Other Request Who started the isekai novels !?

Discussion in 'I'm Looking For...' started by Return, Apr 13, 2019.

  1. Return

    Return Ṩ͢͢͢aℽonara

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    Just as the title says who the fuck started the isekai world thing after 3years of reading almost all JP talks about isekai and CN second chance and Korean damn portals and gates just who came up with this idea anyone know?
     
  2. DocB

    DocB "I see you, little mouse! Run along"

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    DRAGON WARRIOR 3
     
  3. Drakaos

    Drakaos Member (Patriarch?) of the Anti-Qidian Sect

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    I think Mushoku Tensei started it,it's the first isekai I ever read...
     
  4. otaku31

    otaku31 Well-Known Member

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    Mushoku Tensei, the first isekai I ever... dropped.

    The habit has stuck ever since. :sweating_profusely:
     
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2019
  5. Renaxan

    Renaxan [Ero Culture Enthusiast]

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    Nah i recall novel of Zero no Tsukaima, which also have anime adaptation.. my 1st isekai, pretty old isekai stuff.
     
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  6. wtfkjp

    wtfkjp ASDFGGWP

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    edgar allan poe
     
  7. Ddraig

    Ddraig Frostfire Dragon|Retired lurker|FFF|Loved by RNG

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    Isekai is a pretty old idea tbh. For example digimon is an isekai, alice in wonderland is an isekai etc.
     
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  8. Meloman

    Meloman My dog is lazier than me

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    Only people with no regrets would not wish for a second chance, authors are the same. In Western film literature it also exists as Groundhog Day scenarios. One Day (N Sparks? Or something) groundhog day (movie on Xmas day or something) return to the past of some superhero like Superman (maybe not Superman, but one of those heroes), that movie where the girl goes back some years to the past to change something in a futuristic setting (tv series) oh the Terminator was also return to the past
     
  9. BarryKaizer

    BarryKaizer your crazy fairy godmother of death

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    goes way back there's been other world novels for ages
     
  10. Siceraria

    Siceraria Well-Known Member

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    Was it the Ancient Greeks with the Odyssey or the Japanese with Izanagi?
    Maybe Ancient Mesopotamia with Utnapishtim?
     
  11. Lemonfairy

    Lemonfairy 〖Retired Cat Boss〗〖Feeling the Effects of Aging〗

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  12. Tsuru55

    Tsuru55 Well-Known Member

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    It's Mushoku Tensei that popularized the idea of "isekai". Even though it's kinda true that Zero no Tsukaima was before it.
     
  13. deepon

    deepon One who inevitably awakens

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    It was started by truck-sama. It all started with an accident, and the driver's attempt to make the body disappear. But the guilt stayed and resulted in nightmares. So in order to remedy this, the driver convinced himself through self suggestion that the poor dead kid must have reincarnated into a world of magic and swords as a hero and must be enjoying a fantasy life.
     
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  14. Goblin Sleuth

    Goblin Sleuth Well-Known Member

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    I dunno if you can really count Zero no Tsukaima has an isekai novel, I mean it does have the whole "travel to another world" thing, but so do a ton of other movies, novels, anime, comics, myths, fables, etc. It is basically one of the oldest troupes in human history.

    No the term isekai no longer just a genre for "travel to another world" it has been warped into a gag, a parody. When you use the term isekai no one thinks "whoa a story about going to another world, this could be about anything" no they think "oh an isekai, so let me guess it is about some normal beta loser who gets sent to a world of swords and magic, who will then join the adventurers guild, use his cheat power to get really strong and buy a bunch of slave girls and start his own harem" Cause that is basically all isekai is, a bunch of different authors telling the same exact story over and over and over again.
     
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  15. Sena

    Sena Well-Known Member

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    Mushoku Tensei definitely increased the popularity a lot, but the genre was already popular enough at that point to have standard tropes for Mushoku Tensei to reference.
    There are hundreds of isekai novels that don't fit that mold. Are you just basing your opinion on the novels that get translated here?
     
  16. aocypher

    aocypher Active Member

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    I don't think Mushoku Tensei popularized it. I mean anime like Magic Knight Rayearth and Fushigi Yuugi had worldwide followings decades before Mushoku Tensei was even conceived.

     
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  17. DragonMage18

    DragonMage18 Outcast

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    .Hack//
    Is the oldest, i can think of right of the batt.
    Long time since i have watched the anime but as far as i remember it's prety close to a lot of iseka even if it's not one its self.
     
  18. kfahad

    kfahad 『The Lurker Beast』『Beast fallen』

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    I think fushigi yougi is my first Isekai, Miaka and Tamahome. xD they got transported to a book or novel?
     
  19. aocypher

    aocypher Active Member

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    Ya. I recall they got sucked into another world via a magical book and ended up on opposite sides of a war.

     
  20. anhrefn

    anhrefn [NTR Sect Leader]       [True Ancestor]

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    the inferno of dante started everything