terrified to ask this but i think i need to as someone getting into anime:
what on god's green earth is "isekai" and why are its defenders rabid
So isekai is an anime genre that roughly translates to "in another world." These shows tend to all feature some main character (almost always a teenage boy) who gets transported into another world, usually one which runs on video game logic, and usually one with fantasy/DND aesthetics, (and usually one where he gets to become a hero of sorts [eventually] and wins the attention of 3-6 hot girls with 2-dimensional personalities. You know for wish fulfillment.)
The genre by itself is not the problem. The oversaturation is.
It is what I can only assume vampire fiction was to the teen romance landscape back when Twilight was popular.
And because the isekai formula just Works for the fans, most isekai shows do not have to try at all. They can get away with a terrible plot, terrible world-building, and terrible characters because you don't need any of those to be good to appeal to the core demographic. You JUST need to be an isekai. Make sure it has cute waifus that the whale-fans will shell out $$$ for to own their figurines, and bam, you're set.
And the extreme oversaturation (both of isekai and harem shows) means it's squeezing out most anything interesting, original, or innovative. After all if you were an anime studio why WOULD you take a gamble on something innovative when you can recycle the same isekai plot for the 1,000th time and for a much safer bet at turning a profit?
There are, likely, some good isekai out there. But I'm confident in my assessment that that bad far outnumber the good. Some friends and I do a weekly bad-anime-watch-night and usually we just throw a dart at any isekai on the crunchyroll page and it is almost ALWAYS just JUST awful. And as such, someone who chows down on all isekai as their preferred type of media is going to have nothing in common with me. They would also be mad as hell at me saying that isekai is almost universally garbage.
...I can't believe I'm logging back in again for the first time in like half a decade for this, but apparently I have Opinions on the subject.
I simultaneously emphatically agree and vehemently disagree with this post.
I hate isekai anime. Almost all of it is indeed trash. But I want to love it, because I love the isekai genre.
Allow me to explain.