Genre Savvy - The History of Isekai Anime

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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