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.
There's good food to be found when dumpster diving. Just put on your rubber gloves and test everything for toxic substances and pathogens.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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
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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.
And that sounds a lot like the premise of Shield Hero :kombucha-disgust: