There is a thread on /a/ lamenting isekai(a genre where one is transported to another world...

There is a thread on /a/ lamenting isekai(a genre where one is transported to another world, most often a swords and sorcery fantasy world) the thread goes on to praise Veeky Forums for its ability to create setting saying that a bunch of gaijin neck beards make better isekai than the elevens.

so I ask Veeky Forums Howwould you do a good isekai? what cliches do you avoid, which do you embrace? what kind of setting do you use.

Pic semi related, its more of a deconstruction than an example of the genre done well.

Other urls found in this thread:

kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/
1d4chan.org/wiki/Stranded_in_fantasy
youtube.com/watch?v=42TupUcpxPw
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Automatically being able to speak the language is cancer. Special powers are cancer. Being unique in the fact you were taken over is cancer.

It's fine to be the only (recorded) one brought over, but all those other automatic special powers are awful, as is gameification. Using JRPG stats, levels, and concepts are just awful - an adventurer guild is one of the worst fucking tropes. That, and they tend to be EXTREMELY generic settings, the base japanese 'western' fantasy world with it's vanilla elves, vanilla dwarves, vanilla JRPG style magic, it's so fucking repetitive.
Now and Then, Here and There is a good example, I think, though Shu is an oblivious idiot.

Look up the Major Tom threads from April.

>EXTREMELY generic settings

this is the biggest problem with isekai, but how do you fix it? what kind of setting goes well with isekia?

Make one up. You can even use a generic setting, as long as the story itself is interesting enough, but it rarely is. It's usually some guy coming over with some superpower that makes them effectively invincible, either straight away or after a very brief period of time. The story is what matters at the end of the day.
Another thread is asking a similar question, about getting simply cast back in time like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. In both, it's someone far outside their comfort zone, and well outside of any real recorded history (save myth). Your best bet is to either have the person have skills from their prior life, or be a quick learner for the setting's own relevant abilities. In a fantasy style setting, you can have them learn magic but apply some modern concepts to it to optimize it. In a sci-fi setting, the classic is something like The Last Starfighter, it's someone who had all the training he needed from playing a very specific video game. As long as they don't get 'chosen hero' powers as a cop-out it can be great.

Does Re:Creators fall into this genre? Because that series is pretty cool. Fate only well written and with fictional characters meeting their creators could make an interesting campaign.

>Isekai where the MC is transported to the Imperium of Mankind

Make it happen, Japan

>isekai where a knight is transported to modern day Japan

It doesn't. You could call it reverse isekai I suppose. The show has a neat premise but the writing has been otherwise terrible so far.

At the root stuff like Three Hearts and Three Lions or The Wizard Knight are isekai but they're a lot more ambitious in how they go about it than most of the Japanese stuff. Or like, the Harold Shea books are all the same sort of set-up.

Personally, I'd make the other world gritty as possible.
From the episodes of Grimgar I've seen, they do a damn good job of this. Fighting goblins isn't busy work, it's a life or death struggle for everyone involved, even with their MMO style abilities. The characters struggle to get by and deal with the loss of companions. Power fantasies never really stay fresh.

If I was doing a isekai, I'd have a protagonist dropped into a Darkest Dungeon style situation, where they are obligated to put themselves into deeply perilous situations, having to prepare as best they can for situations they cannot conceivably predict. Comrades are killed, or rendered unable to continue from what they've faced, but the protagonist must press on or face total obliviona and perhaps freedom from this torment.

TL;DR: Just do Darkest Dungeon the anime

Does Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet count as isekai?

Because it's as close to the perfect way to do it as possible, for me.

Here's how you do it.

Start with the reverse. Guy walking home from a movie sees a strangely dressed man looking very uncertain off to the side of the road. Most people seem to be avoiding him, because he looks weird and nervous. Guy is a good person, and stops and ask if the guy is okay.

The hobo just spouts a bunch of gibberish. But our MC is not deterred, because he notices two things: the first is that the gibberish isn't gibberish, even if it doesn't sound like any language he is familiar with there is a certainty and consistency to it that clearly means SOMETHING.

The second is that this hobo has a sword. A real goddamn sword on his hip.

Curious and interested, he leads the hobo to a nearby diner and buys him a meal for which the guy is very grateful. The more he interacts with the hobo, the more certain he becomes that the guy isn't crazy, just lost. They manage to work out a kind of pantomime to get across simple concepts, so communication is possible.

