more than that, so more than ~6 enemies at once is always Bad News). It also strongly sticks to the premise that the protagonist and his party are very average and will never be as talented as the top people (but can still get good through experience and practice). The interpersonal relationships are also pretty well done, at least up until the point I've read to. The protagonist doesn't end up with any sort of harem; as far as I can tell he only has one potential character who seems romantically interested in him (and I'm pretty sure is the romantic "end game"), and his reaction to things is pretty realistic. Usually male protagonists in these stories are either completely oblivious or are morally reprehensible horndogs, but Haruhiro actually wonders if the character he's interested in reciprocates his feelings and stresses out about it like a normal teenager/young adult. Ranta is the main problem on this front, though the other characters are pretty consistent about not just treating his unacceptable behavior as a joke. There's also an unstated acceptance that the work they're doing is pretty hosed up, but that they don't really have a choice if they want to survive. The orcs were probably the most "morally acceptable" of the enemies I've seen them fight, but the kobold situation was arguably even worse than the goblin one, since they were just walking into their town and mass murdering them. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jul 20, 2019 |
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Jul 20, 2019 03:06
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Nihilarian posted:literally every culture fiddles with their food until it tastes good to them, one way or another IIRC there's a culture in Africa where their entire diet consists of a rather bland paste processed from a specific tuber that grows in the area.
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Jul 20, 2019 03:27
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The worst thing Isekai do is introduce Sushi to medieval cultures. A whole lot of people are going to get food poisoning by eating raw fish that is days old and unrefrigerated. They might get parasites too. Also, I find it really dumb when the protagonist discovers that something considered inedible is actually really delicious. If there is a cheap and plentiful food source, you can bet people are going to try really drat hard to make it palatable or they will get used to it and eat it anyways.
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Jul 20, 2019 03:46
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IShallRiseAgain posted:If there is a cheap and plentiful food source, you can bet people are going to try really drat hard to make it palatable or they will get used to it and eat it anyways.
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Jul 20, 2019 03:59
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Clarste posted:Has there ever been an isekai where their food is better than Japanese food? Along those notes, has anyone got any where they're moved beyond fantasy medieval times? Like they get brought in and there's FTL space ships or it's like Treasure Planet or Xenoblade or something? Hell, the weird premise ones work for me, like coming in as a sword or spider. I'm waiting on Sadako as an A-rank monster in an isekai or going to a new world and for some reason now I'm a werewolf.
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Jul 20, 2019 04:06
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RareAcumen posted:Along those notes, has anyone got any where they're moved beyond fantasy medieval times? Like they get brought in and there's FTL space ships or it's like Treasure Planet or Xenoblade or something? Its not listed as isekai because reasons.
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Jul 20, 2019 04:12
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Gensou Gourmet has a dude get dropped into a fantasy world without humans in the middle of a magic-based industrial revolution. It skips ahead to after he's established himself and is mostly about him travelling around to experience the world's unique cuisine. Pretty fun story.
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Jul 20, 2019 04:13
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Clarste posted:Has there ever been an isekai where their food is better than Japanese food? There's no direct comparison with Japanese (or any real) meals, so it might not count, but Gensou Gourmet is basically about an isekai guy eating a lot of fantasy food and loving it. (The first chapter is an exception, for whatever reason)
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Jul 20, 2019 04:15
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So I'm looking for a webnovel ive only had explained halfway to me in the middle of an mmo trial by a group member who didnt leave its name. It centers on a typical isekai guy who doesn't get to choose his powers at all. Instead he has a really vindictive evil god assign him a bunch of evil skills and titles so he can be entertained. MC decides to spite him and promises to be the biggest hero ever. He ends up with stuff like mind control, blood control, undeath manipulation etc, but is actually a really cool nice guy who looks at the moral implications of his powers and freaks out/never uses them for anything beyond barely keeping himself alive due to everyone thinking he is evil Does this ring any bells because it sounds like it could be neat if they were telling the truth about it really not being a creep. KittyEmpress fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Jul 20, 2019 |
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Jul 20, 2019 04:52
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KittyEmpress posted:So I'm looking for a webnovel ive only had explained halfway to me in the middle of an mmo trial by a group member who didnt leave its name. That DOES sound dope as hell and actually really familiar as well for some reason.
