The genre of isekai has gotten a little bit of a reputation over the years. It’s been seen as something that panders to a very particular audience, people who seek out a kind of wish fulfillment or power fantasy they can experience by projecting themselves onto a sea of bland protagonists with no traits other than that they have more power than god and that everything with a vagina in a 10 kilometre radius of them will instantly apply to join protag-kun’s harem. I’m not going to suggest that that reputation isn’t earned, there’s an amount of escapism inherent to a genre where the basic premise is that you get magically transported to a world where you’re good at everything and everyone likes you. I myself usually put on an isekai when I want to watch something to distract me from Life that I won’t have to think too much about. But it’s that escapism that makes the genre so important and that helps it get across some really important life lessons to people that honestly need someone or something to hold a mirror up to them in that way.
A lot of the best isekai (i.e. my own favourites, my taste is immaculate) purposefully draws the audience in with the promise of a fun – if not a little generic – fantasy world that’s ripe for adventure and monster slaying. You get to project yourself onto an all-powerful overlord, a prodigiously talented mage, an unkillable knight sworn to save his princess, and at a base level that can be a great experience in and of itself as a kid or a teenager. The thing is, though, that the stories don’t just stop at that point and keep you comfortable. The overlord is just playing a role, he’s socially inept and afraid he’ll never find friendship, the mage is haunted by a laundry list of regrets over things and people he ran away from, that “unkillable” knight is traumatised by the violence he’s experienced and he’s at a loss when he realises the one he wanted to save is entirely capable of existing beyond his image of her. These stories force their main characters, and us as the viewers, to face the parts of our lives we wanted to run away from, and to try to understand other people for who they are instead of selfishly thinking that you’re at the centre of everything.
Kumo desu’s anime wasn’t great, but it did introduce me to one of the best stories I came across last year in the form of both the light novel it was based on and the webnovel. I didn’t even remotely expect for this silly story about a really chatty spider would turn into something about how people’s beliefs and morality are influenced by the circumstances of their lives, and that’s what makes it such a wonderful experience. A big part of the conflict later on in the story has to do with what a difference in the values and ideas of different groups of people can cause, all the needless suffering and violence that can unfold just for the fact that these people couldn’t communicate with each other, and couldn’t overcome their preconceptions. Mushoku Tensei, for all the problems with it, is another example of a story that gets across a similar idea through its protagonist. There are various points in the story where Rudeus reflects on his past life and realises that he did have chances to make things better, and that there were still people who cared about him and tried to help him even though he didn’t realise it. He commits himself – with mixed results – to being a better human being and recognising the humanity of others, fully embracing the world and people around him for better or worse. There’s more to life and other people than you might initially assume, and that’s the message that so many of these “escapist” stories put across to an audience that might otherwise not think about things that way.
Obviously not every isekai has all that much going on, we all saw the news about “That Time I got reincarnated as the P*ssy of a Lvl 1 Female Swordfighter”, and with so many coming out every season there’s more duds than you could count, but every genre has that problem, so it’s a bit unfair that so many people just cast off isekai specifically because there’s a few out there that they didn’t like. I mean heck, Sonny Boy is technically an isekai if you’re ready for That conversation, and I haven’t yet brought up Ascendance of a Bookworm, or Re:Creators either, there are unique and valuable stories that exist within this genre or borrow aspects from them, and if you give it a little time you might well find one of your favourite stories. The only anime I’m watching this season, The Executioner And Her Way Of Life, is another decent spin on the genre if you’re looking for something more current. That’s really all I can say at this point, just Watch More Isekai
Leave a Reply