There is a thread on /a/ lamenting isekai(a genre where one is

Automatically being able to speak the language is cancer. Special powers are cancer. Being unique in the fact you were taken over is cancer.

>>54057675
It's fine to be the only (recorded) one brought over, but all those other automatic special powers are awful, as is gameification. Using JRPG stats, levels, and concepts are just awful - an adventurer guild is one of the worst fucking tropes. That, and they tend to be EXTREMELY generic settings, the base japanese 'western' fantasy world with it's vanilla elves, vanilla dwarves, vanilla JRPG style magic, it's so fucking repetitive.
Now and Then, Here and There is a good example, I think, though Shu is an oblivious idiot.

>>54057638
Look up the Major Tom threads from April.

>>54057751
>EXTREMELY generic settings

this is the biggest problem with isekai, but how do you fix it? what kind of setting goes well with isekia?

>>54057842
Make one up. You can even use a generic setting, as long as the story itself is interesting enough, but it rarely is. It's usually some guy coming over with some superpower that makes them effectively invincible, either straight away or after a very brief period of time. The story is what matters at the end of the day.
Another thread is asking a similar question, about getting simply cast back in time like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In both, it's someone far outside their comfort zone, and well outside of any real recorded history (save myth). Your best bet is to either have the person have skills from their prior life, or be a quick learner for the setting's own relevant abilities. In a fantasy style setting, you can have them learn magic but apply some modern concepts to it to optimize it. In a sci-fi setting, the classic is something like The Last Starfighter, it's someone who had all the training he needed from playing a very specific video game. As long as they don't get 'chosen hero' powers as a cop-out it can be great.

>>54057638
Does Re:Creators fall into this genre? Because that series is pretty cool. Fate only well written and with fictional characters meeting their creators could make an interesting campaign.

>Isekai where the MC is transported to the Imperium of Mankind

Make it happen, Japan

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>isekai where a knight is transported to modern day Japan

>>54058062
It doesn't. You could call it reverse isekai I suppose. The show has a neat premise but the writing has been otherwise terrible so far.

At the root stuff like Three Hearts and Three Lions or The Wizard Knight are isekai but they're a lot more ambitious in how they go about it than most of the Japanese stuff. Or like, the Harold Shea books are all the same sort of set-up.

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>>54057638
Personally, I'd make the other world gritty as possible.
From the episodes of Grimgar I've seen, they do a damn good job of this. Fighting goblins isn't busy work, it's a life or death struggle for everyone involved, even with their MMO style abilities. The characters struggle to get by and deal with the loss of companions. Power fantasies never really stay fresh.

If I was doing a isekai, I'd have a protagonist dropped into a Darkest Dungeon style situation, where they are obligated to put themselves into deeply perilous situations, having to prepare as best they can for situations they cannot conceivably predict. Comrades are killed, or rendered unable to continue from what they've faced, but the protagonist must press on or face total obliviona and perhaps freedom from this torment.

TL;DR: Just do Darkest Dungeon the anime

>>54057638
Does Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet count as isekai?

Because it's as close to the perfect way to do it as possible, for me.

>>54057638

Here's how you do it.

Start with the reverse. Guy walking home from a movie sees a strangely dressed man looking very uncertain off to the side of the road. Most people seem to be avoiding him, because he looks weird and nervous. Guy is a good person, and stops and ask if the guy is okay.

The hobo just spouts a bunch of gibberish. But our MC is not deterred, because he notices two things: the first is that the gibberish isn't gibberish, even if it doesn't sound like any language he is familiar with there is a certainty and consistency to it that clearly means SOMETHING.

The second is that this hobo has a sword. A real goddamn sword on his hip.

Curious and interested, he leads the hobo to a nearby diner and buys him a meal for which the guy is very grateful. The more he interacts with the hobo, the more certain he becomes that the guy isn't crazy, just lost. They manage to work out a kind of pantomime to get across simple concepts, so communication is possible.

When it comes time to leave, the MC can't convince the hobo not to follow him home, and ends up guilt-tripping himself into letting this hobo sleep on his couch, telling himself its just for one night. But the truth is he is really interested in what this guy's story is.

The next morning he walks into his living room and the hobo is talking to what appears to be a ghost living in his floor lamp, some kind of 'communing with spirits' magic. Actually goddamn magic!

Obviously, he's not kicking out the hobo after that.

>>54058558

Over a period of weeks, they figure out how to talk to each other. The adventurer lives on his couch and watches TV to try and learn more about our world, totally unfamiliar with our technology but a quick learner once he gets the basics down. He is fascinated by our world and standard of living, eating a variety of foods available by takeout that would be fit for nobility back home. He loves to explore our world, which he can do sort of safely as long as he cleans up and wears normal clothes.

The MC asks a lot of questions about the fantasy world hoboventurer comes from, and magic in particular. Apparently the guy got lost in some kind of fairy circle that's based on the phases of the moon, and is pretty sure he can't get back home until the moon is right again.

They become fast friends in that time, the hobo learns rather more english than the MC learns fantasyspeak, and hilarious misadventures are had.

When the time comes for the circle to work again, the hobo loads up on some stuff that will make him rich back home, dons his old clothes, and says his goodbyes.

The MC has been planning for this for half a year, and follows after with a bunch of camping gear, a gun, some mismatched "real quality!" larp armor for protection and some stuff of his own.

He follows after the guy to see the fantasy world for himself and learn magic, and the next arc is the reverse of the first: now the MC is the fish out of water, and the adventurer is the one showing the ropes.

We already had this thread a thousand times.

If you want an example of a good isekai, read Tunnel in the Sky or Alice in the Wonderland or Wizard of Oz. Hell, even Brave New World counts as isekai for all intents and purposes.
Isekai is literally a "stranger in the strange land" plot.

>>54058666

MC knows just enough fantasyspeak from loving with hobo to not get himself killed, but still has a lot left to learn to be fluent and has drastically underestimated how hard living outside of modern comforts is. He tells himself magic is worth it.

The two of them make a lot of money selling modern wonders, and use that to travel to a prestigous magical academy where MC can get taught like a pro, which is actually more than the adventurer has ever actually gotten. Since, you know, poor before now.

MC strikes a deal with the mages to trade his knowledge for theirs, introducing them to concepts like germs and some half remembered science facts he can't prove but they find very interesting anyway. That, and his money, buys him an education.

Which he finds both very difficult and very easy at the same time. On the one hand, he learned to speak their language but not to READ it. On the other hand, he is already literate otherwise and as a BA in something useless he is actually more educated than some of his professors, just not in anything that matters in fantasyland. So his math is better than great, but obviously his history and reading are poor until he picks that up over time.

Meanwhile, word gets around and local nobles start inviting him to dinner. They don't actually realize how special he is, its just a status symbol to have a foreign prince at your dinner events. Everyone assumes he has to be nobility, because he is rich and well fed and wears well made clothes. Over time, as he starts to do more and reveal how useful his knowledge can be, he finds himself becoming a point of contest in local politics. This eventually gets too hot for safety, just after his magical studies finally are starting to pay off, and he is forced to return home in a hurry, his friend saying he will come and visit once things cool down.

But that's not what happens.

>>54058737
we arnt talking about stranger in a strange land type stuff we are talking about the very inbred way that the Japanese to isekai and how to fix it.

I remember really enjoying The Glove of Maiden's Hair back when I was a kid.

I was much too young to realize that it was actually a fantasy fapfic for women. Handsome magical elf ends up trapped in the modern world, where the aging single lady- who's getting on in years- can totally help him and seduce him.

>>54058891
>>54058666
>>54058558

I'm not much for anime but I am digging the shit out of this concept anon!

>>54058891

Instead of ending up back on our world, he ends up somewhere else. A different flavor of magical land. The moon was in the wrong phase.

So now he has to go through all of this again, but less prepared and without a guide this time. But he knows some basic magic now, so that helps a little!

This fantasy land is much 'higher magic' than the previous one, and after he gets dragged before someone important they give him a magic necklace that translates for him. Which helps speed things up a lot, but its expensive and if he wants to keep it he'll have to pay off the debt.

Interestingly, while this new world has more common magic than the last realm, it shares almost nothing in common with what he was taught. The basic magic shit he has only barely learned and was a novice at in the prior world is, here, totally unheard of.

This sets the theme for future arcs. Each arc is a different world, the language barrier glossed over by the necklace from now on. In each world he goes to he learns some trick or acquires some tool that is unique to that place. He never masters anything, but he eventually ends up with a combination of tricks that were never supposed to go together, exploiting combos that other people can't because they haven't been the places he has.

He just wants to find a way back home, or as things get worse at least find a way back to a world where he has friends.

By the time he finally makes it back to earth its been 20 years and he is rolling is power armor with magic items he has built into it or strapped on top, with an increasingly absurd history of shit like fighting aliens or overthrowing ancient godkings. After all of that he is finally home.

The last arc is him trying to find his place in a world that has passed him by, and in many ways he has himself outgrown. He thought he wanted to go home, but is this even home anymore? No one believes he is who he says he is, and he doesn't even know if he should tell everyone magic is real.

>>54058915
Let them do their own isekai stuff as they see fit. They sure as fuck need their power fantasies in their lives that are devoid of individualism and are basicaly feudalism in modern iteration, with lords replaced by corporations.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/

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>>54059029

>>54059068
I read that article.

Shit's insane. I would never be able to handle living there.

>>54058147
The French made a bunch of movies about this already.

As someone who is unfamiliar with this genre, what are the common tropes and themes?

>>54059253

Japanese Isekai usually involves a really bland dude getting thrust into a fantasy world that conveniently follows classic JRPG tropes, up to including a class based system and levelups, either explicit or by another name.

He immediately runs into a waifu that the plot forces to stick with him, and he builds up a party of tagalongs that are going to be at least 2/3rds alternate waifus. While initially useless, he will fall into a seemingly uninteresting skill based class like "thief" that he inevitably proves to be not just competent at, but unlocking some hidden talent or extraordinary skill that only happens to an adventurer once a hundred years or some shit. The recurring theme for this special power is that it usually never works, but when it does it wins you the fight. Aka "and this is how the MC beats boss monsters they he clearly shouldn't be able to beat after all hope is lost".

