Isekai was a thing before the word was popularized and normalized in the west to describe the subgenre of fantasy. I'd argue The Neverending Story is clearly an isekai, for example. And there's been great conventional anime isekais in the past, such as Vision of Escaflowne.
What I'm sick of is the "oh this is like a video game and the NPCs can be manipulated because they're just programs susceptible to cheat codes" gimmick. It's gross and I find it intolerable to follow any "hero" that dehumanizes other characters under any excuse to build a virtual capitalist empire with an infinite harem. It's :epstein: tier :brainworms: to me.
I don't want to automatically reject something I hear about because I hear it's an "isekai" but all too often it means "another video game world with NPCs to exploit!" :capitalist-laugh:
What an empty sort of metagamey victory to fantasize about. How alienating and sad for such "heroes," even if they still deserve :gulag: in general.
A man who is obsessed with vending machines is crushed by one as he tries to protect it from crashing to the ground. He's reincarnated as a vending machine in a fantasy world. Though he wants to see what the world has to offer, he's unable to move or talk, because, well, he's a vending machine. Help comes in the form of an adventurer named Lammis who agrees to carry him around on her back, granting his wish and setting the stage for vending machine themed adventures.
Yes, I read theory.
That actually sounds interesting. Critical support for the guy carrying the vending machine around.
Edit: I misread. Oops.
Nothing at all. This is the first time I heard of the vending machine story.
By "critical" I mean "conditional support because I don't know enough yet."
By "critical" I mean "conditional support because I don't know enough yet."
When Sword Art Online first came out, a good friend of mine (that is still a good friend, even if his taste is sometimes sus) told me all the good stuff about SAO, making the premise sound genuinely interesting. I could say I had "critical support" for that in lieu of not yet knowing about all the waifu harem shit or the "video game boy that wins" power fantasy wank.
Regarding the vending machine adventure, I want to believe.
There's already a good 'guy as vending machine' anime and it's called Coffee Vending Machine & Its Sword. And it's super perfect.
Found an upload of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr3h4PfH31g
I love all of the director/head animator's stuff. It's all really cute and charming. Satellite Girl & Milk Cow's another film of his -- that's actually easier to find -- that I recommend.
Oh, I thought you meant how every third fucking anime and manga now has UI like it’s SAO as a vehicle for the “cheat ability system” or whatever. Such a lame way to have a character interact with the world unless you actually make an effort to make it interesting (which almost never happens).
That also sucks. The last time I saw that work well was Vanellope in Wreck-It Ralph and her "glitching" ability.
It would actually be a little interesting to try to really explore the consequences of living in a world where most “other people” have a very narrow number of scripted responses, so long as it wasn’t just used for hentai shit (that’s all it would be used for). Living in a world of lw-complexity automatons that happen to have human anatomy would drive someone insane from the effective social isolation.
Reboot played with this, especially in the episode where Enzo wished to be twice as smart and that caused everyone to halve their bits of processing (and turned down their graphical resolution too!).
I'd also like a setting where the real protagonist is fighting off a creepy otaku fuck that is trying to exploit the fantasy world.
I have not. I don't know anything about it but a cursory glance on a browser search has me... concerned. :hentai-free:
I can be hard to please when it comes to anime/manga. I've been burned one too many times from "this is great after that :awooga: :libertarian-alert: part" recommendations for stuff. In those cases, no, it wasn't a single hurdle, more like a pedophilic minefield.
Noted. I may check it out. If it's like :homelander: but with less :awooga: :libertarian-alert: :hypersus: P R E S T I G E T V gimmicks, might be worth it.
as there’s a yandere, dandere, a second yandere, etc. and the deuteragonist is absurdly top-heavy
They could choose not to fill out the cliche checklist, where the main difference between the characters in it and another product is a face and hair color swap, but no. :joker-shopping:
Hence my saying in so many words “even if you overall say meh, you’ll still probably find episode 1 amusing”
I might try it. :dead-dove-2:
Thank you for the clarification and further information. I appreciate the effort put into it. When I have time I may take a look.