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Jul 20, 2019 04:58
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Ytlaya posted:I also like that, even much later in Grimgar after the party has improved a bunch, things still stay grounded and the main characters get owned if they gently caress up and let themselves get attacked by more enemies than they can handle (which, for small enemies, is a pretty strictly limited number that is usually something like "2 on the tank, 1 on Haruhiro, Yume, Ranta, and maybe Merry, but no more than that, so more than ~6 enemies at once is always Bad News). It also strongly sticks to the premise that the protagonist and his party are very average and will never be as talented as the top people (but can still get good through experience and practice). I'm so disappointed that another season of grimgar will never come, and as far as I can tell there's very little else out there like it. I imagine it's pretty well resolved by the point the anime ends at, but I also really appreciated that their driving goal wasn't a desire for adventure or a need to kill the evil demon king or whatever, but just plain the fact that they're living in poverty and if they don't go out on this goblin-slaughter expedition and it doesn't go well, they are going to just flat out starve, or won't be able to replace their hole-riddled clothes, and when an expedition does go well their big celebration is "we finally bought our tank a helmet." I enjoy seeing a struggle for survival that isn't, like, some kind of stranded in the wilderness scenario, but just plain living in civilization as poor people. The characters in general I wasn't super crazy about, their personalities were generally a handful of basic archetypes, but the larger theme of the story being how they reacted to and dealt with trauma and loss was pretty compelling. I dunno if I find Mary by herself an interesting or unique personality but the scenes where she's coming to terms with her previous adventuring party getting horribly slaughtered because of their hubris and how abruptly her budding crush on one of them got forcibly ended was excellent.
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Jul 20, 2019 05:01
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RareAcumen posted:Along those notes, has anyone got any where they're moved beyond fantasy medieval times? Like they get brought in and there's FTL space ships or it's like Treasure Planet or Xenoblade or something? There's a few "Reincarnated to sci-fi world" iskekais, but for whatever reason they seem to tend not to get English translations as often? Unparalleled Path ~ Reincarnated as the AI for a Space Battleship is one with a kind of interesting premise that I vaguely remember being alright. Looking around the Sci-Fi or Futuristic Setting tags will find you some more similar. It's not quite Sadako, and hasn't been translated into English, but there is Atashi Mary-san, Ima Isekai ni Iru no... where Mary-san from the Japanese ghost story gets transported to an isekai. I haven't read it yet, but it's seemed to do okay on rankings and is still getting updates, so maybe someone will pick it up sooner or later? Der Werwolf: The Annals of Veight is a pretty good series about reincarnating into a werewolf that was picked up by J Novel Club.
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Jul 20, 2019 05:19
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there are a bunch of chinese isekai stories that use sci-fi settings but i really can't recommend them.
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Jul 20, 2019 07:28
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IShallRiseAgain posted:The worst thing Isekai do is introduce Sushi to medieval cultures. A whole lot of people are going to get food poisoning by eating raw fish that is days old and unrefrigerated. They might get parasites too. One of my favorite things about Saving 80,000 Gold Coins is that the protagonist sets up a shop with a bunch of modern technology for sale but the number one thing everyone's interested in is how she can get fresh fish so far inland.
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Jul 20, 2019 08:04
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ninjewtsu posted:Something I liked about grimgar was the little background commentary it was doing on the role of goblins in games/isekai stories. Being a low level enemy, "hero(s) kills a bunch of goblins to get stronger and also pay the bills" is a pretty expected direction for things to go, but grimgar made a point of showing that the goblins weren't mindless monsters. They clearly were sapient with a civilization and could communicate with one another (not sure if their weird screams were actual language, they seemed to mostly communicate with each other nonverbally) and later on several goblins got pretty well humanized, showing them playing chess with one another and even feeding animals in an eyecatch image. The main characters were clearly aware of this too: even 6v1 in a fight they were obviously going to win they're all incredibly awkward about attacking and make a personal note that the goblin was fighting for its life, one of them even gets freaked out by the feeling of his sword going through flesh the first time the goblin gets wounded. And at the end of the fight, as they're walking home, the protagonist notes that they didn't even make enough off of it to pay for their living expenses for the day - essentially, they just ambushed and gangstabbed a hobo for pocket change. And while its subtext, the next episode or so has them dealing with the emotional fallout of having killed an intelligent creature. All in all, I found the overall theme of "hey, this 'low level hero runs around killing goblins for cash' is essentially a horrifying act of genocide" really fascinating. Your post got me thinking and... man, it's weird but a lot of isekai play the "Low Level Monsters are Always Chaotic Evil" trope completely straight. It seems especially strange to me since so many isekai try sooo hard to stand out by "subverting" various fantasy tropes (and of course the unending litany of weird protagonists... a sword, a vending machine, a spider, a dog, a vampire, a dragon, a demon, a blah blah blah you get the idea). They bend over backward and twist and contort themselves to make themselves "different" in the strangest ways but seem perfectly content to all make use of the same bog standard fantasy templates that people have considered old and tired since the like 80s.
