What annoys you about ‘Isekai’?
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The best part about KonoSuba, honestly, is while it's a parody, it's something of an affectionate one. Yes, it parodies the elements but at the same time it is a fairly good example. Kind of like how One Punch Man parodies things but still is a good example of superheroes.
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One of these days I want to write an isekai story that turns the tropes on their head. Forget ‘coming in pairs’ and ‘but why Earth?’. I’ve got a good idea going where a human male falls off a building (pushed by a female coworker) and before making a bloody imprint in the ground gets summoned to a world that is exactly like ours... except for the fictional is the reality and humans are the legend. The working title I have for the idea is ‘What if George Washington was an Elf’, but I don’t think that really rolls off the tongue.
My idea for the series is yes it does have magic, but the world is so similar to ours down the the makeup of the atmosphere that magic is highly inefficient and unreliable, so technology still advanced to our current era.
This bring the question; How did he get summoned if the world is almost exactly like ours? The answer; ‘Almost’. That is the key word. Magic was much more reliable in the early ages, and one spell that requires a ton of magic energy is the classic Summoning Spell which in this world was discovered in an ancient ruin and after many arguements between scholars of several races about which race the Legendary Hero must have been, they built a device that could build up Magic over the course of several years to get enough power to summon one.
Let me point out that in this idea, the nations thought that brodcasting the summoning would be the biggest publicity for their specific race, allowing them to become the most powerful race on Earth (yes, they would also call their planet Earth. ‘Almost’, remember). They were willing to take a gamble because the depiction of the Legendary Hero was one that could be mistaken as pretty much any of the races.
Imagine how suprised those clever clogs, let alone the entire viewing populace’s when they saw that what was summoned had the height of an Elf, wiskers akin to a Dwarf (really just a little bit scraggy), eyes like a Were (the world’s version of Beastfolk) and the presence of a Demon.
They were not expecting the Hero to be from the fictional Human race.
Any opinions?
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The worst thing about Isekai for me is the Magical Deus-ex-machina. Most isekai doesn't have clear limitation on Magic, with the MC being (usually) a magic cheat, that makes him / her someone who would sooner rather than later able to clear all challenges with a wave of his hand. Once it gets to that point, its just send the whole story spiraling down to boring and repetitive.
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To be fair the OP MC trope isn't limited to isekai.
Other genres does this as well.
I'm more annoyed with the same tired and true beginning of an isekai series:
-MC gets sent to another world
-First encounter is a girl(s) in trouble, either from nameless bandits/rapists/slavers made as asshattery as possible so the readers will sympathize with the girls and hate the villains
-MC wins and gets the girl into the start of a harem -
The only things I dislike about most of the current other world stories are overpowered protagonists and worlds with game mechanics. I vastly prefer the "worst but best" trope and not everything needs to be based on Dragon Quest/Wizardry and MMOs.
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@village-idiot Though the girls didn't end up in a harem or romance (yet), that formula isn't far off from the start of the action in Dendro. Pretty much nails Smartphone though, and volume 7.5 of Rokujouma. Would that count as an isekai sub-story?
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@paul-nebeling Is there a character from another dimension who is trapped in the world with no way back?
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@paul-nebeling said in What annoys you about ‘Isekai’?:
@village-idiot Though the girls didn't end up in a harem or romance (yet), that formula isn't far off from the start of the action in Dendro. Pretty much nails Smartphone though, and volume 7.5 of Rokujouma. Would that count as an isekai sub-story?
@oathkeeper95 said in What annoys you about ‘Isekai’?:
@paul-nebeling Is there a character from another dimension who is trapped in the world with no way back?
Let's keep Rokujouma spoilers to the relevant thread, please.
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@tako I think the set up of the concept made it pretty easy to guess where it was heading.
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@oathkeeper95 Is it? I haven't read very far and Isekai theme is not in the tags nor in the description of the series.
So I'd say that could be safely considered spoilers, even if minor (I'm not sure if they are minor or major at this point)
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@tako I haven’t read any myself, and I assume the plot is more than just ‘seven different entities want control over a smal room, but for each entity the other 6 refuse to give up on their plans, so they play games to gamble space in the room’... Considering the Japanese version is... what? 26 or so strong so far? Anyways, I have myself not read the series or even watched all of the anime, but I can at least assume things gonna get weird eventually... Well weirder than a human, ghost, mole woman, alien and magical girl all playing jin rummy for floor space...
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@tako Sorry. Thought that was vague enough not to be considered a spoiler or I would have put it in a spoiler tag. My apologies.
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I don't consider the start of Dendrogram similar.
Yes, it's an event to save a girl.
However, it was clear that it was the machinations of someone else. Liliana was holding her own, and Ray barely won his own battle thanks partially to Shu.
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@village-idiot Agreed, not a 100% match, but
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@paulnamida I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that's expecting that reaction. The question is how Yandere will she get.
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@paul-nebeling I’m shipping the polar opposite of the hero😅. But I was on your ship before we found out who that person was IRL in the novel of course.
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@hyferzftw Oh, that RL ship has Titanic (sic) potential.
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I'm just going to address your first point, because it seems very strange to me that you're so hung up about it.
We didn't name the land/soil "earth" after our planet. We named our planet after the land/soil. It's a function of the English language, but also many other languages.
For example, the Japanese term for the planet is "地球" Chikyuu. This is made up of the character "地" Chi, meaning "land/soil/etc", and the character "球" kyuu meaning ball. Literally translated the planet is just named "Dirt Ball".
So why do alternate worlds have the term "earth" meaning land? Again, because that's just the LANGUAGE. We call the element "earth", so in order to impart the same meaning to us, it has to be called "earth". Maybe this is an function of the in-universe translation magic that we often see in these types or stories, or maybe it's just a meta function that the narration of the story has to be told in a language we the readers understand.
If it makes you happier, just imagine that whenever any characters from an isekai say the word "earth" meaning ground, they're actually saying whatever word in their natural language that is. And that word is the same word as their planet, but we as readers just have it translated for us, like the rest of their entire dialogue.