Sometimes shit stays pretty low level, sometimes he goes on to save the whole world. That part varies, but everything above this line is pretty much a given.

Konosuba remains the best actual Isekai because it takes the piss out of the whole thing. Kazuma is a guy in a harem that he might occasionally perv on but he wouldn't actually fuck any of them with a full body condom. His skill abilities are never what wins him important fights, its his strategies and the fact that if he coordinates his useless minmaxer party they can actually be really good. He steadfastly refuses to leave the starting town, because life is easier there.

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>>54059029

Fuck, that's good.

>>54057638
You can abstain from mentioning the world /at all/ and have an incoherent and inconsistent setting, and get away with it, as long as you don't obstruct the monomyth in the process.

The issue with bad isekai, with most bad writing actually, is that there's no monomyth whatsoever. They don't have stories, just settings.
That's all well and done if all you're just trying to sell self-insertion wankery, but if you're too lazy to build a setting you have nothing to market.

>>54057675
Learning the language is also cancer. Either way wastes space to add nothing to the story. If you make no reference to language at the start, no one bats an eye.
The real issue is automatically knowing /every/ language. It's either lazy world building, or an extension of the whole "cheat power" problem.

>>54057751
>Using JRPG stats, levels, and concepts are just awful - an adventurer guild is one of the worst fucking tropes.
These are also pretty bad, but to Nips that *is* fantasy. Take them away and the setting feels juxtaposed to them.
They'd definitely be better off without them, mind you. The only purposes they serve are padding the word count (which takes away from the story and setting) and "following the leader."

>>54057638
I've had an idea for a kind of Isekai short story that I've been kicking around, but thinking about it it could probably be an interesting campaign if changed a bit.

The idea is that in generic-ish Isekai fantasy land, there has been a prophecy stating that a chosen hero will come from another world and stop the evil of the dark lord and save the world. There are people all around the world who have prepared for years for the coming of the Hero, not the least of which is the Dark Lord himself, who gained his position specifically for the challenge of fighting this prophesied savior. There are people who have trained their whole lives to accompany the Hero, others who pray for the day the Hero comes to free them from tyranny, and all kinds of stuff.

And then on the day of the hero's foretold arrival, he doesn't show up.

And he never shows up.

And the whole world has to figure out what to do when the savior they spent their lives waiting for isn't going to be there to save them.

the working title I've been calling it in my head is Waiting For The Protagonist

>>54058335
>The Wizard Knight
My nigger. I was about to mention that. Yeah, the keys I would say are:
A. Have the protag be a complete fish out of water at the beginning, with even language providing a barrier. Or, at least, give a decent excuse for why they can speak the language.
B. Even once they can communicate, there is still a great deal of cultural baggage they've brought with them to their new home. Play with this, and do it for drama, not just for gags
C. Have people plausibly respond to them telling people that they're from another world/time. Either people should act like they're fucking nuts, or the protagonist should keep quiet about it for fear of people thinking they're fucking nuts.
D. Don't use their displacement as an excuse to have them suddenly start running shit. Of course an average person from our time isn't going to be able to start reproducing modern amenities from scratch. Very few people have the knowledge to build even a gun and gunpowder from completely raw materials, nevermind something like an engine.

Ultimately, keep in mind that being in the past or a fantasy world with modern knowledge doesn't suddenly turn them into a complete badass. They are an average person, completely out of their element, treat them as such. However, this doesn't preclude them from learning how shit in the setting works and BECOMING a badass. They just gotta work for it.

>>54059688
Turns out the protagonist was killed by bandits minutes after being transported to the new world.

are you a bad enough dude to to pretend that your the legendary hero so the world does not lose hope?

>>54059029
Sounds sport of like a combo of John Carter of Mars and Samurai Jack.

>>54059803
Bonus level: it's the bandit who killed him who only realized afterwards that he killed the legendary hero. Not wanting the entire world to kill him je pretends that he is the hero when people come to the prophetic location the hero is supposed to appear. He tries to BS his way through more and more dangerous situations while trying to find a way out of this mess.

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>>54060139
>get back to town after slaying some idiot wandering around the forest.
>the towns having a festival, ohh yea, the legendary hero is arriving today.
>i wonder what he'll be like
>...wait, that guy in the woods who was dressed strangely and had no idea where he was...
>ohh shit

>>54060227
>>54060139
What is Hero of the Imperium for 500$, Alex?

>>54057638
>isekai
NO

FUCK YOUR JAP AND WEEB SHIT

THIS IS PULP.

JOHN CARPENTER, A CONNETICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHURS COURT, ETC

NOT 'ISEKAI'

FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING WAIFUS

>>54060363
It's a specific *subset* of pulp, for which no specific term exists in English, of which Japan is the current primary (almost only) producer and consumer, and we're discussing the Japanese version of the genre specifically. What do you have against loanwords?

>>54061197
>for which no specific term exists in English
It's usually "trapped in another world" but that's kind of a mouthful

>>54059029
Is anyone willing to write this? I would but I don't normally write so it would be shit

>>54058147
I've got Jean Reno on the line.

>>54061667
Fish Pulp?

>>54059391
>but he wouldn't actually fuck any of them
What a fag.

>>54061897
>Fish Pulp?
No.

>>54057638
I avoid anything that would attract weebs. Thus I use tropes from pulp fiction and dime novels. This means using a setting with rich history, giving all characters depth, avoiding folded steel memery, making magic balanced, and not using anything remotely oriental in aesthetic. This means the players are not unique, they are not special or significant in any way. They are lost and confused, marooned in a world they have no hope of truly understanding.

I do not allow the players to perform as if their characters are completely at peace with be separated from everything they knew and loved. If they are unable to list even a single thing or person their character would miss from their home world, I kick them from the group and discard their application. I then drop bread crumbs throughout the world. An aged cell phone sounding off in a dark forest, the computer that one of them used at work, with everything still open from when they left, a television or radio broadcasting a rerun of their favorite show. Nothing is actually useful. There's no signal, no internet, the shows run on repeat, every radio station is the same. They're all just fragments of a world left behind. I'll include pets and belongings appearing at random. I'll give them dreams of their old homes, empty and gathering dust. All of their belongings packed away in boxes they don't remember buying. I'll scatter pictures and letters from loved ones, left for them to find. But whenever they reach out for home, I leave them with silence. The dreams go nowhere, and leave nothing but longing.

But beyond these things, the players are free to march towards their own futures. I just keep everything on the horizon until they need an ending.

>>54061942
It's really more about cowardice.
On the other hand, all the women in his life are insufferable.

He's in a party with 3 That Guys in a campaign run by That GM.

>>54057638
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Stranded_in_fantasy

>>54061942

Eh, its for the best.

He tries to think of Aqua romantically. She is the girl that gets bound to him by the plot, the first one he meets. She should be the heroine. But she is just so fucking stupid and awful he can't see her as attractive.

Megumin is too young for him. Even Kazuma has standards, somehow.

He thinks Darkness is hot, and he flirts with her on occasion, but she has weird fetishes and no self control. Sex with her would get too weird, and the consequences of being in an actual relationship with Darkness are too horrifying to comprehend.

>>54059688
>it's basically RL

>>54057675

this this this this

MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS

THAT IS WHERE THE BEAUTY LIES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42TupUcpxPw

EXPERIENCE YOUR NEW GOD!

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>>54057638
It depends on what is meant by isekai.

If it means "a person from our world is transported to another" then Western Isekai has always been better.

Some good examples of Western Isekai are Farscape or Planet of the Apes, or hell even Fallout 4 are better stories than Gate or Log Horizon.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

1. Western Isekai tends to feature main characters who are soldiers or astronauts or police. Characters that it would make sense for them to have the necessary survival training to live through their rough introduction to an extreme survival situation.

2.Western Isekai is willing to play with the tropes involved in the Fish out of Water scenario. There might be No Way Back, especially if the main character has been cryogenically frozen for hundreds of years. Western productions also tend to steer clear of the cliche settings and depict the main character having difficulty adjusting to their surroundings. Case in point: John Crichton slowly going insane because everything is so alien that he has no frame of reference.

3. There's been a really annoying trend in anime since the late naughties, and not one unique to Isekai either. Anime writers tend to hand the main character an I WIN button right at the start of the story. Death Note did it, so now everyone else has to do it to. The problem with this is that it's not engaging, it's not interesting it creates a boring, invincible hero right from the start. It's just a juvenile power fantasy. Most of the Isekai stories that irritate people tend to fall into this same trap.

I think RWBY did a really good job of deconstructing this idea and showing just how much having an IWIN button like that would suck.

>>54066643

1: Most of those are not Isekai, even loosely. Just ending up in a world you are unfamiliar with isn't a portal fantasy, anymore than going to Europe without a good grasp of the language or a guide is an Isekai adventure.

2: Every single example of "western isekai" you mention is scifi in nature rather than fantasy. You should probably think about that.

>>54066643
>Some good examples of Western Isekai are Farscape or Planet of the Apes, or hell even Fallout 4 are better stories than Gate or Log Horizon.
>Fallout 4

wat.

What the actual. How bad are those that F4 is better than them? That game has a terrible story, bad gameplay and bland graphics. There is no redeeming quality to be had there. As for the fish-out-of-water story, the main character slots into the post-apocalypse as if he's lived there all his life, with very little in the way of reaction to synths, super mutants, deathclaws or the general state of the Commonwealth.

>>54066643
What's your beef with Log Horizon?

Stop making everything about sexual tension.

>>54066868
That there is no season 3

>>54060286
>40kid thinks Cain is the first time this trope has been done

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>>54066917
fuck you and your mother

>>54059029
I like the general setting and structure, but if we're going to forge this into a media empire we're going to need more drama. Heaps of it.

