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it's only a true isekai if a bunch of redditors really want to jack off to the power fantasy
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Jul 12, 2021 23:32
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There should be sub-genres in Isekai like regular, fantasy Isekai and video-gamey Isekai.
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Jul 12, 2021 23:35
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Android Blues posted:The isekai classification's only arisen pretty recently, though, right? And it typically describes works with extremely familiar, almost rigid genre tropes rather than stuff that's analogous to the entire history of portal fantasy. Almost without exception, characters are transplanted into a virtual or fantastical world that is rigidly adherent to the common mores of its genre (whether that genre is fantasy, romance, martial arts, etc.) where they then attempt to thrive. I do appreciate that The Owl House will occasionally use the tropes of Harry Potter to rip on Harry Potter (the choosy hat, grudgby). Hell, even Amity initially comes off as "not quite Draco Malfoy" before we get to know her better.
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Jul 12, 2021 23:41
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I mean, I have seen tabletop roleplaying games like Vital Hearts list Digimon as inspiration for their MMORPG style Isekai TRPG. I also often joke Amphibia and Owl House are the best Isekais of the last decade (eat it, "I'm A Spider So What?"! Get a real animation budget; get hosed, "Sheild Hero," and your terrible slavery plot; don't make an extended forced penile sounding scene, "Overlord", like what the actual gently caress?). Got to be real with y'all. No one ever heard the term Portal Fantasy before. Everyone has heard of an Isekai. Mraagvpeine posted:I'm sure anything glossed over will be explained in the light novel. Finally! An excuse to read! Mraagvpeine posted:There should be sub-genres in Isekai like regular, fantasy Isekai and video-gamey Isekai. I concur. The Clinian scale. How close to a Ernst Cline twitter.com post does your Isekai fall?
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Jul 13, 2021 00:17
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Covok posted:Got to be real with y'all. No one ever heard the term Portal Fantasy before. Everyone has heard of an Isekai. If you live on anime and have never read anything serious about genre fiction, sure. This is like saying, "I don't know what a bildungsroman is, sounds dumb. Everyone knows what shounen-ai is though, that's universal".
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Jul 13, 2021 00:23
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Covok posted:Got to be real with y'all. No one ever heard the term Portal Fantasy before. Everyone has heard of an Isekai. Uh, "Portal Fantasy" is a really well established and recognized term within fantasy fiction circles. It's also a really self-explanatory term if you're even passingly familiar with the usual tropes of fantasy fiction considering the idea of a normal person being transported to a fantasy world is a trope as old as the fantasy genre itself (Having its roots in proto-fantasy literature like The Wizard of Oz and early defining works of fantasy fiction like The Chronicles of Narnia). You could say "Portal Fantasy" to an English-speaking fantasy fan who'd never heard the term before and they could very easily parse out what it means by context.
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Jul 13, 2021 00:47
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Genre names and definitions change all the time, both across time and across populations. If you want to argue about precise delineations you'll only wear yourselves out.
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Jul 13, 2021 00:51
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Genre names and definitions change all the time, both across time and across populations. If you want to argue about precise delineations you'll only wear yourselves out. Yeah, true, but there are also decades of critical theory discussing genre delineations and acknowledging that is also necessary to have the conversation. Genre's amorphous but not purely arbitrary - and an extremely consumer-facing genre like isekai tends to be particularly into the repetition of popular aesthetics, which changes not just its present borders but probably influences its future trajectory, too.
