|
I dunno if this has been mentioned already, but I recently found this weird series: The other world doesn't stand a chance against the power of instant death It's an intriguingly cynical parody of the premise of a lot these Isekai stories, and as a result of that I feel like the world itself is more interesting than the characters, so I'll start with that. Basically, the setting is described as the "lowest energy potential" of all the infinite isekais, so it's extremely easy to get transported there and extremely hard to get out. Which means it's constantly under attack by extra-dimensional invaders of all kinds, from demons to elder gods to mecha. But the most dangerous invader of all is of course the Ordinary High School Student, who usually ends up with some OP cheat ability and starts enslaving the populace or whatever. Basically it's a hellhole where cities are blowing up every day because of all the clashing OP-ness, and almost everyone is a sociopath. Keeping "order" such as it is are the Sages, who are the most OP of the OP who have filtered their way to the top and are basically amoral gods who will casually kill lesser mortals with a wave of their hands. They're the only ones who stand a chance at stopping invaders from other worlds, so they consider themselves the rulers of the world, and, well, who's going to stop them? However, not even the Sages are truly immortal, and sometimes they die in battle against invaders. To replenish their numbers, one of the Sages (they have no leader, since naturally every single one of them thinks of themselves as the most powerful) orders a new shipment of Ordinary High School Students, this time an entire class of students on a bus. They're all given RPG stat menus and OP new abilities yadda yadda yadda, and maybe one of them will end up being powerful enough to join the Sages. Probably not, but eh, they're expendable and they can always get another batch. However, also on the bus are a few students who failed to "install" the RPG mechanics and they're abandoned by the other students, assuming that they'd weigh them down. Naturally, these people turn out to be even more special than the others, and in fact were special even in their original world, and are all ridiculously OP in their own, even more OP ways. Etc etc. Basically it's a ridiculous black comedy parodying all the OP cheat slave-owner type protagonists, as pretty much everyone is an awful person trying to kill each other. The most fundamental, basic gag of the series is the anti-climax though. As the title indicates, the main character can just kill anyone or anything by thinking about it. It's sort of designed to be the most ridiculously overpowered, yet also boring, ability possible. But he's vaguely a nice guy (not really) so he only uses it in self-defense. IE: if anyone even thinks about hurting him they will immediately die, from any distance. Other than that, he's the most boring man imaginable (intentionally so). The story is usually told more from the perspective of his companion, who's the one who overreacts to everything until she gets bored of doing that. Also she's a highly trained ninja, for some reason. It's the kind of story where everyone has some crazy backstory, because every single person in the world is the main character of an Isekai novel. I don't know how well the writer can keep this from getting old, but the premise is absurd and creative enough that it really stood out to me. Also there is absolutely zero harem nonsense (still some romcom nonsense between the two leads though), and the slavers are villains who gets killed, if that's the sort of thing you worry about.
|
#
¿
May 21, 2019 05:54
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 01:43 |
|
|
Nipponophile posted:I've read that series recently as well, and my feelings can be summed up thusly: "Mark Millar writes manga". Can you elaborate on that?
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2019 07:14
|
|
|
To be honest, I kind of dismissed it myself until I was talking to my brother about it (as a list of "bad isekai I've read recently") and then when I described it it sounded way more interesting than how I felt when I read it. That's kind of why I thought the premise was more entertaining than the characters or whatever, although that did make me look back on it more fondly than I had before.
