(Thread IKs:
Nuns with Guns)
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Impermanent posted:slaughterhouse 5 is an isekai it's true, and you should say it
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Sep 20, 2021 18:33
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| # ? May 30, 2024 14:40 |
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Impermanent posted:slaughterhouse 5 is an isekai eh, it's probably more of an anti-isekai. the dude keeps returning to the most horrible place he's ever been to, and has to invent an imaginary scenario that recontextualizes his soul-crushing, humiliating experiences in said horrible place- hang on a minute
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Sep 20, 2021 18:40
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Mokinokaro posted:No you're right. It just feels like a satire due to how much of the lovely isekais get animated while the otome villainess stuff is left. Bakarina's popularity might change that. It is kind of funny how the more female-bent crop of modern isekai stuff has centered on "Oh no I got reincarnated in a game/book as the villainess. I don't want this. [Accidentally, resentfully succeeds by resisting genre tropes/game scripting.]" while all the male power fantasy ones heavily trend towards grimdark pubstomping and rape or slavery and heavily exploiting those systems.
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Sep 20, 2021 18:44
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I think it's interesting that there's a couple of shows (Amphibia & The Owl House) which while not a 100% match to Isekai (they're definitely portal fantasy, at least) are clearly in dialogue with the conventions of the genre. In Amphibia, Anne winds up in a backwater farming community and remains an outsider for most of the first season, while in the case of her friends Sasha is captured by the toads and thrown in a dungeon before rising through their ranks and becomes a major antagonist, while Marcy, the one who got them stuck there, seems to have the more typical Isekai experience until it turns out King Andrias has been playing off her expectations to get what he wants, and when it's revealed what she did Anne & Sasha, despite both having had character growth and made new friends in Amphibia are shocked and angry at what Marcy did. Oh, and the final series has Anne returned to Earth with the Plantars, so now they're the ones out of water. While in The Owl House the most recent episode had Luz interacting with her mother and the Basilisk who took her place when she ran off to the Boiling Isles (she left initially to get out of going to summer camp and only got trapped there at the end of the first series), and both of them call her out from running away to live out her witch fantasies.
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Sep 20, 2021 18:46
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CmdrKing posted:As well, that list there has works going back over 100 years. The point isn't "there's not very many english language examples", it's "they don't happen all that often". One known example every 5ish years occupies an inbetween spot where it's common enough people will recognize it as a recurring story element, but not so common as to prompt them to consider it a separate category from the other genres it belongs to. That's mostly because it's a random sampling I pulled off the top of my head, I think you're REALLY understating just how common this is as a plot contrivance. Just over the past few years we've had multiple animated series with the trapped in another world premise (Amphibia, The Owl House, Centaur World, Infinity Train, Elliott from Earth...). It's an incredibly common genre convention with multiple examples of being released in multiple media pretty much every year for the pas 150+ years. The cluster of Isekai series that's come out recently are noteworthy more for their specific similarity of plot elements (Nerdy NEET gets hit by a truck, is reincarnated with a special power in an alternate fantasy world resembling a console RPG), but I wouldn't say really introduced the broader concept of Portal Fantasy to the public consciousness as a genre. CmdrKing posted:Like, genre terms tend to arise when there's enough examples of it happening all at once that people need a word to refer to them collectively. It's easier to see this in video games, where you go from some percursor games, to the mega-smash hit that was Doom, to a slew of imitators that are just called "Doom-clones", to the genre getting big and differentiated enough that calling them all "Doom" got silly and someone needed another word. Your definition kind of glosses over the fact that another major component of how genres evolve is through influence and interaction between creators - On topic with the thread, this is actually a pretty good rundown of how influence affects genre groupings as related to music, but is also applicable here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Ad02QGNes). A genre is not just a collection of tropes, it's also about which creators work together and influence each other. CmdrKing posted:Unless portal fantasy was already someone's particular interest, they wouldn't have run into the term at all. It's a really common term in fantasy literature circles. I'm not denying that people might be unfamiliar with it, but that's probably because they're unfamiliar with the fantasy literature scene as a whole. There's a wealth of academic literary articles written about the term. CmdrKing posted:Then when suddenly some 25% (the number is abitrary) of all anime was people getting stuck/reincarnated into vaguely fantastical worlds, calling them all "SAO-clones" got silly so genre-terming just... happened separately, and by the time people made the link in style and substance to the larger literary canon the anime genre term had stuck. So like, it's fine to not really care for all that, but it's not especially weird or unexpected. And I'm fine with the term as it applies to that slate of "SAO-Clones" or even more broadly applying it to earlier anime and manga that inspired those works, but if we start using isekai to broadly refer to portal fantasy stories as a whole then it becomes completely redundant as a separate term. It's weird in the same way as the "translator's note: keikaku means plan" meme. It's people needlessly and broadly applying a foreign loanword for a concept that already has several perfectly cromulent English counterparts. A word like "Schadenfreude", or even a more direct genre counterpart like "Shonen Battle" make way mroe sense because they don't really have direct English counterparts. It, to me, is something that comes from people only really consuming anime and anime-adjacent media.