When it comes time to leave, the MC can't convince the hobo not to follow him home, and ends up guilt-tripping himself into letting this hobo sleep on his couch, telling himself its just for one night. But the truth is he is really interested in what this guy's story is.

The next morning he walks into his living room and the hobo is talking to what appears to be a ghost living in his floor lamp, some kind of 'communing with spirits' magic. Actually goddamn magic!

Obviously, he's not kicking out the hobo after that.

Over a period of weeks, they figure out how to talk to each other. The adventurer lives on his couch and watches TV to try and learn more about our world, totally unfamiliar with our technology but a quick learner once he gets the basics down. He is fascinated by our world and standard of living, eating a variety of foods available by takeout that would be fit for nobility back home. He loves to explore our world, which he can do sort of safely as long as he cleans up and wears normal clothes.

The MC asks a lot of questions about the fantasy world hoboventurer comes from, and magic in particular. Apparently the guy got lost in some kind of fairy circle that's based on the phases of the moon, and is pretty sure he can't get back home until the moon is right again.

They become fast friends in that time, the hobo learns rather more english than the MC learns fantasyspeak, and hilarious misadventures are had.

When the time comes for the circle to work again, the hobo loads up on some stuff that will make him rich back home, dons his old clothes, and says his goodbyes.

The MC has been planning for this for half a year, and follows after with a bunch of camping gear, a gun, some mismatched "real quality!" larp armor for protection and some stuff of his own.

He follows after the guy to see the fantasy world for himself and learn magic, and the next arc is the reverse of the first: now the MC is the fish out of water, and the adventurer is the one showing the ropes.

We already had this thread a thousand times.

If you want an example of a good isekai, read Tunnel in the Sky or Alice in the Wonderland or Wizard of Oz. Hell, even Brave New World counts as isekai for all intents and purposes.
Isekai is literally a "stranger in the strange land" plot.

MC knows just enough fantasyspeak from loving with hobo to not get himself killed, but still has a lot left to learn to be fluent and has drastically underestimated how hard living outside of modern comforts is. He tells himself magic is worth it.

The two of them make a lot of money selling modern wonders, and use that to travel to a prestigous magical academy where MC can get taught like a pro, which is actually more than the adventurer has ever actually gotten. Since, you know, poor before now.

MC strikes a deal with the mages to trade his knowledge for theirs, introducing them to concepts like germs and some half remembered science facts he can't prove but they find very interesting anyway. That, and his money, buys him an education.

Which he finds both very difficult and very easy at the same time. On the one hand, he learned to speak their language but not to READ it. On the other hand, he is already literate otherwise and as a BA in something useless he is actually more educated than some of his professors, just not in anything that matters in fantasyland. So his math is better than great, but obviously his history and reading are poor until he picks that up over time.

Meanwhile, word gets around and local nobles start inviting him to dinner. They don't actually realize how special he is, its just a status symbol to have a foreign prince at your dinner events. Everyone assumes he has to be nobility, because he is rich and well fed and wears well made clothes. Over time, as he starts to do more and reveal how useful his knowledge can be, he finds himself becoming a point of contest in local politics. This eventually gets too hot for safety, just after his magical studies finally are starting to pay off, and he is forced to return home in a hurry, his friend saying he will come and visit once things cool down.

But that's not what happens.

we arnt talking about stranger in a strange land type stuff we are talking about the very inbred way that the Japanese to isekai and how to fix it.

I remember really enjoying The Glove of Maiden's Hair back when I was a kid.

I was much too young to realize that it was actually a fantasy fapfic for women. Handsome magical elf ends up trapped in the modern world, where the aging single lady- who's getting on in years- can totally help him and seduce him.

I'm not much for anime but I am digging the shit out of this concept user!

Instead of ending up back on our world, he ends up somewhere else. A different flavor of magical land. The moon was in the wrong phase.

So now he has to go through all of this again, but less prepared and without a guide this time. But he knows some basic magic now, so that helps a little!

This fantasy land is much 'higher magic' than the previous one, and after he gets dragged before someone important they give him a magic necklace that translates for him. Which helps speed things up a lot, but its expensive and if he wants to keep it he'll have to pay off the debt.

Interestingly, while this new world has more common magic than the last realm, it shares almost nothing in common with what he was taught. The basic magic shit he has only barely learned and was a novice at in the prior world is, here, totally unheard of.

