This is a post that I had kinda promised @firedragon1321 to write, so let me try and write it. Because we had that conversation about isekai's, and how the genre had shifted, and how the shift felt strange, especially from a very autistic point of view. And given that I see posts about this every so often, I think it might be worth exploring.
The posts that come up again and again will usually ask this:
"When did Isekai become a trash genre?"
And the simple answer is: When Sword Art Online showed that trashy isekai is economically viable.
But I think there is a more complicated answer to this.
And yes, I have read up on this, and yes, I am going to make it y'all's problem now.
Let me start with one obvious thing: Isekai used to be a genre that was primarily shojo, with a couple of shonen contenders here and there - most often in shonen in some sort of monster taming capability.
But the big influential isekais were stuff like Fushigi Yuugi, Vision of Escaflowne, Magic Knights Rayearth, Twelve Kingdoms, and InuYasha. All of those followed roughly a similar pattern: girl gets isekai's into a magic world (yes, InuYasha technically is just historical Japan, but let's face it, this historical Japan has demons and monsters and what not, so it is for all intents and purposes a magical world) and has to save it. The function of the fantastic world tends to somewhat relate to some sort of oppressive system, which actually gets addressed. Trauma in several ways is a topic of the show. The character grows from their experience, and in many examples (though not all) returns to the real world. Yes, there was usually romance involved, and Romance often was the main reason for a character possibly staying, but generally this was the structure, and the structure most of the time relied heavily on girl characters and female experiences.
Then, of course, there was the Monster Taming Isekai that was fairly big around 2000, which generally threw some kids into a world of monsters where they had monster battles, saved the world, and then were send home. Now, this was usually also sad because they would have to say good-bye to their monster friends, but that was how it usually went. The prime examples here are Digimon, Monster Rancher, and Devil Children.
There were a couple of deconstructions of Isekai back then. The most notable was Now and Then, Here and There, which was just a very traditional genre deconstruction ("okay, but what kinda trauma would a kid get if he was put into a fantasy world where he had to fight in a war").
And I guess there also was .hack//, which did on many levels also work as an isekai, especially .hack//SIGN where Tsukasa has no memory of the real world.
The Sword Art Online of it All
Okay, so technically it is not really Sword Art Online's fault. And I hate to say that, because I fucking loathe Sword Art Online. But... generally it was more the fault of Shōsetsuka ni Narō, a Japanese website that made it a lot easier to publish Light Novels online. Sword Art Online was actually not published there. But... Sword Art Online was a piece media that started as a Light Novel, and had the sort of basic set-up that would become very familiar to the Isekai genre: an overpowered protagonist is trapped in a world that works by RPG mechanics and every girl loves him. Now, SAO was very much a piece of media that was clearly borrowing heavily from .hack// and was kinda bad, but sadly it was also very, very, very successful commercially speaking.
And, well... There was Shosetsuka ni Naro, which was at the time already a website and there was a bunch of more light novels on there that were using similar tropes to SAO, and were ready for the picking for the animation studios and their producers, who were hoping to cash in on the SAO hype.
And it worked. It worked really well.
Sure, there is a bunch of flops in this genre, but sadly also a bunch of series that were really, really successful. Sure, critically most of it was bad. But that does not really matter. Quality does not matter. Sales numbers do. And those were good on a bunch of them.
Now, it should again be stated: SAO is actually - while centering a male character - still a lot closer to the old isekai stuff. The goal is still to go home eventually. At least that was how it started at some point.
And a bunch of the early adopters of the new genre still kinda used a similar framework. Often the characters explicitly were stuck in a video game, and explicitly tried to get home, and explicitly interacted with some sort of game dynamics.
But there was a thing. Why actually go home? Enter Truck-kun.
The Truck-kun Genre Shift
Okay, here is the thing. While Truck-kun got memed to death a thousand times over, Truck-kun is actually related to a very, very important aspect of the shift of the genre: the excuse to not go home.
As noted: SAO originally was very much still about people trying to escape the isekai. A lot of the transitional works that followed were also using the "trapped in an RPG and trying to escape" framing in one form or another.
And then there came Truck-kun, and shifted the genre once more.
Because Truck-kun served one specific goal: kill the character and have them reincarnate in the fantasy world with their memory. In many cases the fantasy world still for absolutely no reason still works by RPG logic (including characters having stat screens in their fictional world that is explicitly NOT an RPG, because fuck me I guess). Because that removes a big big factor from the entire story: the ability to go home.
Now, Isekai had always had this strange relation with the idea of "going home". Because, guess what... the entire selling point of the Isekai is that the Isekai is kinda cool, and home is kinda normal, and so why would you go home. In Digimon for example there was also the additional aspect of the kids having to leave the Digimon - a part of themselves - in the other world. Monster Rancher, notably, also had a big struggle about this, because Genki (who is still so neurodivergent coded) does not want to go home. He still has to. And in many isekai's the return home (that is in isekai's so clearly Campbellian in nature) is always symbolic of something: the character has grown. They have matured. And now they return home a different person, but they still return home, because obviously they need to. They have a life to live. And it is their responsibility (especially in the context of Japanese society) to grow up and be a functioning adult.
