Isekai, Writing, & The Problems of a Genre

I so most of you watching this probably already know this but I'm gonna go over it again just so the new people can keep up okay ISA kaiser japanese word that roughly translates into english as different world the description encapsulate Japanese fiction most commonly light novels manga at anime which generally revolve around at least one individual finding themselves with inner worlds different to their original one from this point the genre such as it is begins to branch out a bit the concept to be Sakai whilst currently experiencing high levels of popularity is not a recent invention and can be traced back to Japanese folklore whilst the term Asuka is Japanese in origin and is commonly used in reference to Japanese media the concept of a protagonist being transported to a different world is more Universal if you looked hard enough you could find myths and legends from the West that show and lots of similarities with ISA Kai dating back to Greek myths of Heroes or noble quests traveling to the underworld although these do tend to miss a few common features of modern ISA care storytelling some of the more popular examples of the transported to another world trope amongst Western literature are probably Alice in Wonderland The Wizard of Oz Peter Pan and The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis each of these stories revolve around one more kids being whisked away into a world of fantasy being caught up in wacky hijinx until they returned home having learned some important ball lesson these stories notably differ from one Japanese II Sakai storytelling in a number of key respects however most notable I would argue is that the protagonists get to return home in the end at the core of these stories like a general structure that lines more or less with the storytelling sandwich that joseph campbell called the hero's journey i could quickly run through the steps this model involves but there are a bunch of other people who have already done that way better than I ever could so I'm just gonna draw attention to the most relevant parts which is the three acts of the journey the hero's journey is like a sandwich in that it has three basic components with the first and third acts taking place in the ordinary world and acting as bookends to hold in place the second act in middle which takes place in the special world is where all the juicy meaty good stuff is or if you're a story imaginary and where wholesome fulfilling sweet pizza acting as the bread of the sandwich the first and third acts are vital top the second act together neat and tidy and not just be a messy pile of meat and/or salad on the plate and also to take the meal as a whole and make it more accessible and easier to consume the general process is this protagonist begins story in ordinary world protagonist enters a special world sagginess returns to the ordinary world usually with some reward from the special world that's a gross oversimplification of the process but that's the part that is most important for this discussion I am taking too much time rambling about responds and says it is where ISA Kai differs is that the trend right now is to cut off as much of these tubes sandwich bread slices from the story as possible protagonists and modernise Akai spends as little time in the ordinary world as possible thinking it's a few of the steps Campbell lays out here as journeys necessary and rushing straight to the crossing of the threshold as for the third act well it's just completely job dolphin whereas the general definition of ISA Kai simply requires that another world be involved most modern escucho stories you'll find today have the protagonist trapped in their new reality with no prospect or possibility of returning home instead most of these stories appear set up to be able to simply repeat the second act over and over again ad infinitum and have increasing stakes and so the author writes themselves into a corner and bails out with a box landing or simply get bored and goes on permanent hiatus anyway where was I oh yeah so basically the structure of Annisa Kai is a whole lot of special world main course Paul Bunyan played with just a few small chunks of ordinary world represented beginning as an appetizer it sprinkled on top its flavoring as such the most crucial defining aspect of mundi saccades crossing of the threshold stage which should be at the end of the first act but has now moved straight to the beginning it is very important the protagonist crosses a very literal physical threshold to a wildly different to reality as well most stories will have a metaphorical crossing of the threshold and he's okay the protagonist should be forcibly abducted from her daily lives and flung almost immediately into a life-or-death situation I've got to keep these stories entertaining after wall can't risk letting all the dull boring everyday stuff bore our audience within the first five minutes there's no way we could use the ordinary world setting as the ground in a relatable starting points to explore our protagonists in their comfort zone allow it to act as a contrast with the crazy world they'll find themselves in or even use the characters background to inform the character's behavior and decision-making throughout the story instead let's give the audience narrative whiplash by skipping over all that build up and get straight into the action with a protagonist they know nothing about other than he's probably an incredibly ordinary Japanese high school boy sorry about that I got a little ahead of myself again let's move on to something else shall we before I start breaking up my flow chart of all the different types of ISA Chi we need to start