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.
: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.