There are good isekai manga/LNs/etc out there, but by and large it's a sea of derivative power fantasies and wish fulfillment, yes.
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There are good isekai manga/LNs/etc out there, but by and large it's a sea of derivative power fantasies and wish fulfillment, yes.
I don't think you have to apologize. I think Peklo has an important point that's worth considering. On the other hand, there are definitely adaptations that completely pull the porn out of it to pretty good success. (The first Utawarerumono show, I was absolutely shocked to learn it was based on a porn game because it's not skeevy whatsoever.) In general, porn-game derivitives are gonna have a lot of skeevyness in them, but there's soooo many non-porn game stuff that is just as skeevy, or has more indirect links to pornography that the entire medium is fraught and to avoid all of it you have to be extra judicious or rely on trusted sources to vet things for you. It's just kind of a thing.I apologize if I came across as dismissive. I really was trying to say that I find the whole process amusing, and that time is a flat circle. Like, shows like Kanon, Galaxy Angel, Otoboku, Fate, and Demonbane were fairly common in the '00s, and I legit found it really interesting. Especially since a number of them became more popular once the porn was taken out, so I wouldn't necessarily call it a mask?
Slime-hero was a really popular LN before it became a really popular show, and there are dozens of copycat LNs of it well before the show was even made.Did someone hear how "Reincarnated as a Slime" became the most popular isekai of its season, and decided to do it again but 10x harder?
Mother's Basement is mostly a hard avoid for me. The guy makes some salient points about stuff once in a while. But mostly, his expertise is in cinematography. So him breaking down an opening? Sure good stuff. Him discussing the broader merits of a show? He tends to mostly go for otaku-bait and it's not a great time. I dunno if he genuinely likes those kinds of shows, or is just going after whatever's popular to get clicks, but it's generally not a good time for the proclivities of most people here, including you and me it seems.I also sometimes watch the Mother's Basement YT channel, which suggested the aforementioned Cautious Hero (bleh) and Make My Abilities Average (bleeeh) and loves both Konosuba and Re:Zero so I don't really trust its recommendations anymore.
What it really comes down to is the presence of women. If you look at the genre before the modern boom, isekai was practically a "girl's genre"— most of the major works were written by women, for women, and with female leads. Inuyasha, Fushigi Yugi, Magic Knight Raynearth, Twelve Kingdoms all fall into this. Even the ones written by men still tended to have a female lead or at least have prominent female characters, like Escaflowne (which made a concerted appeal for a female audience; I wouldn't be surprised if the isekai premise was part of that). There were certainly still ones targeted at male audiences (you already brought up El Hazard), but they are very much the exception. That's changed, now, and it's men who are defining the genre… it's perhaps no surprise that it's now synonymous with otaku trash.For much, much older stuff, the original El Hazard OAV (no idea about TV), and the TV series of Escaflowne and Rayearth are still aces (and the latter also pioneered the "let's acknowledge this is just like an RPG meta text.) Maybe isekai just work better when the protag is genderfluid/ an Ordinary High School Girl rather than a male otaku wish fulfillment vessel?
The premise of this series has nothing alike with Slime.Did someone hear how "Reincarnated as a Slime" became the most popular isekai of its season, and decided to do it again but 10x harder?
Also I hate that I know that "Reincarnated as a Slime" is a thing that exists and is popular.
Also I can't speak for what the anime ends up doing since it could swerve the other way, but this is like. Absolutely not what the LN does or is interested in doing at all. The girl isn't set up as a love interest, but as a friend, because she doesn't have any her age being a high ranking noble's daughter. Also Ryoma is skilled at a class of magic she wants to master, so her father goes "Yeah, this works out. Also I'll help out this kid that's living alone in the woods."Anyway the 8yo love interest aspect is hyper-gross and I hope one day the people who decide which LNs to adapt get struck bylightninga runaway truck and they end up isekaing as background characters into, iunno, Berserk.
That's changed, now, and it's men who are defining the genre… it's perhaps no surprise that it's now synonymous with otaku trash.
