TVTropes has a page called UsefulNotes/Gnosticism where it talks about Gnosticism and then lists examples of fictional stories that were or are thought to be influenced by Gnosticism.
As an Amateur Christian Theologian, I think it's a problem how often Gnosticism is defined based on it's mythological archetypes rather then the actual Philosophical/Metaphysical point. If your view of the After Life is an intangible spirit realm where we are free of the confines of the Carnal Material World, you're a Gnostic no matter how Orthodox, Nicene and Trinitarian your Theology and Christology is.
One question that is particularly relevant to the accuracy of calling some of these fictional cosmologies Gnostic is, can you be Gnostic but not even nominally Christian? According to Religion for Breakfast no one called themselves Gnostics in antiquity, and all the known specific groups we call Gnostics were Christian sects who identified each of these Gnostic Mythological archetypes with at least one person or concept in The Bible or some other Judeo-Christian text.
However they are also the result of these Christians being influenced by older gentile ideas that in my opinion Christians shouldn't have allowed to influence them, Neopythagoreanism, Middle Platonism, Hermeticism, Hellenistic Mystery Religions and since they mostly started in Alexandria aspects of native Egyptian Mythology and Mysticism (thing is the "Proto-Orthodox" were also being influenced by at least the first two of those during this time period, simply to different degrees or in different ways. The difference between whether you were called a Heretic or not was chiefly rejecting a Bodily Resurrection). So you take the mythological archetypes that comes from those influences but subtract the explicitly Christian stuff, and you get a framework that can be compared to a number of fictional Fantasy/Sci-Fi cosmologies.
But going back to my distinction between Gnostic Mythology and the actual point of Gnosticism. I don't think any currently existing "developed" culture is less inclined to sympathize with the point of Gnosticism then Japan. Shinto Mysticism I actually view as fairly compatible with Stoic Metaphysics, and Stoicism was I'd say antithetical to all of the Non-Christian antecedents of Gnosticism, even if by the second century they were using a lot of the exact same Greek key words and phrases.
And so when I look at a lot of the Anime or other Otaku Media that has been or can be argued to resemble Gnostic mythology, I kind of feel like they're using the Gnostic Mythological framework to convey the exact opposite attitude.
This is most explicit in SSSS.Gridman where the Sophia figure is trapped in an Idealized Platonic World of Forms and the Carnal Physical Real World is what she needs to return to. But I think on some level the same is true of the use of Gnostic or Gnostic adjacent ideas in classics like Serial Experiments Lain or Revolutionary Girl Utena.
I would not apply a Gnostic reading of any kind to most Isekai however, in modern Isekai the other world is just as much of a carnal/material world as ours, it's the culture being different that makes it often a world the Otaku/Neet protagonist feels more at home in then Modern Japan. Sword Art Online does sometimes feel like it's making Gnostic Mythological references, but that isn't proper Isekai.
But in the case of Final Fantasy VII (and perhaps then every FF that's been argued to be Gnostic) I go back to what I said before about the Stoics and Gnostics being antithetical even in their use of a lot of the same terms. I think every argument for Final Fantasy VII having a Gnostic cosmology is actually better explained by a Stoic reading, The Lifestream is the Pneumatic World Soul and Mako (like Mana in other JRPGs and Manga/Anime inspired by them) is a Pneumatic Substance. The Physical world being Evil and Dirty couldn't be more the opposite of what a story like Final Fantasy VII is trying to say about Nature. These are stories where the Spiritual and Carnal are in a symbiotic relationship with each other, it is Man's Sins (especially Capitalism) that create the problems.
The western world however has been very influenced by Gnosticism, for all the talk about the Gnostics as some minority the Roman Church persecuted into extinction, I'd argue they kind of indirectly won, all of Mainstream Christianity has become at least mildly Gnostic. Gnosticism is essentially Platonism taken to it's logical extreme, and so that's why a lot of the Japanese media I just talked about and others get interpreted by westerners more Gnostically then I feel the Japanese could have possibly intended.
Update September 26th: It's occurred to me that I should explain the Final Fantasy VII part a bit more.
The Gnostic Reading of Final Fantasy VII in large part revolves around equating the Lifestream with the Gnostic Pleroma. The Lifestream and Pleroma have in common being both the source and destiny of each individual Soul However the Gnostic Pleroma is distinctly outside the physical world, the physical world is basically a prison to the pieces of it stuck here. The Lifesream however is the World, it and the physical Earth are intimately connected, they form a Symbiant Circle what happens to one will effect the other. It is quite literally the Soul and Spirit of The Earth.
The World Soul is a concept in a few schools of Greek Philosophy, but it is the Stoic Version that has all the same similarities to the Lifestream the Pleroma has but also is part of the world rather then separate.
Basically Gnosticism has more in common with Scientology then it does the Lore of FFVII.
Further Update October 14 2022: I just obtained Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250 by George Boys-Stones and chapter 8 talks about the World Soul and Nature.
Much of the thesis of the chapter is that while Middle Platonists and Stoics agreed on the World having a Soul, for the Stoics it was a pretty natural product of their Metaphysics as it's virtually synonymous with their God, while for the Platonists it kind of didn't fit so well and proved awkward.
So to Middle Platonists the World Soul was a lesser god at best, and to Plutarch it was actually Evil, but in-between it was also presented as a sort of force without much will or agency of it's own.
But reading this has only strengthened my Stoic interpretation of The Lifestream and Final Fantasy VII.
I also view the Original Pre-Romanization Stoics as having been the Communists of the Hellenistic World. And so here's a good Marxist Analysis of Final Fantasy VII.
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