Comments on post #3386452

@joket84 on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-10-21T10:47:59-04:00

i like mean and hated girls in anime!! i would fuck her and cum inside 100 times, then when she gets pregnant choke her to death!! she is real cum dumpster!!

@Algester on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-04-22T05:30:12-04:00

Bonu$ said:

I would not mind if she experienced a "Game of Thrones" style going out party

IIRC she got raped to death and then burned at the stake like a witch...

@Bonu$ on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-04-16T01:25:36-04:00

I would not mind if she experienced a "Game of Thrones" style going out party

@azurelorochi on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-29T04:15:01-04:00

I think what qualifies a "genre" is less about the faithfulness to the definition or even how the trope is being used and more about how prominent said trope is.

A shounen generally will have a boy and a girl hook up at some point, but you don't call them romance, or alternatively you can have an robot story where the robot explicitly runs on magic rather than science but it still would be classified as scifi.

Heck, look at Marvel movies for example. Guardians of the Galaxy features alien using unscientific powers to save the galaxy, but it is set to the scifi aesthetic and the unscientific tropes are simply ignored = is classified as scifi.
Thor features aliens using unscientific powers to save the galaxy but explicitly frames said aliens as being gods and explicitly call their power as magic. It even uses the "magic is only a branch of science we haven't discovered" lampshading. = is classified as fantasy.

"Genre" is more about first impression rather than the finer details.

A story is Isekai when a protagonist(s) is transported to a world different than his own AND the core of the story is how protagonist(s) react to said otherworld differently than his own. GATE is an Isekai despite the protagonists having the option of returning home at any given time, SAO is an Isekai despite them not being physically transported anywhere, the key is that both series emphasizes the protagonists interaction with the otherworld.

@NWSiaCB on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T17:12:13-04:00

XionGaTaosenai said:

I think the thing that defines Isekai more than just the "trapped in another world" plot device, is that the protagonist is lonely and unsuccessful in real life, and getting "trapped" in another world offers them a second chance to be successful. A "good" Isekai then, has the protagonist use this opportunity to better themselves as a person, making the most of their new lease on life through effort and growth on their part, while a "bad" Isekai just lets the protagonist be the same tedious creep they always have been, but somehow those exact same traits are what let them dominate in the new world, with no need for any change in behavior on their part.

So Alice in Wonderland and Narnia can be stories about normal people having fantastic adventures in another world, but aren't Isekai because they don't have protagonists that are in need of a "second chance" in life. Harry Potter, on the other hand, might be an Isekai, albeit one that's targeted to abused children rather than NEETs. All those tedious accidental time travel yarns where a sad-sack engineering student goes back to the Stone Age or whatever and takes over the world using half-remembered physics trivia and whatever crap he has in his pockets? Totally Isekai.

(that last example comes courtesy of Prokopetz)

"By that logic, would Onii-Chan's Done For be an Isekai" Yes.

In Japanese, they actually put "reincarnated in" in front of the "another world". I think the "reincarnation"/"starting another life" part is more relevant to what it really means as a genre. Girls Bravo, (and don't take my statement that it's not isekai to mean it's good), has another world the main character goes to, but it's mainly just to introduce his Magical Girlfriend (which is its own genre, if sort of a forerunner to the kind of thing people complain about in isekais).

If you focus upon that "reincarnated in" part, then stories like Harry Potter do certainly qualify; it just has the added trick of Harry constantly hopping between worlds where he's Britain's old literary overused hero trope - the abused orphan - switching between the wizarding world where he's an instantly popular chosen one by birth, and the "normal world" where he's a sucky nobody that has to live in a cupboard. The switching between the hero and the nobody is actually a really good effect, even if it's kind of the part of the book a lot of people want to skip over to get to the "good stuff". Also, Ultima did something similar, at least for its middle games. The Avatar is just some random dude in Texas who gets called to another world to be the ultimate embodiment of (obviously Christian-inspired) virtue and save their world before going back to a normal life until the next time to save Britania.