I'm not gonna say this is wrong, but it's definitely an incomplete look at things. If you're only talking about anime, sure. Or even just the stuff that makes it officially to our shores. But in Japan, manga, light novels, video games, they're all interconnected and support each other. Most of the anime that gets made is adaptations of manga or light novels or some other thing. And while most of the seasonal anime that gets talked about here has a primarily young adult male demographic, due in part to when it airs (in the middle of the night), manga and light novels both enjoy a much more balanced, diverse demographic as a medium with tons of girls and women who read them. So there is a buttload of isekai manga and light novels for female targeted audiences. It just usually gets ignored over here because most manga/light novels for a female readership don't make it over, and they also don't usually get anime made of them either.What it really comes down to is the presence of women. If you look at the genre before the modern boom, isekai was practically a "girl's genre"— most of the major works were written by women, for women, and with female leads... That's changed, now, and it's men who are defining the genre… it's perhaps no surprise that it's now synonymous with otaku trash.
Mother's Basement is mostly a hard avoid for me. The guy makes some salient points about stuff once in a while. But mostly, his expertise is in cinematography. So him breaking down an opening? Sure good stuff. Him discussing the broader merits of a show? He tends to mostly go for otaku-bait and it's not a great time. I dunno if he genuinely likes those kinds of shows, or is just going after whatever's popular to get clicks, but it's generally not a good time for the proclivities of most people here, including you and me it seems.
I wouldn't necessarily find that mutually exclusive with what I described though. He picks shows that are big with otaku and will get him clicks, and all three of those shows are pretty popular with otaku too and generated a lot of discussion in otaku circles. They just also happen to be legitimately good as well.OTOH, he recently made videos recommending Deca-Dence, Appare Ranman, and The Great Pretender, which were all big winners.
And frankly, even if the pairing wasn't romantic, a friendship between a 39-year-old masquerading as a kid and an 8-year-old is already problematic all on its own.
Reminds me of when Keiko turned into a kid again, and O'Brien once again was made to sufferI mean, if a baby were to suddenly perfectly remember their previous 96 year life, would they need to abstain from any relationships till they were an adult?
I don't know why that's "putting them down". Also, you bring up Dunbine being a mecha show as if you're trying to prove nuh-uh, Isekai is for boys! But uh, you clearly don't have a handle on Yoshiyuki Tomino if you think he makes his shows for a male audience.If you want to put down Rayearth and Escaflowne as early, pivotal Isekai shows, I've gotta point out that they're both preceded by Yoshiyuki Tomino's classic Aura Battler Dunbine, which 100% is an Isekai.
Them's fighting words.Dunbine is a boring and tragic war story. The first disk regularly put me to sleep.
I can only approach this as someone who skipped Inuyasha for bad reasons, but I've honestly been super into Yashahime so far. The second episode is really the first proper one, introducing the three leads, setting up a longer term conflict, and then putting them together. It's still a bit dense with introductions and events, but it didn't feel overly rushed.Also as someone who has yet to decide whether to watch Inuyasha XX I would appreciate any impressions good or bad
People are strangely taking major offense at an opinion I expressed, picking nits at very specific examples I only brought up to illustrate a much larger point, Talking Time v3 sure is off to a great start.
I'm not offended, just shitposting, sorry!
Tomino shows having groady depictions of women in the 80s does not mean his show isn't primarily targeting a female audience. And just because a bunch of dudes also watch the shows doesn't mean that's his intended target audience either. He's gone on the record repeatedly saying that he only cares about his female fans and impressionable young minds, versus his male fans. Because his female fans care about the messages of his shows and the interpersonal drama, but his male fans are just there for the toys and violence so they can fuck off. In 80s Gundam, those shows took the form of, "boys continuing to fight over a girl who died years prior" because that's what female fans watching at the time really liked and wanted to see. Romance in Japanese pop culture is weird and often very problematic, but it's what they like/liked. As time went on, Tomino's attempts to align the show with a female demographic becomes increasingly obvious as the heroes became more effeminate/less conforming to stereotypical gender roles, and women in his stories were generally increasingly elevated to the degree that they supplanted the vast majority of male roles in his stories.I feel like we could argue for days about Tomino's work, then. The fact that CCA is boys continuing to fight over a girl who died years prior, how all gundam shows treat female characters, such as Four dying to motivate Kamille, and all of Daitarn 3 are some things that come to mind pretty quickly to make me think otherwise. I think he appreciates that a female viewership is also important and will include stuff, but I don't feel like females are his core audience.
Watch iiiiiittttttAlso as someone who has yet to decide whether to watch Inuyasha XX I would appreciate any impressions good or bad