Nov 19, 2025
To:Jay Mark
I don't think it violates the spirit of isekak no🙌, isekai is one of the most broad and varied genres, in alot of ways isekai is less a genre and more just a sentance - 'In another world', personally I think 'living in another world' is slightly more apt but mostly the same difference😆.
My points were about its genre conventions, weather we're looking at the early anime isekais in the 80s and 90, or the more more 2010s generation that has become so large and popular, there are alot of very clear throughlines. A focus on being very close to the protag's perspective (espically early on) is one such example that has stayed very consistent not just across the years but even the different mediums.
Those things are of course not hard rules and theres absolutly examples of everything, isekai is so big now you can do pretty much anything from alternative WW1 settings, to future worlds and good old fashioned fantasy🔥.
My comment pertained to how the further you stray from conventions, espically in a contest with a brief like this one had, the more the reader can feel lost. I think the reason so many isekai start in similiar patterns, following near identical conventions, is becuase it lowers the readers initial investiment. Each bit you stray from that is one more ask of the reader, one more thing they have to settle into. As I said in the comment, I wouldn't strickly call that a bad thing, more that it has a sort of risk involved that you have to ask the reader to stick with you longer, to give you the oppurtinity to invest them. Thats less isekai and more just the basic prinicpal of genre promises - any genre has expectations that a poteinital reader comes in with. The sooner you hook them with your take on those promises, the better for keeping them around ya know😎.
Your story absolutly is isekai, defintionally it is objectively about being in another world - but genres do have alot to them that the reader expects - my comment was simply me ruminating on how I felt about this books deviataions from said conventions, and weather it deviates too much too fast without enough of an incentive for the reader to settle into it and give it the chance it deserves.
Hope thats more clear🙏👍