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2019 07:28
|
|
|
everythingWasBees posted:instant death is a p uncomfortable power fantasy with lots of kind of skeevy elements so im gonna ask we not discuss that one in this thread I interpreted as a parody of power fantasies (by turning it into a childish game of "nuh uh, you're dead"), and frankly it seemed to lack all the second elements of power fantasies, like everyone falling in love with how amazing the main character is, or the main character always being morally justified no matter what, but all right. It certainly has this ultra-violent shock value thing going on.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2019 23:06
|
|
|
I have come to discover that I really like the genre that is "I was reincarnated into an otome game as the villainess, who is the daughter of a Duke and engaged to the Prince, except the Prince falls in love with the Heroine who is merely a commoner and/or baroness, breaks the engagement, and then I get disowned and/or killed and I want to stop this from happening or at least mitigate the damage so I can live a quiet life." Unfortunately, despite there being dozens of stories with this exact premise, there isn't a tag for it on mangadex?! Can anyone recommend any stand out ones? I've probably already read the most popular ones, but I certainly can't remember all their names anyway, so any recommendation would help.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2019 00:58
|
|
|
IShallRiseAgain posted:Its shoujo + isekai. I guess that narrows it down, but it's certainly not the only thing in that search. Edit: Also I found a good one recently that isn't technically an isekai (just the girl going through a time loop so she has memories of her "bad end") which wouldn't have been found with that search. Clarste fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Jul 16, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2019 01:08
|
|
|
SystemLogoff posted:What's the title anyway? The one I found that's not an isekai? I Swear I Won't Bother You Again I dunno if it's actually good in a general sense, but I like the fact that because she's not reincarnated she identifies more as the person who actually acted like a villainess, and she's basically wallowing in guilt and self-hatred as she tries to carefully remove herself from her own life.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2019 01:27
|
|
|
pentyne posted:Is this one of those "uh, last 1/4 of the series gets super creepy" or just early cancellation? Early cancellation, although there are some desperate fanservice chapters near the end that were clearly hoping to revive interest.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 16, 2019 05:31
|
|
|
Part of the fantasy is also that "girls would realize how nice I am and fall in love with me, if only they gave me a chance!" Having a slave is just another way to force interactions between the MC and the girls, which allows that process to happen. It's a cheap way to force people from vastly different backgrounds into the MC's orbit, while simultaneously giving him a cheap and easy way to act nice around her (ie: "Wow, he doesn't treat me as a literal piece of property who has to sleep on the floor and eat tablescraps! Even though he totally could and that would be socially acceptable! What a gentleman!")
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2019 03:33
|
|
|
OldTennisCourt posted:I Won 4 Billion in a Lottery But I Went to Another World is a really fun and relaxed Isekai. Despite not dealing with slavery directly, that series actually addresses the power dynamics of the setting in a more interesting way, at least. Like, everyone in the isekai world thinks he's a literal god, so they might as well be his slaves in that he could order them to do anything and they'd probably do it. There's a point where he casually invites a woman to his room (to give her shampoo he bought or whatever) and she just assumes that he's going to rape her and that she has no choice because he's a god and it all gets very dramatic. Clarste fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Jul 19, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2019 02:32
|
|
|
Has there ever been an isekai where their food is better than Japanese food?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2019 02:12
|
|
|
To be fair, soy sauce is amazing.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2019 02:15
|
|
|
I would think the main advantage modern cuisine has over ancient cuisine is the abundance and variety of spices from international trade. However, except in cases where the MC is physically bringing in stuff that knowledge wouldn't help them at all in an isekai.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2019 02:47
|
|
|
Phobophilia posted:Shinju no Nectar has the protagonist invent the internal combustion engine when everyone had nothing more than the steam engines. And it has very smart and driven antagonists who very quickly work out the principles of the protaganist's inventions so to make imitations and countermeasures. It also has a pretty interesting setting that isn't just "generic fantasy world with game-like systems." Like, it starts out in something like a colonial India being ruled by imperialist elves with guns. Also also tiddies.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2019 00:09
|
|
|
Extremely fair response.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2019 04:39
|
|
|
