Welcome to the Fantasy Zone
This Zone is dedicated to the lesser known elements of anime hosted by the cast of Victory Script.
What weapon is the best?
Who will win in this Death Battle?
Is this costume practical?
You name it, it's all covered here in the Fantasy Zone!
There's a lot of mention of Sword Art Online being the anime that made Isekai but back in the 90s it was a mostly Shojo Genre.
How far back does it go?
Rumiko Takahashi in 1985 released a short anime called Fire Tripper in which a girl is gas exploded back to feudal Japan, alot of elements were later reused for InuYasha, more on that later. Any anime adaption of Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz counts as well.
What are the Main Anime?
Four big names of yester year spring to mind, Vision of Escaflowne, Fushigi Yuugi the Mysterious Play, Magic Knight Rayearth and Inuyasha, all four feature a female heroine drawn into another world either through dimensions, a magical book, summoned by a preist or dragged backwards through time respectively.
How does Digimon fit into the equation?
Digimon by definition is also an Isekai by the fact that a group of 7-8 kids get sent to the Digital World but has more roots in the monster trend alongside another well known title, Monster Rancher.
Staying on topic how good are these four female led Isekai?
Escaflowne has argubly the most beautiful score ever composed for an anime.
Fushigi Yuugi was instrumental in establishing the Josei genre.
Magic Knight Rayearth put the artist team of CLAMP on the map as one of their best work.
InuYasha is yet another stellar work by Rumiko Takahashi and her best selling series by far.
What went wrong?
Escaflowne had a botched dub release and is widely forgotten next to stable mates Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star, not to mention the plot made no sense and the manga is infinitely different.
The others out stayed their welcome, Rayearth had a dreadful 2nd season, Fushigi Yuugi has not aged well and has been out of the spotlight for two decades now, InuYasha kept going and going and became the punching bag in the awkward era of the 00s where anime was struggling with a hangover, it's also aged the worst of the four shows.
As for Digimon, each season was getting less and less returns until they decided on Digimon Tri and a season 1 reboot.
Did Sword Art Online save Isekai?
Kind of, it's premise added elements that weren't available in 90s Isekai and took inspiration from harem, shonen and even thriller in some cases, Sword Art Online also took inspiration from Dot Hack Sign.
Now we can't get rid of Isekai
Blame covid, Japan's abysmal birth rate and Sword Art Online outstaying it's welcome, on the bright side, female led Isekai made a return with Saints Magic is Omnipotent and to a lesser extent Bofuri, we also have enough try hards to keep anime interesting and it's not devoid of having it's formula mixed in ever more dangerous ways, it's not like the tail end of the early 2000s where anime actually stagnated.
I think we need to revisit a long forgotten feature on the Fantasy Zone, Genre Savvy, our first subject will be isekai.
Isekai translates as simply going to another world, it's origins are routed in the high fantasy genre with early adopters of Isekai include Rayearth, Fushigi Yuugi and Inuyasha to name a few, other variations of Isekai can also include being stuck in a video game, with Dot Hack experimenting with the concept and Sword Art Online taking it to it's logical extreme, it's popularity exploded in the late 2010s early 2020s helped by the global pandemic but it's over saturation of anime is causing it to die off as ideas run out of steam.
Depending on what you watch can also set the tone, there are lots of examples of the chosen one and fish out of water plots as well as world breakers when the isekai'd character has something that can break the laws of the world they've entered.
The earliest isekai I can name is the Inuyasha prototype Fire Tripper by Rumiko Takahashi.
The future of the genre is a bit up in the air as the next trend, I dub, the best girl anime in which the anime is defined by it's best girl, is taking over the trends boosted by Twitter's outrage over it working against them.
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