So:
> Where's the conflict in this story?
> Is there overarching theme; some type of through-line for all the worlds?
> Are the two main characters foils for each other, and if so how?
> Is there any type of moral ambiguity to him rising up through the socio-economic ranks by selling garbage from earth?
> How does he feel about trading high school level science for magical knowledge?
> Do his "mundane" earth skills ever give him a demonstrable advantage, IE, doesn't always resort to magic?

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>>54066643
>fallout 4 is a better story than log horizon

>>54060363

There is no real difference, dude. And I mean seriously, John Carter has adventures, badass powers for no reasons, waifus, and all that shit. The only thing he doesn't have are maids, probably.

Personally I think the problem is that usually they're too focused on being comfy. Sometimes literally, sometimes more on the "I'm too badass" variety. I think it's a trap the elevens are starting to evade, at least sometimes. See Zero Kara (which was everything but "comfy") or Grimgar.

Another problem is the generic as fuck setting. The oddest thing is that it appears people don't really give a fuck about THAT, to the point a new Inuyasha (traditional japan fantasy) would kinda seem something new.

Personally I'd go for giving the character(s) other objectives. How about a bunch of college students that are transported there, possibly with parts of their faculty (library, laboratories, power generators) and try to build an industrial civilization?
There is no reason for them NOT to have harem antics with catgirls or whatever, mind you. This can be silly as you'd like it to be.

>>54057963
>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Mah negro

>>54059688

I'd read/watch that.

>>54067163

Good point. I was originally picturing this as a kind of a "You cant go back" theme where the longer he is at this, the more he realizes he is in a position where he can never have everything he wants.

He has friends and family on different worlds. Settling down on one worlds means never seeing the rest again. I could see him ending an arc by being in the middle of a victory party, realizing he is getting too attached to this place, and immediatley ducking out the back and jumping to the next arc because he is afriad that if he doesnt leave now he never will.

That said, there does need to be some kind of throughline. Maybe he realizes there is some kind of multiversal Eldrazi-like threat that no one else knows about, running around eating worlds. Or he crosses paths with another Isekai protagonist that has taken over one world, and has only just realized there are more worlds out there to conquer.

>>54057638
>good isekai
No such thing.

>>54066973
That's a problem with the author, not the story.

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>>54057675
>>54057751
>special powers and being able to speak the language are always cancer

Plebs.

>>54066643
>Fallout 4's story
>better than Log Horizon

Don't be a twat all your life, mate.

>>54059391
>Kazuma is a guy in a harem that he might occasionally perv on but he wouldn't actually fuck any of them with a full body condom.

Explosion End is pretty much confirmed at this point.

>>54067744
>The Twelve Kingdoms
>anything but excellent

>>54067935
>Explosion End
>shagging up with a teenage girl in need of therapy

Seems reasonable.

>>54068070
How old is Kazuma anyway? I got the impression he was like 18 or something and Megumin was like 15

I think the biggest problem with Isekai as a genre is that it's always wish fulfillment for the main character. They're always someone who's into gaming or fantasy, and gets to go into their dream world. Which means they're always quite genre savvy, understand or can at least extrapolate how the world works, and have all kinds of clever ideas as to how to use any powers they get.

If you want to fix Isekai, fix that first and foremost. Throw someone with no interest in fantasy into a fantasy setting. Their only knowledge of elves are that they're those guys who work at Santa's workshop, and they think magic just means card tricks. Go through their struggles to understand this strange new world - ranging from major things like how common violence and death are, to more minor things like discovering toilet paper doesn't exist. Those minor things don't need to be comedic, either: Imagine how you'd react to finally understanding that you'll never get to experience any of the comforts of home you take for granted again.

Obviously since it's Isekai you're going to give them some kind of weird power, but you can play with that as well. They're completely unused to the idea of whatever it is, and have no innate understanding. Everything they do with it has to come from painstaking experimentation, and they regularly almost die because they misuse it or don't think of possible consequences. Any mastery is the result of genuine growth, not just a magic asspull.

Speaking of, that's the most important thing. Have them grow as characters. Eventually they start getting used to this world, and even start to thrive in it. But that has to come later, and they have to earn it.

Oh, and don't give them a harem. Harems are a dead horse.

>isekaii where person with IQ over 70 is transported to anime fandom
wow, that's what I call high concept!

>>54057638
Go read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court. Isekai is best used as a satirical vehicle to highlight the fallibility of myths and demolish the supposed superiority of the culture the main character is from.

Japanese isekai characters as a general rule can't go a minute without reflecting on how much better Japan is. Until they discover slavery is real, that is. The ount of disgust that generates usually sinks that particular story and author.

>>54068147
>They're always someone who's into gaming or fantasy, and gets to go into their dream world.

The Twelve Kingdoms that was mentioned is about a teenage girl being abduced into a power struggle she has to navigate without any guide other than a demon who keeps telling her that she's shit and should kill herself. The world she's in was basically abandoned by the gods after they slammed it with a covenant that will make nations with bad rulers fucking implode and expose its people to various man-eating monsters.

The usual ones make the MC start out with some mundaen skill that's a lot more useful all of a sudden though, yes.

>>54068042
Twelve Kingdoms was epic, at least the first season. I kind of lost interest once it switched focus to Taiki.

>>54068305
I loved Twelve Kingdoms, and I think I may have been channeling it a bit when writing my suggestion. It's exactly what I'm talking about, right down to her own powers fucking her up because she has no idea how to use them.

Also, I loved the touch where the eager fantasy-loving girl isn't the one chosen to be the heroine, and it fucks her up bad.

>>54057638

Vision of Escaflowne is the best Isekai.

>>54057638

This isn't my idea, I heard it on Discord.

The protagonist is a competent guy sucked into a fantasy world. Big-titted sorceresses, elves, game-stats, all that jazz.

Right after he's summoned, someone else bursts into the summoning chamber and kills his party members. The killer is from Earth, and he's roughly Level 200.

As it turns out, a group has ended up in this world before the hero. They've established themselves as god-kings, and they're killing off anyone who might threaten to disrupt their rule. They know all the tricks, because they've done them before.

The protagonist must find a way to get home, because his enemies have an overwhelming power advantage. Worse, they know exactly what he's going to do, because they were in his shoes before.

>>54059029
.....Jumpchain the Anime? Well, we've had worse.

>>54069093

That sounds completely joyless to watch as a series, since there's no solution to the problem.

>>54058552
This. It actually does fit really well.

>>54069093

In that scenario, I cant see how the story lasts longer than 5 minutes. Guy is caught in a situation he has no knowledge of or control over and is immefiatly beset by an unkillable enemy thst wipes out everyone he might have called an ally before he even learns their names.

The big bad being an earlier traveller isnt even new, thats basically the default """twist""" to these stories.

>>54069229

The gimmick is that his class lets him absorb the levels of his dead party members for one fight. So the girls who die immediately add their levels to his, letting him run and hide.

>>54069093
>>54069229

Okay, not that anon but here's a twist: the MC is a total normie who knows nothing about RPG bullshit and totally clowns on the other grognard "travellers" with the twin powers of basic interpersonal skills and common sense.

>>54069210

Not that guy, but I like it BECAUSE there's no solution. Like Strange Dawn or the anime in the OP, sometimes the best you can hope for is to fuck off home and let the other world fend for itself. Just peace out and leave them to it.

Gives the MC an actual reason to want to go home, other than just pointless bitching.

>>54069272

Common sense stops being common if magic actually is real.

Your normie goes into the attic to hide without a candle. It is dark. He is eaten by a grue, because he didnt have enough common sense to beware of common grues.

>>54069263
Oh god, I know that crap, it's Gesellschaft Blume isn't it?

>>54069397

Blume isn't an isekai.

>>54069263

He just got there. How does he have a class already?

If this is thing he can do, if he lasts more than a few days he can effortlessly overpower the former party, he just has to get enough other people to die around him until he is level 3000 and rolls face. One pitched battle of an army of level 1s getting slaughtered and he is good to go.

>>54069263
>Levels as an actual, acknowledged in-show measure of strength
Eugh.

>>54069456

In all shitty isekai, you get a class just for showing up. Getting 3000 people to die for you might be hard, though.

I read the River of the Dancing Gods back in the 80s and I've never been able to take this kind of portal fantasy seriously since.

>>54069456

In Blume, the boost only lasts for one encounter.

>>54061769

It needs more detail, and in order to be done right has to be long as fuck.

What should the progression of worlds be? So far we have:

> Earth
> low magic game of thrones backwater
> high magic fantasy land with common magic items

>?????

> back to Earth after 20 years

>>54069518

It only has to last one encounter.

Lead revolution you know will fail horribly. It fails horribly, but the power boost you get from it lets you kill everyone who needs killing anyway.

>>54069539

What if you only get one of them? Or if you can only have 3 party members?

>>54057638
wow, I've written and erased everything 3 times.

Ah, got it. First, MC's party wakes up with a goal. He doesn't know what world he's in, but he knows he has to do something to obtain a reward beyond returning home. Let's say he needs an elixir to bring back to his ailing sister, nice and simple but not something that needs to be explicitly said until episode 3 or something.

Second, MC's party is alone for a LONG time. Like how a lot of SoL shows are about how the main cast plays off each other, the dialogue will be carried by a group of friends and acquaintances who already know each other but are in a completely different world. Not exactly like grimgar, but they didn't exactly do this part wrong.

Obviously, they'll face monsters. If it's absolutely necessary to have jrpg tropes, they have the gear but not the training. So the third is that they don't panic so much, but at the same time aren't hyper-competent. We don't need deathdark "oh god, monsters are so horrible so I'm just going to let him eat me now" all the time. They gang up on things one at a time, and try to work their way up to actually swinging a sword properly and not like a bat. Magic works, but is entirely trial and error as the magic user has no teacher. Viewers get to see the mage drawing circles on the ground or slowly moving elements this way and that, and they are most certainly learning.

