Too short, append “, but I’m a level 2 demon lord?” to the end.
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?
Hard to do with the axe hanging over your head. “Sorry, but chapter 3 didn’t score high enough in our magazine poll so we’re killing your serialization.”
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.
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?).
One way to do it is to start with a character that is native to the world but new to the social circles and strata of the story. So that the specific contexts of the story are also new to the character.
Maybe start the charachter in a profession that exsists in our world. The farmboy start like in wheel of time. Or the butcher start like in soaring the heavens. After all most pre industrial people wouldnt have traveled far from their place of birth and wouldnt know much about the world at large.
when the whole plot story fit in one paragraph of title
why does everything have to be relatable to this miserable prison planet existance
Western consumers need media to cater to their terminal Aphantasia, I guess. Feels like some weird postmodern Hayes Code thing major studios want.
Looking at the US media landscape today, you’d think imagining fantasy worlds without connecting it to Earth was illegal. Same with the horde of recent graduate YA authors who seem to care more about book sales than writing. You just instantly get this uncanny valley feeling where it’s clear the writer’s never trained their sense of abstract thought (and assumes you don’t have it either). Plus, the fact that these authors have any sense at all of what today’s media “tropes” are completely fucks them over, as they insecurely try to dodge them, unconsciously add them anyway, and only end up with more generic stories (at least they’re Marketable!). They’ll only remind you of everything you’ve already seen, or know. You’ll forget one as soon as you read another. Unironically feels harmful to a growing kid’s creativity.
In conclusion, I think adult audiences who scrunch their noses and say “That was weird” should be bullied more. They use it like a genre label, so young artists get spooked and avoid it.
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.