By contrast, I'd put Alice in Wonderland more in the Star Trek or Gulliver's Travels or Kino no Tabi zone of allegorical fiction. Alice isn't really doing anything in most vignettes. She meets a crazy person/people, the crazy person/people explain their view on the world (which happens to be an allegory for the way people behave in real life), and then Alice leaves to go meet some more crazy people. Alice isn't solving problems. They aren't really even presented as problems to solve. She's not gaining respect or followers, she's just meeting new people and learning why they do what they do.

@XionGaTaosenai on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T12:15:56-04:00

I think the thing that defines Isekai more than just the "trapped in another world" plot device, is that the protagonist is lonely and unsuccessful in real life, and getting "trapped" in another world offers them a second chance to be successful. A "good" Isekai then, has the protagonist use this opportunity to better themselves as a person, making the most of their new lease on life through effort and growth on their part, while a "bad" Isekai just lets the protagonist be the same tedious creep they always have been, but somehow those exact same traits are what let them dominate in the new world, with no need for any change in behavior on their part.

So Alice in Wonderland and Narnia can be stories about normal people having fantastic adventures in another world, but aren't Isekai because they don't have protagonists that are in need of a "second chance" in life. Harry Potter, on the other hand, might be an Isekai, albeit one that's targeted to abused children rather than NEETs. All those tedious accidental time travel yarns where a sad-sack engineering student goes back to the Stone Age or whatever and takes over the world using half-remembered physics trivia and whatever crap he has in his pockets? Totally Isekai.

(that last example comes courtesy of Prokopetz)

"By that logic, would Onii-Chan's Done For be an Isekai" Yes.

@KillRoB-XV on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T10:44:18-04:00

NWSiaCB said:

SAO isn't technically going to another world, but you can't deny it has all the same trappings of the "isekai genre" you're complaining about, doesn't it?

I suppose it does, but the thing about the "being trapped en-masse in a death game" genre is that the protagonist is surrounded by peers and that he has to work with or against equals instead of NPCs. Kirito (SAO) & Shiroe (Log Horizon) didn't get anything handed to them and had to prove themselves to be better than those around them, and even then they never really became "the hero" or "the chosen one". This seperates them from Isekai, where the competence of a single "real" protagonist (whose realworld knowledge) is highlighted by the incompetence of the NPCs surrounding him.

Shield hero for example threads the line by incorporating elements of the above and by initially withholding the approval an isekai protagonist usually gets, but it later on does a complete 180° and the quality of the story drops significantly from that point on.

Also, the defining quality isn't "going" to another world, it's "being stuck there".

@T34/38 on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T10:32:46-04:00

NWSiaCB said:

(Hell, that would make Star Trek a multi-isekai since they visit so many other worlds...)

That isn't really called isekai anymore. For obvious reasons.

@NWSiaCB on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T10:04:51-04:00

Especially if you're bringing up Alice in Wonderland, though, I again have to say that if you're talking about "isekai" as just the actual act of going to another world, it doesn't count as a genre, just as a plot device. (Hell, that would make Star Trek a multi-isekai since they visit so many other worlds...)

You guys kind of tip off what you think the genre actually is when you talk about how a "bad isekai" has a too-powerful protagonist that trivializes threats. It's not like there haven't been plenty of good stories with overpowered protagonists. (One-punch Man pretty much thrives on it.) It just means the show has to deliver on something other than tension over whether the protagonist will win. (And again, what is Alice in Wonderland doing on this list if we're talking fight scenes? It shows that there's a different understanding of the actual genre than just a 'went to another world' plot device. After all, SAO isn't technically going to another world, but you can't deny it has all the same trappings of the "isekai genre" you're complaining about, doesn't it?)

Overlord's good parts are the parts that have to do with the difference in perspective, where people treat a game world seriously and logically even though it defies any non-game logic. The only really good part of the Raiders of the Tomb Arc (outside the couple pages that took place in the empire) was where the workers were first entering the tomb and wondering at what era the tomb could have come from, since it seemed a haphazard jumble of architecture styles and decorative motifs. In looking up the series on its wiki, I saw there were some stories that are only available as purchase bonuses in Japan, including a story where the guardians find an actual D&D (expy) set and get Ainz to DM a game, where they, failing to understand the intent of the game, take the constant attacks upon themselves as proof that the quest-giving town mayor is actually a demon and set fire to the village.