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Jul 13, 2021 00:54
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The United States posted:Pre-2008 global economic collapse isekai series are quite different from post-2008 global economic collapse isekai series but they're both isekai The whole self-aware "aha, I'm in an isekai!" thing is something that's only shown up in anime adaptations in recent years, and it's less to do with isekai than it has to do with anime across a wide variety of genres going overboard on self-aware comedy. if you watch a harem show nowadays you are likely to get 2 minutes in before the protagonist says "it's like i'm in a harem anime!" it is otaku indulgence and it sucks. Re-Zero even starts this way until Subaru gets killed and they bring in the time loop hook. even a slice of life show I watched years ago, Servant X Service, had characters go "ah, that's the protective sister character" and it made me roll my eyes. i don't have a problem with retroactively bringing older shows into the category. el hazard is a good example, another would be magical shopping arcade abenoboshi, and MAYBE inuyasha?? it's weird because like futurama it's more time travel than anything else, but it's time travel into a time period of fantasy demons and magic and holy bow & arrows. e: also familiarity on the protagonist's part isn't required. the alternate world doesn't have to be based on something in their world ie My Next Life as a Villainess. It can be something like Familiar of Zero or Escaflowne. a fish out of water story isn't uncommon. or you have reverse isekai like Re:Creators where characters from a fictional world are brought to real Earth. or The Devil is a Part-Timer where Satan gets reborn on Earth and flips burgers for a living The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 02:17
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The 7th Guest posted:Amphibia too. and this is a huge stretch but I almost want to say Futurama even though it is not a literal transplanting of worlds just because all of civilization has been destroyed and rebuilt twice in the time that Fry is frozen I wouldn't say it's the self-aware thing that's the main qualifier, it's that the setting is almost always a deeply familiar one that relies on genre tropes and shorthand that are widely understood by the audience. The protagonist being self-aware often follows from that because a protagonist is a natural identification point for the audience, and since the audience already understands what's up with the setting the protagonist doesn't need to be their source for understanding its mores, but it's not a necessary qualifier. Compare Narnia, the classic portal fantasy: the setting is strange and idiosyncratic, drawing on a synthesis of various myths, legends, religious parables, and storytelling forms to express itself. The audience must learn everything about it from scratch, in the traditional manner of a fantasy story taking place in an original setting. Very few isekai do this. More typically, if it's a fantasy isekai, it will have elves, heroic swordsmen, dragons, mages, and priests who cast healing spells. If it's a romance isekai, it will have a string of love interests with identifiable "types" for fans of a particular Boy Archetype to engage with. If it's a martial arts isekai, it will have wicked bandits, wandering warriors who prize competition above all else, and chi masters who have cultivated their fantastical powers for centuries. I think it's actually very important to the genre that the audience are able to go, "oh, it's this type of setting" and then immediately focus on the thought experiment/wish fulfillment/comedy mechanics of how the protagonist interacts with a familiar genre space. The core of the isekai genre is really that last part, I think - imagining how a particularly wilful (or idiosyncratic, or oafish) personality might interact with the tropes of a fictional world the audience is already mostly familiar with the mores, mood and tendencies of. There's a subtext, almost always, of: "you know how the rules of this world are likely to work: what would you do in their situation?".
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Jul 13, 2021 02:38
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If you really wanna get specific into what isekai really is (since fish-out-of-water stories have been done for decades and maybe centuries), it's usually about somebody getting specifically reincarnated into another world (usually with some kind of standard fantasy trappings and videogame-style mechanics) with some kind of new unique skillset that either they dramatically have to figure out how to survive and function in the world, or they wind up with some kind of overpowered skill that they can kind of just coast by on for a more chill story. Sometimes their special isekai skill is just the ability to use real-world science and engineering to get ahead in a world with medieval-level technology. Extremely few isekai stories have any real prospects at returning to their former world, usually it's not really clear what their pre-reincarnation life was like, and I'd actually say for the majority of isekais, that sort of fish-out-of-water setup is just a bit of a writing crutch to make it seem more natural to give the audience exposition about the fantasy world and it doesn't really add anything, so story could've easily been written without the isekai setup and just been straight fantasy.
