Time and Setting in Japanese Fantasy
So, yesterday I have written a bit about the settings of western fantasy worlds, and specifically my good old pet peeve of "stop calling something medieval that is clearly inspired by a Renaissance or even early Modern setting". And while I was thinking about it in regards to some of the more famous western fantasy settings, I also could not help but think about how Japanese fantasy is handling this kind of stuff.
Which, tbh, was the best decision ever, because it gave me a new appreciation of fantasy stories that I consumed in my youth but never thought about that much in terms of worldbuilding.
So, uhm... let's talk about some of it.
Record of Lodoss War is Surprisingly Specific
The first thing I looked at - because I remembered that there was some worldbuilding - was Lodoss. I am honestly not fully certain how much people even know of this series. Because while it was definitely one of THE big fantasy things in anime/manga from the 90s, I feel like outside of a certain subsection many people do not remember it much?
Lodoss started out with a TTRPG campaign, that - at least according to Wikipedia (I wish I had access to the book in question) - was run largely under the systems of Tunnels & Trolls and RuneQuest. The original release was, in the end, pretty much a written down Actual Play Campaign, though other stuff followed. The releases started in the mid-1980s. Which, yes, means that basically one of the somewhat biggest manga fantasy settings did somewhat originate in a similar manner as Critical Role.
Lodoss has quite interesting worldbuilding, because it does one thing that western Fantasy quite rarely ever does: it allows a lot of the institutions inside of the world to be very young. While one of the kingdoms in the setting is about 1000 years old, the vast majority of kingdoms are somewhere between 200 and 500 years, with one other exception that is only 40 years old, being funded during the events of the first main campaign of the table.
Now, if you look at the worldbuilding the oldest kingdom draws definitely on Byzantium in terms of what it is inspired by. The different places also are quite different in terms of culture, rather than doing the otherwise common fantasy thing of "given this is a gritty historical setting, every realm is just another flavor of dirty". Especially how the different realms relate to the main religion varies. While the church is very powerful in some of the realms, it is less so in others. Different older local practices also mix into how the religion works in different places, making it actually quite interesting.
There is no printing press in Lodoss. And while literacy rates do not seem to be as piss-poor as in the real world at this time, it does appear as if the series at large is likely set around a somewhat High Medieval setting. 12th century is what I would say for large chunks of it. We have kings. We do have feudalism. In most places we have a strong church, and a fairly badly educated populus. All of which would fit with a high medieval setting.
Though ever since I read into the lore of Lodoss I cannot help but wonder if Gaider or Weekes also read Lodoss. Because the way the elves and gods are worldbuilt for Thedas is so close to Lodoss that it does not feel incidental.
Slayers is a Mess (anthropologically speaking)
When I went through the worldbuilding of other stuff I remembered, I decided that technically I should just leave out Slayers, because the worldbuilding here is about as careful as many of the random Isekai series.
However, I love Slayers. So despite it all I am gonna go into the Slayers series in terms of a setting.
And in one way it is kinda funny: Kanzaka was one of those people who wrote their stories all in the same general universe, so his Scifi stuff takes place in the same universe as Slayers, but usually just... elsewhere or elsewhen. With the Slayers continent also having the reason of being so historically inspired due to being cut off from the rest of the world due to magic.
But, of course... technically speaking we actually know very little about the world. Like, sure, we have kings, and we have inheritable positions, and lords, and what not. There is also a fairly strong church, though only when the plot demands it. The magic works by the established rules we see in a bunch of JRPGs. (There is a reason I compare the world with Isekai. While the character and story writing is a lot better than on isekai slop, the worldbuilding is handwaving away a lot with: "Well, you played an RPG before." In the same way a bunch of isekai stuff does.)
What we do know though: there is very, very widespread literacy. Writing and reading is playing a role in the plot so often that it is noteworthy. But since we still have a lot of feudalism from the looks of it - and a fairly powerful religious institution, I generally would place this world somewhere in the early Renaissance. Though, again... comparing it is a bit less interesting here than in some of the other fandoms I went over due to it just being very "Well, it would be funny now if this happened".