at the very top of the list so far I've been describing ISA cane its most common form where one or more individuals from an ordinary world are transported to a special world there's a side dredge of this genre known as reverse ISA Kai despite how it might sound these are not stories about a special world suddenly being transported to an ordinary individual although I would be very interested to see how that would be pulled off instead these are stories that involve one or more individuals from one or more special worlds being transported to an ordinary world although I call this a side grade it is a much less popular genre than original brandy so Kai from there he Sakai can largely be divided by means of transportation for the protagonist you'd think there would be by setting which would largely inform the theme structure and tone of the story but you'd be wrong because the setting is always fantasy every Sok is set in a fantasy world and there are no ii sekai that take place in any other setting if you claim otherwise you're lying plain and simple do you understand good then moving on the two most common forms of transporting your cardboard cut-out isa KY protagonist into their new environment are summoning and reincarnation with a little wiggle room available for writers to get it creative if they really want to be that guy in theory these are two distinct subgenres of II Sakai each with their own framework and narrative structure to approach the ISA cache on the front this is a lie whether your protagonist is summoned or reincarnated is likely to only influence their starting location first objective and initial power dynamics of the story all of which will quickly become streamlined into the same plotline checklist of all the other Sakai stories you could typically expect a protagonist who summoned to another world to have been brought there by someone or a specific purpose and for the summoner to be more powerful knowledgeable from the protagonist and their fulfill the role of a guide mentor quest giver and or superior reincarnated heroes however are more likely to arrive in their new setting without explanation in a random location and left to survive and forge relationships with other people of their own accord this predisposition however does break down a number of cases there are Asarco stories where the summoned individual from the ordinary world is inferior to the summoners expectations or otherwise unwanted and it's left to fend for themselves in the new environment in other stories the summoner in question might be an idiot or have somehow he saccade the protagonist by accident in which case the pre assumed purpose and power dynamic aspects are immediately disrupted likewise native protagonists might have the chance to prepare before being sent to their new home and therefore get a chance to avoid much of the shock and confusion they would otherwise experience regardless of how your protagonist gets so their fantasy worlds they are still going to end up completing the Sakai checklists anyway so you might as well not care too much about how they got there in the first place after all who cares about the means by which one can transport themselves between universes or the long term impact such a shocking shift in environments would have on the human psyche or have someone who has only just discovered in new worlds various cultures might struggle to find a place within them when they spent their whole lives assimilating into and preparing to work as part of a completely different society none of these questions actually matter because what you didn't realize is it the esri protagonist isn't its own cats a creative character they're actually just the generic fantasy protagonist wearing a funny hat so let's stop beating around the bush here ISA Kai's become something of a dirty words an anime and manga circles these days this is largely due to there being a lots of derivative unoriginal repetitive works filling of the genre at the moment whilst making lightsphere before but you really would be hard-pressed to find any cigar story that wasn't set in a fantasy world doesn't have an overpowered teenage protagonists have the summer sort of foods 2nz highly attractive love interests at all bar from the same pop of the traveler key game or a combination of the three the market visa guy has become incredibly saturated with that saturation has come a lack of variation with mostly Sakai stories only being able to differentiate themselves from each other with a single small twist and a very well known formula the situation is bad enough in the anime industry reviewers can now expect to have a few new East economy being released every season I was like an only guesses the extent that Jon has started to dominate the manga light novel industries there are even more he's the guy stories to be found where I think really is a shame an entire genre can almost be ruined like this because Lee Sakai itself as I previously mentioned he's running a very broad genre that could laugh an infinite number of possible stories ISA Kiley self isn't inherently florid it's just the right now the industry seems obsessed we're trying to recreate the success and acclaim with those popular titles now actually trying to understand what made those stories worthwhile in the first place I can't even blame them for trying really despite the wordy Sakai being enough to make the type of person who spends their time watching videos of other people monologue but I'm a Trojan roll their eyes on the stain the genre is still really popular it's no surprise really bad I missed you doing the manga hazards keep paying for these stones to be produced because quite frankly it's safe money he sick eyes