Avatar and Isekai Anime

[MithrandirOlorin]

https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot. ... ht-me.html

Pause and Select recently uploaded a video complaining about how AntiTubers usually talk about Isekai. This post isn't about most of what that video is about, in fact it mostly won't be about that video at all. But the issue of how to define Isekai is one of them.

youtu.be/vKvXDw0G1tQ
I agree that calling Harry Potter Isekai is quite questionable, and I personally don't like treating VR MMO based Anime like SAO and Accel World as part of the genre. Thing is he seems half uncomfortable with using the term Isekai to describe any of the Western works it definitely applies to. It's important to understand how the Japanese and Otaku cultural context of modern Isekai Anime makes it distinct, but comparing them to their western counterparts only helps us to understand that. Meanwhile there is no good Western equivalent to a single word for this particular kind of fantasy.

Most talk of Western Isekai is about books that are nearly or over a century old and later adaptations of those books. However there is one truly recent major work of Western Media that I think works as a pretty standard example of Isekai, in a way that is perhaps more like Anime Isekai then the classics, in both the good ways and the bad ways. That is James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar.

I just watched Jack Saint's video about Avatar and it's pretty good.

youtu.be/hihKrHP9aMc
I still haven't watched the movie itself and I still don't really want to. But the way it works as a literal Escapist Fantasy reminds me of everything we've been talking about in regards to Anime Isekai. And it's interesting how this film that came out in the last month of 2009 directly preceded the modern Isekai Boom in Otaku Media.

Jack Saint's video is mainly about how the White Savior and Noble Savage tropes play into Avatar. And it is interesting how often Isekai Anime can seem like they're about a.... what word should I use here?...... Yamato Savior to whom Medieval Europeans are Noble Savages. Now it's incredibly problematic for anyone in the West, on the Right or the Left, to point to this and go "see non white people do the exact same thing". Japan doesn't currently wield the kind of power over "less developed" nations that the U.S. and Europeans Nations do, and to a certain extent they don't exactly think about the concept of "Race" the same way. But in general part of what I enjoy about watching Anime is the different perspective, media from people who view my culture and it's heritage as alien and exotic and where my country is often depicted as the evil empire.

One particular Isekai Anime that came to my mind while watching the video was Outbreak Company, both in the ways it's similar and in the ways it's different. OBC can't be accused of unintentionally saying Hard Power oppression is bad but Soft Power Colonialism is fine, in this story Soft Power is what the villains were using from the start. It's a story about how Cultural Exchange is good but using culture to wield power is evil. And our protagonist does not become the ruler of this world but merely an ally of the ruler.

I made some tweets a few days ago about how for a change I'd like an Isekai about escaping to a futuristic rather then medieval or ancient world. I desire this kind of Escapist Fantasy but realistically I can't imagine ever preferring life in a less advanced world, with no Internet and where the only way to listen to music is to hear it performed live. But watching this video helped me remember how the Fantasy Genre as a whole is often predicated on a tradition of idealizing the past and finding "modernity" depressing. I also remember Wisecrack doing a video on how Tolkien and C.S. Lewis philosophically believed the world is always getting worse.

This particular attitude is an inherently conservative one in-spite of how often Liberals and Leftists wind up enjoying and writing fantasy based on the same attitude. Sadly the people who would consider the ideal world to escape to a Star Trek style Communist Utopia aren't the ones writing Isekai stories, or at least aren't applying that to how they write their fiction.

But taking a Futuristic approach would not require abandoning the JRPG influence, it would mean leaving behind Final Fantasy I and Dragon Quest as the main influence and instead looking to Final Fantasy VII and XIII, or Phantasy Star, or the RPGs set in the Star Wars Universe like Knights of The Old Republic. Though it does seem like an analogue to the Internet is often missing from Futuristic Fantasy, some fans specifically saying they'd find it weird for an Internet to ever exist in the Star Wars Universe. The fact that such a disconnect exists only further proves that SW is Fantasy not SciFi.

I was annoyed in SFDebris Dragon Age review when he said he was shocked the people who first made a SciFi game in KOTOR would so quickly turn around and make a Fantasy game. You see RPGs are inherently Fantasy, you can't do a SciFi RPG, every attempt to do so just creates one that is transparently disguising Magick as Technobabble like Phantasy Star. So the ability for Star Wars to make a good RPG only further proves it's NOT SciFi. Cameron's Avatar is also like Star Wars in this way, it is inherently a Fantasy story no matter how much it uses cosmetic elements that normies assume to be SciFi, the Navi are Elves as much as they are Native Americans.

