They do the isekai thing so then the world building happens naturally as we watch the clueless dork explore the fantasy world and encounter stuff.
Otherwise you have to find ways to explain stuff to the audience when the characters grew up in that world and should already know all about it, so don't need to discuss things.
I think this is often what amnesia is so common in fiction, too, despite being extremely rare in the real world. It provides a convenient plot device, both to perform exposition and for some inevitable gotcha behind either their identity, how they lost their memory, or some other major revelation from their past (seriously, has there ever been a case of amnesia in fiction where they didn't conveniently forget some big, plot relevant thing?).
One way to do it is to start with a character that is native to the world but new to the social circles and strata of the story. So that the specific contexts of the story are also new to the character.
Maybe start the charachter in a profession that exsists in our world. The farmboy start like in wheel of time. Or the butcher start like in soaring the heavens. After all most pre industrial people wouldnt have traveled far from their place of birth and wouldnt know much about the world at large.
why does everything have to be relatable to this miserable prison planet existance
Western consumers need media to cater to their terminal Aphantasia, I guess. Feels like some weird postmodern Hayes Code thing major studios want.
Looking at the US media landscape today, you'd think imagining fantasy worlds without connecting it to Earth was illegal. Same with the horde of recent graduate YA authors who seem to care more about book sales than writing. You just instantly get this uncanny valley feeling where it's clear the writer's never trained their sense of abstract thought (and assumes you don't have it either). Plus, the fact that these authors have any sense at all of what today's media "tropes" are completely fucks them over, as they insecurely try to dodge them, unconsciously add them anyway, and only end up with more generic stories (at least they're Marketable!). They'll only remind you of everything you've already seen, or know. You'll forget one as soon as you read another. Unironically feels harmful to a growing kid's creativity.
In conclusion, I think adult audiences who scrunch their noses and say "That was weird" should be bullied more. They use it like a genre label, so young artists get spooked and avoid it.
I want to se a story when the mc gets isekaid as a baby. But because they have a baby brain and body they are extreamy limited in movment and agency. So the mc has to spend 1 year in whats esentially a straigth jaket shiting themselves. And this leaves them a little unginged
Then when they are a kid they have a kid brain so they are undergoing neural prunning and forgetting things. So in order to not forget the mc starts neyrotically anallyising, ordering and recording their previous memories with various degrees of succes. They either developed an ordered mental framework or end up a compleat paranoid mess. Or something in between.
They have to search for their lost finger painting pictures to retrieve their memories
Exactly. Sice the protagonist was a kid they had poor hand codination while making making those notes exacerbating the problem.
The "reborn as babies" thing is a plot twist in that spider isekai, and it makes some of the cast pretty weird. It's a decent show but I don't know if I'd recommend it.
spoiler
The element is mostly just used as a plot twist, though. It swaps back and forth between two perspectives which are later revealed to have a ~14 year time gap. Everybody in the show was reincarnated as a baby, but the MC reincarnated as a baby magic spider meaning she was basically fully functional from day 1.
spoiler
the spider girl ends up a bit wierd due to being a spider. But she should be the most normal one since she had agency from the beggining. There is another girl that was an egg for a decade and was somewhat concious of it. She should be absolutley fucked up.
Yeah that's what I mean by it mostly just ending up as a plot twist and not being explored fully. It's too bad, really, but it's still one of the better isekai's for not just being "generic anime boy in dragon quest land with X special item/skill/mom".
My main problem with the generic anime boys is that they lack agency. They have increadible power but no positive agenda. I see that as inherently reactioary.
In that sense spider girl is much better, she has her own program. Even if her reasons are selfish at least she has her own goals. So yhea cool anime.
The main character is mofe relatable if they can reference pop culture etc
I liked the approach of Tearmoon Empire a lot. Instead of typical isekai, the main character from the same universe time travels to her past right after she dies by guillotine. Everything she does is to avoid dying again, her personality at its core doesn't change. Would reccomend it on the next anime season.
