When I wrote my Isekai, In Another World with my Smartphone, Why Wish Fulfillment is Art blog post, talking about western works of literature you could apply the Isekai label to.
Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, plus their sequels and stuff. Ya know, it's amusing that this genre seems to begin with female protagonists and then Males take it over later. I don't know enough about George MacDonald's works to know if any of them can be labeled Isekai. What I mainly know is that he is cited as an influence on Lewis.
I still think the Narnia books are more analogous to modern Anime Isekai then those. Especially as I've watched more now.
So it occurred to me that I'd forgotten about Oz as I was watching No Game No Life. I'm aware that a key difference between the book and the infamous 1939 film is the whole "No Place like Home" part. In the book Dorothy wants to get back home to see her family again. But the overall attitude towards Mid Western Rural America that Baum was expressing was rather cynical. So the movie saying "There's no place like home" went quite against the themes of the books.
So all that popped into my head as I watched this Anime about two Siblings with absolutely no desire to return to modern Japan, since they are stereotypical Neets. And then I slapped myself that I just did a blog post acting like I didn't know about any major Pre-Narnia Isekai stories. Then I thought of Alice in Wonderland also.
Overall though, No Game No Life still feels much more analogous to Narnia. With a very different attitude towards religion and spirituality of course. But it's about Siblings who become King and Queen in their new world.
Speaking of which. The most awkward parallel No Game No Life holds to Narnia is the tendency for some of the fandom to engage in Incest Shipping. Now knowing Otaku culture that was probably a little bit intentional with NGNL. While Lewis certainly did not intend that. Also I don't think any Narnia fans ship Peter and Lucy, which is age wise what Sora/Shiro is more analogous to.
NGNL is a very good show, I highly recommend it. I'm a fan of stratagey based Anime like Code Geass.
If I hadn't recalled Alice In Wonderland already, I would have when I started Problem Children, where the protagonists are brought to this world by a Bunny Girl called Black Rabbit.
Problem Children shares NGNL's Gaming theme. But not executed nearly as well. Problem Children also feels like it's trying to copy Fate/ with all the re-imagining Classical Myths as Anime Girls.
But Problem Children might feel the most like Narnia in terms of being about a group of kids. And Asuka seems to have been taken from the WWII era and so almost looks like she's a Susan Pevensie cosplayer at the beginning. Problem Children is a fun show but isn't gonna come off well comparing it to others.
One big advantage protagonists in modern Otaku Centric Isekai Anime have over more old school examples is they tend to be, or at least include, an Otaku who is very genre savvy about the world they've been taken to. The Pevensies don't even seem to figure out that Aslan is Jesus till the third book when he finally spells it out to them. And that's part of my disappointment with Narnia as Christian fiction actually, I'd prefer more Bible Genre Savvy protagonists in my Christian Isekai. The other is that if I wrote a Christian Isekai I'd have one of the nations in this world be one of the Lost Tribes.
Update: January 2019: Peter Pan, I also forgot that Peter Pan kind of qualifies, I'm such a Baka.
Being transported into a another world, especially a fantasy world isn't a Japanese genre in origin. Like many things in Japan, "Isekai" is really just a localization of Western ideas given Japanese tastes. Lewis Caroll, Lyman Baum, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, CS Lewis, etc are just a multitude of originators who blazed the trail of "Isekai" long before the Japanese had even realized such stories existed. One of my first Isekai novels read was Stephen R Donaldson's magnum opus - his Thomas Covenant Chronicles is essentially an anti-Hero twist. Though it follows some lines of JRR Tolkien's world, it has entirely different mechanics and philosophies, with a modern day man transported to a magical medieval fantasy - though I also liked his "The Mirror of his Dreams" and "A Man Rides through it", which are excellent "Fantasy Isekai". BTW, Stepehen R Donaldson is a 1970s author, and many of these authors are nearly 2 centuries old - so you see, the Japanese are hardly originators of this genre - it is more appropriate to ask: "What is the Japanese adaptation of "Isekai". In truth, I think the "greatest" Japanese Isekais like Inuyasha, Sword Art Online, and Mushoku Tensei are pale shadows next to the genius of the Looking glass, Narnia, and Donaldson's the Land - the detail and atmosphere portrayed and revealed is truly high-fantasy storytelling that most people have only imitated ever since.
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