Isekai ramblings

So this is for some Isekia related thoughts I've been wanting to document on this Blog but that I don't think any on their own could justify a whole post.

First is how historically I've come to feel like the Summer of 2017 was a key turning point in Isekai discourse, at least among English speaking Anime onlies.  Before then people being transported to another world may have already been observed as an increasingly popular plot device, but I think that Anime season with Smartphone and Restaurant was the beginning of it being spoken of as a Genre.

I'm pretty sure English speakers using the Japanese word Isekai at all was not as common before that season, like there were prior shows with that word in the title and so English speakers who liked to use the Japanese title would have been saying it in that context, (that word being in Japanese titles goes back to at least 2009 with War on Geminar), but I think that was mostly it.  When I look back on 2016 and early 2017 AniTube videos about Konosuba, Re:Zero, No Game No Life and Gate from people like YGG, Mother's Basement or Gigguk I don't think even they were using the word yet.

But maybe that's just my biased perspective from that being the season I became a fan of the genre principally via In Another Worl With My Smartphone.  I just did another rewatch of Smartphone which I mentioned on Mastadon and it still holds up.  Thing is while I see a lot of unique distinct value in that show it kind of is the first Anime to really tick off all the boxes of the current conception of a Generic Isekai.

I've been contemplating that it's about time I tried giving some rewatches to some of the other Isekai I've watched seasonally since and mostly liked at the time, see how their rewatch value holds up.  I just tried returning to Deathmarch to a Parralel World Rhapsody which I recall being the second Isekai I watched seasonally, and I wasn't into it but I kind of figured it would be the kind of show I wouldn't want to rewatch that much.

Shows I think might hold up better when I rewatch them include Isekai Cheat Magician, Make my Abilities Average (which I think I actually did already rewatch some of), Reincarnated as a Slime (season 1 at least, I kind of didn't like season 2), Highschool Prodigies, 8th Son, Spider-Chan, Million Lives Isekai, and In The Land of Leadale though that might be too recent still like the Lesbian Executioner one.  Some others might've slipped my mind.

Since these Isekai are supposed to be Fantasy settings with Medieval Western Europe principally England and France as the model, there are two common trends in these worlds I consider odd deviations from that model.  The presence of Chattel Slavery which during the real middle ages this specific region was just about the only place where that wasn't practiced.  And a tendency for the otherwise vaguely Aesthetically Catholic dominant Church to be seemingly Matriarchal with even the Pope analogue being a High Priestess.  I find it amusing how together both these details make these societies more like Ancient Athens then Medieval Europe.

I wonder if this is another carry over from Dragon Quest III?  For those who still don't know in Japan the Dragon Quest franchise actually tops even Final Fantasy as the most popular JRPG franchise, with Dragon Quest III specifically usually being the primary model for what "Generic JRPG" tropes are.  For example Dragon Quest II was the origin of Orcs being depicted as humanoid Pig/Boar creatures which I observed being a common thing across these shows in 2018 and 2019.  So Dragon Quest as a whole and III specifically is kind of the Ur Text for a lot about why the Fantasy Worlds we see in Isekai and other generic Fantasy Anime are the way they are.

But without playing the game myself the question of Slavery and Matriarchal Religious institutions are a more difficult world building question to simply google, they aren't simply in the Bestiary the way the Orcs are.  So It's something I'd have to ask people who've played them.