Like a fool, I've jumped down the rabbit hole of Korean shoujo isekais and stumbled upon this nice subgenre of "fake fiances" where two people have to pretend to be lovers for pragmatic reasons, but because they're all nobles in vague feudal times it's a whole formal engagement and all the social and political repercussions of that. I can only assume this has been a shoujo staple for decades but whatever. This Girl is a Little Wild Not technically an isekai, but one in spirit. The hero (a woman who's been disguised as a man for most of her life) has finally cornered the demon king, but as a last desperate attack the demon king uses the remainder of his power to switch the hero's soul with another one in his possession. So the hero ends up in the body of a frail noble girl whose callous and ambitious father sold his firstborn's soul to the devil, while the hero's body is possessed by the girl and promptly gets killed offscreen(?). And now with no demon king to kill and no body to get back to, the hero has to navigate the treacherous life of an unwanted noblewoman whose wicked stepmother wants her out of the picture by any means necessary to secure the inheritance. And she ends up getting fake engaged with someone for protection. Of course. Basically a comedy about her attempting to destroy all social conventions to get what she wants. The Reason Why Raeliana Ended up at the Duke's Mansion This one's being officially translated, but you have to pay for it (which I did). Basically some Korean girl dies and reincarnates into the world of a fantasy novel she's read, except it's a mystery novel and she's now the first murder victim, whose husband poisoned her with arsenic to inherit her family's fortune. Luckily, she's far enough back in time to where they're still just engaged, but even when she tries to break it off he won't take no for an answer. So feeling desperate, she uses her knowledge of a future plot twist to blackmail a duke (the novel's love interest for the detective main character) for his protection, but to do so and also for the Duke's own reasons that he won't tell her, she has to be his fiancee for 6 months. Hilarity ensues. Adelaide Also costs money. A Korean fashion designer in her 20s dies and reincarnates as a minor noble in a fantasy world (from a baby, not like suddenly jumping into a preexisting person's life). She has no useful skills or knowledge, admitting that she can't even sew a dress properly without a sewing machine, so she just fully embraces her new family and new life. However, as much as she enjoys being the spoiled youngest daughter of an unimportant noble family, she doesn't really have anything to look forward to in life other than getting married off. So when she hears about a mysterious black haired girl from another world suddenly appearing in the capital, she has to go take a look, if only to get some entertainment. And one thing leads to another and suddenly she's scheming with a duke to be fake engaged. While everyone thinks she's amazingly sharp and gutsy, she really can't tell anyone that she's only doing this because she's incredibly bored and wants to see a real life soap opera from up close. It's good. Clarste fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jul 21, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2019 22:07
|
|
|
sunken fleet posted:Thanks for this post, I was actually just reading This Girl is a Little Wild the other day so finding other similar stuff is welcome. I'd also toss in a recommendation for Survive as the Hero's Wife which is being translated by the same group as This Girl and has a similar theme. That's not a fake fiance, that's a real fiance who she can't believe might actually care about her. Yinlock posted:just once i'd like to see the fake lovers/arranged marriage plotline where the fake/arranged lovers don't actually get together in the end What's the point then?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2019 02:26
|
|
|
Eh, she just can't imagine that people would love her. That's how she's been all her life, so I don't see it as acting out of character.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2019 23:51
|
|
|
Yinlock posted:making an actually interesting story? I wasn't talking about arranged marriages, I was talking about "fake engagements" where both people willingly enter into it with full knowledge that they have no plans to actually get married, arranged or otherwise. Actually, it's usually a way to avoid arranged marriages, by being able to point to your fake fiance as an excuse. Just a fancier version of the standard "fake lovers" plotline with more political intrigue.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2019 00:55
|
|
|
There's political intrigue because people are trying to assassinate them or whatnot.Yinlock posted:e: having two people who kinda hate each-other fake a relationship to accomplish separate goals while trying to undermine each-other is a pretty good concept, it just never ever sticks the landing They don't hate each other though, they're usually doing it because they're already comfortable with each other as friends (or at least one side is). I think we're talking about completely different things. Clarste fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jul 24, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2019 00:57
|
|
|
Fenrisulfr posted:Inso's Law has been pretty entertaining. It's a Korean webtoon about a girl who wakes up one morning in the world of a web novel she read the night before, except her life outside of where it interacts with the WN characters is exactly the same so it takes her a while to catch on. Dan-I is pretty annoyed by the situation, and not at all interested in playing the role of "MC's childhood friend" or really being involved in the typical WN-style events at all so she tries to avoid everything, which of course doesn't work very well. It's pretty early on yet, but I find it amusing that so far the presumed MC is the one most obviously romantically interested in her, and most of the male leads seem to be enthusiastically wingmanning for her. I feel like a lot of jokes rely on "wow this name sounds so outlandish and silly in Korean; why is no one else even batting an eye?" though.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2019 21:34
|
|
|
I have never read the original work in question, but it was described to me as "an isekai about Otome games written by someone who's never been within 100 meters of an otome game but has incredibly strong feelings about them because he hates women."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 31, 2019 06:49
|
|
|
I don't like stories where the premise is "everyone but the MC is an idiot so he can look smart."