This sets the theme for future arcs. Each arc is a different world, the language barrier glossed over by the necklace from now on. In each world he goes to he learns some trick or acquires some tool that is unique to that place. He never masters anything, but he eventually ends up with a combination of tricks that were never supposed to go together, exploiting combos that other people can't because they haven't been the places he has.

He just wants to find a way back home, or as things get worse at least find a way back to a world where he has friends.

By the time he finally makes it back to earth its been 20 years and he is rolling is power armor with magic items he has built into it or strapped on top, with an increasingly absurd history of shit like fighting aliens or overthrowing ancient godkings. After all of that he is finally home.

The last arc is him trying to find his place in a world that has passed him by, and in many ways he has himself outgrown. He thought he wanted to go home, but is this even home anymore? No one believes he is who he says he is, and he doesn't even know if he should tell everyone magic is real.

Let them do their own isekai stuff as they see fit. They sure as fuck need their power fantasies in their lives that are devoid of individualism and are basicaly feudalism in modern iteration, with lords replaced by corporations.

kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/

...

I read that article.

Shit's insane. I would never be able to handle living there.

The French made a bunch of movies about this already.

As someone who is unfamiliar with this genre, what are the common tropes and themes?

Japanese Isekai usually involves a really bland dude getting thrust into a fantasy world that conveniently follows classic JRPG tropes, up to including a class based system and levelups, either explicit or by another name.

He immediately runs into a waifu that the plot forces to stick with him, and he builds up a party of tagalongs that are going to be at least 2/3rds alternate waifus. While initially useless, he will fall into a seemingly uninteresting skill based class like "thief" that he inevitably proves to be not just competent at, but unlocking some hidden talent or extraordinary skill that only happens to an adventurer once a hundred years or some shit. The recurring theme for this special power is that it usually never works, but when it does it wins you the fight. Aka "and this is how the MC beats boss monsters they he clearly shouldn't be able to beat after all hope is lost".

Sometimes shit stays pretty low level, sometimes he goes on to save the whole world. That part varies, but everything above this line is pretty much a given.

Konosuba remains the best actual Isekai because it takes the piss out of the whole thing. Kazuma is a guy in a harem that he might occasionally perv on but he wouldn't actually fuck any of them with a full body condom. His skill abilities are never what wins him important fights, its his strategies and the fact that if he coordinates his useless minmaxer party they can actually be really good. He steadfastly refuses to leave the starting town, because life is easier there.

Fuck, that's good.

You can abstain from mentioning the world /at all/ and have an incoherent and inconsistent setting, and get away with it, as long as you don't obstruct the monomyth in the process.

The issue with bad isekai, with most bad writing actually, is that there's no monomyth whatsoever. They don't have stories, just settings.
That's all well and done if all you're just trying to sell self-insertion wankery, but if you're too lazy to build a setting you have nothing to market.

Learning the language is also cancer. Either way wastes space to add nothing to the story. If you make no reference to language at the start, no one bats an eye.
The real issue is automatically knowing /every/ language. It's either lazy world building, or an extension of the whole "cheat power" problem.

>Using JRPG stats, levels, and concepts are just awful - an adventurer guild is one of the worst fucking tropes.
These are also pretty bad, but to Nips that *is* fantasy. Take them away and the setting feels juxtaposed to them.
They'd definitely be better off without them, mind you. The only purposes they serve are padding the word count (which takes away from the story and setting) and "following the leader."

I've had an idea for a kind of Isekai short story that I've been kicking around, but thinking about it it could probably be an interesting campaign if changed a bit.

The idea is that in generic-ish Isekai fantasy land, there has been a prophecy stating that a chosen hero will come from another world and stop the evil of the dark lord and save the world. There are people all around the world who have prepared for years for the coming of the Hero, not the least of which is the Dark Lord himself, who gained his position specifically for the challenge of fighting this prophesied savior. There are people who have trained their whole lives to accompany the Hero, others who pray for the day the Hero comes to free them from tyranny, and all kinds of stuff.

And then on the day of the hero's foretold arrival, he doesn't show up.

And he never shows up.

