Why do so many people hate on isekai?

[SakeVision]

Drugs are horrible for you though

Life is horrible for me, too

 

[SilvCrimBlac]

It is clearly the best genre currently. It provides the perfect form of escapism as the real world gets progressively shittier. It really cuts out a lot of the fat of general fantasy stories and really gets straight to what people want the most, a self insert MC with ultimate power. And of course there is an infinite variety of these stories, each with a different aspect for people to enjoy. Would you rather the MC have a challenge? There is an isekai like that. Do you just want to be a degenerate? There is harem isekai. Isekai is truly the greatest genre ever concocted. Read it and enjoy it.

I love it personally, but then it IS becoming a pretty oversaturated genre with so many people hopping onto it so constantly nowadays. Most of them are poorly written and not particularly imaginative. But...when you find the good ones...the ones with wonderful world-building and amazing characters and etc, etc,....there's nothing quite like it. Best genre in the world.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Imagine having a giant greasy box of chicken wings. They taste good, but they're bad for your health. You still eat them occasionally, tho.

Now Imagine being forced to eat the same greasy box of chicken wings EVERY F*CKING TIME. You might enjoy it the first few time due to how immoral it is to only eat chicken wings. But after hundreds of thousands of time eating the same thing over and over again without even having a choice, you start to loathe it, try to avoid it, try not to eat. BUT it gets forced down your throat again and again and again and again and again!

Anyway, my rant is over and now I have a strange craving for chicken wings...

 

[Deeprotsorcerer]

Imagine having a giant greasy box of chicken wings. They taste good, but they're bad for your health. You still eat them occasionally, tho.

Now Imagine being forced to eat the same greasy box of chicken wings EVERY F*CKING TIME. You might enjoy it the first few time due to how immoral it is to only eat chicken wings. But after hundreds of thousands of time eating the same thing over and over again without even having a choice, you start to loathe it, try to avoid it, try not to eat. BUT it gets forced down your throat again and again and again and again and again!

Anyway, my rant is over and now I have a strange craving for chicken wings...

Check your soul gem's corruption levels if you don't want to see Madokami early.

 

[bigbear51]

It gets hate as it's gotten mainstream which got a bunch of people bandwagoning on its success. Despite the fact that one can just ignore it at this point with the so-called adage of "don't like, don't read/watch". It's also easy to get internet points hating on isekai.

 

[T.K._Paradox]

It gets hate as it's gotten mainstream which got a bunch of people bandwagoning on its success. Despite the fact that one can just ignore it at this point with the so-called adage of "don't like, don't read/watch". It's also easy to get internet points hating on isekai.

I mean there are a lot of underrated isekai out there still.

You have
Summoned Zero by @Lloyd

I accidentally summoned the hero, now what? by @Paul_Tromba

And last time I checked you had a good isekai story yourself.
I also forgot @ForestDweller's Reincarnation of a Worthless Man

 

[BlackKnightX]

It is clearly the best genre currently. It provides the perfect form of escapism as the real world gets progressively shittier. It really cuts out a lot of the fat of general fantasy stories and really gets straight to what people want the most, a self insert MC with ultimate power. And of course there is an infinite variety of these stories, each with a different aspect for people to enjoy. Would you rather the MC have a challenge? There is an isekai like that. Do you just want to be a degenerate? There is harem isekai. Isekai is truly the greatest genre ever concocted. Read it and enjoy it.

I think the haters are far in minority compared to isekai lovers, or else the genre wouldn’t be at the very top right now.

As for the reason why some people hate isekai? I think you already know the answer—they’re simply not the target audience, simple as that.

I think, they hate isekai because most of them are written by amateur authors and are just pure wish-fulfillment. It’s not at all what they’re used to reading in the mainstream genres.

Point is: isekai is considered to be a niche thing, even if there are a lot of readers reading it.

Some people don’t get that and just go on and read some of them, think it’s trash because it‘s not what they used to read in mainstream novels, and then just assume that all isekai are like that.

Well, not all of them are like that, obviously. There are some isekai with well thought-out plots and well-developed characters, but that’s also far in minority.

Look at the popular stories and you’ll get what the isekai’s lovers want.

Moral of the story: this is pointless to think about. It’s just the matter of personal taste. I like isekai and so are a lot of people out there.

 

[SakeVision]

Imagine having a giant greasy box of chicken wings. They taste good, but they're bad for your health. You still eat them occasionally, tho.