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Jul 20, 2019 08:35
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khy posted:I could use a good recommendation or two. So I checked your posts to see if you've read Honzuki/Ascendance of a Bookworm, and the only mention of it is when you were quoting me, so I gotta ask if you've ever read it. Okay, the action scenes are few and far between (and in the translated material, pretty much absent), but it very much fits what you're looking for, assuming you're into uplift genre isekai. The MC's main "ability" is her knowledge of earth (she's more or less a human Wikipedia, a natural one, not a magical ability), and rather than being born rich with an OP ability, she's born into poverty and her only actual superpower first manifests itself as a fatal disease which, once she's solved the disease part, only ends up raising a mess of political problems. She invents a lot of things, and yes, it does have the earth food fetishism we all love (she invents both Japanese AND Italian food), but none of it comes easily, and more complicated ideas require her to amass both resources (craftsmen who can do all the experimentation based on her vague descriptions of how inventions outside of her expertise work) and political clout. If you like the kind of story where they get into inventing things in excruciating detail, then this is story is for you because the LN dedicates entire chapters to things like "designing a new dress for my bodyguard" or "making hairpins" instead of having the MC suddenly invent things offscreen. If you're looking for an anime, it's coming in October, but I'm guessing it will have to cut a lot of stuff, as based on the trailer, it's going to get at least as far as ch 130+, and even if you do two cours, you'd need to flat out delete half the chapters just to have the room to compress 2-3 chapters per episode.
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Jul 20, 2019 08:42
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Dinosaur Satan posted:One of my favorite things about Saving 80,000 Gold Coins is that the protagonist sets up a shop with a bunch of modern technology for sale but the number one thing everyone's interested in is how she can get fresh fish so far inland. It also struck me as being true to life that her cover was almost blown not by any of the obvious poo poo but by a small oversight that a modern person wouldn't even consider. Of course, the whole idea of cover goes out the window shortly after that, but it was still nice.
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Jul 20, 2019 10:31
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Even in deepest darkest medieval Europe people would use garlic and onions and leeks to flavor their food. Don't blame them, alliums are great. Respect the onion.
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Jul 20, 2019 10:46
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Phobophilia posted:Even in deepest darkest medieval Europe people would use garlic and onions and leeks to flavor their food. Don't blame them, alliums are great. Respect the onion. i absolutely will not respect that bastard orb
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Jul 20, 2019 11:03
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Dinosaur Satan posted:One of my favorite things about Saving 80,000 Gold Coins is that the protagonist sets up a shop with a bunch of modern technology for sale but the number one thing everyone's interested in is how she can get fresh fish so far inland. I like how she can teleport to any place she can picture in her mind, which results in her being able to teleport anywhere she's been in the fantasy world, but being able to teleport basically anywhere on earth with the help of Google Image Search.
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Jul 20, 2019 11:15
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Argue posted:I like how she can teleport to any place she can picture in her mind, which results in her being able to teleport anywhere she's been in the fantasy world, but being able to teleport basically anywhere on earth with the help of Google Image Search. As time goes on, 80k Gold starts to become less about interdimensional economics and more about how much you can abuse a teleportation superpower.
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Jul 20, 2019 12:04
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That seems to be a problem with his other series too. Where the main character makes a healing potion in a bottle shaped like a mono molecular edged sword. Starts out as some economics manga then proceeds to break whatever super power over the story's knee.
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Jul 20, 2019 12:42
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Guyver posted:That seems to be a problem with his other series too. Where the main character makes a healing potion in a bottle shaped like a mono molecular edged sword.
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Jul 20, 2019 13:11
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RareAcumen posted:Along those notes, has anyone got any where they're moved beyond fantasy medieval times? Like they get brought in and there's FTL space ships or it's like Treasure Planet or Xenoblade or something? There's a really good late 90s/early 2000s anime about a guy who gets stranded in a sci-fi future and has to just make a living there. For real though, what you're asking for is essentially the kind of future time travel fiction that has been a staple of Western literature since stuff like Looking Backward (1897) and The Time Machine (1895). I don't read enough of that genre to make any recommendations, but I'm sure if you went to the book recommendation thread in the book barn and asked for future time travel fiction you'd probably find something you like!
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Jul 20, 2019 13:25
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I really like Root, the immortal shapeshifting dragon in Moon-Led Journey, they are great fun. Their backstory is neat with the "I made the adventurer guild millenia ago as a sort of method to weed people out, oh and also the level system that seems like a stereotypical RPG isekai system doesn't really matter in regards to strength for the most part lol" and the whole "I change my image, gender, identity at a whim depending on who I'm interested in is neat. They're eccentric for sure, but more of the harmless trickster type and less of the Q imperiling countless mortal lives on a whim just to see what happens type. At least...yet.
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Jul 20, 2019 14:06
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new S-Rank Daughter chapter is v good one thing I like about this one is it has a balanced mix of cute slice of life but also an interesting ongoing plot. I love when the old adventurers show up as well.
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Jul 20, 2019 17:02
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The ongoing plot only exists to interrupt dad and daughter time 
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Jul 20, 2019 17:08
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Tanya the Evil comes to mind immediately when talking about isekai series that aren't in a medieval fantasy land, too. The titular Tanya joins the military in a WW1-with-magic setting and fights for the Germans. I bounced off it but it's pretty popular. No Nazis too, so don't worry about that.
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Jul 20, 2019 17:09
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