@KillRoB-XV on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T09:06:35-04:00

NNescio said:

and most of the antagonists are ultimately meaningless in the overall narrative except as speedbumps to show how great Team!!111Super!!11!Elite!!11!!Nazerick is at stomping them.

That is exactly my sentiment. As far as Isekai stories go, overlord is absolute bottom tier. I also wonder about the differences between all of it's versions. Novel, manga, anime, all have slightly different storylines and plot elements that make me wonder if the writer even knows where he wants to go with it all.

@azurelorochi on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T06:21:36-04:00

NNescio and NWSiaCB said:

stuffs

Personally I'd call an Isekai story that is more interested in exploring it's actual world, plot and themes over jerking off the protagonist(and therefore the viewer) A-list. If said plot and themes are also strong enough to stand on itself, of course.

That'd go for Digimon, Spirited Away, Re:Zero or even things like The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland, heck I'm even tempted to include things like the myth of Orpheus into this pile. It doesn't really matter if said story came before or after the term Isekai was coined.

Of course it doesn't mean the protagonist cannot be Mr. Jesus of the story, a modern example I'd give is Dr. Stone(though I'm sure most people don't consider it Isekai since it's technically the same earth in the future), where the protagonist is impossibly smart and spearheads the rebuilding of civilization, but the story still is far more interested in the process of rebuilding civilization and how each individual character is vital to it than just arbitrarily throwing more boobies into the protagonist's direction.

@NNescio on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T02:18:23-04:00

NWSiaCB said:

I guess that depends on what you even count as "isekai", then. I mean, if it's going to be a "genre", it has to mean something beyond just a specific plot device. Murder mysteries have more in common than just that a murder took place; the whole tone of suspense and the detective procedural make it a genre, not just a plot device. As a genre, Narnia might count, but I don't think Alice in Wonderland really does - it's far too surreal and focused upon its own internal logic. It's in whatever genre you put the more out-there Studio Ghibli films into. (Inuyasha is specifically going back in time, not to another world, but considering the superpowers, probably fits in the "genre" if not the literal "another world" part.)

Also, I think there may be a little bit of nostalgia goggles on some of those. Fushigi Yuugi had a really weak ending. ("Oh shit, it's ending, let's kill off all our characters in supposedly dramatic scenes that last like 5 seconds before moving onto the next one so that there's absolutely no dramatic impact to any of it!") Speaking of weak second seasons, Magic Knight Rayearth really had a meandering one. Also, I never watched Digimon, but I'm a little skeptical a first-generation Pokemon ripoff really was that great.

Eh, there's character development, some attempt at fleshing out backstories, world building, etc. IMHO, better than Gary Stu + Horde of Mindless Sycophants + Evil Villains with the depth of a puddle, which TenSlime, Overlord and Tate Yuusha, all suffer from to some degree after a while (albeit less than the other shittier isekais). (TenSlime also has Generic Videogame Fantasy World with unexplained gamelike mechanics syndrome-tis.) And granted, Overlord has some well-rounded antagonists, but they're more like heroes anyway since the main character basically runs Team Villain Protagonist (so the protagonists ARE the villains), and most of the antagonists are ultimately meaningless in the overall narrative except as speedbumps to show how great Team!!111Super!!11!Elite!!11!!Nazerick is at stomping them.

(Maybe it's meant to be existential horror or something showing how a person from our world can slip into debauched evil when the mindset and worldview of a Lich Sorcerous Overlord takes over, but the writing is anything but. After a while [it was better in the beginning], it reads like someone gushing all over how wonderful his BBEG cum DMPC is, oh, and maybe the other PCs who are subordinate to him in the evil campaign. "Look at their ~~kilo~~ PETANAZI-spanning list of atrocities, aren't they awesome!", is what it screams to me. In short, juvenile power fantasy.

Xykon from OOTS has more depth. And is more sympathetic to boot.)