And the whole world has to figure out what to do when the savior they spent their lives waiting for isn't going to be there to save them.

the working title I've been calling it in my head is Waiting For The Protagonist

>The Wizard Knight
My nigger. I was about to mention that. Yeah, the keys I would say are:
A. Have the protag be a complete fish out of water at the beginning, with even language providing a barrier. Or, at least, give a decent excuse for why they can speak the language.
B. Even once they can communicate, there is still a great deal of cultural baggage they've brought with them to their new home. Play with this, and do it for drama, not just for gags
C. Have people plausibly respond to them telling people that they're from another world/time. Either people should act like they're fucking nuts, or the protagonist should keep quiet about it for fear of people thinking they're fucking nuts.
D. Don't use their displacement as an excuse to have them suddenly start running shit. Of course an average person from our time isn't going to be able to start reproducing modern amenities from scratch. Very few people have the knowledge to build even a gun and gunpowder from completely raw materials, nevermind something like an engine.

Ultimately, keep in mind that being in the past or a fantasy world with modern knowledge doesn't suddenly turn them into a complete badass. They are an average person, completely out of their element, treat them as such. However, this doesn't preclude them from learning how shit in the setting works and BECOMING a badass. They just gotta work for it.

Turns out the protagonist was killed by bandits minutes after being transported to the new world.

are you a bad enough dude to to pretend that your the legendary hero so the world does not lose hope?

Sounds sport of like a combo of John Carter of Mars and Samurai Jack.

Bonus level: it's the bandit who killed him who only realized afterwards that he killed the legendary hero. Not wanting the entire world to kill him je pretends that he is the hero when people come to the prophetic location the hero is supposed to appear. He tries to BS his way through more and more dangerous situations while trying to find a way out of this mess.

>get back to town after slaying some idiot wandering around the forest.
>the towns having a festival, ohh yea, the legendary hero is arriving today.
>i wonder what he'll be like
>...wait, that guy in the woods who was dressed strangely and had no idea where he was...
>ohh shit

What is Hero of the Imperium for 500$, Alex?

>isekai
NO

FUCK YOUR JAP AND WEEB SHIT

THIS IS PULP.

JOHN CARPENTER, A CONNETICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHURS COURT, ETC

NOT 'ISEKAI'

FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING WAIFUS

It's a specific *subset* of pulp, for which no specific term exists in English, of which Japan is the current primary (almost only) producer and consumer, and we're discussing the Japanese version of the genre specifically. What do you have against loanwords?

>for which no specific term exists in English
It's usually "trapped in another world" but that's kind of a mouthful

Is anyone willing to write this? I would but I don't normally write so it would be shit

I've got Jean Reno on the line.

Fish Pulp?

>but he wouldn't actually fuck any of them
What a fag.

>Fish Pulp?
No.

I avoid anything that would attract weebs. Thus I use tropes from pulp fiction and dime novels. This means using a setting with rich history, giving all characters depth, avoiding folded steel memery, making magic balanced, and not using anything remotely oriental in aesthetic. This means the players are not unique, they are not special or significant in any way. They are lost and confused, marooned in a world they have no hope of truly understanding.

I do not allow the players to perform as if their characters are completely at peace with be separated from everything they knew and loved. If they are unable to list even a single thing or person their character would miss from their home world, I kick them from the group and discard their application. I then drop bread crumbs throughout the world. An aged cell phone sounding off in a dark forest, the computer that one of them used at work, with everything still open from when they left, a television or radio broadcasting a rerun of their favorite show. Nothing is actually useful. There's no signal, no internet, the shows run on repeat, every radio station is the same. They're all just fragments of a world left behind. I'll include pets and belongings appearing at random. I'll give them dreams of their old homes, empty and gathering dust. All of their belongings packed away in boxes they don't remember buying. I'll scatter pictures and letters from loved ones, left for them to find. But whenever they reach out for home, I leave them with silence. The dreams go nowhere, and leave nothing but longing.

But beyond these things, the players are free to march towards their own futures. I just keep everything on the horizon until they need an ending.

It's really more about cowardice.
On the other hand, all the women in his life are insufferable.

He's in a party with 3 That Guys in a campaign run by That GM.

1d4chan.org/wiki/Stranded_in_fantasy

Eh, its for the best.

He tries to think of Aqua romantically. She is the girl that gets bound to him by the plot, the first one he meets. She should be the heroine. But she is just so fucking stupid and awful he can't see her as attractive.

Megumin is too young for him. Even Kazuma has standards, somehow.

He thinks Darkness is hot, and he flirts with her on occasion, but she has weird fetishes and no self control. Sex with her would get too weird, and the consequences of being in an actual relationship with Darkness are too horrifying to comprehend.