Now Imagine being forced to eat the same greasy box of chicken wings EVERY F*CKING TIME. You might enjoy it the first few time due to how immoral it is to only eat chicken wings. But after hundreds of thousands of time eating the same thing over and over again without even having a choice, you start to loathe it, try to avoid it, try not to eat. BUT it gets forced down your throat again and again and again and again and again!

Anyway, my rant is over and now I have a strange craving for chicken wings...

I used to eat fried chicken every day for years. Never got bored of it.

 

[aattss]

My dad, a long time ago, used to work at a pizza place for over a year, where one of the perks was free pizza. From what I've heard, eating so much of something so often can in fact cause physical revulsion.

In regards to fiction, the more often I see something in fiction, the more I end up analyzing it, and the more often I see something I don't like, the more my frustration towards that thing rises.

 

[Shomin]

To be precise, I don't hate isekai in general as a genre.
But I hate an isekai that keeps on using similar trope like truck-kun, next life, leveling up... etc, you name it.
Some isekai works are really great, like Inuyasha and Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi.
Yes, the above examples are isekai! Talking about "getting into another world".
Thus, the hate is not on isekai, it is on "reincarnation trope". they should have been clearly identified.

 

[lnv]

To be precise, I don't hate isekai in general as a genre.
But I hate an isekai that keeps on using similar trope like truck-kun, next life, leveling up... etc, you name it.
Some isekai works are really great, like Inuyasha and Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi.
Yes, the above examples are isekai! Talking about "getting into another world".
Thus, the hate is not on isekai, it is on "reincarnation trope". they should have been clearly identified.

Can we stop hating on truck-kun? He did nothing wrong!

Spoiler: STOP HATING ON Truck-kun! He is simply misunderstood!

Truck-kun is riding down the street happily delivering furniture to all those in need. Then on the sidewalk Truck-kun spots a poor sad NEET... worst of all he is crying... dumped by his girlfriend.



Truck-kun doesn't understand what being dumped by a 2d girlfriend means but Truck-kun feels sad for said NEET. Truck-kun looks left and right but sees nobody there to help him... is that not sad? The poor NEET is sad and nobody is there to help him! They just mind their own business and carry on! How can people be so engineless?



But Truck-kun is not like those mean engineless people! Truck-kun has a warm engine inside and wants to spread that warmth! And Truck-kun knows exactly what that NEET needs right now!



Yup, that's right a HUG!



As the NEET crosses the sidewalk, Truck-kun revs up his warm engine and in all his glory runs to give the NEET the hug of a lifetime!

*VOOOOOOOO*

*BAM*



"ARGH!!!"



Hmm... well that's weird... Truck-kun is confused, where has NEET gone? He was just there a minute ago and he just suddently disappeared...



"H-e-l-p m-e..." came a voice...



Truck-kun hearing some strange noise coming from underneath did just the thing anyone would do when asked for help! Truck-kun must help! But there is a problem... the voice is coming from underneath so Truck-kun has to move to find said voice! Setting his gears to reverse, Truck-kun back tracked to find and help that voice!

*VOOOOOOOO*

"ARGH!!!"



There it is, that strange voice again! But where is this voice coming from? Truck-kun goes back and forth all around the spot to locate the source of the voice! Because Truck-kun is a good truck and always willing to help!



*VOOOOOOOO*

"ARGH!!!"

*VOOOOOOOO*

"ARGH!!!"

*VOOOOOOOO*

"ARGH!!!"



And at one point Truck-kun stopped hearing that voice... all Truck-kun wanted to do was help... but if the voice stops, how can Truck-kun help? Feeling sad that Truck-kun couldn't help neither the NEET nor that voice, he moves on... Oh well, there is furniture to deliver! Truck-kun will definitely make someone happy today!



And thus Truck-kun moves on, followed by a trail of red paint... while Truck-kun is a bit worried that red paint might confuse other drivers, Truck-kun remembers that one proverb he once heard prior to giving someone a hug, "If you mind it, you lose". And if there is one thing that Truck-kun doesn't want to do, and that's lose!



Because if Truck-kun loses, who is going to give those poor lonely NEETs their hugs?

PS While inuyasha is entertaining, and probably different then many other isekai's. It had a pretty bad issue where pretty much OP abilities that got nerfed next episode. And pretty much everything in the world is due to naraku somehow. It just looks less tainted because it wasn't copied so much to the point where everything pretty much became generic tropes.

