Are the majority of Isekai Settings all Fantasy Settings?

[Pocky Balboa]

Part of the problem is that the history of Japanese entertainment media is far more extensive that many from outside the country realize; even those who consider themselves fans. I mean seriously; have many people do you think have actually heard of Panzer World Galient, Aura Battler Dunbine, or Now and Then, Here and There, outside of Japan? Heck, not many Japanese people living in Japan have heard of them these days, let alone seen them. We're all just skimming the surface of a vast, deep ocean.

Eh, quite a lot with Dunbine, actually, considering it's one of the other non-Gundam shows people like to trot out to showcase "Kill 'Em All" Tomino. And I think Now and Then, Here and There did get a bit of blow up during the time of its Western release because of "muh deconstruction" and "muh machure edginess" but it dropped back to obscurity afterwards. But yes, people shouldn't be making claims about where a genre dominated when they only have access to a bit of it.

 

[Bear Ribs]

We really need to hammer down a definition of "Isekai" for the conversation to go on. How it works is going to be pretty arbitrary.

Personally I lump Isekai and Planetary Romance together because I disapprove of dividing things by nationality and saying "Only X country can create X genre." It seems prejudicial to me and ignores how much interchange there is between fandoms of different nations. For this reason I don't generally divide them by whether they are Japanese or not.

By that standard Sword Art Online is Isekai, as are Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Inuyasha.

One can consider the "Changeling Fantasy" genre where a person discovers they were never human but rather a witch/alien/werewolf etc. and comes into their powers as a subgenre of another world, as the hero does indeed leave their old world behind and go to a new one, often hidden in the same world but dramatically changed by understanding that it has magic or aliens in it. Harry Potter is probably the most successful current ChangelingFantasy. I would class that as a subgenre as Harry's Adventures are quite similar to a a japanese HikiNEET except he goes back to the ordinary world a couple months each summer.

Modern-style Isekai usually includes gamer elements and a HikiNEET protagonist in which case women were never included in those but I feel limited it to those elements is too narrow. If one expands it to include the likes of Escaflowne, Inuyasha, and Fushigi Yuugi, which predate the gamer elements that were strongly popularized by Sword Art Online, one needs to also include the male-led Isekai of the time and those that preceded them such as the aforementioned Isekai no Yūshi or beyond ancient Urashima Tarō.

I do not like lumping "reverse Isekai" in with Isekai because it tends to swing a huge net across a swath of "Magical Girlfriend" romance pieces like I Dream of Jeannie in the west and Sally the Witch in anime (which was heavily inspired by Bewitched, another magical girlfriend series in the west). This makes the separation less useful as you're pulling in a lot of stuff with an entirely different theme base.

Female characters have always been a major part of Planetary Romance and Isekai both. Alice in Wonderland is a fine example of a bizarre world to be explored and Alice's irritation with it's perpetual insanity is lovingly crafted. But there is no period one can point to where only females were being Isekai'd, nor really males for that matter and the idea that Isekai is somehow "stolen" seems bothersome.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I think it's because the author wants to transplant a character from our world, into another world that is usually pre-modern. So like medieval knights and castles.

If the setting is going to be overall modern, like within the past 100 years or so, you mind as well just write alternate reality fiction or something.

 

[Terthna]

Personally I lump Isekai and Planetary Romance together because I disapprove of dividing things by nationality and saying "Only X country can create X genre." It seems prejudicial to me and ignores how much interchange there is between fandoms of different nations. For this reason I don't generally divide them by whether they are Japanese or not.

It's not dividing by nationality; but rather, by culture. Isekai and Planetary Romance aren't the same thing, for the same reason Japanese and American folklore are not the same thing. Sure in the modern day, there is a great deal of intermingling between cultures; but to ignore that they are still separate cultures is, in my mind, disrespectful and dishonest.

 

[Pocky Balboa]

If the setting is going to be overall modern, like within the past 100 years or so, you mind as well just write alternate reality fiction or something.

Modern and futuristic settings can still be isekai, actually. Like, I recall this one comedy manga where a dude gets isekai'd into the usual elves and dwarves locale but their tech level and civilization is at the same level as 21st century earth. Still goes through the usual isekai tropes, comedy version. Plus there's a number of isekai into futuristic or post-apocalyptic settings. Three off the top of my head are "I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship, so I Became a Space Mercenary", "Unparalleled Path ~ Reincarnated as the AI for a Space Battleship ~", and "I'm the Evil Overlord of a Galactic Empire" (though the last one's a comedic story on the level of shitposting). For post-apocalyptic there's the aforementioned Now and Then, Here and There. There's another one where I can't quite remember the manga's Japanese title but it translates to something like "I and the Demon King's Rebellion."