|
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2019 01:25
|
|
|
RareAcumen posted:Oh snap, I had to re-read this a couple of times because it was colored and I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that it was a manga (even though colored manga isn't like, the most outrageous thing in the world or anything). It looks like anime screenshots. It's a Korean webcomic. They're all fully colored.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2019 08:42
|
|
|
Schubalts posted:Was this posted? Cheating Men Must Die I read this a little while ago and mostly I just thought it was odd how, despite the title, the focus was way more on getting revenge on "the other woman". Maybe that'll change in future stories, but that gave me a unpleasant impression, like the writer thought that women were always at fault for a cheating man.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2019 09:13
|
|
|
You should know by now that in-universe excuses aren't very compelling in this thread. Anyway, it was just the juxtaposition of the title and the actual content of the first arc that made me raise an eyebrow.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2019 20:23
|
|
|
Nalin posted:I Swear I Won't Bother You Again updated. I like this one too. It's a very... internal story, about how she sees the world and how she's internalized that everything bad that happened to her the first time around was her own fault. I've also been reading the latest chapters in Japanese after the translations stopped updating.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2019 03:49
|
|
|
There are like, 15 billion different otome game villainess isekais so you probably need more arms.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2019 12:37
|
|
|
In-universe explanations never serve to magically make problems with the work go away, but yeah that explanation sounds pretty misogynistic anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2019 05:49
|
|
|
...Why are we talking about it then? Export this conversation to the unwholesome thread.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2019 07:11
|
|
|
The odds of any individual player being dumb are pretty high, but the odds of an entire group, or an entire culture, being dumb are slim to none. Any power fantasy that relies on the MC being the only person on the planet with any common sense is an instant no from me. Video game logic in particular is specifically designed to be "easy mode." The player is presented problems that are designed to be solved, with mathematical certainty. Unlike, you know, the rest of life which is a billion times more complicated. Which is why people like to retreat into the simplicity of video games in order to feel smart and powerful. Clarste fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Dec 17, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2019 23:14
|
|
|
Siegkrow posted:Aheehehehehe. That's the point though: bad players will mindlessly try to copy the better players. And the better players will freely share all their secrets for bragging rights. From what was described, that doesn't seem to be the case here: instead the community consists entirely of the lower-skilled players and no one has even considered doing better until the MC shows up. Because, as a society, they are all apparently just dumb and lazy. Edit: You also have to consider that you yourself are another average player, and the fact that you existed in your groups to look down on everyone else as an idiot is a relevant piece of this puzzle. Essentially the story is reinforcing your own naive illusion that you are the only intelligent person in the world. Clarste fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Dec 18, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2019 01:10
|
|
|
ninjewtsu posted:I mean that didnt stop medical science from advancing Yeah, this, basically. The story is assuming that this society is cripplingly stupid/complacent compared to real life. You can come up with all the rationalizations you want, but all I'm hearing is "actually, I am that smart compared to literally everyone else in the world." Edit: I mean, forget "advancement" people have been eating poison for centuries in the name of medical research. The fact that a battle in a dungeon would have a more obvious positive or negative outcome just means that people would be even more experimental with it. Clarste fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Dec 18, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2019 04:33
|
|
|
Either way, the idea that the MC comes in and teaches the locals how it's done is a sketchy premise at the best of times. I mean, who'd have thought that Japanese food was the tastiest cuisine in history, am I right?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 18, 2019 07:40
|
|
|
egg tats posted:I mean, yeah that's fair, but it's wierd that I've got like 5 manga on the go right now about an otome game (or just a fantasy setting) about a magical school in a western featuring: They're all parodying the same "generic fantasy otome game" in the same way that all the other isekai stories are parodying the same generic Dragon Quest JRPG world with slimes and demon kings. I'm not sure if such a game has ever actually existed, but it's just part of the zeitgeist by now. Also there are like dozens of them, if you've only seen 5 that's pretty surprising. Clarste fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Jan 13, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jan 13, 2020 15:38
|
|
|
A lot of these stories also have the protagonist go "oh, I don't mind being disowned/exiled because I don't care about being nobility, I'll just go relax in the countryside" as if that's super easy.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2020 04:28
|
|
|
If you've reached the point where you have to explain how it's totally cool in context it's already too late.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2020 07:24
|
|
|
Sometimes I find myself morbidly wondering what would happen if Violette confronted her father about it, but like on his own terms instead of trying to change his opinion on her. Like if she said "As we both know, I suck and Maryjun is better than me in every conceivable way, and therefore in order to protect the family's honor and save us from embarrassment I should be removed from public attention entirely in order to let her shine. I mean, it's not like I can actually help her in any meaningful way, right? Plus, even if I'm married off to someone for political gain there's no guarantee my husband won't try to undermine Maryjun's obvious entitlement to the entirety of the duchy. I'm really more of a liability than anything. And that's why you should disown me and send me to a nunnery, k thanks." Like, it's incredibly dumb but I want to see that. Edit: I don't know why I spoiler tagged all that. Clarste fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Jan 15, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2020 10:45
|
|
|
everythingWasBees posted:close enough for the purposes of this thread What distinguishes it from just a fantasy story? It doesn't even have like a time-travel/reincarnation element that would give the protagonist an unusual perspective.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2020 17:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 01:43 |
|
|
Nalin posted:Living as the Tyrant's Older Sister is probably my favorite isekai so far. The female MC is just one of the best protagonists out of all the stories I read. I do enjoy this, but I kind of wish it didn't collapse into funny faces quite as often (as in, 90% of the time). Like, they lose their impact when they're the new normal, imo.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 21, 2020 19:17
|
|