>it's basically RL

this this this this

MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS

THAT IS WHERE THE BEAUTY LIES

youtube.com/watch?v=42TupUcpxPw

EXPERIENCE YOUR NEW GOD!

It depends on what is meant by isekai.

If it means "a person from our world is transported to another" then Western Isekai has always been better.

Some good examples of Western Isekai are Farscape or Planet of the Apes, or hell even Fallout 4 are better stories than Gate or Log Horizon.

There are a couple of reasons for this.

1. Western Isekai tends to feature main characters who are soldiers or astronauts or police. Characters that it would make sense for them to have the necessary survival training to live through their rough introduction to an extreme survival situation.

2.Western Isekai is willing to play with the tropes involved in the Fish out of Water scenario. There might be No Way Back, especially if the main character has been cryogenically frozen for hundreds of years. Western productions also tend to steer clear of the cliche settings and depict the main character having difficulty adjusting to their surroundings. Case in point: John Crichton slowly going insane because everything is so alien that he has no frame of reference.

3. There's been a really annoying trend in anime since the late naughties, and not one unique to Isekai either. Anime writers tend to hand the main character an I WIN button right at the start of the story. Death Note did it, so now everyone else has to do it to. The problem with this is that it's not engaging, it's not interesting it creates a boring, invincible hero right from the start. It's just a juvenile power fantasy. Most of the Isekai stories that irritate people tend to fall into this same trap.

I think RWBY did a really good job of deconstructing this idea and showing just how much having an IWIN button like that would suck.

1: Most of those are not Isekai, even loosely. Just ending up in a world you are unfamiliar with isn't a portal fantasy, anymore than going to Europe without a good grasp of the language or a guide is an Isekai adventure.

2: Every single example of "western isekai" you mention is scifi in nature rather than fantasy. You should probably think about that.

>Some good examples of Western Isekai are Farscape or Planet of the Apes, or hell even Fallout 4 are better stories than Gate or Log Horizon.
>Fallout 4

wat.

What the actual. How bad are those that F4 is better than them? That game has a terrible story, bad gameplay and bland graphics. There is no redeeming quality to be had there. As for the fish-out-of-water story, the main character slots into the post-apocalypse as if he's lived there all his life, with very little in the way of reaction to synths, super mutants, deathclaws or the general state of the Commonwealth.

What's your beef with Log Horizon?

Stop making everything about sexual tension.

That there is no season 3

>40kid thinks Cain is the first time this trope has been done

fuck you and your mother

I like the general setting and structure, but if we're going to forge this into a media empire we're going to need more drama. Heaps of it.

So:
> Where's the conflict in this story?
> Is there overarching theme; some type of through-line for all the worlds?
> Are the two main characters foils for each other, and if so how?
> Is there any type of moral ambiguity to him rising up through the socio-economic ranks by selling garbage from earth?
> How does he feel about trading high school level science for magical knowledge?
> Do his "mundane" earth skills ever give him a demonstrable advantage, IE, doesn't always resort to magic?

>fallout 4 is a better story than log horizon

There is no real difference, dude. And I mean seriously, John Carter has adventures, badass powers for no reasons, waifus, and all that shit. The only thing he doesn't have are maids, probably.

Personally I think the problem is that usually they're too focused on being comfy. Sometimes literally, sometimes more on the "I'm too badass" variety. I think it's a trap the elevens are starting to evade, at least sometimes. See Zero Kara (which was everything but "comfy") or Grimgar.

Another problem is the generic as fuck setting. The oddest thing is that it appears people don't really give a fuck about THAT, to the point a new Inuyasha (traditional japan fantasy) would kinda seem something new.

Personally I'd go for giving the character(s) other objectives. How about a bunch of college students that are transported there, possibly with parts of their faculty (library, laboratories, power generators) and try to build an industrial civilization?
There is no reason for them NOT to have harem antics with catgirls or whatever, mind you. This can be silly as you'd like it to be.

>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Mah negro

I'd read/watch that.

Good point. I was originally picturing this as a kind of a "You cant go back" theme where the longer he is at this, the more he realizes he is in a position where he can never have everything he wants.

He has friends and family on different worlds. Settling down on one worlds means never seeing the rest again. I could see him ending an arc by being in the middle of a victory party, realizing he is getting too attached to this place, and immediatley ducking out the back and jumping to the next arc because he is afriad that if he doesnt leave now he never will.