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Jul 13, 2021 03:08
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There are definitely isekai where you are thrown into a strange setting that you learn about as you go... Kyousougiga comes to mind, or Spirited Away, or Magic Knight Rayearth, Fushigi Yugi... it's hard not to process this argument as "These series that don't fall into my curated definition don't count" (i'm sure i will get pushback on Spirited Away falling under the isekai definition too, but like I said, I'm scooping up older titles into this) e: I don't expect to convert anyone with my posts but I just wanted to emphasize that there's a lot out there. and also to deny any modern portal fantasy as counting as isekai is a bit silly, especially with children's TV because it of course is going to rely on genre tropes just the same as a lot of anime isekai do. amphibia is a fish out of water portal fantasy but at the same time, the frog society is not really that unusual and pretty analogous to rural fantasy. and owl house draws from harry potter and D&D for sure The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 03:15
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The 7th Guest posted:There are definitely isekai where you are thrown into a strange setting that you learn about as you go... Kyousougiga comes to mind, or Spirited Away, or Magic Knight Rayearth, Fushigi Yugi... it's hard not to process this argument as "These series that don't fall into my curated definition don't count" These are retroactive categorisations, though (with the exception of Kyousougiga which I'm not familiar with) - the use of "isekai" to describe a genre didn't exist when any of these series came out, and internationally or in Japan it would generally be considered unusual to describe them as such. They have similarities in terms of the highly literal plot mechanics, but thematically and tonally they're very different from the majority of isekai stories. Rayearth and Spirited Away are both classic portal fantasy - there's a strange other world, a child or children are sucked into it, and they must have a formative adventure there to learn moral lessons and facilitate the journey to adulthood. In the case of Spirited Away, the world is highly metaphorical and operates as a series of parables, providing the protagonist with means to better understand her own world once she returns. Thematically, none of this is how modern isekai, the stories that actually birthed the term, tend to run. Rather, they are usually highly literal, mechanistic, and focused on the acquisition by the protagonist of concrete rules not for achieving wisdom, but for achieving mastery over the material systems on which the familiar setting turns. Even those that do take a more traditionally literary tack and focus on character development tend to do so within the confines of a familiar and understandable world which allows the protagonist to blossom not as a metaphor for growth into adulthood, but as part of a fantasy about a world in which it is possible to self-actualise without being ground under the heel of an office job or the expectations of society.
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Jul 13, 2021 03:33
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To be clear, I don't think that one genre is better or more "serious" than the other - there are a lot of rote isekai out there, but there's also a lot of rote "pushed this out in a month because I needed to make rent and my publisher was searching for something like Narnia" portal fantasy. I just think there are notable differences between the two genres, and they aren't typically two names for the same thing.
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Jul 13, 2021 03:38
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I'd say that there are enough stories that specifically follow the current "isekai formula" that exploded relatively recently that it's worthwhile to define the genre as that and let other stories just be fantasy. Although definitely there are stories from way beforehand that veered close to the formula. It's like how Harry Potter doesn't seem like that original and unique of a story but it wound up basically inventing the whole Young Adult genre of novels. Or if you take another niche genre of anime, there were shows beforehand that had an improbable amount of sexy women circling around some male protagonist, but Tenchi Muyo was the one that devised the currently popular setup where all of them are tactically placed in close proximity with the protagonist so that they're all apparently equally plausible as romance options and all the other harem anime follow in its footsteps. Ranma 1/2 kinda almost hit the same formula, but it was following older romantic comedy setups and went into a lot of diversions into action stories about fighting. And now I'm showing my shame about knowing too much about harem anime that I swear I liked them for more of the non-harem aspects.
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Jul 13, 2021 03:58
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I acknowledge and appreciate all the thematic differences being discussed, but also I'm going to continue calling Alice in Wonderland an isekai because it personally amuses me to do so. (Admittedly Alice doesn't really have much in common thematically with portal fantasy either.)
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Jul 13, 2021 04:38
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Android Blues posted:I wouldn't say it's the self-aware thing that's the main qualifier, it's that the setting is almost always a deeply familiar one that relies on genre tropes and shorthand that are widely understood by the audience. The protagonist being self-aware often follows from that because a protagonist is a natural identification point for the audience, and since the audience already understands what's up with the setting the protagonist doesn't need to be their source for understanding its mores, but it's not a necessary qualifier. By these arguments, The Owl House is not an isekai. The big point of the second episode of the first season is that the Boilings Isles are very much not like the "Good Witch Azure" books with which Luz is familiar. And in most other cases whenever Luz did try to get by on "genre savvy" it usually bit her in the rear end. It was only after Luz started dealing with the Isles and its people as they were that she began to make some progress.
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Jul 13, 2021 04:45
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Where are people watching the Owl House? Is it Disney+?