:dead-dove-2:
i would definitely recommend the first episode which had me hooting and hollering because of isekai burnout similar to what you describe. talentless nana was very similar
idk why this person is even talking about ecchi or whatever, it's literally what you want to watch re: isekai and you'll see why in the first episode. If you want I can just spoil it for you and tell you exactly how it handles the isekai genre
This really spoils the first episode, which is like a build up to what is meant to be a VERY surprising twist, like, the first episode is meant to shock you so this will absolutely spoil that
it's a world where people (iirc just the Japanese? idk I watched half of it) who get isekai'd come with phenomenal and in many cases uncontrollable power that can cause a lot of devastation, so, as a principle they are executed on sight. Which is why the english title is "The Executioner and Her Way of LIfe." The first episode has a kid sent over from Japan who is at first extremely excited until it turns out he has no magic or ability or money and is starving and shit. Then he meets the main character, who after ascertaining his highly destructive ability, summarily executes him. That's the basic premise for the world
and
other, separate spoilers that also spoil episode 2
from there it goes off into yuri adventure after she meets an isekai'd girl whose power prevents her from being killed! so, she kind of has to Figure That One Out
That is an interesting premise. It may not be my genre, but doesn't sound that bad.
when isekai protagonists were women: characters feel like actual people, not a ridiculous power fantasy, little to no :awooga:, not overtly fascist
now that isekai protagonsts are dudes: one note characters, ludicrous power fantasy, all the :awooga:, paedophilia, slavery is goodThis is Bastian erasure. :angery:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ysa-4NsQ_A
I see you're not familiar with the near world ending crusade Bastian goes on in the book.
Oh, I am, I am. That was part of the life cycle of the world.
I was mostly referring to the movie (the third doesn't count at all), but even if I was referring to the book it had more of a point than "both the reader and the writer indulging themselves one-handedly through the ego insert's invincible power trip."
It's a very paternalistic way of approaching worldbuilding. This new world can't have complexity like the one you came from. Its rules can be predicted by a generic videogame or it's just a copy pasted videogame world.
There's rarely a humbling situation like you would see if you wound up in a foreign country you know nothing about. If there is, it's just played for laughs or a situation where the world is wrong and not the protagonist
It reminds me of how earlier science fiction usually assumed alien beings were powerful and knew things beyond human understanding.
Contemporary scifi tends to have the aliens absent, extinct, "bugified," or outright inferior to Humanity Fuck Yeah :reddit-logo: :brainworms:
The most blatantly disgusting version of what you mentioned that I can think of is "Gate." "Fantasy world can be absolutely destroyed by tacticool boot bullshit! JAPAN FUCK YEAH!" :so-true: :scared-fash:
LitRPG can be good but them merging with Isekai really fucking brought out the worst in both genres --- if the story isn't about 'oooh wow this is like that one video game i played...i know how to powergame this civilization into basically becoming my sex slaves' it is always something equivalent to 'i was put in this world and i'm the only one who actually knows how to use these spells/skills/game mechanics that this civilization i was dropped into has been apparently living with for centuries!'
Like fine, you wanna throw a goddamn Status screen at me out of the blue with numbers, skill descriptions, and damage equations - fine. I will happily flip past that because god knows it'll be mentioned again when its actually needed. Just actually make the story about something other than 'wow this is a world with skills and stats exactly like an RPG!'
The only isekai/LitRPG stories I've read/watched in the last five/six years that have been actually decent are: The Salamanders (this one's just pure litrpg and honestly more about trauma, friendship, etc with a 'teenagers at a school to learn how to be dungeon explorers & live in a fantasy world where you can 'level up'' setting), Wandering Inn (more isekai than litrpg but actually well written for being a web-serial. still suffers from the cliche 'wow people from earth are so much stronger than literal world-powers' and 'we still have phones/technology and can repair/charge them with magic' but thankfully the author has avoided the worst of it), and The Gods Are Bastards (which gets way more praise than it should, but was genuinely super well written with an interesting cast of characters and worldbuilding...up until the author decided that they were gonna have the kitsune and dryads both be the races created by...drumroll the people from earth who created the whole world and essentially became the first gods :very-intelligent: there's even a light-sabre that gets used!! wow!! thankfully the author put it on a never-ending hiatus pretty soon after that.)