That said, there does need to be some kind of throughline. Maybe he realizes there is some kind of multiversal Eldrazi-like threat that no one else knows about, running around eating worlds. Or he crosses paths with another Isekai protagonist that has taken over one world, and has only just realized there are more worlds out there to conquer.

>good isekai
No such thing.

That's a problem with the author, not the story.

>special powers and being able to speak the language are always cancer

Plebs.

>Fallout 4's story
>better than Log Horizon

Don't be a twat all your life, mate.

>Kazuma is a guy in a harem that he might occasionally perv on but he wouldn't actually fuck any of them with a full body condom.

Explosion End is pretty much confirmed at this point.

>The Twelve Kingdoms
>anything but excellent

>Explosion End
>shagging up with a teenage girl in need of therapy

Seems reasonable.

How old is Kazuma anyway? I got the impression he was like 18 or something and Megumin was like 15

I think the biggest problem with Isekai as a genre is that it's always wish fulfillment for the main character. They're always someone who's into gaming or fantasy, and gets to go into their dream world. Which means they're always quite genre savvy, understand or can at least extrapolate how the world works, and have all kinds of clever ideas as to how to use any powers they get.

If you want to fix Isekai, fix that first and foremost. Throw someone with no interest in fantasy into a fantasy setting. Their only knowledge of elves are that they're those guys who work at Santa's workshop, and they think magic just means card tricks. Go through their struggles to understand this strange new world - ranging from major things like how common violence and death are, to more minor things like discovering toilet paper doesn't exist. Those minor things don't need to be comedic, either: Imagine how you'd react to finally understanding that you'll never get to experience any of the comforts of home you take for granted again.

Obviously since it's Isekai you're going to give them some kind of weird power, but you can play with that as well. They're completely unused to the idea of whatever it is, and have no innate understanding. Everything they do with it has to come from painstaking experimentation, and they regularly almost die because they misuse it or don't think of possible consequences. Any mastery is the result of genuine growth, not just a magic asspull.

Speaking of, that's the most important thing. Have them grow as characters. Eventually they start getting used to this world, and even start to thrive in it. But that has to come later, and they have to earn it.

Oh, and don't give them a harem. Harems are a dead horse.

>isekaii where person with IQ over 70 is transported to anime fandom
wow, that's what I call high concept!

Go read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court. Isekai is best used as a satirical vehicle to highlight the fallibility of myths and demolish the supposed superiority of the culture the main character is from.

Japanese isekai characters as a general rule can't go a minute without reflecting on how much better Japan is. Until they discover slavery is real, that is. The ount of disgust that generates usually sinks that particular story and author.

>They're always someone who's into gaming or fantasy, and gets to go into their dream world.

The Twelve Kingdoms that was mentioned is about a teenage girl being abduced into a power struggle she has to navigate without any guide other than a demon who keeps telling her that she's shit and should kill herself. The world she's in was basically abandoned by the gods after they slammed it with a covenant that will make nations with bad rulers fucking implode and expose its people to various man-eating monsters.

The usual ones make the MC start out with some mundaen skill that's a lot more useful all of a sudden though, yes.

Twelve Kingdoms was epic, at least the first season. I kind of lost interest once it switched focus to Taiki.

I loved Twelve Kingdoms, and I think I may have been channeling it a bit when writing my suggestion. It's exactly what I'm talking about, right down to her own powers fucking her up because she has no idea how to use them.

Also, I loved the touch where the eager fantasy-loving girl isn't the one chosen to be the heroine, and it fucks her up bad.

Vision of Escaflowne is the best Isekai.

This isn't my idea, I heard it on Discord.

The protagonist is a competent guy sucked into a fantasy world. Big-titted sorceresses, elves, game-stats, all that jazz.

Right after he's summoned, someone else bursts into the summoning chamber and kills his party members. The killer is from Earth, and he's roughly Level 200.

As it turns out, a group has ended up in this world before the hero. They've established themselves as god-kings, and they're killing off anyone who might threaten to disrupt their rule. They know all the tricks, because they've done them before.

The protagonist must find a way to get home, because his enemies have an overwhelming power advantage. Worse, they know exactly what he's going to do, because they were in his shoes before.

.....Jumpchain the Anime? Well, we've had worse.

That sounds completely joyless to watch as a series, since there's no solution to the problem.

This. It actually does fit really well.