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Jul 13, 2021 04:55
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kidcoelacanth posted:it's only a true isekai if a bunch of redditors really want to jack off to the power fantasy  The 7th Guest posted:The whole self-aware "aha, I'm in an isekai!" thing is something that's only shown up in anime adaptations in recent years Everyone posted:By these arguments, The Owl House is not an isekai. The big point of the second episode of the first season is that the Boilings Isles are very much not like the "Good Witch Azure" books with which Luz is familiar.
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Jul 13, 2021 05:08
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If we're using some of the definitions in this thread, then The loving Talented Mister Ripley is isekai. Legit thanks to Android Blues for actually being a decent poster, lmao.
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Jul 13, 2021 06:07
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Okay, let me see if I have this right: Princess of Mars - Guy goes to another world, but he's an adult, doesn't learn particularly anything, and the fact that he's special is due to being from another world. Upon his return all he can do is lament the lost other world.; Isekai?
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Jul 13, 2021 08:16
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Here's the only litmus test that I think matters: If someone told you about a work you've never heard of and said it was part of X genre, would your expectations line up with your experience or would you be surprised and confused? In the former case, the genre is valid, at least as far as the two people using it are concerned. In the latter case, the genre is most likely inapplicable.
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Jul 13, 2021 08:23
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Isekai can definitely be called a subgenre of portal fantasy, if anything it's actually got a fairly narrow proper definition as some of the more blatant examples of escapism and audience-insert wish fulfilment. A really common feature is excessive focus on the protagonist abusing 'meta-knowledge' for their personal empowerment and achievement in a setting that's deliberately cliched and doesn't throw them any major thematic curveballs, and little if any influence from the 'real' world beyond the existence of the protagonist. (so yes, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court is 100% an isekai, and probably could be considered a pre-emptive parody of the genre considering how it actually goes) The Owl House doesn't qualify for a few reasons; Luz isn't on a one-way journey and does have a mother she cares for and worries about, to the point where, y'know, her losing her ability to go home is actually a major plot point. And a big part of the Boiling Isles as a setting is that Luz's experience with fantasy tropes and mythology doesn't quite match up with it; going well with the whole theme of even more familiar fantasy ideas having curveball traits. (Spider-spitting griffons and all) And the Boiling Isles residents do have context for Luz and where she comes from, even if their information is scattershot and humorously inaccurate, and the main antagonist so far has intentions specifically involving it. Barsoom is its own thing given John Carter himself isn't quite a typical protagonist, having some mysterious traits that he never explains. (also, iirc they never really go into how he ends up on Mars in the first place)
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Jul 13, 2021 09:13
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I think we can all agree Marcy Wu thought she was in an Isekai.
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Jul 13, 2021 10:09
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HOMOEROTIC JESUS posted:Where are people watching the Owl House? Is it Disney+? I am a dork who still has cable but I assume it must be on D+
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Jul 13, 2021 12:02
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Barsoom is its own thing given John Carter himself isn't quite a typical protagonist, having some mysterious traits that he never explains. (also, iirc they never really go into how he ends up on Mars in the first place) He gets hit by a Native American truck-kun and dies in a cave from poison and suddenly he's on Mars. I don't think the exact mechanics need to be known nor are they important to the power fantasy and glorification about the old Confederate soldier. Burroughs clearly didn't think it was necessary or important to the story to detail how Carter gets to Mars any more than countless modern isekai stories care.
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Jul 13, 2021 12:32
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Yvonmukluk posted:I think we can all agree Marcy Wu thought she was in an Isekai. I think it's more that she just really, really, really wanted to be in one and yanked her friends out of their lives to make that happen. TwoPair posted:I am a dork who still has cable but I assume it must be on D+ The first season is on D+. The first five eps of S2 will arrive on D+ July 23. The new eps of the show are on Disney Channel on Saturdays at 10 AM EST and I guess on the Disney Now app. Everyone fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 14:03
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Wishbone was isekai.
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Jul 13, 2021 14:52
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And on a similar note, She-Ra and He-Man technically count as Magical Girl/Boy shows.
