Discussion Isekai: Trash

That's just Sturgeon's Law in effect. The same is true for paperbacks, video games, anime and so on. Just think about this: In each new anime season, there are about 50 to 60 new shows airing. Out of that, there are maybe five that can be considered outstanding, and maybe one or two that actually stands the test of time. The same goes for webnovels, with the added twist that we are talking about 100s of new stories per "season", making finding the good ones even trickier.

 

A majority of the novels that are actually interesting, and readable, are probably those that haven't been read that much because of the flood of trashy novels (of which are probably written by high school students, or middle school students in their free time). If you were to look deep enough on AlphaPolis or syosetu, you would probably come across a hidden (most likely untranslated) gem.

 

I agree with you. However, I would use a different principle to explain this. The principle I will use is the Pareto Principle also known as the 80/20 rule. The principle states that 80% of outcomes can be attributed to 20% of all causes for a given event. By applying this to the isekai genre, it means that 80% of the value of the genre comes from 20% of its works. This means that works in the genre which are good or better and have minimums rating of 7/10 or higher consist about 20% of the total number of the works in the genre but are representative of 80% of the reason of why people even read the genre. The next 10% of the value of the isekai genre comes from 30% of its works. These are works that are considered above average with ratings of 6/10. They consist of 30% of the works in the isekai genre and are 10% of the reason why people would read the isekai genre. The last 10% of the value of the isekai genre comes from the last 50% of its works. These works are considered mediocre or worse with ratings of 5/10 or lower. They consist of the remaining 50% of the works in the isekai genre and are the reamining 10% of the reason why people would read the isekai genre.

What the Pareto Principle means in application to the isekai genre is that if you only want to read good or better works in the genre, only 20% of the works in the genre is worth spending your time reading. Yet, these works are 80% of the reason why people even read the isekai genre to begin with, proving that the quality of the works in the genre is not distributed evenly. This also illustrates the difficulty of finding good works in the isekai genre as you would only find them 20% of the time while 80% of the time you would find works which are at best above average or worse. The main difference between this principle and Sturgeon's Law is that Sturgeon's Law asserts that 90% of the works in any medium are crap and hence do not have any value in them. On the other hand, the Pareto Principle asserts that there is value in all works in the genre just that the value of each individual work is not equal. Hence, despite the fact that the Pareto Principle is mostly applied in business areas, it is also applicable to works of entertainment as well since the value of each work is subjective to its readers or viewers.

 

What you have is one guy made a web story successful with minimal costs and skills. Some eager writers tried to copy the guy by cloning his stuff. Some of them succeed. Now you have a market that anybody can get into.

So very body jump into this market and the best and cheapest way would be to clone each other over and over again. To make it reach a wider market, they also clone other stuff too like cliche scenes and stock characters.

As long as they are paid enough to keep going then they would keep making the stuff. If they don't, then they would continue to clone each other forever and hope they might hit something.

Most of them involves pure power up and harem because they give instant gratification and tend to keep people reading. They also include a lot of cliche and stock or similar backatory characters because it's far easier to clone a character form somewhere than making your own.

Most stories would have little to no failures because they tend to turn people off. They would have old struggle to power up (aka. training) or against super strong boss battles that the main character will defeat easily with plot armor.

 

You assume the original was good, but in reality, the originator of a genre can suck, and still generate interest. Some come for the mediocre success, others trying their hand at making a better story with this concept.

 

I think the best example of an originator of a genre that suck is Infinite Stratos. Sure, it is not an isekai series but it was what started the high school battle harem genre to begin with. At this point of time, I think most people would even say that it is one of the worst works in its genre and almost any other work in its genre is better than itself. I agree with this to some extent but to be honest, it is still not the worst originator of a genre I seen and definitely not the worse work in its genre either. After all, Infinite Stratos was mediocre in my opinion with a rating of 5/10. If I had to name the worst originator of a genre, I would argue that it is Sword Art Online which started the isekai genre. In fact, it is one of the few series that I will give a rating of 0/10 because it was just that bad.

 

That didn't start isekai, SAO is one of the copy cats that "failed," just look at when it was written, and remember that isekai, is one of the spin-offs of the original author insert genre. Basically fanfic, someone writes a good story, like LotR, "Well, if my character was in there..."

Edit: Hell, the Monsters shared literary universe was made from transposing (isekai-ing) monsters from one work to another, that's why it's common sense now that Vampires lord over werewolves, and they funded the research for Frankenstein's monster. I think if you really think about it, the whole Cthulhu mythos is about an Eldritch abomination bypassing truck-kun, and trying to isekai into a world like ours...seems before the current isekai boom, it used to go the other way around, "fish out of water" was a magical being washed up on mundane shores....
Scandinavian seal women, veiled celestial maidens in China....

