what makes a good satirical isekai?

[Workaholics.inc]

I am writing a satirical isekai , and making fun of some tropes here and there with alot of 4th wall reaks but i need help when it comes to making it good.

 

[DarkGodEM]

Read Ch 1 of Dungeon and Ch 34 of Necro. (only those should give you an idea of what you seem to be trying to do) although I can't say i'm amazing at it either

The hardest part of making a satirical isekai is that you need to FILL THOSE VERY TROPES and only then break it. Doing it consistently is hard if you only think about the satire part. You need to also like those tropes enough to write them well

 

[Workaholics.inc]

Read Ch 1 of Dungeon and Ch 34 of Necro. (only those should give you an idea of what you seem to be trying to do) although I can't say i'm amazing at it either

The hardest part of making a satirical isekai is that you need to FILL THOSE VERY TROPES and only then break it. Doing it consistently is hard if you only think about the satire part. You need to also like those tropes enough to write them well

than you very much i will try take the advice and will read it in a attempt to learn how to make it a good one, thank you kind sir or mamm

 

[bananapink]

Have you seen Ixion Saga DT (Dimentional Transfer) but in portage's case it's 'duotei'... cough, cough, virgin!
Just make fun of all the common tropes. I forgot which anime it was I saw before that the MC got isekai'd in a toilet bowl before Truck-kun became popular..

 

[DarkGodEM]

Have you seen Ixion Saga DT (Dimentional Transfer) but in portage's case it's 'duotei'... cough, cough, virgin!
Just make fun of all the common tropes. I forgot which anime it was I saw before that the MC got isekai'd in a toilet bowl before Truck-kun became popular..

Death by shitting too hard

 

[bananapink]

Death by shitting too hard

That's a lot more tragic than being betrayed and smashed by a truck.

The dude if I remember it correctly was bullied and got shoved to the swirling drain...eww

 

[Jemini]

I am writing a satirical isekai , and making fun of some tropes here and there with alot of 4th wall reaks but i need help when it comes to making it good.

Here's the best advice I can possibly give. You have to LOVE the Isekai genre and respect and understand all those tropes. It's not just that you should know they exist, you also need to know WHY they exist. What are those tropes accomplishing? If possible, you should search back into the origin of the trope, and you should also find and compile a catalogue of all of the best examples of each trope working out very well for the Isekai it was included in.

A satire only works out well if it's written by someone who loves what they are writing about and really understands the material they are making fun of. If you are making a satire about the genre because you think it's stupid and the tropes are stupid, your readers will be able to sense that mean spiritedness no matter how you try to hide it. But, if they can see you as a fellow fan, they can laugh along with you when you put in the biting satire against the thing you all love and all mutually understand that, even though you love it, this aspect of it is kinda ridiculous.

Nobody likes to be attacked, but people will feel free to laugh at themselves if they feel they are among friends and the person telling the jokes actually understands them.

EDIT: Also, an idea, even though you need to understand the best cases of the tropes being applied, you can still reference the worst examples. This one is not an imparitive like the above tip. In fact, it will make your writing a little more low-brow. If you are fine with that and you're not bent on making a "high-class" satire, then go ahead and reference dumpster fires like "In Another World With My Smartphone" or how "Death March to Another World" seriously broke down and lost the plot after the MC learned how to chant his own spells and essentially became a god. (Plus how it wasn't exactly good before that, but that's the thing that pushed it over the edge from an "Ok decent wish-fulfillment power fantasy" to "this is total trash, nothing's even a challenge to the MC anymore, this is no longer interesting.")

 

[DarkGodEM]

Here's the best advice I can possibly give. You have to LOVE the Isekai genre and respect and understand all those tropes. It's not just that you should know they exist, you also need to know WHY they exist. What are those tropes accomplishing? If possible, you should search back into the origin of the trope, and you should also find and compile a catalogue of all of the best examples of each trope working out very well for the Isekai it was included in.

A satire only works out well if it's written by someone who loves what they are writing about and really understands the material they are making fun of. If you are making a satire about the genre because you think it's stupid and the tropes are stupid, your readers will be able to sense that mean spiritedness no matter how you try to hide it. But, if they can see you as a fellow fan, they can laugh along with you when you put in the biting satire against the thing you all love and all mutually understand that, even though you love it, this aspect of it is kinda ridiculous.

Nobody likes to be attacked, but people will feel free to laugh at themselves if they feel they are among friends and the person telling the jokes actually understands them.

EDIT: Also, an idea, even though you need to understand the best cases of the tropes being applied, you can still reference the worst examples. This one is not an imparitive like the above tip. In fact, it will make your writing a little more low-brow. If you are fine with that and you're not bent on making a "high-class" satire, then go ahead and reference dumpster fires like "In Another World With My Smartphone" or how "Death March to Another World" seriously broke down and lost the plot after the MC learned how to chant his own spells and essentially became a god. (Plus how it wasn't exactly good before that, but that's the thing that pushed it over the edge from an "Ok decent wish-fulfillment power fantasy" to "this is total trash, nothing's even a challenge to the MC anymore, this is no longer interesting.")

