isekai thesis

as much as i fucking hate isekai
i fucking love isekai
the long amount of time it's had as the anime fotm combined with cultural accelerationism really taking off these past few years
means that the sub-genre's been explored at a faster rate than any other subgenre in history, probably
so
while it does contribute to the field being massively oversaturated with isekai
the 'throw enough shit at a wall' principle means that there's still a surprisingly high number of diamonds in the rough
i feel like the word 'subversive' has been memed into meaninglessness at this point, but seeing so many bog standard dogshit isekais coming out at the same time as these really inventive, quality ones is bizarre
like
basically american superhero movies rn but some of them are actually good
:smug:
like it's such a narrow genre and yet there's still so much coming out that they're going to longer and longer lengths to differentiate themselves
i read one recently where mc-kun pisses off the god and gets dropped in the bottom of the world's toughest dungeon and before he gets turned into a fine red mist he gets saved by a lich who's like
the strongest being in the world and she trains him
everyone in the series has like single digit IQ so she's hyper-tsundere and she can't/won't let him leave so she ends up gaslighting him into staying longer while she incessantly powerlevels him because she's so afraid of something killing  him
like the world's strongest human is lv 200 or something and when she finally makes him leave the dungeon he's like 4000
which she does by giving him a bracelet that revives when he dies and throwing him into a portal to the pocket demon hellscape and letting him get eviscerated over and over again until he's a fucking freak
and it's pll played for laughs but she very clearly ruined his life
so the first thing he does when he leaves the dungeon is bump into said strongest human and inspire the fear of god into him
and then he takes his own disciple and promptly proceeds to ruin her life the same way the lich ruined his
and they go around saving people from these once in a lifetime  catastrophes that follow him around because the entire world is actually just a reality show for the gods and the one he pissed off is the director
dude it's fucking wild
and it all works because from the start, none of the characters are portrayed as believable
they are simple actors on a stage, dancing for our entertainment and that's exactly what they fucking do
vol 3 ends with the god he pissed off getting so desperate to kill him that he effectively breaks the 4th wall
and like, senior management tells him the only way they can stop him from being canned after that is to /write him into the show/
and like
what other genre could even come close to delivering something this fucking wild
no other genre has a field so crowded it's like a combination of baby turtles running through a war zone to get the ocean and the sperm in a Nut racing for the egg
and it breeds hyper competition where the dumbest shit wins