“Isekai Is Dead” is a bold statement from our guest contributor from the tabletop community, who is also way into anime and would like to remain anonymous. Read on to know why he thinks it’s the case.
What’s An “Isekai” Anyway?
Over the past decade, the sub-genre called Isekai (from the Japanese word meaning “different” world) has flooded the anime scene with numerous titles that include the ever-popular Sword Art Online, Overlord, Konosuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World!, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and Mushuko Tensei. These titles introduced viewers to putting modern-day characters into exciting and often dangerous fantasy worlds. This concept resonated with many anime fans and gamers, appealing to their sense of adventure and escapism. This new breed of anime titles allowed their creators to craft stories without the constraints of creating characters whose actions and logic would be dictated by what would seem sensible in the world and period wherein their characters lived, thus giving them an enormous sense of creative freedom.
Isekai Is Dead – A Flawed Formula
The massive success of the genre has led to an explosion of countless light novels and anime adaptations that fall under that category, much to the delight of anime fans looking for a title wherein the main character often mirrors that of the reader or viewer’s real-life situation. Fast forward to 2024, where Isekai titles are a dime a dozen. Many fans of the genre are rapidly moving to other anime genres, citing the repetitiveness of plot points and the main character’s overpoweredness as the main reasons they are tired of Isekai. At the same time, some say they have outgrown the genre altogether. Often, the main characters in Isekai animes are blank slates or devoid of real strong personalities, allowing space for self-insertion. While this seems appealing at first, as a series of episodes of progress, this eventually creates a sense of superficiality as, more often than not, the writers themselves fall into the trap of creating a world almost always favored towards the protagonist.
Isekai Is Dead – The Cure
With the number of Isekais running about, it was only a matter of time before viewers looked for alternatives to the tired genre. Enter Freiren, Kimetsu No Yaiba, and Delicious in Dungeon. These new anime titles offer viewers a more natural take on the fantasy genre inspired by games such as Dungeon and Dragons and Pathfinder, offering stories and characters that really feel like they are part of the world they are living in. The world-building in the said series’ feels refreshing after a decade of misplaced characters in “convenient” situations. While one can argue that comparing two opposing takes on fictional characters encountering fantasy worlds is a mistake, there lies the truth that traditional fantasy-based storytelling leads to a specific type of authenticity that is not possible with Isekais. Modern sensibilities and know-how of a modern-day character apparently destroy that sense of suspension of disbelief if placed upon a different era, which is one of your initial appeals as the viewer encountering the Isekai genre for the first time.
Isekai Is Dead – And I Hope It Stays That Way… For Now
As more fans gravitate to newer non-Isekai titles, the demand for the genre has shown a sudden downtrend, which, for the most part, is a good sign in terms of renewed creative freedom. The resurgence of interest in more traditional high-fantasy animation and storytelling is a welcome sign that the Japanese animation companies will not just be slaves to a popular genre for too long, giving anime fans a choice as to which adventure they want to be on.
In a sense, the Isekai genre has the same problem as why horror movies are no longer scary.
