Isekai. Always with the medieval fantasy and such.

[zerogoddy]

I think this is about us, readers. We demand it, at least I do.

Today, we are excessively in touch with each other. Any event can be watched by millions and there is no space for us to hide and chill. If you fuck up 1000 km away from home, the next day your homies would know every single detail.

Moreover, the world has stiff rules, you can't travel it as you wish. You need too many papers and money etc. The world got better and safer in a way but it is also a boring order.

Although life was harsher, I prefer to relax in a past setting as the past is calming.

 

[queenofthefuzzybugs]

I always got the impression that isekai fantasy is not medieval fantasy so much as GAME fantasy, specifically early Japanese "western fantasy" RPGs like Final Fantasy (1-6) and Dragon Quest. This is why slimes (Dragon Quest kind, not D&D) are mentioned so often. Slimes are a game thing and don't come from regular standard fantasy. So isekai isn't going into a generic fantasy world so much as going into a GAME fantasy world. This is why there's usually something like skills and levels and whatnot, that's more from games than regular generic fantasy.

If I am correct, then isekai isn't just "guy got thrown into a fantasy world" but "guy got transported into a game world [similar to Dragon Quest]". In which case, it can't be a real isekai if the game world isn't somehow vaguely reminiscent of Dragon Quest (or some variation of that). If you change it to sci-fi or just an alternate dimension (without magic), it's not isekai but something else.

How many Japanese men grew up playing Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy? How many of them, as boys, wished they could live in those worlds and be a hero, admired and loved by everyone? When they grew up, adulthood ended up being really disappointing. They're either stuck in a job they hate or "living in their parents basement" (never really growing up at all) and they're very VERY lonely. They look back on their childhood and that feeling of wonder and wholeness and want to experience it again but can't. Isekai takes these two concepts and merges them together, and that's why it remains so popular and there's 100 & 1 flavors of it now.

That's my take on it anyway.

 

[Zoey]

I always got the impression that isekai fantasy is not medieval fantasy so much as GAME fantasy, specifically early Japanese "western fantasy" RPGs like Final Fantasy (1-6) and Dragon Quest. This is why slimes (Dragon Quest kind, not D&D) are mentioned so often. Slimes are a game thing and don't come from regular standard fantasy. So isekai isn't going into a generic fantasy world so much as going into a GAME fantasy world. This is why there's usually something like skills and levels and whatnot, that's more from games than regular generic fantasy.

If I am correct, then isekai isn't just "guy got thrown into a fantasy world" but "guy got transported into a game world [similar to Dragon Quest]". In which case, it can't be a real isekai if the game world isn't somehow vaguely reminiscent of Dragon Quest (or some variation of that). If you change it to sci-fi or just an alternate dimension (without magic), it's not isekai but something else.

How many Japanese men grew up playing Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy? How many of them, as boys, wished they could live in those worlds and be a hero, admired and loved by everyone? When they grew up, adulthood ended up being really disappointing. They're either stuck in a job they hate or "living in their parents basement" (never really growing up at all) and they're very VERY lonely. They look back on their childhood and that feeling of wonder and wholeness and want to experience it again but can't. Isekai takes these two concepts and merges them together, and that's why it remains so popular and there's 100 & 1 flavors of it now.

That's my take on it anyway.

While I agree with you that the generic fantasy I was talking about is probably better phrased as game fantasy I disagree on your definition of isekai.

To me, isekai just means transported to another world, whether that means teleported or reborn doesn't really matter, I've seen isekai stories take place in sci-fi before so I don't believe it's limited to just fantasy.

On a side note I think the reason people don't use dnd slimes is because their kind of horrifying and not really the kind of thing alot of people want to write about.