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Sep 20, 2021 18:52
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I'll be honest, this is the first time I'm hearing the term Portal Fantasy too so I'll probably just stick to isekai because it's snappier.
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Sep 20, 2021 19:15
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all your favorite things are isekai, i'm sorry but it's been decided by a shadow council e: i'm also still unconvinced this isn't just petty pedantry. we're gonna run into the one piece friends argument again but anime is mainstream in the west and kids are far more likely to have heard of isekai than portal fantasy in the year 2021. but it doesn't really matter because the distinction between the two is marginal at best. isekai literally translates to 'other world'. if you want to call everything a portal fantasy go hog wild, but i'm gonna call everything isekai because i'm a forums poster and not someone attempting to disrupt the world of academia. the Western cartoons coming out that have characters transported to another world are inspired by the shows that the creators watched as a kid, and more likely than not those include shows such as Inuyasha, Now and Then Here and There, Spirited Away (Matt Braly mentions it as an influence for Amphibia), Magical Shopping Arcade Abenoboshi, and yes, possibly even Sword Art Online or one of the .hack series. The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Sep 20, 2021 |
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Sep 20, 2021 19:20
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The 7th Guest posted:e: i'm also still unconvinced this isn't just petty pedantry. we're gonna run into the one piece friends argument again but anime is mainstream in the west and kids are far more likely to have heard of isekai than portal fantasy in the year 2021. but it doesn't really matter because the distinction between the two is marginal at best. isekai literally translates to 'other world'. if you want to call everything a portal fantasy go hog wild, but i'm gonna call everything isekai because i'm a forums poster and not someone attempting to disrupt the world of academia It's perhaps pedantic, but it raises a similar ire in me as when TV Tropes jargon supplants actual academic terminology in the public consciousness. It's a frustration with the public's general ignorance of the broader academic analysis of media and the conventions of established literary media. Call me elitist, but the fact that most people's touchstone of a longstanding literary and mythological tradition has become a slate of particularly derivative light novels* is, from the perspective of somebody who's really into fantasy literature, incredibly frustrating. * - And before anybody says it: Yes, there are definitely enjoyable and worthwhile isekai light novels, it's just that there have been so many of these works released over the past decade that the signal to noise ratio on them is incredibly skewed.
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Sep 20, 2021 19:36
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Sydin posted:Wizard of Oz is an isekai The Matrix and both the Final Fantasy Tactic sequels are isekais. So is The Nightmare Before Christmas.
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Sep 20, 2021 19:39
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Ibblebibble posted:I'll be honest, this is the first time I'm hearing the term Portal Fantasy too so I'll probably just stick to isekai because it's snappier. "Another World" is always the term I'd heard before Isekai became more broadly colloquial.
