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I liked the way Fruits Basket: The Final ended, it actually got me a little misty-eyed. Still bullshit that they’re making Kyoko and Katsuya’s story a whole separate thing when they easily could’ve included it though.
 
Car Won't Crank said:
Out of all the isekai that are airing for the summer 2021 season, Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki is looking to be a good one. First two episodes in and the premise, characters, and plot are quite good. The protagonist is basically faced with an Adam Jensen "I didn't ask for this" situation in the new world he was transported to. I recommend.
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What I've heard of its reputation is that it's the exemplar of the "chronological snobbery" type of isekai, where everyone slobbers on the MC's knob because he brings some plebbit-tier modern knowledge and the locals are plot-dumb.
 
Thomas Talus said:
What I've heard of its reputation is that it's the exemplar of the "chronological snobbery" type of isekai, where everyone slobbers on the MC's knob because he brings some plebbit-tier modern knowledge and the locals are plot-dumb.
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Seems like that's what it's turning out to be. It's sort of like How to Not Summon a Demon Lord as it also has a harem element.
 
Oddjob OTP said:
I sort of like "let's apply economics to a fantasy setting" genre, as exemplified by Spice and Wolf and Maoyuu Maou Yuusha but I'm not sold on this one yet. All the characters are generic, the country is Weimer republic levels of holding the idiot ball but somehow they are pretty good when it comes to actually enacting the protagonist's dictates (although the plot insists otherwise, there's no evidence presented to the viewer other then "someone might be embezzling or screwing up the budget somewhere" which is completely normal).
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I can't really think of a way to apply modern economics without it either turning into libertarian/commie manifesto or applying advanced math. Or it being the "you researched breathing" kind of deal.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I can't really think of a way to apply modern economics without it either turning into libertarian/commie manifesto or applying advanced math. Or it being the "you researched breathing" kind of deal.
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I think it's largely a disease of isekai. The problem is that it's not an action anime so in order to be cool the main character has to be competent because he can't just throw kamehamehas at people 20 seconds after dropping into the world. But it's really hard to write a character to be cooly competent in a reasonable world, and most writers at best manage to make everyone around them incompetent so they get to look competent by comparison. The part where he learns about the world should have been longer then 3 days skipped over in 10 seconds and he would have to be shown to be capable of being wrong, though maybe for good reasons.

Just for comparison, Maoyuu Maou Yuusha is about Hero and Demon King (female) secretly teaming up to make the world more stable and end the forever war between the human and demon blocs which they mostly do by creating a middle class in the human kingdom by solving food insecurity by introducing potatoes to human farmers and by diplomancing (and occasionally straight up having Hero kill) a few people that really want to prolong the conflict. Neither side has to come off unreasonably dumb to sell Demon King being smart and Hero pushes back when it makes sense to and even when they are wrong they had good reasons to be wrong.
 
Oddjob OTP said:
I think it's largely a disease of isekai. The problem is that it's not an action anime so in order to be cool the main character has to be competent because he can't just throw kamehamehas at people 20 seconds after dropping into the world. But it's really hard to write a character to be cooly competent in a reasonable world, and most writers at best manage to make everyone around them incompetent so they get to look competent by comparison. The part where he learns about the world should have been longer then 3 days skipped over in 10 seconds and he would have to be shown to be capable of being wrong, though maybe for good reasons.

Just for comparison, Maoyuu Maou Yuusha is about Hero and Demon King (female) secretly teaming up to make the world more stable and end the forever war between the human and demon blocs which they mostly do by creating a middle class in the human kingdom by solving food insecurity by introducing potatoes to human farmers and by diplomancing (and occasionally straight up having Hero kill) a few people that really want to prolong the conflict. Neither side has to come off unreasonably dumb to sell Demon King being smart and Hero pushes back when it makes sense to and even when they are wrong they had good reasons to be wrong.
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It's ye olde case of smart person written by a dumb person:
XGEpbQCzrLz0RCqUPKRSDUg3YtakoZ8VIhMGqXrxPq0.png


I watched the first 10 minutes of Maoyuu Maou Yuusha and turned off, it might be just an awkward start but it felt way too much like the usual case of looking at the past as fucking idiots.

Modern economy/convenience of life is the result of technology enabling new markets and massive amount of deaths to get a political landscape that's good for the economy. It's not just "muh crop cycling", but the moving of power from inbred families towards middle class (usually by force) and giving people access to easy credit (not always to their betterment). And even with all the knowledge of the last centuries you'd still have places with 16th century living conditions, or places where the new technology created a perpetual war by denizens too stupid to use it for good.
 