Fourth is that "otherworld knowledge" is not so reliable, and that it can cost you. Sometimes the character just didn't learn the skill well enough yet, other times they need too many tools and manuals due to lack of fundamentals, or the world is simply different: chemistry exists, but the periodic elements don't quite have a 1:1 counterpart. Gunpowder could just fizzle, while a poison or curative becomes TOO strong. And you just feed that in to building the setting. Use the otherworld knowledge to develop the setting rather than overwriting it with modern sensibilities.

cont.

>>54069958
After a whole arc of this, culminating in a proper boss fight, we get....other people. Natives.

And nobody can speak their fucking language.

So we spend some time on that. Easy translation magic is weak, but if you don't want to deal with themes on discrimination and the importance of communication, it's a price that CAN be paid.

Then they find that their otherworld methods of tech and magic are....not too different from established methods. The academe would find them a little young or quick at learning, but that's that. They've got novel ideas and perspectives(if they can even communicate them), but not enough experience with the world and physical materials to apply them in practical environments.

So then they come to a choice: do they go to school, or keep adventuring as they are to accomplish their goal and hopefully get home sooner? Whatever the result, even possibly splitting up, you can continue the story on from there.

>>54061197
Isn't there a very specific word for "temporal displacement fantasy" in Russian?

>>54068523
>Also, I loved the touch where the eager fantasy-loving girl isn't the one chosen to be the heroine, and it fucks her up bad.

I felt bad for her and hoped that she'd return with the black Kirin. But she probably got eaten by that demon he got stuck with it.

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>>54066832
Also way to ignore the meat of the argument and focus on one single statement.

>>54069522

What about a place where the crux of magic is understanding a force intuitively until you can control it. MC has an especially rare affinity for lightning, owing to the fact that being from modern Earth he actually knows how the fuck electricity works.

He mostly uses his Word of Lightning powers to charge his phone and stuff, but ocassionally he can muster up enough lightning to fry some shit.

>>54066643
>Death Note did it, so now everyone else has to do it to.
Didn't Light lose in the end though?

>I think RWBY did a really good job of deconstructing this idea and showing just how much having an IWIN button like that would suck.
And which thing would that be? Can't remember anything that makes the heroes straight up invincible except for that weird superpower at the end of season 3 that's become one of the driving mysteries now and hasn't shown up at all again

>>54059747
Gene Wolfe is the master, no two ways about it.

>>54066756
This is one thing I dislike about all these made up phrases from /a/ is that no one can seem to agree on what they even mean. I was told that isekai means "trapped in another world." Yet you seem to be saying that, in order to qualify as "isekai" the setting must be a straightforward Tolkein pastiche in the style of an Eastern MMORPG.

Does that mean that Escaflowne doesn't qualify because it has science fiction elements?

What about western "Planetary Romance" stories like the Barsoom series or the Martian Chronicles are those Isekai? They are clearly fantasy, since we know for a fact that Mars never had an atmosphere or complex, multi-cellular life and they feature characters from contemporary Earth trapped in these worlds.

>>54059029
>By the time he finally makes it back to earth its been 20 years and he is rolling is power armor with magic items he has built into it or strapped on top, with an increasingly absurd history of shit like fighting aliens or overthrowing ancient godkings. After all of that he is finally home.

I prefer the idea of the MC making it home, but failing to recognise it as anything but another magical world, and people regarding him as a threat. Possibly because he lands in the middle of buttfuck nowhere in Africa.
Or WW3 happened while he was away and the world's completely unrecognisable.

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>>54057638
>elevens

>>54057842
Dark Sun

>>54064419
Worthless weak-bodied middle-class wastes of space stranded in fantasy land is one thing. It'd be interesting to see what'd happen with people who actually work for a living and have practical skills getting dumped there.
I mean, I'm USED to lifting heavy shit and walking miles in a day, and so are all the people I work with.

Or maybe a party stumbling across the fact that they WEREN'T the first to get put there, and that a bunch of real-world peasants ended up there first, and just sort of carried on doing peasant things because crops and cow shit haven't changed in centuries.
'I followed my goats through a sparkling doorway and ended up here. Abdul is going to be mad because I won't return the goats to him, but I guess now they're my goats'.

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>>54072247
>WWIII
Oh my god. I'm back. I'm home. All the time it was...
We finally, really did it.
YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

>>54058335
>The Wizard Knight
>little boy gets raped by a transdimensional horror and sent to deal with other transdimensional horrors
>he never managed to get over it and grow up, in spite of having a decade or two of his life stolen from him in an instant by the transdimensional horror that raped him

It was a pretty dark series.

>>54059029
The only problem I see is magic working in our world. Evolution is a bitch and if magic actually existed those who have access to it would have killed everyone else.

And no you don't get a free pass just because you fell in from another universe. Because if we start engage with things like planar bubbles things will become really strange.

Hey, even if most examples of the genre suck, there have to be a few good ones, right? It's basically portal fantasy as anime.

What are some good examples of isekai anime?

Also, I'd love an anime based on the Magicians trilogy (preferably following it more closely than the Syfy show) or Zelazny's Amber series.

>>54057638
Definitely my favorite fantasy sub genre. I loved Sword of the bright lady, Lord Conrad's Time Machine and others.

>>54069491
I think it could be done okay but then you need to show how alien is the world around the character. Soon he will find out that there are no atoms, things exist as some kind of weird whole objects progressing from one state to the other and so on.

>>54072891

Magic has to work on Earth at least a little, otherwise the story literally cannot function. Travel to and from Earth would be impossible.

Maybe we used to have magic but it died out. Maybe, upon returning to Earth, he realizes we DO use magic we just dont realize thats what we are doing (aka: technology is our magic which is why so few other places have anything like it).

>>54072941
Some mentioned Konosuba, but that's a parody. Maou-sama is decent, but it's a comedy and a reverse-isekai.

I'd like to be able to mention Kumo desu ga, but that's not an anime and it dropped the ball really hard halfway through for me.

Fuck, I can't really think of a good one that plays it straight.

>>54073077

Oho.... divergent anthropic principals.

So okay. The Anthropic Principal says that we dont exist because we lucked into a universe that randomly ended up being able to support us, but rather that the universe exists the way it does because life is there to see it.

In that case, you could explain different worlds and different laws of physics as all being multiple choice answers to the Anthropic Principal. The only thing that has to be true in all of them is thst humans, or humanlike beings, exist there to observe it.

So thats why each world has very similar effects and natures, even if the underlying rules and important specific details can drift from world to world.

This solves the 'how does magic work between worlds' question too. The pov that defines whether magic is real and how it works isnt impartial, you carry your own rules with you. The universe conforms to what you know to be true, to a degree.

>>54072941
>>54073134
Alright, Thermae Romae is the only legit good thing I can think of, and that's a time slip.

>>54058147
>Isekia where Mohammed is brought to japan
Its a lolicon hentai

>>54073302
The Germans made a loli porn game based on Mohamed coming to Germany, did they not?

>>54057638
Go read Release That Witch. It's not great but it's still the best isekai you'll find on novelupdates.
tl;dr Chinese engineer dies and wakes up inside the body of a murdered prince, armed with the entire textbooks he's memorized thanks to the weaponized autism of the Chinese education system, and engages in a war of succession with his siblings
No RPG mechanics, no adventurer's guild, no generic elf/dwarf/catfolk stuff, and no fucking harem because the author's wife put her foot down.

>>54073250
That's the Strong Anthropic Principle which nobody believes in earnest. The Weak Anthropic Principle is just that we did luck into a universe that randomly ended up being able to support us but that intelligent life will always observe itself to have lucked into such a universe because they wouldn't be around to observe if they weren't.

>>54057638
I like this genre and always wanted to run a game under that premise.

I don't know that I'm up to accurately simulating the effects of gunpowder, the printing press, distilling etc and new concepts like democracy to a fantasy setting.

Mostly the hard science parts, about just how hard it is to establish a tech base in a fantasy world. I know some, but I don't think I've got a handle on enough to keep more tech savvy players from bending what is and isn't doable to run roughshod over the setting.

Mostly I really enjoyed the culture/technology clash and people struggling to keep things together with massive cultural upheaval. The 1632 series is great for this, even if it's got no magic.

Go read wandering inn and realize random free internet stories beat the crap that gets printed in japanese.

>>54073109
>Travel to and from Earth would be impossible.
Actually no it will be possible.

It just that scouting landing position would be problematic. Supposedly you could breach the universe boundary with magic from one side and with technology from the other. It's like throwing stones. One side uses hand throw and other some machine. In the darkness.

>>54073480
If it was any good, we probably would have heard about it already

>>54057751
As worthless and shounen as it might be, Zero's Familiar had a pretty good setup regarding the world-travel.

At one point they have a big reveal that, actually, plenty of people from Japan have come to that world in the past, they just blended in and never told anyone. The curiously Japanese maid turns out to be the granddaughter of a WWII pilot who accidentally flew into the magical realm when whatever crazy planetary alignment happened during his patrol.

>>54073480
>read first chapter
And dropped. This shit reads like it was translated and rewritten from a Jap LN. Stinks just the same except it isn't full of grammatical errors like most TLs.

>>54059029
I love this especially the ending bit of just trying to fit back in after 20 years.

Imagine someone who left earth in say 1987 and comes back in 2007. He would have gone from Cold War to the birth of widespread use of the internet. Fucking insane.

>>54072891
Nah, just make magic require some sort of spiritual or divine touch by an individual, onto another individual to allow the learning process to even start. Our world doesn't have magic because either our our world has no gods or the god(s) of our world decided to not to bless us with it.

Hell, this could open up an arc where the MC gives magic to another world that is completely mundane.

>>54073513
Nobody knows about anything in the western web fiction scene because theres no major forum to discuss them in.

>>54073571
Read the LN instead of watching the anime. At some point it's revealed the Kursk was transported there.

>>54073584
You do understand that if you inject magic in our world it gets to interact with our physics and shit really hits the fan?

You are falling in the same trap most isekai stories fall where things work in one instance but not in the other only because author says it to be so.

>>54073376
Don't make it hard science, keep it soft and reasonable to a layman's perspective, you don't need to impress any professors with your setting.