@NWSiaCB on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T02:02:20-04:00

NNescio said:

Older "warped into another world" fiction that existed before the term "isekai" was coined for the genre? like Fushigi Yuugi, Digimon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Inuyasha, Antolia Story (okay, these two are into the past, but still), ~~Zero no Tsukaima~~ (that one got horrible after a while and suffers from many of the same problems as modern isekai... after whichever point in the LN where the anime starts adapting season 2 and onwards). Plus quite a lot of shoujo stuff that I can't recall (girl whisked into low fantasy alternate past or alternate medieval world used to be a very popular genre).

(As for modern isekai works that I think are good... hmm... Re: Zero, for being a serious story that does away with all the suspension-of-disbelief-breaking gamified fantasy world tropes, Konosuba, for relentlessly parodying and deconstructing said tropes, and Hataraku Maou-sama, for inverting the whole genre. No Game No Life is also good, 'though they are some parts I dislike.)

On the west there are classics like the Narnia series, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz. And on the flaming turd end we have the Spellsinger series and all the crap written by Alan Dean Foster that can make shitty modern Japanese webnovels look good in comparison.

I guess that depends on what you even count as "isekai", then. I mean, if it's going to be a "genre", it has to mean something beyond just a specific plot device. Murder mysteries have more in common than just that a murder took place; the whole tone of suspense and the detective procedural make it a genre, not just a plot device. As a genre, Narnia might count, but I don't think Alice in Wonderland really does - it's far too surreal and focused upon its own internal logic. It's in whatever genre you put the more out-there Studio Ghibli films into. (Inuyasha is specifically going back in time, not to another world, but considering the superpowers, probably fits in the "genre" if not the literal "another world" part.)

Also, I think there may be a little bit of nostalgia goggles on some of those. Fushigi Yuugi had a really weak ending. ("Oh shit, it's ending, let's kill off all our characters in supposedly dramatic scenes that last like 5 seconds before moving onto the next one so that there's absolutely no dramatic impact to any of it!") Speaking of weak second seasons, Magic Knight Rayearth really had a meandering one. Also, I never watched Digimon, but I'm a little skeptical a first-generation Pokemon ripoff really was that great.

Likewise, it's not like Inuyasha's villains were driven by much more than "we're youkai, so we're EEEEVIL!"

@NNescio on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T01:21:47-04:00

NWSiaCB said:

Also, saying things like listing those as "B-tier Isekai" begs the question what the "A-tier Isekai" are...

Older "warped into another world" fiction that existed before the term "isekai" was coined for the genre? like Fushigi Yuugi, Digimon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Inuyasha, Antolia Story (okay, these two are into the past, but still), ~~Zero no Tsukaima~~ (that one got horrible after a while and suffers from many of the same problems as modern isekai... after whichever point in the LN where the anime starts adapting season 2 and onwards). Plus quite a lot of shoujo stuff that I can't recall (girl whisked into low fantasy alternate past or alternate medieval world used to be a very popular genre). Oh, and I think Negima sorta counts after the class moved to the Magic World.

(As for modern isekai works that I think are good... hmm... Re: Zero, for being a serious story that does away with all the suspension-of-disbelief-breaking gamified fantasy world tropes, Konosuba, for relentlessly parodying and deconstructing said tropes, and Hataraku Maou-sama, for inverting the whole genre. No Game No Life is also good, 'though they are some parts I dislike.)

On the west there are classics like the Narnia series, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz. And on the flaming turd end we have the Spellsinger series and all the crap written by Alan Dean Foster that can make shitty modern Japanese webnovels look good in comparison.

@NWSiaCB on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-28T01:04:26-04:00

azurelorochi said:

That's a lot of issues with the "B-tier Isekai"(TenSlime, Overlord and Tate Yuusha). They may do much better to make their protagonists more multi-faceted that the other horribad Isekais, but the supporting characters and antagonists are still massively one-note and one-dimensional.

The girls(Raphtalia, Filo, Shion, Shuna, Albedo and Shalltear) hardly have any other role but to sing praises to the protagonist. Raphtalia and Filo only has an edge because they also serve a more vital practical function in the protagonist's quest whereas the females of Overlord and TenSlime can easily be removed and the plot will be exactly the same.