Oddjob OTP said:
I think it's largely a disease of isekai. The problem is that it's not an action anime so in order to be cool the main character has to be competent because he can't just throw kamehamehas at people 20 seconds after dropping into the world. But it's really hard to write a character to be cooly competent in a reasonable world, and most writers at best manage to make everyone around them incompetent so they get to look competent by comparison. The part where he learns about the world should have been longer then 3 days skipped over in 10 seconds and he would have to be shown to be capable of being wrong, though maybe for good reasons.
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One of the reasons authors like to use the trope of being transported into the world of a novel read by the main character is that they can use the excuse of knowing future plot to keep ahead of the enemies, though a lot of them don't use the trope well. They either make it seem like somehow the main character has memorized everything that happened to the littlest detail or that them meddling doesn't make all future knowledge useless. The only one I really liked that did this, which I'll continue to shill since I think more should read it, is Trash of the Count's Family since the author does a nice job of balancing Cale's smarts with future knowledge while actually developing the world.

On the other end is isekai where the author is very knowledgeable about topics, so much that they go on autistic rambling quite often, where it feels like the isekai is just an excuse to talk about their very specific interest. From what I remember of the Tanya LN I think that one falls into that with the author's military history knowledge.
Just for comparison, Maoyuu Maou Yuusha is about Hero and Demon King (female) secretly teaming up to make the world more stable and end the forever war between the human and demon blocs which they mostly do by creating a middle class in the human kingdom by solving food insecurity by introducing potatoes to human farmers and by diplomancing (and occasionally straight up having Hero kill) a few people that really want to prolong the conflict. Neither side has to come off unreasonably dumb to sell Demon King being smart and Hero pushes back when it makes sense to and even when they are wrong they had good reasons to be wrong.
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I couldn't stand the anime for that with the stupid added fanservice, it felt so distracting and random. At least the manga was better in the aspect.
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Modern economy/convenience of life is the result of technology enabling new markets and massive amount of deaths to get a political landscape that's good for the economy. It's not just "muh crop cycling", but the moving of power from inbred families towards middle class (usually by force) and giving people access to easy credit (not always to their betterment). And even with all the knowledge of the last centuries you'd still have places with 16th century living conditions, or places where the new technology created a perpetual war by denizens too stupid to use it for good.
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Most people writing in not-medieval Europe settings for their isekai (usually with it being based on Britain) have no idea what it was actually like back then and don't bother doing basic level research. It's not even just a problem unique to them, but a lot of people using medieval or anything not modern for their settings don't bother doing basic level research because they don't think most people will care.

It's always amusing to try figuring out what time period they're attempting to use and then noticing things that either shouldn't be there or it's lacking something that would have happened by then.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Modern economy/convenience of life is the result of technology enabling new markets and massive amount of deaths to get a political landscape that's good for the economy. It's not just "muh crop cycling", but the moving of power from inbred families towards middle class (usually by force) and giving people access to easy credit (not always to their betterment). And even with all the knowledge of the last centuries you'd still have places with 16th century living conditions, or places where the new technology created a perpetual war by denizens too stupid to use it for good.
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If I recall correctly (and I'm probably not the best person to sell you on an anime I watched once through years ago) their reasoning didn't simplify down to "crop rotation" it was more that having one staple crop (grain in this case) is a shit solution to the problem of winters in an agrarian society because it makes you extremely vulnerable to drought and very dependent on growing in specific types of soil. It was more analogous to the real world situation where slavs and the Irish became synonymous with potatoes, a new world crop, because growing them as a staple made much more sense then spamming grains in their climate.
 
Moguro Fukuzou said:
Most people writing in not-medieval Europe settings for their isekai (usually with it being based on Britain) have no idea what it was actually like back then and don't bother doing basic level research.
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Red River is one of the only non-Euro, earth-or-earth-like isekai that comes to mind. What else is there like that one?
 
I've finished the first 4 RE:Zero light novels and I thought it was alright. I like Rem and Ram as characters, as well as that Kansai-dialect business chick and Roswaald (even if in my head all his dialogue sounds like the "YESSSSSS" guy from The Simpsons)
Subaru realizing he really doesn't know shit about Emilia despite being "in love" with her (and then her pointing that out when she's upset with him by the end of book 4) was nice to see since it had been bothering me the whole time.
I guess I'm just underwhelmed considering how much I see people talk about this series. It's alright but there was never a real moment where I clicked with it and really started to like it. I felt that with Konosuba right away, but those are the only two isekai I've ever checked out.
 
