To be fair, the main appeal of isekai is a person from our world having to adjust to suddenly living in a fantasy world, and applying their knowledge from our world to the fantasy world in some way, which is completely lost if you just make it a straight fantasy. I do agree that there are way too many isekais, most of them copy/pastes of each other, and there are other ways of setting up a similar scenario that don’t just use the default isekai setting. Kekkai Sensen for example is a good example of the 2 worlds merging trope which often allows for a lot of the same sort of story beats as isekai but going both ways and with a lot more flexibility.
In my experience this only lasts for the initial arc at best and then the protagonist becomes fully integrated in the world and is no different than someone already living there, with all subsequent arcs receiving no benefit from having someone from another world. The vast majority of isekai make no effort to integrate the protagonist’s experience from another world into the plot and instead rush to sweep it under the rug.
There are of course exceptions to the rule but the vast majority of isekai I come across is as I described above.
Yeah 99% of isekais suck and don’t use the genre to it’s full potential in that regard, but that’s what the general appeal of the genre is supposed to be to most people and why they might choose it over a standard fantasy. Most popular/highly rated isekais do usually utilize this aspect to a reasonable degree afaik.
To be fair, the main appeal of isekai is a person from our world having to adjust to suddenly living in a fantasy world, and applying their knowledge from our world to the fantasy world in some way, which is completely lost if you just make it a straight fantasy. I do agree that there are way too many isekais, most of them copy/pastes of each other, and there are other ways of setting up a similar scenario that don’t just use the default isekai setting. Kekkai Sensen for example is a good example of the 2 worlds merging trope which often allows for a lot of the same sort of story beats as isekai but going both ways and with a lot more flexibility.
Removed by mod
In my experience this only lasts for the initial arc at best and then the protagonist becomes fully integrated in the world and is no different than someone already living there, with all subsequent arcs receiving no benefit from having someone from another world. The vast majority of isekai make no effort to integrate the protagonist’s experience from another world into the plot and instead rush to sweep it under the rug.
There are of course exceptions to the rule but the vast majority of isekai I come across is as I described above.
Yeah 99% of isekais suck and don’t use the genre to it’s full potential in that regard, but that’s what the general appeal of the genre is supposed to be to most people and why they might choose it over a standard fantasy. Most popular/highly rated isekais do usually utilize this aspect to a reasonable degree afaik.