Why are Japanese people obsessed with the idea of being

They aren't.
It's a short phase in the lives of adolescents where they wonder where all the skills they have gained so far might be actually useful in an environment that is actually appealing to them.

Don't take LNs for the entire width of Japanese literature.

Because they're currently trapped in hell, which is a little bit worse.

Because real life is disappointing.

vg is childish
anime is childish
we are childish
we are loli

>>146181562
Yea just look at the amount of suicides because they couldn't get into that or this high school.

There's what, four, five franchises like this total? Notable enough that I can remember the name? Pales in comparison to the abundance of mecha anime.

Good job picking the crappiest one though. SAO being the exception that's closer to a space opera than anything else (and a poor one at that, maybe because it keeps switching back and forth between "space opera" and "science fiction" without ever settling on one or the other).

Exception aside, I think using a videogame as a setting is a great mechanic, and it's liked for the same reason we tend to like fantasy and science fiction: It lets us explore ideas and explore things we otherwise wouldn't be able to. Log Horizon and .hack are excellent examples of this.

Also American's aversion to serious animated stuff makes the trapped-in-a-videogame or videogame-setting mechanic expensive to produce, but otherwise I think it'd be just as popular if not moreso. There's lots of movies about it.

>>146181538
Good, first answer is the proper one, glad to see it wasn't immediately entertaining a delusional OP.

Because reality in Japan is a dull, gray and depressing grind.

>>146181492

why are Westerners so obsessed with medieval fantasy and blood feud when they can have the real thing by migrating to the Middle East?

>>146181492
How are they obsessed again? There are only, what, three shows that are about being trapped in a video game? .hack, SAO, and Log Horizon. And Log Horizon is technically isekai, though unlike Overlord, it's close enough to the actual video game that it can count.

It's just otakus. Are you not aware that nerds are looked down on in Japanese society even more than in the West? That shit is made for a niche market of mostly the same dudes.

>>146184230
Most people don't think straight to the desert when you say "medieval", at least until you mention the crusades.

>>146184178
Just like the rest of the world, then.

>>146184315
Three popular ones but an innumerable amount of shitty ones

>>146184659
>an innumerable amount of shitty ones
Name them.

>>146184230
Maybe if they still used scimitars instead of AKs and RPGs it would be a good idea

>>146184823
Gate then?