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Sep 20, 2021 19:42
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i can't believe people found a more tedious argument than "is x a game"
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Sep 20, 2021 19:44
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https://music.ishkur.com/
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Sep 20, 2021 19:46
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7eU3VUi14
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Sep 20, 2021 19:50
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KingKalamari posted:That's mostly because it's a random sampling I pulled off the top of my head, I think you're REALLY understating just how common this is as a plot contrivance. Just over the past few years we've had multiple animated series with the trapped in another world premise (Amphibia, The Owl House, Centaur World, Infinity Train, Elliott from Earth...). It's an incredibly common genre convention with multiple examples of being released in multiple media pretty much every year for the pas 150+ years. why would you use the word "cromulent" instead of just saying "fine"
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Sep 20, 2021 19:58
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KingKalamari posted:It's perhaps pedantic, but it raises a similar ire in me as when TV Tropes jargon supplants actual academic terminology in the public consciousness. It's a frustration with the public's general ignorance of the broader academic analysis of media and the conventions of established literary media. Call me elitist, but the fact that most people's touchstone of a longstanding literary and mythological tradition has become a slate of particularly derivative light novels* is, from the perspective of somebody who's really into fantasy literature, incredibly frustrating. that's why I think it's pedantic and a miserable discussion I wish him the best, he's obviously had a keen interest in diving into game making himself by hosting all those game jams. i'll be curious to see how his progress goes
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Sep 20, 2021 20:04
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theGrooseofLegend posted:
I kinda wish this was a more critical look at the genre rather then just explaining the mechanics.
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Sep 20, 2021 20:08
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literally no one in the outside world calls it a "portal fantasy"
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Sep 20, 2021 20:09
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KingKalamari posted:... A few years ago someone did some research* and found that there are on average about 250 scifi/fantasy novels published in English every month, and that's just one genre. Every genre is going to have horrible signal to noise ratios, especially since the vast majority of works aren't good enough or bad enough to be memorable. *I can't remember where I read this but I do remember that it didn't count self published books or fanworks.
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Sep 20, 2021 20:19
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The REAL Goobusters posted:literally no one in the outside world calls it a "portal fantasy" I don't really care about the wider discussion but the outside world doesn't generally know much about any sub-sub-sub genre names and it's not like "isekai" would make any more sense to the long-suffering woman at the Wendy's cash register.
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Sep 20, 2021 20:21
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The 7th Guest posted:I mean yeah it's a little elitist to act like the signal to noise ratio is particularly worse for the thing you don't like vs the thing you do. especially if you're deadset on excluding it even though the difference between the two conceptually is miniscule Question: Where have I said isekai, even as it relates specifically to the slew of anime adaptations of light novel series that have come out within the last 10 or so years, is not a worthwhile or broadly bad genre? My contention is I dislike the fact that "isekai" has subsumed other terms in the public consciousness over existing academic terms. When I discuss the signal to noise ratio of isekai, I am specifically stating that I don't think that a greater than usual percentage of these works are bad, but that there was a sudden market surge of derivative works being released when the term gained traction in the west. Apparently I phrased this poorly because everyone is responding like I said the exact opposite of what I meant.
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Sep 20, 2021 20:22
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it's only an isekai if it's from the isekai region of japan otherwise it's just a sparkling portal fantasy
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Sep 20, 2021 20:26
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“Portal fantasy” isn’t a great term either because in this case the “portal” is the grille of a truck. “Another world” is the term I associate with it and waddaya know, that’s what “isekai” translates to. I’m okay with “isekai” being used for these stories since it feels less clunky than “another world”. I am less okay with how every time the subject comes up people go all “_____ is an isekai haha woaaaah” like they’re making a funny discovery. Like, no poo poo, you have a new pet term for one of the most classic plot hooks in all of human storytelling, how is it surprising you can apply it to things.
