They do the isekai thing so then the world building happens naturally as we watch the clueless dork explore the fantasy world and encounter stuff.
Otherwise you have to find ways to explain stuff to the audience when the characters grew up in that world and should already know all about it, so don’t need to discuss things.
Otherwise you have to find ways to explain stuff to the audience when the characters grew up in that world and should already know all about it, so don’t need to discuss things.
…you mean worldbuild organically like any other story set in a universe that isn’t our own? Countless shows and stories have been doing that for centuries, why should anime get a special little exception?
Narnia walks through the wardrobe.
Harry Potter learns about the wizarding world.
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Hard to do with the axe hanging over your head. “Sorry, but chapter 3 didn’t score high enough in our magazine poll so we’re killing your serialization.”
Most Isekais are Novels. Barely any pressure in writing for most of those companies (or at least, not that type of pressure).
Countless shows and stories have been doing that for centuries, why should anime get a special little exception?
Imagine the intelligence and attention-span of your average Anime fan. Now realize half of anime fans have lower levels of attention and intelligence.
And for centuries they have been struggling to find good ways to present that newly built world in a natural way. Just because good examples exist doesnt make it an easy thing to accomplish. Bad fantasy stories have also existed for centuries.
You may call it lazy, but you gotta admit that with isekai settings presenting a new world is easy and natural.
And its not like only animes use that. Harry poter, Narnia, Peter Pen, Alice In Wonderland, Tron Legacy etc etc… All have clueless main characters finding themselves in a new world.
The first work of art to find an “easy and natural” storytelling shortcut gets to reap the benefits. By the 79th work to abuse the same shortcut, the novelty has worn off and the downsides to the plot become clearer. A cliche is born.
It’s well and good to say “stories have failed plenty without including cliches”, but do understand what you are defending – an eternity of knights on white horses, "I am your father"s, third acts speeches about the power of friendship, women in refrigerators. Personally I think it’s probably healthy that some tropes become cliches and die.
I think that overusing ideas that affect the premise of a story isnt nearly as bad as overusing ideas that affect its progress/conclusion, like Disney’s plot twist villains, “i am your father” and white knight cliches.
Stuck in another world, stuck in a death game or a “chosen one journey” cliches make the beggining seem unoriginal, but can develope in so many ways that as a reader/viewer, i dont mind if the idea is overused as long as the story that follows is good and original.
It’s way harder to do on screen. Works for print.
Yeah, but explaining it to someone who is new to the setting as an audience insert is easier!
I think this is often what amnesia is so common in fiction, too, despite being extremely rare in the real world. It provides a convenient plot device, both to perform exposition and for some inevitable gotcha behind either their identity, how they lost their memory, or some other major revelation from their past (seriously, has there ever been a case of amnesia in fiction where they didn’t conveniently forget some big, plot relevant thing?).
I would love one where the person forgets who they are and what happened to them, but they remember the big plot point and have no idea why they know or why it is important.
Pretty sure there are some that already exist, but can’t think of any off the top of my head.
Yeah it’s similar to why hidden world fantasy is popular. Or some rube idiot protagonist. It’s a lot harder to do something like mistborn where everyone knows what a basic allomancer can do without it either sounding weird or the author thinking it does
Too short, append “, but I’m a level 2 demon lord?” to the end.
“Satan couldn’t possibly be this cute?!”
why does everything have to be relatable to this miserable prison planet existance
The main character is mofe relatable if they can reference pop culture etc
Also, japanese weebs/neckbeards need some relatable protagonist, who gets to live a life they never will, harem and all.
Also, since the main character is an audience insert it gives the author an excuse to expo-dump.
How about a regular fantasy world whose inhabitants make real-world pop culture references for no adequately explained reason?
when the whole plot story fit in one paragraph of title
I liked the approach of Tearmoon Empire a lot. Instead of typical isekai, the main character from the same universe time travels to her past right after she dies by guillotine. Everything she does is to avoid dying again, her personality at its core doesn’t change. Would reccomend it on the next anime season.
Well they tried that with arguably the most well known fantasy world in existence, D&D, and it flopped because too many people need their worlds spoon fed to them.
The dnd movie did not flop at all, who told you that?
Relative to its budget it was considered sort of a box office failure, from what I’ve heard. Maybe I’m mistaken. It was probably my favorite movie of the past few years for what it’s worth, wasn’t trying to bash it.
Checks out
https://movieweb.com/dungeons-and-dragons-sequel-unlikely/
200M box office on a 150M investment, means a net loss after marketing and distribution costs
Turns out it did, financially.
I seem to remember Chris Pine getting very floppy at one point
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From what I remember it was considered kind of a failure for the budget it had. I personally loved it, to be clear. As far as I know, I’m not retarded, although people who interact with me socially might disagree.
Slurs - oh boy my favourite!
He isn’t, but you might be