two attackers with a big summer action blockbusters to Hollywood the products they produce don't have to be good they just have to be out there people will still sit and watch it because there's a few hours of mindless spectacle that's really all most people are looking for if somewhere along the way the products actually turns out to be really good and worthy of popularity and claim well that's just a bonus the question then really is how did we get here well that sounds like too broad a question for me to answer with any degree of accuracy we are going to that fall abundance of a psychological sociological and economic aspects of Japan is history I'm instead going to cop myself out of that nonsense and rephrase the question ask what is the appeal a visa guy or more accurately why are people still watching this garbage honestly I personally believe the most modern II Sakai stories benefit from the sort of hybrid nature of the genre majority of East Coast stories you will find will be rooted in traditional fantasy settings which may be potential twist to stand out from the rest these circa is meant to set itself apart from the fantasy genre and I could be outgrown it in terms of popularity I believe this is partly because easy case stories generally pull on all the appealing aspects of a fantasy story then add a little bit extra on top of them fancy stories are popular for a wide number of reasons Myo be hesitant to claim that I knew all the major aspects that contribute to the genres popularity but I think there are few that would be obvious to anyone first and foremost fancy offers B audience a chance to experience a story in a world completely unlike their own any number of wildly man cheated magic some wickedly impressive technologies available new settings without much limits on the audience's suspension of disbelief so long as the Creator can imagine it there's room for it in the world they're creating this provides some of the best opportunities for scape ISM of any medium which on earth those looking to switch off from the world for an hour or two explore something completely new and different well find that many better places to look secondly fantasy offers the same opportunity for spectacles his sister genre science fiction and they're popular adopted child superhero comic where else other than fantasy can you watch a wizard command lightning to strike a fire-breathing dragon from the sky or an army of elves and orcs clashing against each other the footage of an evil volcano or group of fairies dancing under the moonlight if you're looking for something to entertain and to excite fantasy is as good as John to do when there's any other and it comes with a whole toolbox for the mechanics and tropes exclusive to itself fantasy does have its own issues when trying to attract an audience however most obviously the base fact that the settings can be so fantastical and alien to the audience can be a barrier for entry especially if the author is a hard time introducing the setting organic things in the audience wore familiar with the infamous info-dump trope where writers choose to throw in tire histories and cultures of the audience in an ingestible block of text without context or build up its problems like this that couldn't put people off the genre entirely especially when they run the risk of hitting these steep information curves with every story they consume unlike fiction set in our world which generally share the same history and cultures whenever you want to dive into a new fantasy adventure you have a whole new world to learn about now for some people that's incredibly appealing as it helps differentiate stories from each other and ensure that no two are exactly the same but for others it can be incredibly frustrating to have to learn a whole new set of rules for magic they grant new races in their relations with each other or to have to unlearn common assumptions of the genre just because the oil that wanted to be superficially unique in cases like these it helps to provide the audience with a vehicle for which they can gather this information gradually inorganic is the story and requires whilst there are other ways of achieving this 9 times out of 10 this means that the protagonist has to know as little as the audience in order to be taught this information alongside them throughout the story after all protagonist is the perspective character of this story the lens through which the audience sees the entire world and plot - helps a lot if the two are roughly on the same pages each other when you have a protagonist that knows more than your audience it can be frustrating for the audience either because it feels like information is being withheld from them or because it leads to clunky expositional dialogue between characters who know something the audience doesn't were you all know the kind where characters say things like this is katana she's got my back she cut all you and a half with one sword stroke just like on the lawn I would advise not getting killed by err no one talks like this so typically speaking writers get around this problem by placing their perspective character in an environments different for what they're used to even if the two environments share the same overall world or they can place a character that is knowledgeable experienced in one particular role the scenario they are not familiar with and that their previous skills experience are not a really benefit to them alternatively a writer could always rely on everyone's favorite rope good old-fashioned amnesia yay what Easter Kai offers there is a superior solution to the problem of a perspective character whilst a modern-day person might struggle to the lates of the life