So, with that I wanna move over to the world that really got me interested in worldbuilding in the first place, and was one of my special interests for so very long. Enough that I annoyed a whole lot of people with it (especially in the German Final Fantasy fandom). Ivalice. The setting of the Final Fantasy games written by Matsuno. And a setting that has you ask: "Okay, is it now one setting or is it different settings with the same name?" Because it definitely is one of the worlds that technically shows up in a bunch of Final Fantasy games and one game that is not Final Fantasy. To be exact:
Final Fantasy Tactics (and the remakes/remixes there off)
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Final Fantasy XII: Revanant Wings
And this is a bit of a headache. Because Final Fantasy Tactics is a setting where outside of some thinking beasts, there is only humans. Vagrant Story has humans and some lizard people. And every other game does actually have a bunch of different fantasy races in the setting.
Now, Vagrant Story definitely does take place on another continent than the other games, so the difference here can somewhat be explained away. But the other games? Well.
Tactics does however mention a specific cataclysm that apparently happened over 1000 years ago, which some fans have taken to explain away that possibly the other races died in that cataclysm.
Tactics itself is the easiest to place. It is by far the game where we see the most of the politics and religion. The religion once more is one of those that is "Christianity Remixed", a bit like the religions of a bunch of western fantasy worlds. We have a saint who was a son of god or a reborn deity - including holy trinity - and his twelve disciples. The twelve disciples however are also calling back onto an older religion (the Zodiac), and the worldbuilding leaves some of it open. Generally speaking, there is actually quite a lot of very specific historical things in the setting. It is inspired by the War of Roses, just like Game of Thrones, but does the setting a lot more coherent than GoT. And all in all we are very clearly in a very late medieval period for this one game.
Now, XII and Revanant Wings are quite different, of course. Because they are set in a very technologically advanced society. Again, we can possibly argue to no end, whether this is the same world, and whether it is set before or after Tactics (the crossovers of either game make no sense no matter how you slice it). And the specific way the tech looks in this is actually quite interesting. Because...
Remember how I talked about how the "Solarpunk" that was around in around the time of 2010 in the UK Steampunk scene was absolutely not what we understand under the term now? Yeah. That UK Solarpunk was actually something that looked A LOT like the tech we see in XII and Revanant Wings.
This, of course, does not make it easier though to place it. Generally FFXII Ivalice is a lot like Faerûn. It is technically a modern setting, though not quite "today" modern. But more 1900 or so modern, with a lot of real world technology being made up from magic instead.
And as much as I adore the TA games: placing them is kinda impossible, partially because so much of them hinges on them being isekai.
Final Fantasy - starting with VI - generally had less of an interest in doing the traditional fantasy settings, making a lot of the stories more science fantasy focused. But outside of Ivalice which is generally a whole lot more fantasy than the Nomura-helmed games, there was one more that was a lot more fantasy focused. (Yes, and I know, the new one as well, but I have not played that so...) And that is IX. FF9.
The world we see in FF9 - Gaia - was for a long time the more historically appearing setting within Final Fantasy, given that most of the Nomura-made games went a lot heavier into Science Fiction. FFX was somewhat more Post-Apocalyptic, sure. But FF9 at least at first appears a bit more historical, with Burmecia and Alexandria being depicted as the sort of monarchy you would see during the Imperial age. Like, the way the world does relate to travel and the general geography is a lot more fitting with the age of Imperialism than it would be with a medieval time. There are royal lines in several places - but it does not seem to work on feudalism anymore.
But then we also come to see a lot of industrialization. Like, a lot of it. And it reframes everything of course, pushing the culture forward to basically the 19th century at the very least.
This is one of the points where people will usually go: "Well, this is a fantasy world after all. So it does not need to make sense." And in some regard this holds true. And obviously the real world does not have Mist or magic or flying ships or boys with monkey tails like this.
However, I still have to say that actually it is not that off from reality. Because this is your casual reminder: most fights - even in wars - were done with bladed weapons even in the early 20th century.
And funnily enough the fact that Gaia is quite diverse in how industrialized the different places are, is kinda a big part of making it more realistic. In its own... Final Fantasy way, of course. But technology being more relevant in some places than others is actually quite typical.
Let me then move onto Frieren. The one of the current big three of Anime fantasy that I admittedly am not super invested in. But going through the wikis and some youtube videos kinda allows you to sort this into the setting - even though Frieren is one of those series that focus a lot more on the characters and their relationships, than the world. Which - I should say - is an absolutely valid way to do fantasy. The core of the story is the characters, their relationships and the philosophy behind it. The world mainly exists to allow for that to happen.
We do know this is a world that has monarchy, and there is aristocracy, that is heavily implied to function under some sort of feudalist system, though we do not fully privy to how this system works. We know that there are Lords that seem to be local rulers, and we know there is monarchy.