 

While Sword Art Online did not start the isekai genre but it was the work that popularized the genre in the anime, manga and light novel mediums. It was only after Sword Art Online got popular that we started to see a flood of isekai works in the anime, manga and light novel mediums. Perhaps I should have corrected my terminology in my previous post since this was what I was originally trying to say in that post. The true originator of the isekai genre in the anime, manga and light novel mediums is actually Zero No Tsukaima which is still infinitely better Sword Art Online despite being a mediocre work. It was also the work that started the high school battle harem genre way before Infinite Stratos. Infinite Stratos merely popularized the high school battle harem genre in the anime, manga and light novel mediums in the same manner as Sword Art Online popularized the isekai genre in those mediums. On a side note, I actually miss the times where it was magical beings which are being transported to our world since at least back then there was not as much nonsense as there is it now since works in the isekai genre was not predominant in the anime, manga and light novel mediums. After all, some of the most offensive tropes like slave harem and cheats are oftentime only found in the isekai and reincarnations genre. Back then such tropes never existed since those genre are not popular in the anime, manga and light novel mediums.

 

ah, zero no tsukaima. The never-ending novel in a way ;=;

 

While I cannot that I am interested in reading its light novels despite having watched all 4 seasons of its anime but it still unfortunate to hear that a series could not properly end because it's author died. After all, that is even worse that having a series axed in a sense.

 

I still like isekai, but with an underpowered MC in a fight for survival settings..
An isekai with an OP MC gets boring pretty fast.. no tension.. everything goes his way and is too easy..

 

Novels are written by people to fulfill their fantasy

and isekai is started by people who feel bullied/stressed/oppressed in their daily life who want to go to a world where life is good

how do you expect a riajuu to suddenly think of "Hey i want to go to an alternate world and live a totally awesome life, which is not much different from the one i am living in right now"

 

A riajuu thinking, hey I want to go to a totally different world, where my life isn't dictated by my looks and/or wealth, where my life won't be on rails, freedom.

 

I think that isekai with OP main character can work, and be actually good (instead of merely moderately entertaining when you have nothing better to do), but it requires actual thought and skill to pull off.

 

I think this guy breaks it down in a few videos where he compares other OP protagonists to SAO-

also I wonder how SAO is considered isekai considering it is more vrmmo/deathgame

 

Harems in an isekai are expected along with the all the usual JP tropes.

I'm not against most JP tropes -- except for the very unfortunate loli trash which seems to be a requirement in iseki. I'm also tired of the dumb beastgirl trope, especially fox-girls.

The harems in isekai are really bad, but normally not awful enough to make me drop them. What makes them bad is how the girls become emotionally enslaved to the MC. Since the MC is usually amazingly powerful with cheat skills it makes sense for him to easily attract female companions so you can accept the female characters' behavior to some extent but it goes completely overboard into ridiculousness. For example, the slave girl who's bought by the MC and freed but she wants to keep pretending she's the MC's slave -- I guess because she really wants to be a slave as long as it's a guy she likes? Or the noble girl who forgets about all her family, social commitments, lifestyle, etc, just so she can hang around the MC. I'm not saying that those developments can't happen, but they have to be actually developed; the author should at least show how the characters change via interacting with the MC and other characters. In a harem situation, you also have to show how the various girls deal with their jealousy, build trust with another, and learn to share the MC.

 

The slave girl knows no other way of life, so she wants to serve in the only way she knows. Plus the Master/Servant relationship is hammered in very hard before slaves are sold, in most of these stories. The noble girl can help her family just as much at a distance, sticking close to the walking WMD is a massive boost to reputation already, enough to elevate a minor noble house to royal capital standing, usually. That all said, I can understand if the harem feels flat, if you can't believe that they have their own feelings and thoughts, that shit bothers me enough to drop after twenty chapters usually, though that's assuming something interesting was happening aside from the harem.

 

Hello gayboo...

Isekai trash.

 

I agree with you since the isekai genre is only interesting with an underpowered protagonist who has to constantly fight for his survival in a harsh world. This is what made Hai To Gensou To Grimgar and Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu such appealing and interesting series to me since they feature such a setting. However, I could never like an isekai series with an overpowered protagonist since everything always goes the protagonist's way and is far too easy. That type of setting in an isekai series has zero appeal to me.

 

Give the op protagonist some consequences, the kind that power alone won't fix. Make them deal with a famine, plague spreading through their lands, or the leadership/government is misusing the mc's efforts, rescued a foreign nation from demons (or something), only for them to be enslaved by the mc's backing nation. It really only matters how they've been written, some underpowered mc stories just use it to justify the whining and the poison, or backstabbing of the mc.