Exactly. Dungeon is an isekai, I wanted to mate a parody with truck-kun but in a very retarded way....
So, I made god yeet it out of a bridge on accident and fall onto the protagonist.

And since many isekai have god invite the protag to his realm, why not make it sound like a meeting with a big shot in a corporation that thinks they can shrug things off with a job proposal?

 

[Aaky]

I disagree with everything said above. The overused tropes are all out there, make fun of them for how silly they are. Just don't attribute things to isekai that aren't isekai tropes.

 

[DarkGodEM]

I disagree with everything said above. The overused tropes are all out there, make fun of them for how silly they are. Just don't attribute things to isekai that aren't isekai tropes.

TunTriggered

 

[FDSIO]

If you are making a satire about the genre because you think it's stupid and the tropes are stupid, your readers will be able to sense that mean spiritedness no matter how you try to hide it.

Not necessarily...

While I agree that you have to understand the trope before making fun of it, you do not need to necessarily like everything about it as well.

Yes, I like truck-kun and because of that I can twist the trope to make it hilarious, but you can also make fun of the parts that you dislike or downright hate from the troupes that you like.

Let's take as an example the tsundere trope. I, personally, enjoy a good tsundere. But the tsundere must be a good tsundere, not the violent tsundere. And because I enjoy the trope, I know how to make fun of the violent behavior of the violent tsundere that I dislike.

That applies to basically anything... Dense protagonists, the cardboard character issue that harem-members tend to have in harem tropes, overly-lucky protagonist issue, the power of friendship and their so-called sense of absolute justice or whatever in shounen shows, and so on...

(I basically made fun of these tropes just by pointing their flaws right now... :]]] )

My point is, that you do not need to wholeheartedly love a trope to make fun of it. You can also make fun of the parts that you dislike from the tropes that you love.

 

[Jemini]

Not necessarily...

While I agree that you have to understand the trope before making fun of it, you do not need to necessarily like everything about it as well.

Yes, I like truck-kun and because of that I can twist the trope to make it hilarious, but you can also make fun of the parts that you dislike or downright hate from the troupes that you like.

Let's take as an example the tsundere trope. I, personally, enjoy a good tsundere. But the tsundere must be a good tsundere, not the violent tsundere. And because I enjoy the trope, I know how to make fun of the violent behavior of the violent tsundere that I dislike.

That applies to basically anything... Dense protagonists, the cardboard character issue that harem-members tend to have in harem tropes, overly-lucky protagonist issue, the power of friendship and their so-called sense of absolute justice or whatever in shounen shows, and so on...

My point is, that you do not need to wholeheartedly love a trope to make fun of it. You can also make fun of the parts that you dislike from the tropes that you love.

Well, your objection here shows that you misunderstood what I was saying with my post. Probably my fault, so I suppose I should say thanks for pointing out that I had communicated poorly.

What you have to genuinely love is Isekai. I did not mean to put across the message that you have to also love everything about it including the tired old tropes that are often done badly.

What I did say about the tropes is that you had to thoroughly understand them, or at least the ones that you are poking fun at, and have at least one good example of each of them working out VERY well.

To take the example of your violent tsundere, an example of a violent tsundere who works would be Akane Tendo from Ranma 1/2. The reason why Akane works is because Ranma is genuinely enough of an insensitive idiot that you don't feel sorry for him and think he deserves it approximately 70% of the time he gets flattened, and the other 30% of the time when he is undeservidly beaten down you can see the comedy of the moment because it's just well written. Akane is also a fairly deep and complex character, and she is not defined by just her violence.

An example of a bad violent tsundere would be Naru from Love Hina. She just jumps straight to being violent without question, most of the problem is that I cannot tell you much about Naru's character other than the fact she is violent and jumps straight to beating the MC at the slightest provolkation. In other words, her character is that she's violent and she doesn't really have any other defining trait. Plus, the ratio of deserved Vs. undeserved beatings of the MC is more like 15% deserved Vs. 85% undeserved. This makes her flat out hateworthy, and leaves you wanting to see her arrested and dragged away by the police for her constant and consistent violent behavior. Naru beating Keitaro is pretty much the go-to gag of the entire series, which shows a lack of imagination on the writer's part and gets the audience incredibly annoyed.

Those are two extreme examples of either end of the spectrum of violent tsundere. Unfortunately, most cases where the tsundere trope is used actually winds up not only making them more like Naru than Akane, but they even manage to overshoot Naru and have even more flat characters while beating the MC with even less reason to be doing so.

Oh, since the subject here is parody, I also have a fairly excellent example of an incredibly well done violent tsundere in a parody anime/webnovel series. This series is called "Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu." It is a parody on the magical girl genre. Instead of energy, hearts, or whatever it is, the villains in this series steal moe fetish essences. That is, they steal the ability of girls to enjoy dressing or behaving in ways that appeals to some form of moe fetish. Of the various essences, the twintail essence is apparently the strongest. The MC of the series is a guy who, for some reason, has the strongest twintail essence in the world. Not because he wears his hair in that way as is the typical reason, but because he's stupid obsessed with girls who have twintails.