However, don't make the inhabitants of the setting complete retards as certain manga/anime do (like not knowing fucking crop rotation or hand pumps).

>>54073571
Everyone and their mother want MC cock in that, I couldn't stand how Henrietta or whoever it was got so obsessed with it she becomes retarded.

>>54073582
Never try out a story by the first chapter always start with a side story that doesn't focus on the main character.

A lot of published authors have shit tier books for the first in a series, just look at the early dresden files books.

>>54071928
Yes, and that's what makes Death Note good.

Death Note is a story about a man given the divine power to kill, how he is slowly corrupted by that power, and ultimately how that power leads to his death. It's a classic tale of the corrupting influence of power with some novel (extremely so by Japanese standards) twists.

The issue is that most people don't realize this and just want to see their husbando/fantasized self take his I WIN button and beat the story over the head with it.

>>54073742
>Death Note is a story about a man given the divine power to kill, how he is slowly corrupted by that power, and ultimately how that power leads to his death
>how he is slowly corrupted by that power
>slowly
Nigga, did we watch the same show?

>>54057638
I think my favorite sub-sub genre of this is when a whole group/community is transported ideally with the equipment/resources to get a jump start on rebuilding infrastructure. Like Ring of Fire or The Destroyermen.

Instead of having the setting have a few years to get used to stuff like muskets and cannons, they've got to deal with that shit pouring in in the first months and steam engines, then combustion engines then flying machines and radios before they've had time to stop shitting themselves over riffled muskets.

>>54073777
Well he did spend a couple of minutes thinking about it.

>>54073657
>You do understand that if you inject magic in our world it gets to interact with our physics and shit really hits the fan?
Depends not only on how magic is defined in the setting, but also whether or not all worlds share the same rules for both physics and magic. I've seen settings where magic was just entirely separate from physics because magic and settings where magic was an inherent part of physics, it all depends.

>You are falling in the same trap most isekai stories fall where things work in one instance but not in the other only because author says it to be so.
Every story ever written does this to some extent, the trick is finding an explanation that satisfies the reader's suspension of disbelief.

>>54073777
>>54073789
Probably shouldn't have used slowly there, true, but my point stands, it's a show about the corrupting influence of absolute power and the tyranny that comes from it.

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>>54058558
relevant

>>54073850
>I've seen settings where magic was just entirely separate from physics because magic and settings where magic was an inherent part of physics, it all depends.
It can't be completely separate because it interacts with the world in different ways. If you can't affect magic through physical world things become really weird due to one sidedness of interaction.

Stories just ignore that.

>>54067235
It easily is.

>>54073777
>>54073789
Doesn't Death Note take place over seven years though?

>>54067708
I like the idea of another "Isekai" er being the antagonist. The rest of the story seems like an intensely personal story, so making the villain a person who can act as an ideological foil strikes a chord in me. Maybe the first time he only encounters the after effects of his foils handywork in the world? It would be a great contrast that the first 2 or 3 jumps he'd be accepted with open arms to set a pattern. The next jump could have him be vilified due to the actions of his foil.

Could "how do we encounter the Alien" be the basic thematic throughline?

lol, I like him jumping out to another world as part of his "dark and gritty middle chapter"

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YA'LL NIGGAS READY FOR THE WORST SHIT POSSIBLE?

>>54059633
>These are also pretty bad, but to Nips that *is* fantasy.

If that's really the case, it really shows how influential vidya and ttrpg's were over there for it to warp their whole perception of western style fantasy. Which is pretty interesting since Moorcock and Tolkien were adored, Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone specifically. Like, one of the things I like about Daicon IV is how it's basically a huge time capsule and love letter showing everything that Japanese nerds loved in the early 80s.

>>54072891
>>54073109
Anons, the answer is simple. Magic *is* real on Earth. It's just all used by either Charismatic Christian types, Internet meme magicians, or child-molesting/murdering Luciferian cults that run the government.

Incidentally, the latter quite possibly provides an antagonist for the initial Earth arc of the story.

You know, as long as he avoids getting murdered by Hillary Clinton's crew of hitmen, anyway.

>>54073891
I'm pretty sure Light was sociopathic from the very beginning, and the power he was given just allowed him to reveal his true colors more openly.
Light is basically Patrick Bateman if Patrick Bateman's delusions were actually real.

>>54074037
Yeah, but the first arc ends with Light attempting to assassinate L for "daring to challenge the God of this new world" and he'd only had the Death Note for like a month tops.

>>54067882
Isn't Three Hearts and Three Lions technically a double-reverse isekai since the protagonist is actually Ogier the Dane in that world?

>>54074109
>build a nuclear reactor
Whooo boy.

>>54057638
The guy sent back in time is actually an old guy instead of a kid. Rather then going out adventuring cuz he's too old for this shit he sells his wrist watch and gets enough money to open an inn. The story is all about some sixty year old guy learning how to adjust to his new life and teaching valuable life lessons to adventurers. There's no prophecy or nothing, just an old guy using modern reasoning to solve problems.

>>54074280
I really like this idea.
Bonus points if he sets up a still for his inn for cheap booze, and accidentally creates major waves in setting.

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>>54057638
Isekai but the protagonist is a child soldier straight out of a brutal civil war

>>54074518
>Brutal violent world
>And one more brutal violent child solider
>this causes no changes
Eh. Sounds boring to me.
The thing I like about he genre is introducing new technology and ideology to a fantastic setting and watching the changes.

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>>54073947
well, fucking up physics and field interactions could be a good twist to the story

>MC decides to try some shit, links the two worlds longer than needed for [reasons], thus merging part of the two universes
>the electric grid becomes sentient because is now powered and run by a flux of hiveminded elementals, and so is every transmission of data in the world. Computers, smartphones, servers, tv and radio broadcasts now comprise the elemental flux mind
>an AI God is born, and it's 80% made of porn and inane social media bullshit

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>>54060139

>>54059747
This reminds me a little bit of RE:Zero.
The main character is a shitface who fucks up all the time, most of the people there think he's crazy.

>MMO Isekai
>Protagonist attained a class/race which can only be gained highlander style
>Absolutely paranoid as fuck that someone's going to kill him for the class
>Doesn't know whether he'll ever re-spawn or just die for good
Bonus points if it's something obvious which makes blending in absurdly difficult

>>54074604
I honestly really like it.
An electro-sex god. With minor domains of memes, social networking and occasionally news.

The MMO Isekai have gotten so out of hand lately I'm surprised we haven't seen one with the mmo gm/admin as the protagonist with his admin menu powers.

>>54074593
>a world of heroism and adventure
>and an incredibly fucked up individual with lethal skills
>plenty of drama and conflict

I just wanna see a noble paladin try and explain chivalry to someone who saw their mom get raped with a machete ok

>>54074804
>fake news

>>54074060

Honestly, I can see a bunch of good themes here.

How do we encounter the alien? Check. But, over time, this could become a sort of "what do I do with all of this power?" problem. So through virtue of being an isekai protagonist, you end up with the power to throw down evil emperors and change the after of worlds and shit. Yes, you can do this because you are powerful. But what gives you the right to make that call as an outsider who showed up 5 minutes ago and knows fucking nothing about the context of whats going on?

As for the antagonist, the more I think about it the better a foil he can be.

> come across eldritch monster threatening a world. Slay it with your friends, thinking its a local problem.
> its not. See another one on a later world, winning a fight against some army that is trying to kill it. Step in and help them with lessons learned from fighting the last one.
> You make friends with the army, and find this isn't their only problem. They are being invaded by not just monsters, but some extraplanar empire they are blaming the monster attacks on.
> Motherfuckers. Gotta stop that shit.
> This is what leads him to his first confrontation with Isekai antagonist, conqueror of worlds
> For a long time it is played off as the other guy being a greedy, powerhungry fuck. But while that IS true, its not the whole story
> Isekai antagonist is taking over worlds and forging an empire in his image to try and provide a unified resistance against the eldritch horrors. None of the worlds individually know the monsters exist until they are already there. Unless you are a traveler, you don't know the real danger they represent
> Join me, fellow Isekai protagonist. You're the only other person in this multiverse who understands the importance of what I do! Its for their own good. You HAVE to understand why I have to make these worlds bow to me!
> You have to...

>>54074942
Exactly.

>>54074819
Give Natsunokumo a try.

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>>54075262
I'm not sure I'd like a story with "what do I do with all of this power?" as the theme for the second half of the narrative. I think it has the potential to be really powerful as a closed in and personal theme about the making and losing of relationships. I'd push for a narrative that would serve to highlight this as the Protagonist moves through the worlds.

I think the themes and plot would tie closer together if the main ideological divide between the two Isekai's revolved around the theme of making and breaking of relationships. For example, the Protagonist spends the back half of the series looking for home, while the Antagonist spends it trying to force all worlds to be "Home" by forging them into one multi-universe spanning empire.

The antagonist doesn't even have to "win" all his conquests. The first world that rejects the antagonist could have been scared via Phariac victory against the antagonist. This would serve to keep the Antagonist and by comparison the Protagonist grounded because there are things out there that can be a credible threat.

>>54069522

> Earth. Starting point.

> First world. Low fantasy. Important contribution is getting the basic and most down to earth version of this story done, while teaching the MC the basics of surviving in these kinds of worlds. Learns some basic primitive magic, like talking to spirits (doesn't work on all worlds, not all worlds have spirits) and lighting small fires. Part of talking to spirits is weaving protective charms against the supernatural to keep the spirits you call from fucking you up. After the political shit comes down on him hard (maybe he kills someone important with that gun he brought from Earth and has to run) he gets lost in the fairy circle.

> Second world. High magic land with a focus on magical item crafting. Whats worrying is that he can't find the fairy circle afterwards. This is where he gets the translation amulet that glosses over future language barriers so we don't have to do that again every single time. They don't have spirit magic even though they do have some kinds of spirits, so his simple tricks are seen as new and unique. He finds a patron willing to support him and his projects, and manages to find references to otherworld theory in their library. using these old notes, he convinces his patron to help him build a planar gate back to Earth. As the man who opened trade with another world, he'll be rich and famous when he gets back home! On this project he learns a bit on how to infuse items with magic. The gate explodes on its first test, sending the entire workshop through the aether and into world 3.