All that to say, isekai/litrpg sucks and I read a ton of them :ursus-hexagonia:
All that to say, isekai/litrpg sucks and I read a ton of them
This me fr fr
:Hoggers:
I wrote a third of a story about a :freeze-gamer: who was at the launch of the world's most anticipated VRMMO 100 years in the future. I put numbers on the power levels, the movement speed, and the in-game currency. I think going full LitRPG is boring and it takes away from a character's ability to be creative. The narrative is in first person and it's portrayed like, "I know about all the spell descriptions, damage calculations, and optimizations, but I'm not going to bore you with it. What I want to talk about is the interpersonal drama in my hardcore guild and the streamers that associate with us."
I'm just really upset at Japan's otaku culture and obsession with lolicon in general, harem shit plays into this. It seriously alienates me from modern anime.
There's good food to be found when dumpster diving. Just put on your rubber gloves and test everything for toxic substances and pathogens.
it feels like you have to dive a bit to find the creepier stuff if anything.
I didn't have to dive at all to have Goblin Slayer, Shield Hero, and especially Sword Art Online shoved in my face, unsolicited, by their respective fandoms and general exposure on the internet.
Maybe we’re hanging out in different spaces
Probably. I play some mainstream online games with general audiences that talk about such things before I so much as look them up.
I won't invalidate your experience and in turn I hope you won't invalidate mine.
I'm authentically curious about Chainsaw Man but haven't dived in yet.
CSM is the one piece of media in any format (that I've seen recently) that actively engaged and reckons with what it means to live under the hell world that is late-stage capitalism.
Which also means we have to deal with themes like objectification of women and grooming, and said commentary gets smuggled in 'poison pill' style to otaku with a thematic bait -and-switch.
Idk what your tolerance for horny male gaze camera is, and I get that "it's in service to the story" only goes so far before it rings hollow, but for what it's worth CSM is the only show I'd go to bat for.
Idk what your tolerance for horny male gaze camera is,
If it's horny for adult women with some agency that aren't victimized constantly to feed the hogs, I can go for quite a bit.
that actively engaged and reckons with what it means to live under the hell world that is late-stage capitalism.
Didn't One Punch Man kind of do that too? :ok:
That can definitely work, especially if it doesn't go the "oh no this is so terrible isnt winkwinknudgenudge so let's glorify it with lots of fanservice camera angles and repetitive gratuitious emphasis" Gambo route.
Which also means we have to deal with themes like objectification of women and grooming, and said commentary gets smuggled in ‘poison pill’ style to otaku with a thematic bait -and-switch.
same as above.
Yeah, it's deffo not Gambo style reveling in the misery. It's out to make a point, and that point is how much capitalism sucks.
Didn’t One Punch Man kind of do that too?
Sorry was at work earlier so I couldn't give a longer reply, and I kinda want to address this cos I think it does raise an interesting comparison:
OPM kinda does that, in a postmodern ironic sense, but it hyper-fixates on the alienation of labour (why Mumen Rider is sorta a foil character to Saitama, in that he's the true proletarian hero who is not alienated from his labour but is completely disempowered and he just like me frfr), and imo one of OPM's big failings is that it gets lost in the sauce and doesn't posit a way out of that alienation, to the best of my knowledge. (I haven't followed OPM in a while, although I read the manga a bit further on from where S1 of the anime adapted.) Funnily enough, it's like criticism of Mark Fisher's work on Capitalist Realism we've seen sometimes, in that it's not enough to point out that we're stuck in capitalist realism but we also need a way out. Not that I think it was on Fisher to supply that answer.
