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// Trapped in Another World with Unwanted Cheat Powers, by FoME 
// Story: Group Precipitation 
// by FanOfMostEverything 
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Introducing Sunset to Earth’s pop culture was an ongoing group effort, with different friends handling different genres and media. It was Fluttershy’s efforts that had introduced her to anime (other than Dragonpearl) and that had made her aware of the CHS Neighponese Culture Club.

She’d known of the club during her bad old days, but only as one more way to divide and conquer the school, one that had ended up sundered as its members had retreated to their own larger cliques. Now she understood it as… Well, basically an excuse for several students to watch magical girls and highly improbable romances after school. Fluttershy had warned Sunset about recent trends in the medium, but with Scribble Dee as club president, scantily clad harems weren’t on the docket any time soon. And that was all Sunset had cared to know about it.

“Sunset?”

So when Scribble Dee, a unicorn aspect with frizzy orange hair and yellow skin like some surreal anti-Applejack, came to Sunset one day with a thick paperback in hand, she was rather confused by the approach. “Um, yes?”

The girl squirmed under her scrutiny, and Sunset recalled all of the incidental bullying she’d put her through. Scribble had never been a deliberate target, but she’d often been in Sunset’s line of sight during especially foul moods. “Sorry for… everything.”

Scribble blinked owlishly, then gave a weak smile. “Oh! It’s not that. I know a redemption arc when I see one.”

“Thanks?” Sunset’s eyes darted to the crossed pencils emblem on the girl’s skirt as she recalled  fringe psychological theories about how ponies’ cutie marks warped their way of thinking.

“It’s just, I know you hate stumbling across this kind of thing without warning…”

Sunset sighed. “Right, we share a lunch period, don’t we?”

That got a grin and a nod. “Yeah. So I figured you ought to know about this.” Scribble offered the book to her.

Sunset raised an eyebrow as she read the cover. “Reincarnated in Another World as an Almighty Pet Goldfish.” She glanced up at the blushing Scribble. “The only other world I can send you to is Equestria. And you won’t even get turned into a pony, much less a goldfish.”

Scribble shook her head. “Not that. It’s a certain plot device in the manga. Right at the start.”

After a few pages, Sunset looked back up. “Is it the vehicular homicide?”

Another shake. “No, that’s been a common way to kick off isekai stories for years.”

Sunset furrowed her brow. “He gets sent to a bar?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Sunset kept going. Another few pages later, she sighed. “Oh.”

Scribble sighed. “Yeah.”

The artist had applied a thin veneer of plausible deniability. The character’s face was never shown, always cut off by the top of the panel or obscured in her hair, and in theory that could be any young woman with striped hair in the black-and-white pages. But sitting behind an overloaded desk in a fluffy cloud afterlife with a nameplate that read “Sxxxxx Sxxxxxx” made the intent clear.

Sunset read bemusedly as the portrayal of her sifted through a mile-high inbox to handle the main character’s premature demise, mixing up several forms in the process and sending him to his titularly surreal fate. She sighed. “Why do I get the feeling that this is as much of a trend as the main character getting run over?”

“It is more recent than that. The original light novel just used a generic god of the afterlife, but the manga adaptation came out just after everything changed, and, well…”

“It’s a trope now?”

Scribble nodded. “People online are calling it ‘Kami-shima.’ They never come out and show your face or say your name, but it’s a bit like not using the actual name of Burger Princess. Everyone knows what they’re referring to.”

Sunset dragged her fingers through her hair. “I was dragging my feet on getting Magical Mayhem translated. I should definitely get on that. Don’t want people thinking this kind of thing could actually happen.”

“It’s isekai,” Scribble said with the same tone Sunset might have used to talk about Prince Blueblood when she was Celestia’s student. “Pure wish fulfillment with barely any plot.”

“People want to get turned into goldfish?”

“Okay, mostly pure wish fulfillment.”