Why does Isekai have so much hate?

[Arkus86]

here's what I noticed...
its a fairly rigid genre system. you can say it doesn't have "rules" you sort of must follow, but... it kinda does. Now, the language that gets used can be very soft. "see, you need to understand. readers expect certain story beats, and you have to give them these things." I've also heard it said. "Isekai, is a contract. a promise. you say isekai, the reader better get the things he expects to see."

I suppose it depends on the application of the Isekai genre. This particular term is most closely associated with the Japanese WN/LN market, so you get audience looking for that specific overused formula. But Isekai has an equivalent in the Western market too, the portal fantasy. Technically, they are nearly the same thing, but people have different expectations for them.

So... I don't know what it is I'm trying to say, but you can do a lot within the genre and be popular, you "just" have to find the right audience, I suppose.

now that's just what seems to be the rules of the isekai genre game.
on top of that, we have to add the ever present "rules" of web-novel-ing in general.

and what do you end up with, by the time you're done.
the same situation as the old time harlequin romances.
fans typically reward the books that do what they're "supposed to do" for the genre.
critics? say they keep trying to read the genre, but its the same story every time, over and over again.

Me, I find soap operas... to be repetitive and boring.
fans though... they get withdrawal symptoms if they miss a single minute of "their soap".

So you're saying the genre is stiffled by authors who are gatekeeping it, or who are afraid of not getting audience? You know... that makes sense. It's the same reason why there are so few actually original movies, and so many reboots, sequels, prequels, alternate universes... of the popular ones, especially the superhero genre reusing the same formula and characters ad nauseam. Bonus points for making it politically correct.

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it is. it sounds exciting.
Just seeing that first sentence on one of my old paperbacks back covers?
Yeah, I'd have read that one next.

but me, if i next read 2 or 3 more, and it started to seem like the same exact formula... i'd quit grabbing for it.
this happened to me with the "serial killer investigation" novels. I got burned out on the tropes.
it got to where I could check stuff off a list as I read one.

when's the big autopsy scene, with weird info that will be later useful? oh here we go. called it.
i wonder which boss will be incompetent, preventing the star investigator from getting the job done? Oh, there they are.
hey, will it be a stripper or a hooker, that conveniently knows the critical information. there she is!
where's the dead witness, i wonder where they will hide the body at this time... oh, freezer again? ha.

then, the big one on one fight, detective against the evil crazy killer, cornered.
dude, why even carry a gun? you know it goes hand to hand, and you almost lose ten times, until you JUST squeak out a win.
*happens*

I got bored.

Reminds me of a series I read where the "star investigator" only believed to be a star investigator, but was actually fairly incompetent and chronically unable to listen to orders, always winning by chance, and always playing the victim when promotion passed her by. I don't remember much of the books, but in one of them, I think she would have never discovered the killer, if the killer did not reveal themselves by kidnapping her first and spilling everything.

 

[Bosniarat]

Well I hope that I don't come off as lazy on the one I'm currently writing.
I gotten kind of burned out on it with some having promise only to get either bogged down in stupidity that doesn't roll the plot along or worse the "Fan Service" which I can state are both in Outbreak company, an Anime I regretted watching. I didn't look for the Manga or LN as if the Anime was bad I could image how the LN was.
I think Isekai is a good genre that can tell many stories. However, just like any genre you have a lot of people that write either power fantasies or Harem fantasies, which if done right work, but many are silly or just not executed to their true potential. And to use my example from above, Outbreak Company started strong, there was a good idea, ie a Stable portal, how a country can subvert the local population by just being there, a possible Government conspiracy to take over the area and for it to all fall apart as the Protag gets bogged down in fan Service and idiot games that didn't do anything but subvert the original idea, until they came to the last of the series and they tried to restart the Government conspiracy but it came off as half baked and clichéd. Good idea, terrible follow through.

 

[SirContro]

okay, this is where I have to throw a flag.
This, was one of those "rules" that kept coming up.
I wasn't the only writer that thought this needed to be explored, even at length. perhaps even be a major theme of the isekai novel. everyone kept drilling it into my head. No, no, no. You *never* give *any* reason, for the ass-pulling. Why? i'd ruin the self insert. because if the person is special or has some needed talent, then the average person can't easily fit into the self insert.

it was explained to me that it works as a universal power fantasy, because the person that has this fantasy wish, is by definition weak, ordinary, powerless. They need to feel that they are the exact type of person that would get what the MC is getting.

I thought it made sense to do an extended death scene, everyone argued no. sentence or two, move on.
i next thoguht the traveling would be a nice surrealistic trip moment, again a no. sentence or two, or better yet they just wake up there, sentence one, no explanations.

heck, even here. I *think* it was... which member here was doing the "low attention span" reviews? I remember they did an isekai review, and they explicitly complimented one writer on just that. Hey, i like how they just wake up in the world, sentence one. You did it 'correctly', the way it should be done.

you can call it in soft language, an expected beat? or you can just say its a rule... but in the end its the same thing.

MLA was always an "example' because of its viral success.
it was explicitly pointed out, over and over.
see how they just wake up in the world? That's how its done. don't screw that up.

everything I thought would be a good thing to do different?
it was explained to me.
i was thinking "like a trad pub novelist"
and this was web-novel, its different, there;s different rules and guidelines.

it was always pointed out to me.
go ahead and try it, but don't be surprised when you get nothing out of all the work.
do it the way it should be done?
you get readers.

I don't make the rules, i just try to notice them.