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Sep 20, 2021 20:28
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The REAL Goobusters posted:literally no one in the outside world calls it a "portal fantasy" nobody in the outside world calls any of these loving subgenres anything so who cares. We're already well past touching grass just discussing 'isekai' and not just saying 'a fantasy show where someone goes somewhere else'
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Sep 20, 2021 20:38
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Anyway, Land of the Lost sure had a banging intro didn't it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmcx0PWPYj0
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Sep 20, 2021 20:42
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'Is time travel an isekai?' - the greatest thread in the history of forkliftaction forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate
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Sep 20, 2021 20:42
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Nuns with Guns posted:I don't really care about the wider discussion but the outside world doesn't generally know much about any sub-sub-sub genre names and it's not like "isekai" would make any more sense to the long-suffering woman at the Wendy's cash register. Yeah I know you don't care because it really sounds you don't (and have not) gone outside all that much! I never said anything about isekai, and yet here you are making yourself look like a clown. Normal people call it a Fish out of water story. lmfao man sexpig by night posted:nobody in the outside world calls any of these loving subgenres anything so who cares. We're already well past touching grass just discussing 'isekai' and not just saying 'a fantasy show where someone goes somewhere else' when did i say isekai (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) The REAL Goobusters fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Sep 20, 2021 |
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Sep 20, 2021 20:44
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From Another Time Another Land
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Sep 20, 2021 20:52
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The REAL Goobusters posted:Yeah I know you don't care because it really sounds you don't (and have not) gone outside all that much! I never said anything about isekai, and yet here you are making yourself look like a clown. Normal people call it a Fish out of water story. lmfao man ???? I'm not saying "I don't care" to sound cool, I meant I don't have any strong feelings about debating about what counts as an "isekai" versus "portal fiction" in genre terms. If you're going to make a "HAHA YOU SAID THE NERD WORD" play though, you could at least say what you're thinking of to start with. And a "fish out of water" story is any story where someone's thrown into a new environment. It's as much about "kid goes to a new high school and has to learn how to fit in" as it is "kid is hit by a truck and suddenly is a living refrigerator in a world with Bethesda video game physics."
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Sep 20, 2021 20:52
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Pigbuster posted:I’m okay with “isekai” being used for these stories since it feels less clunky than “another world”. I am less okay with how every time the subject comes up people go all “_____ is an isekai haha woaaaah” like they’re making a funny discovery. Like, no poo poo, you have a new pet term for one of the most classic plot hooks in all of human storytelling, how is it surprising you can apply it to things. I mean, that's the whole joke? It goes: "man, isekais are everywhere now, it's getting old" "what's an isekai" "someone wakes up in another world somehow, like if they get hit by a truck or something" "like yu yu hashiko?" "what" "like narnia?" "man cmon" The whole point is it's an old story contrivance, yet is talked about like a modern one because of the huge amount of manga adaptations of light novels with this theme that get animated lately. The whole joke is that you can describe so many stories as isekais when the dominance of a particular type of story comes up.
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Sep 20, 2021 20:53
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Something Awful is isekai - a strange place where lame nerds can become legendary heroes. Also sometimes creepy as hell, but the fans usually ignore that.
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Sep 20, 2021 20:55
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I liked that one web manga about the guy who works for an "isekai delivery service" by which I mean he gets requests from other worlds for heroes and then finds people to run over and kill with his truck to send them over. It was a wonderfully absurd take on the genre and actually had genuine pathos and world building about just how difficult it is to actually keep such a service going without losing your mind or being caught and locked up as a serial killer.
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Sep 20, 2021 20:58
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  there, isekai wins
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Sep 20, 2021 21:15
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Alaois posted:From Another Time Another Land Alright fucko roll for anal circumference.
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Sep 20, 2021 21:28
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John Murdoch posted:Alright fucko roll for anal circumference. people love the anal circumference but i feel like the racism armor is more emblematic of the game as it was originally released
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Sep 20, 2021 21:30
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Alaois posted:people love the anal circumference but i feel like the racism armor is more emblematic of the game as it was originally released Don't forget about the slur table!
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Sep 20, 2021 21:32
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Optimizing your urination rolls to expel piss with the PSI of a fire hose is also a key feature.
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Sep 20, 2021 21:35
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Neo_Crimson posted:Don't forget about the slur table!  Turns out FATAL is actually good???
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Sep 20, 2021 22:06
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FATAL is an objectively bad system with tons of gross shock value things but there's some genuinely funny stupid things tucked in too.
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Sep 20, 2021 22:10
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Going on vacation is an isekai
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Sep 20, 2021 23:04
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| # ? May 30, 2024 14:40 |
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Arc Hammer posted:"Another World" is always the term I'd heard before Isekai became more broadly colloquial.
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Sep 20, 2021 23:14
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