>>54068305
Ctrl-F "Covenant"
:(

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>>54057638
All the best isekai start with a classified ad.

>>54076618

> Third World: epic fantasy adventure land. MC and his workshop materializes in the sky and falls to the ground. MC almost dies. Everyone else who was int he room with him DID die, the protective charms from world 1 somehow kept the magical energy from killing him, but the fall fucks him up badly. He gets found and healed by a group of adventurers coming back from a quest, and joins up with them. He gathers as much of his planar gate that he can, and they loot the remains of the workshop for stuff to sell.
> On this world he has to work to earn his keep, so this is the first world where he actually learns to fight. He goes on adventures with his new friends, and uses the money to work on his planar gate some more to see if he can get anything useful out of it. They find him really useful to keep around at first because of his ability to make magic items, and over time he voltrons himself up with magic trinkets to cover his shortcomings, in addition to learning some basic healing magic.
> He eventually manages to jury-rig his former gate into his new gadget infused armor as a sort of jump rig. It takes a lot of power, but its stable enough to send him somewhere else, albeit he still has no idea how to aim it at a given world. After he gets attached to his new group, tragedy strikes as they get confronted by a powerful beast that mops the floor with them. In an act of desperation, he saves his friends by closing into close combat with the beast and activating his jump rig. He and the beast go for a ride. He survives, the beast does not.

And that I think is the bare minimum needed before he can start going on real adventures. By the end of world3, he has some tricks he can combine, the ability to slowly upgrade his options over time (magic infusion), some combat skills so he can handle some fights, and the ability to heal so he doesn't have to WIN every fight. Without these, he wouldn't last long on his own traveling other worlds.

>>54076409
>while the Antagonist spends it trying to force all worlds to be "Home" by forging them into one multi-universe spanning empire.

I can see it now.

> In the middle of the fight against the antagonist, MC stops to mumble a spell and heal himself.
> Antagonist's jaw drops as he hears it.

"where-Where did you learn that spell? TELL ME WHERE YOU LEARNED THAT FUCKING SPELL!"

> Antagonist spent a long time looking for home and never found it before he became what he is now. Part of spreading out and conquering is making everyplace home, but there is no small part of it that hopes the next world will be his own.
> The MC passed through the Antagonist's home plane in an earlier arc.

I should state for the record that I would never DROP the focus on leaving things behind and relationships. I just think that with a narrative like this we can have concurrent themes. And should, even. Not everything can be about searching for home and moping about leaving people behind, though that is a strong emotional core to the character.

Whatever the focus, the antagonist Isekai needs to be seen as a 'there but for the grace of god go I'.

>>54076789
My nigga

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>Isekai thread
>no mention of most thought out and comfiest ever written.

<= No waifus, no speech, no opposable thumbs blinding boss with coke&mentos main villain is fast food chain ruining local shops.

>>54072647
>TFW you will never get kidnapped by a fairy queen to be her nubile boy slave, violated repeatedly, literally get turned into a man with magic, get violated some more, then get brainwashed to be a political pawn in a centuries long game of inter-planar warfare
Why even live

>>54077512

What this is?

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Reminder that the only good overpowered isekai is comedy isekai where the MC doesn't pointlessly hide his powers forever.

More magic power than a god and he does stuff like get into a fistfight with a frogman and builds the internet just so he can blog and shitpost

>>54059029

Write this story now. Please.

>>54078532
You could always run it as a quest

>>54078532

Can't. Getting a shitty space opera out of the way first.

Maybe after that, though. Its actually a pretty fun idea.

>>54060139
There's already one like that, Yuusha ga Shinda.

Not Isekoi exactly, but follows the same motif

>>54078607

The more I think about it, the more I realize I'm pretty sure this has to be a comic or something. Some format with a visual medium.

Unless you can SEE the difference, the different blends of fantasy world are going to bleed together for casual viewers. We appreciate the difference between various flavors of magical settings, but for a casual audience the differences would have to be much more extreme to keep things from all being treated as the same.

>>54078693
Yeah, I agree, maybe even to the point of needed different visual styles for each different world.

>>54057638
Make the protagonist someone it makes sense would be chosen to fight against some evil force.

Instead of being a fantasy loving nerd, a first pick hilariously athletic wrestler, a hick Texas Ranger and a Navy SEAL end up in this fantasy world.

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>>54057638
>There is a thread on /a/ lamenting isekai(a genre where one is transported to another world, most often a swords and sorcery fantasy world)
I'm unfamiliar with the term, but I've always felt that the sort of thing your describing diminished the world. I like a strong, self-contained reality where everything fits together, and it seems like the need to link it to our world is some kind of cheap fan service to help folks who can't fully commit to fantasy better relate to this alien world they might otherwise find it hard to understand or care about.

There is inevitably a clash of paradigms where the fantasticality of the other world comes across as silly and stupid when viewed in the context of our scientific reality. I'm perfectly willing to suspend belief when it comes to a different reality with different fundamental laws, but trying to reconcile it with our reality creates problems. Cool magic becomes stupid superstitions like astrology. Mind you, there's a good way to do magic and mysticism in our reality, but it's not waving hands and chanting as you read from magic scrolls and shit like that, which is how it invariably seems to work in the fantasy world in these sorts of crossover stories. It needs to be more mysterious and maybe even directly perceptionist to work with our more ordered reality.

And then there's the tendency to have the person from our world kick ass in the fantasy world, which makes little sense and only serves to diminish my respect for the fantasy world. It's like "Oh, I thought these were fierce and scary monsters, but never mind; if some schmuck from our world with no history of dealing with shit like this--and often no rationale for or history of athletic or martial prowess--then they obviously aren't that impressive after all."

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>>54078851
Not a roadie?

>>54078955
A profession filled with guys in fairly bad shape and drunk as fuck?

>isekai
>ever good
I'm sorry, most of muh cuntry's fantasy is basically that and it's steaming pile of garbage; it's just a never ending wank for adult losers.
пoпaдaнцы

>>54078317
>I Reincarnated Into a Vending Machine
Guy dies saving vending machine from truck and reincarnates as his true passion in typical fantasy world.
Rest of the story is him trying to do stuff without hands or legs, without mouth and having to use money to function. Everything is surprisingly well thought out and consistent.

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Isekai =/= bad

>>54057638
An Isekai where the protagonist is an idealist transported to an Orwellian dystopia.

>>54057638

Got a link to the thread, or even the archived version?

>>54079065
The last couple years have had some pretty good isekai with Grimgar, Log Horizon, Konosuba, and Re:Zero. That one sucked though

>>54079144
That's almost the plot to Demolition Man

>>54062073
>I use tropes from pulp fiction and dime novels.
>This means [...] not using anything remotely oriental in aesthetic.

Pulp was chock full of oriental aesthetics, though mainly pertaining to "evil Chinaman" characters such as Fu Manchu, et cetera.

>>54079265
The recent surge in it has made it less appealing, I think.

>re:zero
>good

Yeah, no, the MC in that one is just too awful.

>>54079485
Aside from isekai there's also been a pretty big surge of that really similar pseudo-genre of fantasy where everything works like video game logic which doesn't really help.

>>54076742
Thomas Covenant is a dork crybaby rapist.
>>54076789
First book was best. I prefer The Dragon and the George myself.

>>54079265
u wot m8? Evil Loli Hitler was pretty good.

>>54079684
I dropped it after the first episode. I might have liked it more if the main character was the antagonist, but the character designs were also really off putting to me

>>54079684
It really wasn't.

The twist that shes actually a grown man didn't change the fact that nearly everything done was borderline retarded and it was just in the end another loli military series and a wanky one at that.

>>54079697
Understandable. I saw a lot of complaints on /a/ about the designs, which were apparently the original author's idea to discourage waifufags. As for Tanya, try watching episode 2, might make her a bit more tolerable.

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>>54057842
Japs already did this

Modern military goes into parallel universe full of mythical beasts

All I would change is toning down the magic a ton, and making the alternate universe into more of a grimm fairy tales kind of place. Military patrols go into woods, encounter fey, and disappear completely not a bullet fired. Tank gets haunted by a ghast and has to be excorcized in a ritual before it's safe to crew it again, harpies offer to work for the military as scouts and then lead convoys into goblin and ogre ambushes in the mountains.

As a narrative twist write the scenarios out so they provide some kind of moral guidance/life lesson in retrospect, just like grimm fairy tales and aesop's fables do.

IIRC /tg/ did something like this as well, except it was nazi's who left for asgard or whatever and was run as part of a quest thread.

>>54079765
>twist
Yeah, those second episode shockers, really came out of left field. And everything else you said is your own dumbass opinion, which you should keep to yourself.

>>54079775
Even if it was to discourage waifufags, as someone who really hates little girl military shit it was still really bad. It might have had some redeeming qualities (I mean hell, Maria the Virgin Witch had some amazing fights despite being complete dogshit), but finding out the sociopath little girl is actually a sociopath adult man wont really improve it to me if that's what it is.

>>54079838
Is this the only defense lolicons have for their shit series?

>>54058147
>isekai where a roman bathhouse architect is transported to modern day Japan

>>54079917
Is that even isekai at this point? I think that just enters the more broad "fish out of water" genre

>>54079860
I wasn't aware military little girl shit was widespread enough to warrant its own genre, so to speak. I meant seeing how Tanya became, well Tanya and her conflict with Being X might make her more tolerable, but I guess the show just rubs some people the wrong way.

>>54079864
Wow, you're so inbred you don't even know what lolicon means. Here's a hint: enjoying a show with a young female character a lolicon does not make. Do your part to clean up the gene pool, and kill yourself.

>>54079917
Ha, I remember that one. Was pretty good.

>>54080061
>More tolerable
>Annoying fucking atheist mouths off to god and god for some bizarre reason decides to make this annoying shit its all important player
>Atheist for some unexplained reason is made a little girl and lives in a universe white little girls are put in the military and she somehow ends up being a military y commander.