I know that lazy writing is popular. Truth is, most people like their escapism as simple power fantasies that they can mindlessly consume. Hell, the fact that isekai tends to blend together with other stories in the genre is probably why it's so popular despite the minimal effort in most stories. But just because it's popular doesn't make it good. The audience most of the time just wants to get into the story as quickly as possible and can ignore what doesn't make sense so long as they're entertained. There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't write for my audience. I write for me. Simply doing what gets readers because everyone else does it isn't interesting, and so I'm not going to waste my breath trying to write what's popular.

 

[TinaMigarlo]

Personally, I'm 19 chapters in up and posted, still pissing around with chapter 20. Of my isekai idea. transmigration, portal, whatever you decide its called.

I decided its a big WN thing, but less seen with trad pub.
so I'll try to write one that way.
Because who the MC is is a reason later for it happening, I spend some time on them before they die.
then, a brutal death betrayed by those closest, I felt that deserved some time too.
traveling to another time and place? heck, that ain't a sentence only. surrealistic experience.
when they get there and there's tense moments, fine.
but then the time comes, they realize they are not 'themselves".
I'm sorry, I need to spend time on this, that would threaten to drive a person insane.
then they accept, and adjust... and I can go on with starting to build up what's going to be the major conflict.

as an experiment, I liked it.
but, its written trad pub style.
but, i disobeyed isekai rules.
but, I dwell on descriptions and extensive inner monologue.
but, I use paperback sized paragraphs.

so I can't really complain that it got little to no notice, the 19 chapters I experimented with to get it going.

I mean, one could argue I couldn't have done anything else to try ruin my chances of success with it, LMAO

 

[Bosniarat]

Well don't feel too bad, I'm only on chapter 5 and still going, but I have a lot to set up before introduce the Heroes. You do a lot better than me on chapters, I take forever to get them out. (not that I'm not working on 'em but work and other things tend to set me back.)

 

[Hans.Edward.Trondheim]

Summarized and self-answered, I don't think it is the origin, tag, or device of Isekai that is a problem. It's popularity has been boosting for years in both literature and anime. A majority seem to complain about the same issue: lack of quality control. I think readers are simply burned out by titles featuring overused plot tropes or writing that seems devoid of any style beyond very passive speech.

It's kind of sad. The tag isn't the problem, but some people blacklist it for themselves entirely.
I get it. If you smell a rotten egg sandwich once, chances of taking a second or third whiff will be lower.

That said, I think it is more or less a problem that will solve itself. The bar to make a good isekai is much higher now than it was before, and it needs to be, not in just the writing but in presentation as well.

Because there are those who love to escape real life problems and some peeps who rarely touch grass hate others being happy.

 

[VanVeleca]

Isekai is actually not that bad of a genre, it even makes sense why so many writers begin with writing isekai stories or stick with doing them exclusively.

A whole new world that typically has completely different laws and often some kind of magic system, you can spend multiple pages going on and on about how these worlds and the magic system work. It can be inspired by basic western medieval fantasy, but I've also seen things like sci-fi inspired, edo period-ish, ancient china-ish or european medieval.

Fantasy races of all kinds, wheter it be things like orcs and elves or completely new kinds of creatures created by the author. Pages upon pages about all these different civilizations and their lore.

Not to forget the main character, someone of our world who is gradually changed by this new world they've been plunged into. You can write sooooo many pages of the character getting used to learning new customs and trying to accept living in a world without the technology and other sorts of conveniences of the modern world.

...But because it's such a popular genre, it's instead filled with copy cats who want to create the new Re:zero or Konosuba. Hell some clearly just want to write a normal harem romance but force their story to be an isekai because it's guaranteed popularity. Pain.

 

[Snake99]

First, I don't think it's bad that they're repetitive; for example, superhero stories are almost all the same: someone gets bitten on the butt by a radioactive animal, gains powers, and puts on a ridiculous costume to fight criminals. For many years, people consumed the same story over and over again.

Furthermore, I don't think isekai are as popular as people say. Stories of that genre are very rare in the West. As another comment above mentioned, isekai is mainly popular in Japanese web novels and light novels aimed at the otaku audience who like power fantasies with harems and ecchi. It's a genre for a niche audience.

 

[Lysander_Works]

It's overdone and lazy. Many writers can't be bothered to come up with a narrative reason as to why the protagonist needs to be someone from our world crossing over, as opposed to someone who was just born in that world. Like any genre, isekai can be good if the author is talented. But because isekai is a popular genre, that means that if a less creative/talented author tries their hand at it, it will have a higher chance of attracting an audience, and so there is an incentive to oversaturate the genre with subpar works.

Isekai isn't a narrative though; it's just an origin type, one could even look at it as an intentional writing constraint (like how English teachers would make us do in school). It becomes part of the plot though when [character] uses [knowledge from other world] that they otherwise shouldn't have (and can't have if they were simply born there). Of course, execution of this is up to the author.
The oversaaturation make sense tough.

First, I don't think it's bad that they're repetitive; for example, superhero stories are almost all the same: someone gets bitten on the butt by a radioactive animal, gains powers, and puts on a ridiculous costume to fight criminals. For many years, people consumed the same story over and over again.

Furthermore, I don't think isekai are as popular as people say. Stories of that genre are very rare in the West. As another comment above mentioned, isekai is mainly popular in Japanese web novels and light novels aimed at the otaku audience who like power fantasies with harems and ecchi. It's a genre for a niche audience.

Mostly yes, but as more people take to it, it can evolve outside of what it was originally meant for; for better or worse.

But it's interesting you mentioned Marvel. I actually liked the original spiderman, hulk, similar hero stories for a short while, but when each new film kept coming out recycling similar plots, I pretty much turned the other way without thinking about it. Havent watched a marvel movie in over a decade, cause it didn't look like anyone there was willing to be inventive and try something new. Merely update the graphics, better looking special effects, but boring (to me) story regeneration. I thought it was a fair analogy...