Diet Purple Pepsi said:
I've finished the first 4 RE:Zero light novels and I thought it was alright. I like Rem and Ram as characters, as well as that Kansai-dialect business chick and Roswaald (even if in my head all his dialogue sounds like the "YESSSSSS" guy from The Simpsons)
Subaru realizing he really doesn't know shit about Emilia despite being "in love" with her (and then her pointing that out when she's upset with him by the end of book 4) was nice to see since it had been bothering me the whole time.
I guess I'm just underwhelmed considering how much I see people talk about this series. It's alright but there was never a real moment where I clicked with it and really started to like it. I felt that with Konosuba right away, but those are the only two isekai I've ever checked out.
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It doesn't start really clicking until around arc 4 of the wn (ln 10-15), which is coincidentally one of the longest (though they cut a shit ton for the anime/ln adaptions).

Imo, the best arc is arc 6, but at that point you either like it or you don't.
 
NoReturn said:
Red River is one of the only non-Euro, earth-or-earth-like isekai that comes to mind. What else is there like that one?
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Honestly I'm not super sure myself, a lot of isekai don't bother developing their worlds so they tend to blend together in my mind. The one that stands out most to me is of course Twelve Kingdoms which is heavily inspired by Chinese mythology. I don't even mind them poorly using medieval euro settings as long as the author puts in enough effort to explain their worlds, answering the little questions that help breathe life into the world. If they can give a logical reasoning in their world why certain things didn't develop, such as widespread magic using making it pointless to develop a lot of the quality of life items, it doesn't bug me. I think Ascendance of a Bookworm is pretty good for this.

It's not just a problem in isekai series, but just fantasy series in general that don't take enough time to develop their world are just as irritating. Too often worlds feel like they don't exist outside what is needed for the main characters to complete their journey.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
It's ye olde case of smart person written by a dumb person:View attachment 2338180

I watched the first 10 minutes of Maoyuu Maou Yuusha and turned off, it might be just an awkward start but it felt way too much like the usual case of looking at the past as fucking idiots.

Modern economy/convenience of life is the result of technology enabling new markets and massive amount of deaths to get a political landscape that's good for the economy. It's not just "muh crop cycling", but the moving of power from inbred families towards middle class (usually by force) and giving people access to easy credit (not always to their betterment). And even with all the knowledge of the last centuries you'd still have places with 16th century living conditions, or places where the new technology created a perpetual war by denizens too stupid to use it for good.
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The anime cut a lot compared to the manga.
 
Recently watched Eden of the East. It was okay. It's about this girl who meets a boy with amnesia and their only clue is a cellphone he has that can give him anything and he has a lot of money. They find out he may or may not be involved in a event called Careless Monday; which was a event where 10 missiles stuck Japan but one one died. So they try to find out if he was and who else was involved. There's also a plot where a woman called the Johnny Chopper cuts off guys dicks. It's outrageous as it sounds.
 
Oh man, Eden of the East. I wanted to like that anime because it was such a neat thriller and the main characters had a good dynamic, but damn that ending was just underwhelming. I don't even remember what the movies were about despite apparently being actual sequels.
 
Ha, someone made a Kumoko-only edit of the 'So I'm a Spider, So What?' anime. I didn't really like the anime adaption enough to re-watch it again so soon but I'm tempted to, just to see how well it actually works.
 
Mr. ShadowCreek said:
Recently watched Eden of the East. It was okay. It's about this girl who meets a boy with amnesia and their only clue is a cellphone he has that can give him anything and he has a lot of money. They find out he may or may not be involved in a event called Careless Monday; which was a event where 10 missiles stuck Japan but one one died. So they try to find out if he was and who else was involved. There's also a plot where a woman called the Johnny Chopper cuts off guys dicks. It's outrageous as it sounds.
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I was literally just watching a couple of old Eden of the East AMV’s and came to talk about how disappointing that series (and especially the movies, which I didn’t get to see till almost 2 years after the series) was after such an amazing first three or 4 episodes. It felt like it just didn’t know what to do with a thriller plot, and the conflicting plots to save Japan by spending money ran over each other too much.

Though the finale, where he’s shooting the missles down while Reveal the World plays is an impressive scene. Actually lot of the visuals are really striking - including the opening to Falling Down, one of the all time best - which makes the weak plot even sadder. Although Saki constantly looks like a frog.
BE5A29AF-3213-4AC8-AA38-09C1BB12C7DE.jpeg

Ribbit ribbit.

But yeah, it just collapses under its own weight and winds up feeling like a shaggy dog story.
 
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