They do the isekai thing so then the world building happens naturally as we watch the clueless dork explore the fantasy world and encounter stuff.
Otherwise you have to find ways to explain stuff to the audience when the characters grew up in that world and should already know all about it, so don't need to discuss things.
Otherwise you have to find ways to explain stuff to the audience when the characters grew up in that world and should already know all about it, so don't need to discuss things.
...you mean worldbuild organically like any other story set in a universe that isn't our own? Countless shows and stories have been doing that for centuries, why should anime get a special little exception?
Countless shows and stories have been doing that for centuries, why should anime get a special little exception?
Imagine the intelligence and attention-span of your average Anime fan. Now realize half of anime fans have lower levels of attention and intelligence.
And for centuries they have been struggling to find good ways to present that newly built world in a natural way. Just because good examples exist doesnt make it an easy thing to accomplish. Bad fantasy stories have also existed for centuries.
You may call it lazy, but you gotta admit that with isekai settings presenting a new world is easy and natural.
And its not like only animes use that. Harry poter, Narnia, Peter Pen, Alice In Wonderland, Tron Legacy etc etc... All have clueless main characters finding themselves in a new world.
It's way harder to do on screen. Works for print.
Yeah, but explaining it to someone who is new to the setting as an audience insert is easier!
I think this is often what amnesia is so common in fiction, too, despite being extremely rare in the real world. It provides a convenient plot device, both to perform exposition and for some inevitable gotcha behind either their identity, how they lost their memory, or some other major revelation from their past (seriously, has there ever been a case of amnesia in fiction where they didn't conveniently forget some big, plot relevant thing?).
I would love one where the person forgets who they are and what happened to them, but they remember the big plot point and have no idea why they know or why it is important.
Pretty sure there are some that already exist, but can't think of any off the top of my head.
Yeah it’s similar to why hidden world fantasy is popular. Or some rube idiot protagonist. It’s a lot harder to do something like mistborn where everyone knows what a basic allomancer can do without it either sounding weird or the author thinking it does
Too short, append ", but I'm a level 2 demon lord?" to the end.
"Satan couldn't possibly be this cute?!"
why does everything have to be relatable to this miserable prison planet existance
The main character is mofe relatable if they can reference pop culture etc
Also, japanese weebs/neckbeards need some relatable protagonist, who gets to live a life they never will, harem and all.
Also, since the main character is an audience insert it gives the author an excuse to expo-dump.
How about a regular fantasy world whose inhabitants make real-world pop culture references for no adequately explained reason?
I liked the approach of Tearmoon Empire a lot. Instead of typical isekai, the main character from the same universe time travels to her past right after she dies by guillotine. Everything she does is to avoid dying again, her personality at its core doesn't change. Would reccomend it on the next anime season.
Well they tried that with arguably the most well known fantasy world in existence, D&D, and it flopped because too many people need their worlds spoon fed to them.
The dnd movie did not flop at all, who told you that?
I seem to remember Chris Pine getting very floppy at one point
Turns out it did, financially.
when the whole plot story fit in one paragraph of title
Great meme
