Thread "I cannot enjoy a western made Isekai." in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 6:07PM, Jul. 23, 2022

I want to enjoy them.
I love, love, love Japanese Isekai where a dude is introduced to truck-kun and sent to a fantasy world filled with beautiful women, cool monsters and characters that are way, way more interesting then Mr. Atsukami.
Or my more beloved one where Japan has a gate open up to another world, or is transported there and they use their modern might to basically kick the knights of the round table asses seven days to Sunday.
In theory I should love the idea of a kid or a group of kids being transported to another world of strange creatures, weird magic and physics devised by mad gods. In theory I should enjoy the idea of a mastermind that has to be stopped before unleashing some great ancient weapon of mass destruction.
But each time I sit down and try to read or watch something made in the west I just keep hearing one little thing that ruins my enjoyment of these type of stories.
"Everything will be rest by the end, and it would have been a waste of time."

I cannot enjoy western made Isekai because I just know after everything the main character would go through, finding magic and friendship, it won't matter in the end because that stupid rest button must be slammed fast you think it was an episode of Voyager.

Honestly I think what vexes me is the lesson of "everything will go back to the way things were after a major event" a lot of these shows have, that no matter what everything is going to be exactly the same as before the major event, how devastating said event was as it is meaningless.

Just thought I put that out there, and wonder if anyone else felt the same.

Posted at 2:07AM, Jul. 24, 2022

Ever see G.I. Samurai? Made back in 1979, JSDF goes back to 16th Century Japan and has to pick sides knowing the history and realizing in the end that all their efforts will be for nothing because the path of history cannot be changed.

Kind of like the original concept of Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Go and find the reality behind your favorite fantasy ( which is often some previous era of history) try to live in it but the timeline will reject you and everything will stay the same.

Substitute fantasy world for fantasy history and it's easy to see how one came from the other and they're all entwined. Does the player/character rule the game/history or does the game/history rule the player/character. Who wins and does anything really change?

Since a lot of these involve massive conflict and warfare it is clearly a sub genre of war fiction. Does someone really matter in the big machinations of a world at war? A lot of Japanese war stories deal with this so someone put modern and fantasy/history together and you get G.I. Samurai and Gate: And the JSDF fought among other works to include Harry Turtledove and Mark Twain.

Why am I watching this? I know history won't change. I know the fantasy may all just be a dream at the end. Why am I so involved? It's more than the story and the inexorable march of the plot. You know Pearl Harbor gets bombed in Final Countdown. Has to something more than just the set/reset of some game.

Could ask why watch an historical movie about a well known historical event. Do you really think Napoleon will win Waterloo this time when you watch the movie? Will the Yamato not sink in Men of the Yamato? Will the Japanese win Midway in Storm over the Pacific? Will Sonny Chiba change 16th century Japan?

Seems a lot of the same themes at play whether fantasy or history and figuring out why I'm watching stuff where I already know how it ends and does it really matter?

For me I just like a good story. I already know how it ends. I once figured out the twist ending of a thousand page epic fantasy on page three but still then read on to see just how it unfolded.

Posted at 5:07AM, Jul. 24, 2022

I also prefer stories that don't reset a status quo. Doesn't need to be fantasy or really any particular genre. The commentary in the special edition Gravity Falls DVDs talks about that, that every episode should affect the world/characters and those effects should remain. I try to do that with my own story arcs. If an "episode" doesn't change anything, it's pointless and has no place in my story.

However, I do still enjoy episodic franchises that reset the world to zero every time. They can be comforting in that way – even if not quite as engrossing. It's nice to not have to emotionally invest so much in a story sometimes.

Posted at 11:07AM, Jul. 24, 2022

The first western fiction fantasies were always "Isekai", they pretty much invented the genre :)
The idea was that you couldn't write about a fantasy place as just being real because the audience wouldn't be able to suspend their disbelief so instead you have a person from the real world being transported, and the audience can find the story believable that way…

And it didn't always hit a reset button, but yeah the idea was that the person would come back to reality again.
Some of the famous ones were Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and the Narnia series.

The style in the west moved on to straight out fantasy without the convention of a person traveling to the land, especially after Tolkien that style just wasn't as popular anymore, But it still existed and there are some great book series that use it. The Dragon Knight series by Gordon R Dickson is a amazing, Magic Kingdom for Sale series by Terry Brooks is the perfect way to do the trope, The Xanth series by Piers Anthony is good at this as well and they are a lot of other examples.

The huge problem with the modern Japanese take on the genre is that it's almost ALL based on the wish fulfillment of getting stuck in a videogame world, specifically an MMORPG. There are almost no real fantasy worlds in these stories, they're all just game worlds unfortunately. Even when they really seem to be fantasy, if you think about the character design, the magic they use, the interactions they have, the way the visitor character gets abilities and status and how they fight etc is all just game mechanics and that's a bit of a let down.

The idea isn't really a character visiting a magical world, it's "What if the world of a game was "real" but still a game"

I can only think of one that doesn't do that.