of a medieval peasant girl or prince on the run from Assassin's it's much easier for us to relate to a character from a fictional version of our own world it also helps that a person from said fictionalized version of our world but know as little as Morgan's by the ISA CAI world going into it and therefore the audience gets to learn about the world and its rules of the exact same paces with Dragons the observant audience member will also notices the majority of each sekai protagonists are high school boys and whilst this might largely be due to the target audience and stories it also harkens back to the pervasiveness of the high school setting in modern Japanese storytelling essentially high school serves as a common ground from Japanese audience as shared experience the majority of the population community relate to in some respect having your protagonist being of high school age means that even if some of your audience is too old to directly relate to the protagonist who age alone they can at least remember a time when they were that age the other side of this coin however is that ISA Chi makes for easy wish fulfillment there's always an aspect of this whenever a story has a protagonist that it's intended to be relatable to the audience ISA Casas genre just seems more willing than at most others who tap into the inherent power fantasy of changing from being a generic citizen of a dispassionate modern society the literal scent of a fictional universe quick scan of Beast Kijana will show you just how many of the protagonists are drastically more powerful than any person obstacle or other threat they may come across during their adventure were still a lot of these protagonists will be overpowered from the outset it may be only a negligible amount of practice or training mean to adapt to their new power even more egregious the strength of the tag list comes not from any specialist skill or inherent ability but some random boon they're presented with as part of their Issa Kang further making their power seem entirely unearned usually this massive increase in power is explained through some sort of rpg-like system the world seems to operate on them occasionally when the writer feels like it none of these particular tropes all that surprising though really considering the prevalence of the fantasy genre and role-playing games it's not hard to imagine that some writers would take inspiration from these games as much as any other medium it's also not surprising that when coming to the ultimate worst fulfillment fantasy world some would look to video games as a basis for their paradise games more than any other medium I would argue our fantastic Skinner boxes they can be incredibly rewarding experiences for the audience participating and hardly any game genre recreates the Skinner box better than RPGs while near universal truth of humankind is that we like it when good numbers go up and bad numbers go down and whoo boy do RPGs have a lot of numbers it can be difficult for people in Mon Society to feel a sense of progression in their everyday lives a great deal of the time it might feel like you're stuck in a rut not really going anywhere not advancing towards some new objective it is kind of getting by but if you lived in a world that had an RPG style interface you would always be able to see your experience points rising your stats growing and your skills improving you would also have a clear logical power structure that could be easily understood as a glance it also comes the general assumption that there's some degree of fairness and potential for upward mobility in a game system which might be something you're missing is an important aspect of your ordinary like the idea fairness is probably also tied into the SunPower escalation of the protagonist in these stories as discussed before the aim of most of these writers of these stories is to present the audience with a protagonist so painful the average that's easy for everyone to relate to them on some level by sticking such a generic person in a world where dragons roam the sky and demon hordes burn to overwhelm the land is basically a death sentence so in order to give the protagonist a chance to not immediately be bear food they have to be given some capability to survive long enough to start fulfilling me well wish fulfillment part of the story some stories will give a protagonist an overpowered ability that they still need to figure out or develop further before they ascend to the knee omnipotent Superman they will almost inevitably become leaving them to still struggle against fairly small scale threats to begin with whilst they get a handle on things other writers who want to skip over all that and immediately start with a protagonist - now I take entire armies or challenging Satan himself to an arm-wrestle we'll probably just put that protagonist off all power from the start well they might hear their protagonist some room to grow it like in the previous example but make it so their basic abilities are so strong that they can face off against large-scale threats from the get-go having admitted that the majority of modern Yusuke stories are simply intended to be popcorn fodder and aren't trying to be particularly extraordinary or revolutionary for the genre it seems somewhat redundant to attempt punking holes in them after all these stories are just trying to be a fun time for the audience I might have to be a real or if I was going to ruin other people's fun just for the sake of nitpicking but I'm gonna do it anyway as stated before the main problem most people who complain about the current states of the occasion I have with it is that either guy's oversaturated with derivative works they don't offer