>>54080061
>I wasn't aware military little girl shit was widespread enough to warrant its own genre
It's part of a long chain of "deconstructing" (but not really) the magical girl genre that's been going on for at least a decade

>>54079824
That's actually still running on /qst/, I think.

>>54058544
Grimgar did the character aspect and reality of adventuring really well. It didn't feel like a power trip and it played out how i'd expect it to play out if something like that were to actually happen and because of that i never trully felt like the characters had a "hero license" so to speak. Made the show really good if not a bit slow at times.

>>54080288
Frankly Grimgar could have been any kind of shitty, but if it still had those watercolor backgrounds I would have watched it, but it really did like its take on the genre

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>>54080110
She gets put into the military because of PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER

She gets such a high rank because war nerd+super salaryman sociopathy/relentless work ethic

>>54080575
She's also ten.

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>>54080652
If a blind man can has a perfect batting average, he's gonna get recruited

>>54080702
Yeah because hes a grown man.

She's a ten year old little girl.

>>54059688
One of the mentor characters who died early on should be a guy who learned of the prophecy only after the bad guys killed everyone he knows. Instead of following everyone else's beliefs he just said "fuck the prophecy, I'm gonna kill as many evil bastards as it takes legendary hero or not"

>>54059688
Godot Falls would be a good name too and a neat reference

>>54080738
Is there a war going on? If it's big enough they'll manage to bullshit some way of getting her in early
Probably something along the lines of faking documents

>>54080575
what the hell is up with those eyelashes?

>>54066314
I loved that game

Isekai where the protagonist is transported to a world of PURE FUCKING SUFFERING.

Like Berserk's world.

The kind of world that makes the protagonist wish to go back home and deal with bullies, depression, social difficulties and unfulfilled desires, because at least it's better than crying yourself to sleep wondering whether you'll wake up as yourself the next morning or whether you'll wake up as a shambling horror chewing on the guts of your fellow villagers.

>>54066643
On the subject of Japan and the problem with I WIN buttons.

Saitama in One Punch Man.

Became a hero to have bloodpumping fights that drag on forever like you see in comics and cartoons.
Ended up becoming the ultimate hero - as in, there's nothing in the universe he can't end in just one punch.

>>54072941
Overlord

But you have to read the light novels and browse /a/ threads for extra special secret stuff because the anime is shit and just showcases the LMAO OP MC in a shitty way I think

And even then it's only 'ok' and that's because it's like a bizarro cross between themes of One Punch Man and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and yes, standard shitty isekai JRPG tropes.

You know what, forget I said anything.

>>54083056
>The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
Isn't that the one where the main character thinks "Hahahahahahah, this is a dreaaaaaaaam!" and rapes the first woman that comes his way, and his entire adventure as a world-saving hero he has to deal with that weight?

>>54083046
One Punch Man is a parody of the genre.

>>54073658
>>54073571
3 good episodes establishing the setting then it freefalls into utter shit before the end of the first season. Still have no idea how the fuck it got a sequel, let alone 3 of the fuckers (jk it printed money.)

>>54083209

Pretty much.

At the start of the book he has leprosy, and is essentially a bitter misanthropic pariah, who has lost most sensation in his extremities (hence why lepers tended to... rot).

After entering the Land, he's suddenly cured and filled with vigor - and *obviously* it's all a dream, and the beautiful maiden he sees bathing, and the sudden restoration of his libido is just a part of the dream...

>>54073341
>fucking harem because the author's wife put her foot down.
God bless you, angry Chinese matriarch.

You know what I want to see? An Isekai story where the main character's special power is a respawn mechanic. And that's it. No other abilities, no improbable combat skills, no harem of powerful and beautiful women. Just an ordinary teen stuck in strange new world, completely out of his depth, armed with only what he acquires between each death.

>>54085199
Re:Zero fits that bill, but the MC is dumb as a brick and the characters often act like a baffoon.

>>54085385

I couldnt make it through that show. He was just too fucking stupid.

It takes him like 5 goddamn lives to graps the concept of "All of this is repeating every time I die. Its ALMOST like time rewinds. Whichs means thst bad thing that killed people before... uh... it will... UHHHHH..."

Its still going to happen, you stupid fucking peice of trash. God, why is this so difficult for you?

>>54067304
>How about a bunch of college students that are transported there

MC:
Young academician lecturer, doctor of anthropology, that have to teach his first lecture of "Magic and rituals in ancient cultures"
During lecture he draws magic circle and cause stars are right he moves his class into fantasy realm
All magical shit that we created over the years works, but nobody is sure what ancient Sumerian rite of X does.

Main party would be students that have skills that are relevant.
Subject was facultative and interdepartmental so we can choose anyone who we want.
Linguist that can help with communication.
Bio-chemist wanting to catalogue alien lifeforms and learn why alchemy does follows some principles of chemistry while ignoring others.
Literature student writing thesis on mythology is a person that knows how monsters and some magic work. At conflict with dnd nerd, that throws useless information.
Some survival fag, possible contender for role of the leader, as he have important skills other than arcane power that could save them or kill them all in one badly chosen rite.
Other students are used when we need "expert" from field X or to die so we try to create "anyone can die" atmosphere.

World should be alien at least on Morrowind level
No:
>I'm 6 gorilion years old, that looks like 11, so it is okay to fuck me oni-goy
Story focus on studding new land, finding way to at least communicate with home and conflict within group that wants to go back and group that wants to stay.
Also MC's laptop in now arcane artifact that have more arcane tomes in .pdf format than most sorcerers kings ever seen. While magic extended battery life a new source of power is needed and witch king wants to get his hands on it, and force knowledge needed to open it(it is admin;admin).
Fantasy creatures works like in old uncensored Grimn.
Many motives from our world mythology are present but distorted.
Distorted our world is in fantasy world mythology

>>54076794

I like it. Nice list of abilities with room to grow.

>>54073780
Those are typically called ISOTs and yes they're pretty good fun in theory.

>>54085385
Edge of Tomorrow was better, and I don't take recommending Tom Cruise lightly.

>>54079378
The majority of Pulp did not use Far East aesthetics. The majority used Modern Western Society, mostly American and European themes and trappings.

Which is why it's acceptable to not pull from the Pulp works that did use the Far East as inspiration. Especially as a method to deter the autism that is the weeb.

I want to see one where natives all use mmo rules and the protagonist just follows physics. His buddy gets hit for 10 damage and a superficial injury to represent that. He gets hit for a sucking chest wound because that was a sword between the ribs. Of course, it goes both ways, making some hp sponges really easy to kill because they have arteries, bones, and organs like a normal being would when the protagonist is the one swinging.

>>54086404

Personally I wouldn't diss normal isekai that bad. I mean, your idea is interesting, but I wouldn't think it impossible to salvage even regarding the more... hrm, fetish-y aspects.

I mean, you know what I really think is the problem? Not the cute elf girl per se. It's the cute elf girl that for no reason seems to like the protagonist.

Basically, we need them to have to work for that. Or for whatever they might want. Personally I would think something like the king going "dude, in this... how you called that magic mirror? Video? Whatever, you see something that goes BOOOM. Do you have more of that?"
Or something more peaceful, actually. I dunno, medicine. After that, who knows, I wouldn't put the "trying to have a comfy life in another world" concept in the bin. It just needs more interesting conflicts to reach it.

*=actually I think that a less moronic GATE could be interesting, but that's not our scenario.

>>54082932
In this case it concerns the fact that she is a mage. Mages are recruited at 18 years old as normal but when they were making laws for volunteer mages someone forgot to write down minimal age.

So she goes as a volunteer trying to use the war for her own benefit and rise in rank. Problem is her opponent predicted that move or at least accounted for it.

>>54086882
Shouldn't be so bad for the protagonist, since the mmo people all use a set number of animations for attacks.

>>54088417
Until you meet some fucking sorcerer from Lineage 2 spamming magic attacks with ridiculous speed.

>>54057638
slice of life isekai where the main character doesn't care about getting out of the game or battoru or beating the demon/dragon lord and instead starts a comfy life

>>54086404
I like it.

>>54086882
I'd like something like this except the more the protagonist uses real physics to solve issues, the more broken the world becomes. It starts simple with a corpse havok-glitching into the ground and freaking the fuck out to eventually whole cities just glitching out into a black void that flickers in and out, people who's ai breaks and fall over twitching or their skeleton animations get switched with some animal creating body horrors.

>>54057638

Here's what I'm thinking:

The protagonist is a boy who keeps getting bullied. Only his childhood friend, a hot girl, lightens his miserable day.

Everyone gets magically sent to the fantasy world. What would really grind the gears of the readers would be the following: the bully turns out to not be such a bad guy. After all, now everyone's fighting for survival, being a dick is pointless - all they have is each other, so it's pull together to survive.

More, the bully's gang is now his own personal band of blood brothers. They're an effective fighting force, and the only one who can't see it is the protagonist. At first, it's initially hinted, with the compulsory elf waifu going: "I understand you feel a lot of resentment towards him. But I've looked into his heart, and I know he's a good man."

Eventually, the female love interest ultimately snaps at the protagonist and his passive-aggressive whining, and goes: "For the love of God, can't you see that he's changed? He's been fighting to keep us alive since we got here! The only one who hasn't grown at all is *you*! You're still holding on to the same petty grudges, whining about how no-one understands you, even though none of it matters now. Do you even know how hard it is to be your friend?"

Then she catches herself, of course, because she's said too much. After that, the protagonist decides to go off on his own. Later, it turns out that the bully went looking for him, genuinely worried. Why? "We're all from Earth. I don't want anyone to die."

Oh, and the girl's hooked up with him now, since the protagonist isn't around to be a third wheel.

After realizing what a piece of shit he is, the protagonist decides to go off on his own, and begs his former tormentor to tell his childhood friend that he died. The other guy agrees, and sadly sends him on his way.

>>54088705
I like it a lot.