It's also interesting to think about how Isekai relates to Video Game culture. Again the name of Avatar is not really based on the Hindu origin of that term but rather the idea that the MC has an Avatar to explore a world that is at first rather like playing a Game to him. Even SAO arguably has a western equivalent in more ways then one now in Ready Player One.

One aspect of how Isekai and Video Games relate I think needs more notice is how often old Video Game Adaptations became Isekai in the adaptation. The idea that the Super Mario Bros come from Brooklyn and are not indigenous to the Mushroom Kingdom is accepted as fact by the western fandom but it was never the case in the Games at all, Yoshi's Island ends by making clear they were raised in the Mushroom Kingdom, they look like normal humans for the same reason Princess Peach does. The Brooklyn origin was invented by the Super Mario Bros Super Show and then reused in the live action 1993 movie that I quite unironically like. Meanwhile the 1985 Anime film had them pulled into a Video Game, and the Game Boy comic was a Reverse Isekai based on Super Mario Land. This Isekai approach was also taken by the Captain N cartoon.

Meanwhile it's also easy to look at both the original Legend of Zelda game and the first Final Fantasy where the player character is said to come from another land with no other elaboration, and see it as easy to read that as an Isekai premise if you wanted to.

[Mecha82]

Isekai is interesting genre just because it has been thing for some time but has become so popular that there are lot of those these days with new once pretty much being made for each season. If I am not mistaken it was SAO (subpar anime IMO) that started current Isekai craze that still doesn't seem to be dying out.

Back when I watched Outbreak Company I was wondering what would had happened if Japan had taken direct military approach and then GATE answered that by having MC be member of JSDF who also happens to be otaku send to another world with JSDF troops as response to attack from that another world.

Over all lot of sci-fi that we see media is either science fantasy or at least closer to it than sci-fi. I believe that this is because science fantasy doesn't require to have basis on real world science and it allows more freely inventing technology and planets to fit needs of story. It gives more freedom for writers and gives them free pass from ignoring real world science.

[TGLS]

Meanwhile there is no good Western equivalent to a single word for this particular kind of fantasy.

Now, English is very fond of pilfering words from other languages, but I do happen to find using the term "Isekai" a bit condscending. Besides which, English isn't German with its love of long compound words to describe particular things. The term "Portal Fantasy" works perfectly fine and has a clear meaning to unfamiliar readers.

I still haven't watched the movie itself and I still don't really want to. But the way it works as a literal Escapist Fantasy reminds me of everything we've been talking about in regards to Anime Isekai.

We're verging on arguing about shows we don't watch here but arguing that James Cameron's Avatar is Isekai is stretching a term beyond meaning. A quick wiki hunt explains Isekai is set in a parallel universe to the protagonist character. If we are shifting the meaning to include transportation that is normal in the world, all fiction where the protagonist goes somewhere exotic is Isekai. So now Stargate, The Last Starfighter, and Indiana Jones are Isekai (Admittedly, The Last Starfighter is probably closer than JM's Avatar).

You see RPGs are inherently Fantasy, you can't do a SciFi RPG, every attempt to do so just creates one that is transparently disguising Magick as Technobabble like Phantasy Star.

No, no, no. Sure, there are plenty of paper thin examples (Mass Effect is one of them). At the other end of the spectrum, there's Fallout, where there's nothing that is clearly repainted magic. Hop outside the VRPG bubble and there's even more examples of crisp non-fantasy RPGs (Transhuman Space, most Cyberpunk games, technothriller games, and historical games come to mind).

[MithrandirOlorin]

If SAO can qualify then so can Avatar.

Yes at face value you can say Avatar is no more Isekai then Star Wars is, but Avatar is a version of the basic feeling Isekai is supposed to evoke in a way that Star Wars is not.

[Fianna]

I made some tweets a few days ago about how for a change I'd like an Isekai about escaping to a futuristic rather then medieval or ancient world.

So, Farscape? Or maybe Futurama?

[MithrandirOlorin]

Futurama is literally traveling to the Future, I've never seen any Farscape.

[Elderdog]

Futurama is literally traveling to the Future, I've never seen any Farscape.

Farscape focuses on a NASA astronaut that gets shot into a distant part of the universe as a result of accidental FTL travel so it could be considered part of the genre. However, it tends to differ from most Avatar and Isekai style stories in that he is the only human in his part of the universe, so his isolation tends to come from the fact that he is the only real "alien" in the series and the first people that are fugitives. In other words it's a pretty great show.