CSM is kinda cuts out the irony in favour of this over the top absurdity (in the Camus sense) that's part of the point, that "life under capitalism is just a bullshit sandwich so why not have a cherry on top" kinda thing, coupled with a deep, deep, searing sincerity. It's post-postmodern, and it cuts to the quick in wasting no time in pointing out what is wrong with the world from literally the first chapter (spoilers: that the powerful want more power and will step on everyone else to get it) AND it posits a solution to that problem, even if it is a classic: Eat the Rich.
Isnt CSM the one where the MC got groomed by a girlboss? at least that girlboss is potrayed as a villain.
Oh and there's also that eyepatch woman who SAed a teenage boy too.
Isnt CSM the one where the MC got groomed by a girlboss? at least that girlboss is potrayed as a villain.
Oh and there’s also that eyepatch woman who SAed a teenage boy too.
Me when I'm curious about something anime I haven't watched or investigated yet.
:dead-dove-1:
:dead-dove-2:
:dead-dove-3:
Contrary to what some think of me here, I really don't say a story can't have such elements. To me the difference is intention and presentation.
Lots of bad things can be talked about, even shown with some tact and sympathy for the afflicted, or it can instead focus on gratuitous fanservice and edge/shock value.
Thanks for the additional information.
“more off-putting to some” wasn’t obliquely saying “you” btw, it was just a hedge because I don’t know how you react to things except certain broad strokes.
No no, you're fine here and I didn't pick up that tone. Rather, I was nodding to what you said and applying it to the wider context of what we were discussing. I do think it's possible to have bad people do bad things in fiction without it being crass and cynical hogfeed.
The one additional thing I will say about CSM, especially the manga, is that it’s a story where the icky elements (which it’s always okay to dislike something for) are for a reason rather than just “fanservice” that well-adjusted adults should filter out if they’re to engage with the media at all. It’s a little hard to explain without getting into the third-act plot twist but, while Denji definitely does not completely reform, his shit gets him in trouble on a level basically unheard of in our age of “every character is a mascot” writing.
Noted.
chainsaw man is incredible. read the manga, which avoids most of the :awooga: in the anime
it's very much critical of its own horniness, and i think is actually a really cutting critique of the way shitty harem anime (among other things) treat sex and sexuality, and the aforementioned stuff is treated very critically and not for fanservice (in the manga. as mentioned the anime is a little :awooga:)
also: important to note that it is never horny for minors (even once it starts introducing high schoolers) and is only rarely horny for adults
Denji is 16
Tbf most of the icky stuff are potrayed as traumatizing/bad.
That's good, as long as "this is bad actually" in the narration isn't accompanied by gratuitous :awooga: camera and cinematographic focus for entertainment purposes.
Goblin Slayer had a "the goblins did that in the first episode, which justifies genocide against them, but wasn't that hot, otakus?" :awooga:
CW for SA:
Hate how goblin slayer justify killing goblin children because all goblins are ontologically evil. Along with the whole "they are raping our women" (while showing :awooga: shots of women being raped) shtick goblin slayer seems to be really fascist as shit. Honestly as a guy with Muslim sounding name it's pretty disturbing considering how fascists often accuse POC of being rapists while somehow believing that women are just making false rape allegations whenever the accusations are against celebrities.
believing that women are just making false rape allegations
And that sounds a lot like the premise of Shield Hero :kombucha-disgust:
I wholeheartedly agree. I only said "waifu harem shit aside" because that's the primary and most obvious issue with the anime/manga industry right now.
:lea-smug: crosscode is an isekai game and was pretty good tho.
spoiler
Tbf the MC turns out to be a sentient "NPC" so it lacks the "hahaha its okay to mistreat others they aren't' even real!"
The common thread of posted exceptions here seems to be "the protagonist is female or at least female coded." With the exception I gave (Bastian) that does seem to be a correlation, at least when it comes to what the story's likely to be about and what the protagonist's goals are.
I'm sure there's shitty capitalist girlboss reverse-harem isekai trash out there, that said.