>>54088705

The readers would burn your house down.

>>54057638

We often just start with the generic stuff Isekai use, then flip one or two things or "follow to the logical end point".

So for instace: with "levels" or "stats" as real things in a setting that people can examine, you have a setting where basically everyone can be assessed and given jobs in a truly meritocratic sense, thus things like "profession by inheritance" and other features of feudal society either can't work or you have to have stats be something that is ALSO inherited, which in turn gives rise to Nobles who are actually all gods at combat, and probably some sort of priesthood whose job is to assess and arrange marriages for all the tradesmen "bob smith here is going to inherit his father's blacksmith, but while his STR and DEX scores are good for blacksmithing, his CON score is limiting how much he can make at a time, so we need to find him a wife with a decent STR & DEX score AND a better CON score...", and births outside of genomancer's strict plans are either killed or assessed for interesting or unique stat spreads and raised for eventual use as breeding stock in this mass societal min-maxing scheme.

So instead of just "man from japan is in the land of ham" any isekai in this setting is now "how does the man from japan survive in a setting where Love is verboten and/or his OP stats disrupt possibly millenia in the making genomancy plans?

>>54088652
I really like that idea too. The protagonist has to leave back to the real world as soon as possible before his existence breaks reality.

Basically he's the Cthulhu monster of the setting. Especially if the MMO had PG13 level violence and now has to deal with actual violence.

>>54088705

So what happens next?

>>54088793
Naw it's fine. The protagonist can have a redemption arc, and come back to save the rest of the party.

>>54088851

I was initially thinking that's it.

But to expand on the concept, he goes off to do the usual dungeon-crawling stuff, to start all over again. The twist is that he never gets better than the rest of the party, but he eventually manages to draw even with them.

Every time he meets the main group, they've improved by leaps and bounds. By the end, he's 'about as good as them', and is satisfied that he's now a functioning member of society, as we say. Eventually he rejoins the group.

His childhood friend's pregnant, but it doesn't trouble him any longer. After all, not everyone's cut out to be the main character.

>>54088923
I think I'd have him put ahead, to be honest. If he was doing the same stuff solo.

Or maybe he was doing better till he had his shit kicked in and almost died.

Maybe introduce another love interest so it's less bleak when the jock/bully cucks him.

>>54088979

Yeah, but the thing is that, there's no reason why he should do better away from the group. The reason why it's always better to fight in a group is because there are people to watch your back.

Five dudes with complementary powers are much more effective than one guy trying to cover all eventualities. Also, it's not really cuckolding, because he's a little shit. She just chose the guy she liked, that's all.

>>54089037
One dude solving situations that are similar to the ones being solved by the five man group most likely will be better. Yeah, he didn't have anyone watching his back, but that just meant he had to get good or die. He succeeded alone where they had a safety net. That has to count for something when it comes to raw skill and situational awareness.

>>54089199
Most of the time it comes at the price of paranoia and autistic focus.

>>54089037
>Also, it's not really cuckolding, because he's a little shit.
Not according to Japan. In Japan,85 counts as NTR If the audience insert character wants a girl and she gets into a relationship with someone else.

>>54057638
a world with crusader king 2 rules?

>>54088705

Needs to have the bully try to reconcile, otherwise it's just "shit on the protagonist."

Also, with all of that combined with the elf love interest going to the bully, it sounds like you either have a chip on your shoulder or an NTR fetish.

>>54074113
Reminder that oversize weaponry caught on from oversized (to show detail) hands and weapons on miniatures.
See also: Dog kobolds.

>>54057638
Was saving this for the Hows your Novel thread but it fits this pretty perfectly.

Sean is a teen living in a small town. Not well liked but not at all hated, he died in the process of saving a little girl and found himself in a fantasy world with the promise of resurrection if he defeats an evil warlord. Entrusted to an old swordsman who trains him he sets out to defeat this evil.

That was four years ago and Sean has killed many. He's killed countless monsters, bandits, ancient evils and warlords and is seemingly not a single step closer to returning home.

Nearly resigned to living a new life with his mentor Percy, things change when he stumbles upon a group of teenagers being attacked by assassins. Upon saving them they inform him that when he was sent to this world, his entry was hijacked and his allies were left unsummoned leaving him alone and without his true order.

The great evil he was hunting? The one he has to kill to not only save the world but his own life? Hes been living with it for the last four years.

Its his mentor Percy.


So basically the idea here is to take the very Japanese isekai setup and then have it play out like a Stephen Hunter novel.

You know, I don't think a single isekai MC has ever missed their original world. I get that you sure wouldn't mind much if you're OP as shit and get a whole harem of bitches for free, but none at all?

>>54090276
Ok, but what's the evil mentor's angle here? What does he get out of training the hero and getting him strong instead of just leaving him dead in a ditch?

>>54092081
A convenient weapon and a stop gap to prevent the actual power sending heroes from sending more.

Being alive and successful it didn't send any significant shockwaves that the MC couldn't find the actual villain until well four years passed and he was still looking for him. Then the power checked in to see what was wrong and saw the massive fuck up that occured.

>>54092254
That makes sense. You'll probably want to establish the possibility of other heroes at some point, though. Otherwise it might come off as an asspull.

If you want a roundabout way of doing it, you could have him discover at some point that there were other heroes, but they've been killed by the mystery villain.

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Onii-chan, am I isekai ~uguu

>>54092459
He has predecessors inuniverse who died maybe ten years before he arrived but his own generation never showed up which is something established early on that he and Percy discuss. So other heroes arriving OS established early on and the question is what's taking them so long.

Percy the villain killed the previous generation and the assassins were sent by him to take the third to keep Sean ignorant and with him.

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>>54057638
The same way Twain, Drifters, Youjo Senki, Pre(And often Post)-Mending MtG, and the Palinka Effect handle it.

Outsiders ruin everything. Even if they're trying to have no effect. Especially if they're trying to help.

I wanted to do a reverse Isekai where all of the NPCs of an MMO suddenly became self-aware and a lot of the ones without strict roles in their towns struck out and started doing their own adventures. Unfortunately players don't take kindly to their loot and kills being stolen. I think it could make for a cool dynamic. No one is stuck inside the game and gradually the NPCs may lose the notion of these heroes being natives and start to realize that they just pop in and out from nowhere.

>>54058335
>Harold Shea
>ywn travel into a literary world and acquire a waifu
>ywn later have to prevent Cu Chulainn from ntring you in a different world
>ywn leave your friends stranded in Xanadu for an extended period of time
>ywn have all your Isekai plans shat upon because mythological logic cannot into guns and matches
It was a good series.

>>54090443

12 Kingdoms. She didn't have the harem, but she was still a ruler with kewl magical powers.

>>54089751

I don't think you get it. The bully IS the hero of the story. He's the traditional main character, the one who overcomes his flaws and emerges as the savior of the world.

The protagonist, our viewpoint character, is that one weird kid. This is actually a straightforward fantasy story, it's just told through the eyes of the resenter.

>>54090443
>You know, I don't think a single isekai MC has ever missed their original world.

Kazuma.

>>54093596
That doesn't really come across if you just have the bully dude instantly turn out to be a good guy who keeps things together when the world switch happens. It just sounds like the narrative switching tracks suddenly in order to induce as much suffering as possible.

I get that you're trying hard here to push against the grain, but there's such a thing as trying too hard.

>>54089199
>>54093596
Yeah.

This is what I was thinking. He wouldn't be a match the party as a whole, because he's just one guy.
But he's had to compensate for being alone by getting good or dying.

I think i'd have him flip good shit and go full autismo villain after being cucked. Ideally literally, if the attractive girl thinks he's dead. Bonus points if the kid the girl has is his, and the bully was just bro enough to raise the kid whether it was good or not, leading to further plot twists.

I'd have the series end with him realizing he's the villian of the story, and makes a heroic sacrifice for the group. I'd have the story end with his sacrifice, because the narrator is dead, leaving it ambiguous as to the rest of the groups fate.

>>54094025

It's actually inspired by an Avengers issue I saw, the one that introduces Star Brand. Basically, the issue focuses on bright or exceptional young individuals who would wield the power of the Star Brand extremely well.

But when the power actually arrives (killing 3,000 people in one blast) it goes to a weedy guy who has been in the background through all of the scenes where they were introducing the ostensible protagonists.

The idea is that the story is distorted through his perspective. We can see that the other guy is improving, but our narrator is full of resentment and doesn't want to grasp that.

>>54092520
>Percy the villain killed the previous generation and the assassins were sent by him to take the third to keep Sean ignorant and with him.
Why bother though? By that point the jig is probably up and the dude can turn on him

Why not stab him in his sleep?

>>54057638
Isn't this genre still popular in anime/manga? Overlord and "I'm a spider, so what?" come to mind.

>>54094367
Because and this is a semi spoiler he cares about the kid.

Hes an evil fucking bastard because hes a selfish bastard who covets power and doesn't really care about who gets hurt, but hes not the kind of evil who is unable to understand good.

Sean is a good person. Hes brave, sort of kind if not high on adrenaline and when he realized he would never go back home he resolved himself to spend his life protecting others.

Percy loves the kid for that but it's also why he immediately sends killers after him the second the jig is up. Because he knows Sean is the kind of man who won't be swayed by offers of power and won't insult him by trying.

>>54057638
Read any Western two worlds fiction, because that's what isekai is. Or Sword and Planet, since the idea of "normal person goes to fantasy land, does things" and "normal person goes to fantasy planet, does things" is pretty similar.

>>54068147
Or have him be the wrong kind of genre savvy.

He thinks he's getting vanilla anime elves. Surprise, you're getting knife eared assholes in light and dark varieties. Or magic is rare and usually not benign.

>>54074113
Everyone who attended Daicon IV has since died inside.

>>54083031
Now and Then, Here and There.
And the best part is that the setting is pretty much modern subsaharan africa.

>>54072423
yes, congratulations, you recognized the reference, have a cookie.

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1MB, 1280x738px

>>54074109
Danganronpa Isekai?

I'm in despair just thinking about it.