Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've stopped following anime for several years now. The trajectory of one punch man from it's humble doodle-like beginnings to mainstream speak volumes about the state of commercialization these days IMHO. The isekai genre is definitely overused at this point, just as slice of life got done to death before it. Lately, I've been having more luck w/ manhwa (Korean manga). If steampunk sci-fi with social commentary plot…
> The isekai genre is definitely overused at this point Yet somehow we can't get enough of it! I mean, I know I'm a sucker for isekai. Some of it is poorly animated with terrible stereotypes (for anime) and far too much fan service but it's not isekai that's cliche it's the story that's being told inside of it that could be. I'd argue that isekai is one of the best and truest forms of sci-fi: Instead of just "drama,…
If you start digging into Isekai manga, there at least one order of magnitude more works to choose from. Then if you look into light novels, there is even more stuff, again with just a fraction getting manga adaptations.
But the real breath of Isekai are web novels - that's where most of the current hit novels started, on websites like "I'll become a novelist" (https://syosetu.com/) where people just type away their fantasies with minimal friction, one chapter at a time and often with lots of direct feedback from the community.
That can result in even more original/crazy ideas being explored, such as:
- What if you were transported to a fantasy world with your solar powered camping vehicle ? (Himekishi to Camping Car)
- What if you became your game character in a fantasy world that has a different gender (female) and is a total glass cannon ? (Alice Tale)
- Whats more fun than raiding dungeons ? Running them! (Lazy Dungeon Master)
- What if there is stable gateway between the other and the modern world and you can go back and forth ? (quite a few series actually, even some mainstream ones like Gate or Isekai Shokudo)
- Fantasy is nice but steampunk and heavy industry is even better! There are quite a few rather non-mainstream series that introduce robots and guns into an Isekai setting. Yet there are others that set out to industrialize the whole thing as including building stuff like railroads.
- What if magic was just a foreign language or alphabet the locals aren't good at but you are, as it's your native language ?
- What if you are the only one who can see the GUI in an Isekai world ? Nothing better than meeting a famous aristocrat with "class: vampire" blinking above his head telling you about mysterious kidnapping cases in the vicinity. Or "goblin shaman [invisible]" floating in the air of dark cave. (Skill Takers World Domination")
- What if due to some mistake no one person gets reincarnated as a son of poor aristocrat but 3 - a high school student, a salaryman and Nobunaga ?
- What if you actually got reincarnated to the buggy mess of an MMO you helped to develop (Death March) ?
- What if a modern Aegis cruiser or even the full Japanese archipelago (including some disputed islands, no less ;-) ) gets transported to an Isekai ?
Really the possibilities are endless. There is definitely a lot of repetition and series that frankly are not any good (especially between web novels, thanks to the same zero entry barriers that enable so much creativity in the first place) but there are many gems to be found if you search a bit. :)