I mean it has all the trappings of it, high fantasy world with overpowered main character where there’s a demon king to be defeated and the MC accumulates allies as they journey.
Thats definitely a debatable point. Most especially the shitty isekai stop caring about the mc coming from another world and just focus on how OP they are. 90% of these stories would not change significantly if the character was just "born different"
See: SAO: Alicization where the MC has their memory wiped and lives their entire life inside the "other world" as a normal person inside of it and it's a twist in a later part of the story that he's actually from another world. Nobody would debate this isn't an Isekai despite it not being one canonically until halfway through the season.
Yeah and in that case its a pivotal plot point. My point is most isekai at this point are just c tier fantasy with truck kun slapped at the front. The trope is often used more for marketing than narrative.
Frieren avoided isekai tropes by not being an isekai
I mean it has all the trappings of it, high fantasy world with overpowered main character where there’s a demon king to be defeated and the MC accumulates allies as they journey.
The core feature of an isekai is the "isekai" part though
Thats definitely a debatable point. Most especially the shitty isekai stop caring about the mc coming from another world and just focus on how OP they are. 90% of these stories would not change significantly if the character was just "born different"
I mean it's really not a word means itself
See: SAO: Alicization where the MC has their memory wiped and lives their entire life inside the "other world" as a normal person inside of it and it's a twist in a later part of the story that he's actually from another world. Nobody would debate this isn't an Isekai despite it not being one canonically until halfway through the season.
Yeah and in that case its a pivotal plot point. My point is most isekai at this point are just c tier fantasy with truck kun slapped at the front. The trope is often used more for marketing than narrative.
tbf the demon king is already defeated. her journey is about going to heaven (ooh baby, its a place on earth!) to say hi to some old friends