So, because of his powerful twintail essence, he gets the ability to do a magical girl transformation to fight the villains. Yes, male magical girl. And, transforming also turns him into a girl. (yes, this is also a reversible gender bender.) He/she has a childhood friend who happens to be a tsundere. This girl expresses her tsundere nature by becoming violent toward the villains whenever she gets too frustrated over how innocent and naive the MC is being. It's pretty hilarious actually.

This is what I mean about thoroughly understanding the trope and having the ability to produce examples of it working out well. It's not that you have to enjoy it every time you see it. In fact, just like you, I absolutely detest the poorly implemented violent tsundere characters. I don't entirely like it even when they are done well such as the case of Akane Tendo, but at the very least I am not so galled by it and I can appreciate that it is done well in that instance. The point is, I am able to recognize cases where it's done well, cases where it's done poorly, and I can identify the differences in implementation between the two.

 

[Jemini]

Well, your objection here shows that you misunderstood what I was saying with my post. Probably my fault, so I suppose I should say thanks for pointing out that I had communicated poorly.

What you have to genuinely love is Isekai. I did not mean to put across the message that you have to also love everything about it including the tired old tropes that are often done badly.

What I did say about the tropes is that you had to thoroughly understand them, or at least the ones that you are poking fun at, and have at least one good example of each of them working out VERY well.

To take the example of your violent tsundere, an example of a violent tsundere who works would be Akane Tendo from Ranma 1/2. The reason why Akane works is because Ranma is genuinely enough of an insensitive idiot that you don't feel sorry for him and think he deserves it approximately 70% of the time he gets flattened, and the other 30% of the time when he is undeservidly beaten down you can see the comedy of the moment because it's just well written. Akane is also a fairly deep and complex character, and she is not defined by just her violence.

An example of a bad violent tsundere would be Naru from Love Hina. She just jumps straight to being violent without question, most of the problem is that I cannot tell you much about Naru's character other than the fact she is violent and jumps straight to beating the MC at the slightest provolkation. In other words, her character is that she's violent and she doesn't really have any other defining trait. Plus, the ratio of deserved Vs. undeserved beatings of the MC is more like 15% deserved Vs. 85% undeserved. This makes her flat out hateworthy, and leaves you wanting to see her arrested and dragged away by the police for her constant and consistent violent behavior. Naru beating Keitaro is pretty much the go-to gag of the entire series, which shows a lack of imagination on the writer's part and gets the audience incredibly annoyed.

Those are two extreme examples of either end of the spectrum of violent tsundere. Unfortunately, most cases where the tsundere trope is used actually winds up not only making them more like Naru than Akane, but they even manage to overshoot Naru and have even more flat characters while beating the MC with even less reason to be doing so.

Oh, since the subject here is parody, I also have a fairly excellent example of an incredibly well done violent tsundere in a parody anime/webnovel series. This series is called "Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu." It is a parody on the magical girl genre. Instead of energy, hearts, or whatever it is, the villains in this series steal moe fetish essences. That is, they steal the ability of girls to enjoy dressing or behaving in ways that appeals to some form of moe fetish. Of the various essences, the twintail essence is apparently the strongest. The MC of the series is a guy who, for some reason, has the strongest twintail essence in the world. Not because he wears his hair in that way as is the typical reason, but because he's stupid obsessed with girls who have twintails.

So, because of his powerful twintail essence, he gets the ability to do a magical girl transformation to fight the villains. Yes, male magical girl. And, transforming also turns him into a girl. (yes, this is also a reversible gender bender.) He/she has a childhood friend who happens to be a tsundere. This girl expresses her tsundere nature by becoming violent toward the villains whenever she gets too frustrated over how innocent and naive the MC is being. It's pretty hilarious actually.

This is what I mean about thoroughly understanding the trope and having the ability to produce examples of it working out well. It's not that you have to enjoy it every time you see it. In fact, just like you, I absolutely detest the poorly implemented violent tsundere characters. I don't entirely like it even when they are done well such as the case of Akane Tendo, but at the very least I am not so galled by it and I can appreciate that it is done well in that instance. The point is, I am able to recognize cases where it's done well, cases where it's done poorly, and I can identify the differences in implementation between the two.

One more violent Tsundere for good measure. " Haiyore! Nyaruko-san" features a male MC who happens to be a male taking up the role of the typical violent Tsundere toward a WAY overly sexually aggressive female lead. It's kinda less that he's a violent tsundere and more that he has to use force to protect his chastity, but he kinda ticks most of the boxes for an Akane-style violent tsundere all the same.

(This is also another parody. I guess it's kinda sad I gave 3 examples of good violent tsundere and 2 of them were from parodies. Then again though, this is also an example of the value in thoroughly understanding the trope before parodying it.)

 

[wildan1197_]

I think, just understand the common tropes and give them a twist. I always do that. For example, The Hero and Demon Lord in that world already a lovers, give some understandable reason with no room for argument, and so on, and so forth.