Truck-kun removes that need. Your normal life is over, go have fun in the isekai that is so much cooler than the real world. The isekai is where you are no longer the jobless loser, you are the coolest person around, and all the girls find you hot.
(And yes, there is of course still girl-focused Isekai stuff, though... frankly, I feel those are a very different beast and tell you more about gender dynamics than anything else. Put a pin into that. Maybe I talk about that another day.)
Isekai and the Millennial Curse
So, this is the moment where I am going to say something possibly controversial: I kinda think the reason that the Isekai genre shifted is explicitly related to the one-two-punch experienced in Japan through the lost decade, followed by how Japan also was influenced by the 2008 financial crisis - and the reason, actually, why western audiences around this same time became more and more entrenched with Japanese media has also to do with this.
Truck-kun removed the pressure from the genre to have a character develop, grow up, and return home. At the same time, when people stopped being able to actually grow up in the conventional sense of the matter.
Because... well, okay. Here is the thing. Media whines and whines and whines about people not having children, people not marrying, and people not settling down. And I think enough tumblrites have already written about this: "Yeah, no kidding, with what money?!" Like, Boomer-centric media, and even Gen-X stuff generally frames it as a social and moral failing of the millennials and Gen-Z people. But, uhm... Yeah, let's face it, a big part is that we just cannot afford the usual stuff, because we are in our 30s and still doing gig work in many cases for less than 50k a year, in an economy where you need to make 80k or more to even start to think to afford a home and children.
Yes, there is other shit layered on top. Like, how there is a growing rift between young men and young women, due to the different media environments, and how a lot of men are just very shit, and what not. But in the end, nothing compares to the big factor that "growing up" in the way society expected us to - the same established milestones that were modeled for us - just is not an option. I am not living in a roommate situation by choice, but because I literally cannot afford to have a fucking flat of my own!
And at the same very time there was also a shift in how media dealt with children. And I feel this... is another big part that goes unnoticed.
The Colonialisation of Child Spaces and How We Were Prevented from Growing Up
Okay, listen up here. This is where it becomes specific - especially in regards to tumblr.
Because here is the thing: there has been a noticable lack of media that is almost exclusively aimed at children during the last 10 or so years.
There is kids media. Yes. Some of it is bad. Some of it is less bad. But there is definitely not as much of it as there was when I was a child and teen. Part of this is because especially in the west we basically killed the Saturday Morning Cartoon with Streaming. And I hope you know what I mean. Gravity Falls, The Owl House, Amphibia, She-Ra, Kipo and so on are all amazing shows. But they also are all shows that at least partially were targeted at adults. I have no doubt that most of them were perfectly enjoyable for children - but... uhm, yeah, they clearly had a lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge stuff in there for an adult audience who had grown up with other media. And... to be completely frank, one of the main issues with these shows was, that there was not an space for kids to talk about them without adults going in and "well, actually"-ing them. And I know that, because I was one of those adults.
There is very few shows out there that do not have this issue - of adults becoming overly attached and then demanding it to be for them. And this, oh well...
Look, I notice this a lot with Miraculous Ladybug. Because the show is actually a really god kids show, if you ask me. But it is that: a kids show, that is a kids show, and it is primarily a kids show, and that is okay to have. Not everything needs to be something massively meaningful. The show has actually something to say, but it still is kinda weird and fun in the way a lot of kids stuff was.
But again, this is also another topic.
The actual main issue I have is... well, pretty much everything I grew up with is still in some way or form around. Pokémon. Digimon. Dragonball. Sailor Moon. Pretty Cure. It is all still here. And it all has merchandise that specifically targets my generation.
The economic crash has basically taken our ability from many of us to hit a lot of the adult milestones that were once considered normal. The society has then blamed us for that. And then... it just decided to sell us our childhoods back again and again and again to fill whatever hole there is with it.
This also relates to the fact that there is really not a whole lot of kids media that is kids media for this generation. And that sucks.
Wait, wasn't this a blog about Isekai?
Yeah, it actually still is.
Because I think the modern shift in the Isekai genre has to do with this. The modern Isekai protagonists have failed in the "real life" in the way a lot of Millennials and Gen-Z adults have failed, as the world just had not allowed them to succeed. They are either jobless, or if they have a job, it is a hollow, meaningless office job, that barely allows them to make ends meet. And yeah, sure, the male isekai protagonist is often a misogynist pig, and a lot of isekai media just tells them that it is fine, but it also should be said that those with money, those who could change things, actively created a media context where it was more profitable for them to really, really hammer home on men that they need to hate women, to keep them isolated and women-hating, so that they would always come back into this context and spend more money in it.
The modern isekai is basically telling someone who has failed in every way that the society has already set them up to fail, and tell them: "It is actually totally okay that you failed this way, here have an escapist fantasy that you can flee into, and just don't think about reality that much. It is fine."
Modern Isekai is telling people who feel like society did not allow them to grow up, that it is actually totally okay, that they have not grown up, and that it is okay for them to refuse to grow up.
Because someone who does their work quietly and otherwise flees into their escapist fantasy is not going to complain about the real world quite literally burning.
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