The antagonist(Malty and the miscellaneous forgettable villains of TenSlime and Overlord) are either driven to do evil just for the lulz, or has to constantly be shown just how pathetic they are to the protagonists. It's like all of them serves no further functions than to be strawmen. TenSlime does kinda try to bend Orc Lord and Charybdis to have sympathetic backgrounds, but said motivation was shown so minimally and the fact both spent their arc as mindless rampaging monsters kinda kill the point.

Are you counting the Nazrick underlings as the "villains" of Overlord? Because I found the human antagonists of the main character in Overlord to be more interesting than anyone in Nazrick, at least, for the amount of page-time they could get. In the case of Albedo, however, for much of the run so far outside the Japanese-only novels, Albedo didn't even exist in the web novels, which is why she rather literally has no role in the plot, and the same goes for the Pleiades. Shalltear did exist, but her role was significantly changed. (However, the degree of overhaul was not nearly enough - it leaves serious imbalances in the pacing of the story with the changes made, and the entire "Raiders of the Tomb" arc probably should have been lopped down for being an utterly extraneous Shoot The Shaggy Dog story at this point.)

Also, saying things like listing those as "B-tier Isekai" begs the question what the "A-tier Isekai" are...

@.musouka on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-27T23:31:22-04:00

The web novel was pretty bad by the end even by the low bars isekai set.

@azurelorochi on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-27T23:19:15-04:00

Saladofstones said:

Every scene with her crawls in my crawl, the original web novel was even stupider with her. I don't mind the rape accusation as a means to get things done, I just couldn't care for her when her only motivation is to be as unlikable as possible with absolutely no purpose in life other than that.

That's a lot of issues with the "B-tier Isekai"(TenSlime, Overlord and Tate Yuusha). They may do much better to make their protagonists more multi-faceted that the other horribad Isekais, but the supporting characters and antagonists are still massively one-note and one-dimensional.

The girls(Raphtalia, Filo, Shion, Shuna, Albedo and Shalltear) hardly have any other role but to sing praises to the protagonist. Raphtalia and Filo only has an edge because they also serve a more vital practical function in the protagonist's quest whereas the females of Overlord and TenSlime can easily be removed and the plot will be exactly the same.

The antagonist(Malty and the miscellaneous forgettable villains of TenSlime and Overlord) are either driven to do evil just for the lulz, or has to constantly be shown just how pathetic they are to the protagonists. It's like all of them serves no further functions than to be strawmen. TenSlime does kinda try to bend Orc Lord and Charybdis to have sympathetic backgrounds, but said motivation was shown so minimally and the fact both spent their arc as mindless rampaging monsters kinda kill the point.

@Nerogrip456 on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-19T17:23:36-04:00

cokerpilot said:

I don't downvote comments I respond directly to. Even if I do make a sarcastic remark to them. You advocating from someone to be repeatedly raped by demons and then saying that she deserves it got downvoted by other people who took offense at it.

they should just grow thicker skin, and all she and the "heros" ever did was causing problems and fine if they think that too cruel why don't we just use her as barging chip to some smart but ugly price with powerful armies for an alliance? or a peace deal with a horny demon price so that he's too busy banging her brains out to take command of his armies? at-least that way the kingdom would be safer for 4 to 5 years

@cokerpilot on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-19T16:40:27-04:00

Nerogrip456 said:

was it you who down voted my comment? besides she had it coming, there are after all worst fates than death

I don't downvote comments I respond directly to. Even if I do make a sarcastic remark to them. You advocating for someone to be repeatedly raped by demons and then saying that she deserves it got downvoted by other people who took offense at it.

@Saladofstones on post #3386452 (malty s melromarc (tate no yuusha no nariagari) drawn by aquamarine_(pixiv2077446))

2019-03-19T14:03:51-04:00

Frawnkenstein said:

Started as vile, back-stabbing bitch which is OK for villain.
However as the story progresses, she becomes even pettier and shallower every time she shows up I can't even laugh at her soap drama antagonist antics. I bet she'll die horribly while being denied chance of redemption.

Every scene with her crawls in my crawl, the original web novel was even stupider with her. I don't mind the rape accusation as a means to get things done, I just couldn't care for her when her only motivation is to be as unlikable as possible with absolutely no purpose in life other than that.