enough of their own original ideas to keep their story fresh this is not a problem that can easily be solved the obvious answer of this problem would be free sky writers to force themselves to spice up their stories with some variety using setting scenarios and character archetypes aren't quite as common to the genre even if you could somehow make the writers by some that particular challenge though it wouldn't inherently fix their storytelling writing something different purely for the sake of being different isn't a very effective strategy depending on the quality of the writing it can be very obvious to the audience that the writer doesn't have any way of backing up this choice to be different with any significant depth it's obviously far bets if the writers are writing studies that they've chosen deliberately because they want to write about it and I've ideas of what to do with their subject matter and that's the thing whilst it's easy to harp on these skywriters of being derivative that formulaic copy and paste strategy isn't entirely brain-dead when someone writes a story similar to one they experienced it can be a sign they like imagination but there might also be very deliberately choosing elements from popular stories to recreate in their own story because they know people like that stuff and will buy their product if it has that stuff in it it's the same logic that gives us so many tsundere characters in Japanese romance fiction it may be shameless pandering but it's not stupid so if a writer were to be changing up a character setting or scenario for the sake of adding a twist to that a Sakai story it would have to be well thought out in order to not seem Hollow when it comes to characters it makes sense to take advantage of the fact that the protagonist isn't from the same world as the one they are now as a basis of strong character writing whilst most protagonists will try not to be too unique in their backstory in order to be accessible for a wider audience there's no reason why they have to be a cardboard cutout character the world we live in is a broad and diverse place so there are plenty of real world people who's experienced a writer could draw upon to create an interesting and compelling character and that's even assuming your protagonist has to come from our own world as I said before there's a whole genre of stories where the protagonist isn't from our world or even human and whilst the familiar setting my help these characters are still relatable enough on their own rhasta is safer to make your character generic so it's not to alienate people in your audience there's no reason to underestimate your audience is empathy humans have a fantastic capacity to form emotional bonds with pretty much anything even inanimate objects so long as you give the Pythagorus a charming character trait or an understandable goal or motive most people are going to be on board even if the character isn't remotely like them in any other way so come on writers dare to be bold there are a number of questions that should be carefully considered when writing a nice akai story if you want the writing of said story to be considered better than the average entry into the genre these include how many people are being soaked I'd lift more than one what are their relationships with each other what was the experience of your characters in their original world and how does it affect their abilities and competencies in the current world what means of transportation to the characters experience and how does this affect the overarching plot of the story who summoned the characters and all why were they transported how did the natives of the world to sponsor the ISA CAD characters how many other ISA code people already inhabit this world and how do they interact with each other what obstacles to adjusting to the new worlds of the characters face and does their unique perspective as an outsider offer them any advantages over the natives usually when a story fails to address or even consider these types of questions it comes across that the right to really just wanted to write a fantasy story and steal some quick and easy bonus appeal for me so guys honor if I have to wonder why is this even ISA Kai story to begin with that's all what's experiencing it then you've probably done a bad job of writing ISA guy the ISA cash onerous shouldn't just be a fashion trend it should be as important at all in the writers toolbox as any other genre or trope now I realize I've spent a lot of time going over some general theories and hypotheses about ASA kite and whilst it's easy for me to vaguely gesture in the general direction of some good examples of ISA Chi I imagine my ramblings would make a lot more sense if I were to provide some concrete examples of how a Sakai can be done poorly and to be fair that should be fairly easy for me considering the vast array of low-quality Sakai stories that have already been released in recent years if I were so inclined it would be easy for me to drag out the bloody pulp of a dead horse everyone else has been beating for years but considering that's a franchise that's already largely ridiculed online and has only produced maybe one good anime series I think I can do better than that so instead I've decided do something that I'm probably going to regret I'm going to take on a pretty popular Sakai series and explain what I don't like about it I'm gonna explain why overlord season 1 was a bad time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Geeks & Gaijins

Views: 9,393

Keywords: Anime, Isekai, Manga, Writing, Storytelling, Geeks&Gaijin, Video Essay

Id: _oTErkCLOkw

Length: 27min 17sec (1637 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019