Trigun
I tried the original anime many years ago and the waifus fawning over senpai each episode while he was too cool to do anything was insufferable to me. Maybe it got better but I gave up. :no-thats-wrong:
They’ve been completely rewritten in the reboot. One is an alcoholic grumpy old man now.
That's a good change!
Give the reboot series a shot! Here’s a link (use adblock).
I just may. Thank you.
It is a weird evolution. People noticed plot holes and wrote fanfiction where they munchkined the powers stem and that was more fun to than the original work. So instead of writing better worlds they just got in on the fun of making fun of their own terrible worlds.
How long will it be before one of those euphoric "why don't Trek captains just weaponize the transporters all the time?" types makes an isekai where the genius ego-insert uses transporter technology to dominate the universe and make infinite clones of himself? :warf-wtf:
I am pretty sure I already read one of those.
The aliens that did that just got weird with it though. They realized it was all pointless and watching them be silly little dudes made the humans get depressed and give up. The other races just got silly with it for fun as well and made fun of us for being all serious. It did explain how everything in star trek ToS was so dumb though. Most the aliens we met were larping, and we were good npcs for their games
To me the video game elements are a lazy crutch for the creators. Who needs a coherent and interesting magic system when you have video game skills? Who needs a deep and original world when you can settle for Generic video game fantasy #206468 with npcs. Just compare trash like Sword Art Online or Shield Hero to any actual fantasy series and it becomes very clear what's going on.
I just want Vision of Escaflowne back QQ
A guess the one silver lining is that the new hotness is isekai where the protag fucks off to the country side with his busty 30 something girlfriend to start a farm instead of save the world.
There is a specific beauty about the 90s thing where fantasy is for girls and sci fi is for boys.
You can have mech battles but if you have a harem of boys there needs to be a dragon in it.
Then there's shows like Magic Knight Rayearth, which is a 1994/1995 Mecha Shojo Isekai.
spoiler
Even if mechs only show up in the imo better S2.
Uncharitably saying that 90's Japanese pop culture reflected that boys must be forced to relive the trauma of losing WW2 well into the future (just with giant robots) while a strong independent young woman who has her choice of romantic partners was confined to the realm of fantasy.
Memes aside realistically it probably was everyone bandwagoning Miyazaki and Tomino. Then Anno came and fucked everything up.
Yeah, litrpg is dogshit. SAO and it's consequences have been disastrous
Brave Story's the earliest one I can think of that operates explicitly on video game logic and it suffered for it. Wasn't terrible though. But video game logic is creeping into general narrative art more and more. I think Liz from TrueAnon was mentioning that, or maybe it was Matt Christman lately, I can't remember.
That saddens me because if done right "person the audience can identify with whisked away to a fantastical world" can be a great premise, but I have no interest in watching the magic being deconstructed into Game Genie codes for endless sexual conquests and capitalistic hegemony.
And don't get me started on the colonial bootlicky fascist nightmare that "Gate" was.
.hack//SIGN (2002) is pretty good.
It's by Patlabor writer Kazunori Ito and while it's a video game Isekai, it actually does not forget about the fact that the characters are real people and that it's a video game where there are odd mechanics, specific playerbase behaviors because it's a game (and not IRL) and no cheats.
Great soundtrack too.
Aura Battler Dunbine
RETVRN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYDVXWJf-_k
(fun fact, alongside Bruce "Commander Sherridan" Boxleitner there, the doomed program at the end of this clip is Londo Mollari on Babylon 5)
Fun fact:
Takashi Katori is a big fan of online games, and so is his American friend Sarah. However, one of their RPGs goes too far, as their virtual world and the Lezarion robot that Takashi created for the game somehow mix with reality. Takashi is caught, but later the Earth Governement discovers that an evil scientist from the Moon (now a sort of abandoned colony with restricted access) is hacking into virtual worlds and security, so they force Takashi to pilot the Lezarion and, with Sarah's help, fight evil and protect the Earth.
Broadcasting Date (Video Senshi Lezarion): 4th March 1984 to 5th February 1985