In that scenario, I cant see how the story lasts longer than 5 minutes. Guy is caught in a situation he has no knowledge of or control over and is immefiatly beset by an unkillable enemy thst wipes out everyone he might have called an ally before he even learns their names.

The big bad being an earlier traveller isnt even new, thats basically the default """twist""" to these stories.

The gimmick is that his class lets him absorb the levels of his dead party members for one fight. So the girls who die immediately add their levels to his, letting him run and hide.

Okay, not that user but here's a twist: the MC is a total normie who knows nothing about RPG bullshit and totally clowns on the other grognard "travellers" with the twin powers of basic interpersonal skills and common sense.

Not that guy, but I like it BECAUSE there's no solution. Like Strange Dawn or the anime in the OP, sometimes the best you can hope for is to fuck off home and let the other world fend for itself. Just peace out and leave them to it.

Gives the MC an actual reason to want to go home, other than just pointless bitching.

Common sense stops being common if magic actually is real.

Your normie goes into the attic to hide without a candle. It is dark. He is eaten by a grue, because he didnt have enough common sense to beware of common grues.

Oh god, I know that crap, it's Gesellschaft Blume isn't it?

Blume isn't an isekai.

He just got there. How does he have a class already?

If this is thing he can do, if he lasts more than a few days he can effortlessly overpower the former party, he just has to get enough other people to die around him until he is level 3000 and rolls face. One pitched battle of an army of level 1s getting slaughtered and he is good to go.

>Levels as an actual, acknowledged in-show measure of strength
Eugh.

In all shitty isekai, you get a class just for showing up. Getting 3000 people to die for you might be hard, though.

I read the River of the Dancing Gods back in the 80s and I've never been able to take this kind of portal fantasy seriously since.

In Blume, the boost only lasts for one encounter.

It needs more detail, and in order to be done right has to be long as fuck.

What should the progression of worlds be? So far we have:

> Earth
> low magic game of thrones backwater
> high magic fantasy land with common magic items

>?????

> back to Earth after 20 years

It only has to last one encounter.

Lead revolution you know will fail horribly. It fails horribly, but the power boost you get from it lets you kill everyone who needs killing anyway.

What if you only get one of them? Or if you can only have 3 party members?

wow, I've written and erased everything 3 times.

Ah, got it. First, MC's party wakes up with a goal. He doesn't know what world he's in, but he knows he has to do something to obtain a reward beyond returning home. Let's say he needs an elixir to bring back to his ailing sister, nice and simple but not something that needs to be explicitly said until episode 3 or something.

Second, MC's party is alone for a LONG time. Like how a lot of SoL shows are about how the main cast plays off each other, the dialogue will be carried by a group of friends and acquaintances who already know each other but are in a completely different world. Not exactly like grimgar, but they didn't exactly do this part wrong.

Obviously, they'll face monsters. If it's absolutely necessary to have jrpg tropes, they have the gear but not the training. So the third is that they don't panic so much, but at the same time aren't hyper-competent. We don't need deathdark "oh god, monsters are so horrible so I'm just going to let him eat me now" all the time. They gang up on things one at a time, and try to work their way up to actually swinging a sword properly and not like a bat. Magic works, but is entirely trial and error as the magic user has no teacher. Viewers get to see the mage drawing circles on the ground or slowly moving elements this way and that, and they are most certainly learning.

Fourth is that "otherworld knowledge" is not so reliable, and that it can cost you. Sometimes the character just didn't learn the skill well enough yet, other times they need too many tools and manuals due to lack of fundamentals, or the world is simply different: chemistry exists, but the periodic elements don't quite have a 1:1 counterpart. Gunpowder could just fizzle, while a poison or curative becomes TOO strong. And you just feed that in to building the setting. Use the otherworld knowledge to develop the setting rather than overwriting it with modern sensibilities.

cont.

After a whole arc of this, culminating in a proper boss fight, we get....other people. Natives.

And nobody can speak their fucking language.

So we spend some time on that. Easy translation magic is weak, but if you don't want to deal with themes on discrimination and the importance of communication, it's a price that CAN be paid.

Then they find that their otherworld methods of tech and magic are....not too different from established methods. The academe would find them a little young or quick at learning, but that's that. They've got novel ideas and perspectives(if they can even communicate them), but not enough experience with the world and physical materials to apply them in practical environments.

So then they come to a choice: do they go to school, or keep adventuring as they are to accomplish their goal and hopefully get home sooner? Whatever the result, even possibly splitting up, you can continue the story on from there.