 

[Shomin]

Can we stop hating on truck-kun? He did nothing wro

Oh yeah, you're right! poor guy trying to earn a living driving truck delivering goods...

 

[AliceShiki]

I think the problem with the isekai isn't the genre, it's just that the mediocre isekai stories tend to be on the lower end of the quality spectrum. It's a similar reason to why plenty of shoujo readers end up moving on to either BL or GL at some point, because mediocre shoujo is just bad, so it's better to go to the genres where the plot structure is fundamentally the same, but that have a higher floor.

Like... If you make a medi-fantasy story with a generic bland MC, even if they're an orphan with no family to speak of, and no reason to search for revenge or anything, they'll probably at least care for the people that they grew up with in the orphanage and about the owner of the orphanage as well... On isekai OTOH, you get a 100% blank slate character with 0 stakes on anything... That definitely makes the character worse overall (A reminder, we're talking about the mediocre stories here, so you shouldn't expect a good development to compensate for the lack of background).

Similarly, if you read a generic bland shoujo, you can expect a perfect ML that loves the MC and only the MC and always understands everything she does and never gets angry at her dumb misunderstandings... OTOH, if you are reading BL/GL, you can at least expect the love interest to be a bit confused about their feelings and by the sense of forbidden of the relationship and the like.

This kind of thing leads to a higher quality floor for the mediocre stories, so people that have already read most gems are that keep on searching for more, end up shying away from the more mainstream genres that have a much lower floor. It's really not a thing of hating the mainstream, but more of hating the poorly written stories... And the worst ones tend to be on the more popular genres, since well... They have a much higher quantity of stories overall~

 

[Theirl]

Imagine having a giant greasy box of chicken wings. They taste good, but they're bad for your health. You still eat them occasionally, tho.

Now Imagine being forced to eat the same greasy box of chicken wings EVERY F*CKING TIME. You might enjoy it the first few time due to how immoral it is to only eat chicken wings. But after hundreds of thousands of time eating the same thing over and over again without even having a choice, you start to loathe it, try to avoid it, try not to eat. BUT it gets forced down your throat again and again and again and again and again!

Anyway, my rant is over and now I have a strange craving for chicken wings...

you are weak no matter how much chicken i eat i will never loathe it...NEVER!!!

 

[Zirrboy]

Because people like to be edgy.
Not as in "the darkness within me", but "look at how unique I am"
Which, as a mass phenomenon usually results in the opposite.

But when the first isekai stories were published, they were popular.
So bandwagon.
More and more people reach thematic saturation.
And in the aforementioned drive to set themselves apart they vocalize their new take

 

[Gryphon]

I mean, I don't hate isekai, its just for every Mushoku Tensei or Re:Zero, there's five more Isekai Cheat Magician and In Another World with My Smartphone. Isekai is kind of doing a quality jump recently with slime isekai and that isekai where an assassin is born as a rich dude and is tasked with killing the hero. I mean, the latter isn't perfect but at least its not a Master of Ragnarok(which isn't even a good harem anime either so it fails in that retrospect too.)

 

[BearlyAlive]

you are weak no matter how much chicken i eat i will never loathe it...NEVER!!!

alright, then we excange the chicken for roasted pork. Or even better whole-roasted hippo. Now try to survive being forced to eat a whole hippo every time

 

[2021]

I like it, but it‘s gotten boring, 99% of is self-insert.

That’s why I try to build to it, and expand multiple things. Why is their a system, what is the system, what is magic, how does that thing even live, why do people like r*pe-goblins so much(Why! Why! They can be used for far more then “the horny”.)

for human, and kingdoms, I threw those out, and made it villages, towns, since if monsters can kill you in one hit how will the world care for building that stuff, instead of surviving.
-
How do things evolve after killing and consuming things, I can go on and on.

 

[Theirl]

alright, then we excange the chicken for roasted pork. Or even better whole-roasted hippo. Now try to survive being forced to eat a whole hippo every time

look roasted pork is naice but the role hippo is to much, like a hippo in novel term would be those chinese 1000 chapter cultivation novel novel.

being serious now , we in history already experience stagnation in writing models. ex romance i dont remenber the date but lord byron was alive in that time... we are in that time, and what can i say we need to wait the next genius to make a new genre of writing. so i can agree with being tiresome having to eat the same food, but there are several ways to cook the same ingredient, just like that there is diferent type of way to tell a story about isekai... so the best is to have patience and to try to diversify thet type of dishes that u eat u see, u can eat chiken,pork and sometimes a hippo