How did isekai became so big

Very helpful, now I know what to do if I end up in an isekai err.... catching an isekaitis

 

Probably because it would involve a lot of new sets and costumes, not to mention special effects for magic and fight choreography. It's cheaper and easier just to make a new reality series or sitcom.

 

Well, most of the series just had to isekai to medieval European setting instead of good old Japan.
Chinese did OK with their transmigration to wuxia/xianxia/xuanhuan & ancient China until they got banned by the government.
Thai did OK with time travel or transmigration to (not so) ancient Thailand or alternate history. They're released every time there's some sort of political tension in the country as distraction, so Thais would be more patriotic during those risky time, as well as promoting traditional Thai costumes.
Also, Thai fantasy drama's fighting scenes suck so hard I wish they actually developed an industry focusing on those special effects.

 

I always thought that the Party liked web novels because they're easier to regulate and can be made useful as propaganda. China has a ton of unlicensed printing houses that churn out banned books because it turns out that keeping track of a billion people is really hard and expensive.

You're comparing apples to oranges here. The old-timey equivalent to cheap isekai schlock would be those pulp magazines with ridiculous covers like this or this.

 

The biggest factor is whether a work has mainstream appeal. If there's a large enough potential audience out there, even Japanese media companies will spring for a live action production. With isekai novels there is zero mainstream appeal so this won't count for much.

The reason is that web novels have the advantages of reach and speed. A popular one might be able to be read by over a million people in a single day. Old fashioned printing is far slower and so it's a lot easier to control.

 

Was there any transmigration movies or series? I know there was time traveling stories, but can't recall transmigration novels to fantasy worlds shows.

 

It's absolutely irrelevant but that's in BTTH.

 

I always figured it was part of a feedback loop.

1. Isekai novels gets reasonably popular and publisher sees strong potential
2. Publisher of novel contracts studio to produce an animated adaption
3. Said adaption does very well and boosts sales of the novel significantly
4. Publisher commissions more isekai novels because their first one did well
5. More novels get animated which results in more novels which get animated which result in more novels etc.
6. Repeat step 5 until consumers can't take it anymore and the market bottoms out

 

Agree to disagree. The harem is the main thing I find unreadable in the first place. If there's a harem, of course the rest is going to be trash. The author naturally won't have an ounce of originality and will only be copying tropes if he's got that trash in it.

 

Anyone seen El Hazard? That's supposedly an Isekai thats not in standard european fantasy setting, according to some it was one of the first. Only catch is that it's from the 90's.

 

This is common to all sorts of older isekai novels. They had very different priorities from the modern variety so they tended to do things very differently as well. I'd say that there's enough dissimilarity that we can regard older isekai and modern isekai as different genres; just like we can with original wuxia and modern wuxia.

 

You clearly haven't red enough novels to made such a statement.

 

Name one that's worth a damn, and I'll take you seriously.

 

How for isekai to not get so big anymore, have any story with the following as a character: an SJW and nagging Flat-Earth mother-in-law who lives in a van down by the river with Seymour, a silent film-watching and Chris Walken-sounding vegan cannibal zombie moose.

 

If you can read chinese or vietnamese i will give you some. Otherwise it's pointless. Found one but translation has came to a halt https://www.novelupdates.com/series/doctoring-the-world/

 

I fail to understand your problem.
Do you think those two (or three?) people would make a good isekai protagonist? I don't think so. Isekai protagonists aren't supposed to take up too much of the audience's attention. If you're going to have an alien MC, you're better off writing an MC who is native to the fantasy world.

 

Trademark Japanese modesty, I'd say.
Also, I tend to think that if an author is popular, it means he is a good writer in some way that matters. Unlike the critic-praised novels from literature textbooks, which are boring crap full of soul-crushing realism.

 

Normally I'd agree, but in this particular case, Kawahara admitted that it was crappy to use the threat of raping a female character to motivate his protagonist and resolved to not do it any more. It may not seem like much, but it's a lot more than the standard self-deprecation.

I can't agree. All sorts of junk gets popular, but it's still junk at the end of the day. For example, Dan Brown sells a ton of books, but even a quick glance at his writing will reveal how awful his prose is. It's not as if it's hard for a book to be both entertaining and well written, so there's no reason to give substandard books a pass.

 

That is my non-sense response to a lot of posts here!

 

Pretty sure that trend slowed down, as well as the meme 'truck-kun' (dying by some car/truck). Not every isekai is the same, I understand your frustration but authors generally don't care for how the MC is transported to the next world, I will say however the god element is unnecessary since this almost always never works out unless the MC is set to overpower his world to then move on to the god realm.

After the MC arrives the setting is almost always the medieval magical world that makes you question whether or not their textile industry is superior to our own despite having either magical advancements or medieval level of sewage and water system as well as other industries/technology being on that level. The clothing is blatantly fan service too...Well anyways getting into politics & race relations, you either end up with a humans and non-human coexisting or enslaving/killing one another, let's say you find yourself reading the latter, the MC will almost always have a harem/slaves either human or non-human and what about the ugly/background-character-material slaves he never bought? Nah, for plot reason he'd rather have whatever cute girls he bought and try saving slaves later on to look human. What is even worse is how a noble/royalty antagonist is introduced as intelligent but then they lose quite a few dozen IQ points when it comes to dealing with a teenager...the redeeming factor is that most isekai tends to either briefly mention relations between nations to either set up some kind of conflict or to be like 'hey this is the politics, right?'

Point is, the genre is mostly wish fulfillment. THIS DOES NOT MEAN that it's all trash, there are novels that try to explore and deal with the politics, races, technology, system, exploration and commerce in the setting. It's just that when the series takes things slowly, as in the case of Overlord (novel not anime) people tend to sperg out, "why are the end game sitting on their asses?! I didn't sit here to read game of thrones! Why are things so slow! I don't care about how much things cost or crops or some noble or this magic system, when will the MC kick some ass! I want to see pew pew action now!".

P.S. Stay away from novels where a teenager suddenly leads to development of an entire nation because of 'muh earth knowledge'. The only acceptable development would be introducing crop rotation.