Help I Got Reincarnated Into My Own Blogpost About Isekai Manga · 9:25am Mar 31st, 2019

So why were British occultists so obsessed with ancient Egypt...... argh wait I already wasted that joke in the previous post.

This started off as nothng more than a "here's some good stories I like" recommendation post, but...

I'd heard about the Isekai fad (mostly complaints) and realized I hadn't actually sampled any, and I should at least give it a try. For those unfamiliar, Isekai is a weird subgenre where regular people get warped or reincarnated into some fantasy book or videogame story. Many of them originate from Japanese Light Novels (basically: pulp fiction market), and you probably notice the similarity to all the HiE and Displaced stories here on Fimfiction.

But they can't all be bad, right? I mean I don't find the basic premise intrinsically awful. It's like Alice in Wonderland or Wizard of Oz, right?! Back to the Future! Those are fun! And I've seen some people generously stretch the definition out to include any "Hero's Journey" themed story. Or maybe even anything relying on "Fish Out of Water", like Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?????

Well I read a little of a bunch of popular titles, and realized I was wrong. Most were pretty boring, though I found a few amazing gems. Maybe there is a line to be drawn. Let me deconstruct it a bit. There's a heavy dose of wish-fulfillment in these stories, of course. I don't blame the fans for liking that, though I also think it's way too flimsy to criticize them on that point alone. It just becomes subjective if you enjoy it or not, and nothing useful is learned.

I think the important distinction is that they have an element self-awareness, relying on a genre-savvy protagonist (and reader). There's a layer of irony seperating it from being a straightforward adventure into Wonderland (or Bel-Air), because the main character fully understands they're within a work of fiction, and have to navigate it by those rules. Undertale is an RPG about a kid falling into a magical world, while Deltarune is about a kid falling into someone's RPG story (actually Deltarune isn't a perfect literal example but....)

But it's also different from something like Slayers or Dragon Half, where tropes are highlighted and exaggerated for the goal of parody. In Isekai, awareness of the tropes isn't the joke, it's the character's primary advantage, and that familiarity is how it tries to be relatable to the audience. Presumably an audience who is very well experienced with fantasy fiction and/or gaming themselves.

And I think it is exactly this that can turns away the non-fans, because while they're superficially similar by having marvelous alternate worlds, they create very different themes and messages. You might go in expecting a hero's journey story, but Isekai are actually.... deconstruction stories as a genre. Spooky.

In an HiE fic, it matters a lot whether the human knows that MLP exists as a cartoon, or has no idea at all. They're making very different statements about the show and fandom.

Anyway, there were some common flaws I noticed in the boring Isekai stories. A lot of them didn't make the alternate world very interesting at all, like they had the rely on the most generic setting possible to appeal to everyone. Though maybe that's the fault of the artists.

Additionally, I had trouble relating to the characters as they go on some adventure arc. I think the self-awareness of the stories killed off that tension for me. It's borrowing the familiar plots of books and games, but the story beats don't work the same when they're filtered through irony. If the protagonist isn't in awe of the world they're in, why should I be? It feels like the writers are mistaking the map for the territory.

I know Sturgeon's Revelation, the majority of works are going to be crap. Though at least for me, I feel that badly written genre work is harmlessly forgettable, while badly written postmodernism is actively painful to sit through.

(does Fushigi Yuugi count as an Isekai? The world is within a book, but that's just the portal and the text isn't used to the characters' advantage. What about The Neverending Story? Argh, I dunno! I hate classification)

Anyway, there were some GREAT ISEKAI that more than made up for all the duds, and I'm so grateful that I was curious enough to dive into this often-ridiculed genre.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

The main character is a modern schoolgirl who has been reincarnated as the evil villain of an Otome game (dating sim for girls), though ten years before the events unfold. She's played the game enough to know all the story branches, and every single one of them ends in terrible disaster for her character.

Katarina starts to meet the other characters and uses her meta-knowledge to try to manipulate their personalities, hoping it might steer the future toward self-preservation. Well that's her intention, but she actually ends up helping them with their problems and forming genuine friendships.

It's.... it's so wholesome Instead of emulating the plot of a dating sim, it's more like something out of My Little Pony.

I think it also makes a powerful message about good and evil. She's not "good" simply because she believes she's good on the inside, and "just don't be evil, don't bully the heroine" isn't the simple obvious solution here. Here the "good" is defined externally, by forging lasting relationships with her friends and family ahead of time, before it's too late.

The Isekai format is just a plot device here so our character knows the future, yet it puts a unique spin on this. Maybe you're really the antagonist in your life's story. Maybe your future is an unavoidable tragic ending, no matter what. If you can't win against destiny, maybe the best thing you can do is cushion the fatal blow by having friends who love you.

It's the most heartwarming and optimistic tragedy I've ever seen.

Otherworldly Izakaya "Nobu"

Here the Isekai works in reverse. Characters living in a fantasy setting are transported to a modern-day izakaya (Japanese tavern) that somehow exists between worlds. They are awestruck by foreign concepts such as sushi, fried chicken, and cold beer. The food is literally out of this world.

This gimmick could get tiring real fast, just clever food porn (I wonder if the Food Network will air the anime), but it always stays charming. It works beautifully as a slice-of-life, as each chapter sets up a new character who visits Nobu for the first time, and they each have their own daily struggles going on. Having a tasty and relaxing dinner isn't going to directly affect their bigger concerns, but maybe that new experience can give them a poignant new perspective on life. As it goes on, the character stories intertwine with each other, and it feels a living community of your friends.

And the reverse-isekai is more than just clever irony, using technology and food that you're already familiar with (probably) which come across as magical to these fantasy characters. You don't have to feel jealous about this alternate magical world, because you're already living there! Maybe you don't have access to an izakaya specifically, but there's so many varieties of food available to us today that we don't even realize that they're luxuries. So maybe we could slow down a little and appreciate them.

We Never Learn

Not an Isekai at all. Um, it's a harem manga. and I actually like it.

I can't take credit for this, I got interested after reading this review (the blog has a lot of thoughtful reviews and analysis of anime. which I'm not really much into, and I still found it worth reading (also he somehow convinced me to watch Heartcatch Precure))

One thing clear from the start is that each character has their own goals they want to reach. Sparks fly and fanservice abounds, but their attractiveness doesn’t define who they are as people. Moreover, they’re all supportive of one another, and this makes it a refreshing experience.

It's funny how rare that is. Even the male main character is included as having his own goals and life outside of shipping, he's not a bland featureless audience stand-in, nor a hopeless awkward loser.

This led me thinking about how the Harem genre is kind of a weird parallel to the Isekai genre. It's basically riffing on the tropes of romance stories and exaggerating them. Once again, this was used for parody going way back to Rumiko Takahashi (see Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, and Ranma 1/2), who liked to expand the standard love triangle into a love dodecagram, and used a constant stream of ridiculous drama to interrupt the romance from ever developing anywhere, like a twisted soap opera. The Harem genre used this same method, but instead of parody it's uses that self-awareness to deliver wish fulfillment. The irony protects it from collapsing on itself. That's why the romance doesn't develop anywhere, to not get in the way of fan shipping.

So it's amusing how We Never Learn subverts its own genre by going: well if everyone knows the romance isn't going to go anywhere meaningful, why not build an actual plot around their academic struggles? Despite all the fanservice and sexual tension, it all feels rather wholesome. Because it's primarily a story about school and life goals, and the romance fluff is relegated to side dish.

Anyway the reason I'm super late on writing haikus and designing book covers is because I was stuck in another world as the villain, and now that I'm back I promise to do my work right away......... right after I order some Japanese food.

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