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Jul 13, 2021 15:43
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Enough isekai talk, now we're discussing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESR3cvErqCg
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Jul 13, 2021 17:28
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Hopefully that ends up better than the Cartoon Network one.
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Jul 13, 2021 17:38
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Need to add characters from the live action shows they've done over the years so you can beat up Drake Bell with all your faves.
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Jul 13, 2021 17:54
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Looks like a pretty typical smash clone, and the character assortment isn't much to write home about, but I love that music. Weird that they chose to use the 80s Ninja Turtles, from the show that Nickelodeon neither produced nor aired instead of one of the later turtle shows that they have more ownership over. Also I think that the Rise incarnations of the characters would be fantastic to differentiate in a fighting game with their much more different skillsets and more unique silhouettes. Yvonmukluk posted:I think we can all agree Marcy Wu thought she was in an Isekai. Well, it might've been a one-way journey for her. I think Sasha's perspective also might've been a more typical isekai story, since after she digs into toad-politics, she kinda just wants to stick around and forgets about trying to get back to her world or being worried about what she left behind, which is what I mean when I say sometimes isekai is a crutch and doesn't really add to the story. You could probably tell a similar story about some city girl within the setting wandering off to the frontier and end up teaching Grimes people management. I really like how Anne stays focused on trying to get home and never loses her sentimentality for the people and things she left behind, although it also helps that the world of Amphibia is genuinely alien and upsetting to a normal human perspective, so we really get to see her slowly getting used to all the bugs.
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Jul 13, 2021 17:55
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SlothfulCobra posted:Weird that they chose to use the 80s Ninja Turtles, from the show that Nickelodeon neither produced nor aired instead of one of the later turtle shows that they have more ownership over. Also I think that the Rise incarnations of the characters would be fantastic to differentiate in a fighting game with their much more different skillsets and more unique silhouettes. Have each turtle represent a different era of the turtles.
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Jul 13, 2021 18:23
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SlothfulCobra posted:Looks like a pretty typical smash clone, and the character assortment isn't much to write home about, but I love that music. Sasha didn't have the music box and didn't think there was any way home. She hooked in with the Toads as a way to make a place for herself and as a way to take care of Anne and Marcy once she found them. Anne seems to have had a pretty good/happy life on Earth, so even though she cares about the Plantars, she does want to go back home. Marcy's main source of happiness seems to have been her relationships with Sasha and Anne which is why she did what she did. Luz is an odd case because she initially did not want to go back home. She loves her mom but she probably wasn't all that happy on Earth (it's not hard to imagine other kids at her school referring to her as Luz-er because kids are assholes). I wonder how much of Luz wanted to go home is so she can say goodbye to her mom because she's much happier on the Boiling Isles. Everyone fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 18:34
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Electric Phantasm posted:Hopefully that ends up better than the Cartoon Network one. it's by the team who made the best smash game to date (Slap City) who have shown that they can do really fun stuff with cartoony characters and they've already confirmed that it will have rollback netcode. in terms of just "how it plays as a video game" i bet it'll be really good and it'll come down to how much you care about the brands or aesthetic.
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Jul 13, 2021 23:08
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HOMOEROTIC JESUS posted:Where are people watching the Owl House? Is it Disney+? Jesus Tactical Christ, I wish. Instead, I have to endure the purgatory that is Disney Now.
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Jul 13, 2021 23:47
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Countblanc posted:it's by the team who made the best smash game to date (Slap City) who have shown that they can do really fun stuff with cartoony characters and they've already confirmed that it will have rollback netcode. in terms of just "how it plays as a video game" i bet it'll be really good and it'll come down to how much you care about the brands or aesthetic. Yeah found out about it after I made that post, wish it was their name on the boxart instead of GameMill.
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Jul 14, 2021 00:18
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Madurai posted:Jesus Tactical Christ, I wish. Instead, I have to endure the purgatory that is Disney Now. Disney is really slow on uploading their new cartoons onto Disney+, for whatever reason.
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Jul 14, 2021 06:24
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Madurai posted:Jesus Tactical Christ, I wish. Instead, I have to endure the purgatory that is Disney Now. Wish they combined them.
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Jul 14, 2021 06:27
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