One thing that is quite noticeable in this series is that we actually do see a whole lot of agriculture - something that I actually do very much appreciate. Because as I noted before: usually there was a lot of agriculture around settlements, so if characters move through those areas I really want to see more agriculture.
From my understanding, there is once more this thing that is actually kinda common in a lot of fantasy: we do know what the main religion is about and some parts of the normal practice done by single people - but there is very little on how the religion is organized and relating to the different hierarchies in the world. Which makes it somewhat hard to relate the world to the exact point in time.
What we can say, though, is that literacy is fairly widely spread, but that also people are generally mainly walking or using horse related travel in regards to their movement.
So, while the exact time is somewhat hard to place. From what I can say this world is situated in a society that is most comparable with the 15th or 16th century. More likely the 16th.
Witch Hat Atelier has a Specific Kind of Worldbuilding
So, admittedly: the reason why I decided to make a series of blogs on this topic was that I saw someone call the world of Witch Hat Atelier medieval. And this is one of the worlds where this is once more really bothering me a lot.
Arguably there is a problem with Witch Hat Atelier presenting us with a world that is so magic, that comparing it to the real world is a bit harder than normally. But this is where I will remind y'all of the good old phrase that I know most of you will have heard at some point: any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic. And the magic in WHA is very very hard magic - so arguing it is actually a science is not even that hard.
Admittedly, WHA also has the other problem: we do know barely anything about how the world is run, and whether there is any form of religion or anything. While this is a world that is a lot more heavy on the worldbuilding, the main part of the worldbuilding we actually get to see is the magic, the rough organization of the magic society, and how witches relate to non-witches. We do know that there are five non-witch rulers and one supreme monarch, which means we are talking about some sort of monarchy in one way or another. The governing systems of non-witches and witches are also separated, which seems to be actually quite important to everyone.
And having spoken on the agriculture in Frieren, I should note that this is actually something that I have noticed in WHA: we see very, very little of it. And I am actually not fully sure if this is related to the fact that we largely observe the witch side of the world, and they are not producing food. (We obviously also see spell that seem to do the Jesus thing: kind of replicate food, which might possibly a reason why we see so little of it.)
But let's get back to why I dislike the idea of it being framed as "medieval": this world is very technologically advanced. Only that their technology is largely powered by magic. Even outside of the witch places, we know that the magic - their seals hidden - allows the non-witches to enjoy quite a lot of comfort, despite it clearly being somewhat bound to class in the non-witch world, where the richer more influential people get to enjoy magic more frequently than the lower class people.
But generally: this is a technologically very, very advanced world. I would argue we are talking about the 18th or 19th century here. Also, because, again: literacy rates seem to be insanely high. And - notable here as well - gender related societal stuff is also a lot less hierarchical.
Again, WHA is technically probably one of the fantasy worlds furthest away from any actual history. But it is definitely not medieval. From what we see anthropologically in this world there is nothing medieval about it.
Next to Lodoss Dungeon Meshi is arguably the one of the Japanese High Fantasy anime that is the easiest to place historically speaking, because it has just a ton of worldbuilding that goes into those anthropological aspects. Though Kui has, obviously, put more focus on some aspects of the worldbuilding than others. Notably we do not fully know much about how the governments are run outside of the Island (and then later Laios' kingdom), and the Eastern Continent. And, once again, we know very little about the religion in this world. Which tends to be a general issue with comparing these settings to historical eras, because the religiosity or rather the handling of institutionalized religion is one of the biggest indicators.
Still, we do see quite a bit of this world from some anthropological perspective, and once again we do see high literacy rates. Pretty much every character we meet does have at least some functional literacy.
We see once more feudalism happening to a certain degree, but we see also a very strong mercantile class. And, related to this, we also are in a world that has been largely mapped. People are generally aware how the world looks and what other cultures there are.
In here, I also kinda want to point on the kind of weapons we see - because generally the weapons in Dungeon Meshi fit a lot more with what we would have expected in the 17th and early 18th century.
The food consumed fits with that as well.
A fun little thing about this world is once again, that the world has seemingly been more advanced than it currently is in the past. The old dwarven technology, that largely has been lost as it seems, is technology we would expect from the late 19th and early 20th century. But it clearly has been lost and is no longer fully understood.
It is one of my favorite things about this world though.
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