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.
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.
...you mean worldbuild organically like any other story set in a universe that isn't our own? Countless shows and stories have been doing that for centuries, why should anime get a special little exception?
Narnia walks through the wardrobe.
Harry Potter learns about the wizarding world.
Hard to do with the axe hanging over your head. "Sorry, but chapter 3 didn't score high enough in our magazine poll so we're killing your serialization."
Most Isekais are Novels. Barely any pressure in writing for most of those companies (or at least, not that type of pressure).
And for centuries they have been struggling to find good ways to present that newly built world in a natural way. Just because good examples exist doesnt make it an easy thing to accomplish. Bad fantasy stories have also existed for centuries.
You may call it lazy, but you gotta admit that with isekai settings presenting a new world is easy and natural.
And its not like only animes use that. Harry poter, Narnia, Peter Pen, Alice In Wonderland, Tron Legacy etc etc... All have clueless main characters finding themselves in a new world.
The first work of art to find an "easy and natural" storytelling shortcut gets to reap the benefits. By the 79th work to abuse the same shortcut, the novelty has worn off and the downsides to the plot become clearer. A cliche is born.
It's well and good to say "stories have failed plenty without including cliches", but do understand what you are defending -- an eternity of knights on white horses, "I am your father"s, third acts speeches about the power of friendship, women in refrigerators. Personally I think it's probably healthy that some tropes become cliches and die.
I think that overusing ideas that affect the premise of a story isnt nearly as bad as overusing ideas that affect its progress/conclusion, like Disney's plot twist villains, "i am your father" and white knight cliches.
Stuck in another world, stuck in a death game or a "chosen one journey" cliches make the beggining seem unoriginal, but can develope in so many ways that as a reader/viewer, i dont mind if the idea is overused as long as the story that follows is good and original.
Countless shows and stories have been doing that for centuries, why should anime get a special little exception?
Imagine the intelligence and attention-span of your average Anime fan. Now realize half of anime fans have lower levels of attention and intelligence.
It's way harder to do on screen. Works for print.
Yeah, but explaining it to someone who is new to the setting as an audience insert is easier!
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?).
I would love one where the person forgets who they are and what happened to them, but they remember the big plot point and have no idea why they know or why it is important.
Pretty sure there are some that already exist, but can't think of any off the top of my head.
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.
Yeah it’s similar to why hidden world fantasy is popular. Or some rube idiot protagonist. It’s a lot harder to do something like mistborn where everyone knows what a basic allomancer can do without it either sounding weird or the author thinking it does
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.
Too short, append ", but I'm a level 2 demon lord?" to the end.
"Satan couldn't possibly be this cute?!"
The main character is mofe relatable if they can reference pop culture etc
Also, japanese weebs/neckbeards need some relatable protagonist, who gets to live a life they never will, harem and all.
Also, since the main character is an audience insert it gives the author an excuse to expo-dump.
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.
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.
Already done; see Return of the Blossoming Blade.
when the whole plot story fit in one paragraph of title
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.
Well they tried that with arguably the most well known fantasy world in existence, D&D, and it flopped because too many people need their worlds spoon fed to them.
The dnd movie did not flop at all, who told you that?
Relative to its budget it was considered sort of a box office failure, from what I've heard. Maybe I'm mistaken. It was probably my favorite movie of the past few years for what it's worth, wasn't trying to bash it.
Checks out
https://movieweb.com/dungeons-and-dragons-sequel-unlikely/
200M box office on a 150M investment, means a net loss after marketing and distribution costs
I seem to remember Chris Pine getting very floppy at one point
"i smoked too much crack and ended up in crack world"