Skip to main content

Week 10

Isekai! I'm actually very familiar with isekai, since it's the hot manga craze right now. I read quite a handful of them and The Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is one of my favorites. I think it's because it handles the reincarnation much less like a "self-insert" of the author's self, and it's more about this man turned slime and how he's starting to govern a whole country on his own.

Another favorite of mine is So I'm a Spider, So What? It's about a girl who was killed in her class, but is reincarnated as a spider.

These two are my favorites of the isekai genre so far not only because the web novels started early on in the isekai boom so they're less like the "mainstream" isekai now, and they're quite unique. The spider isekai focuses a lot on our MC's struggles being a weak spider, and fighting and growing into a stronger spider. It deals a lot with healing, getting damaged, and being a (giant) spider scaring everything off later on. I feel like Slime Tensei also is similar, because it doesn't glamorize these isekai as much, even though they're really fantastical situations. I feel like a lot of newer isekai these days are really just the author self inserting themselves into what they want because they don't like their mundane life and want to escape. I'm honestly not very interested in these latter ones, because a lot of the time they fall to the same stereotypes--personality-less protagonist, harem of girls, etc etc.

Also I want to make a point that Sword Art Online (which I dislike to note) is like, one of the first isekai in my opinion. Hataraku Maou-sama is also similar to a reverse isekai. These two were earlier than the isekai trend, but I think they shaped the future isekai genre.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

PERSONAL MANGA

Week 13

I read some of Oishinbo and I wanted to discuss one of the chapters I found interesting this week, which was the chapter on tea. I didn't find it interesting because of the tea, in fact tea wasn't talked about that much. Rather, I found the concept behind the chapter more interesting. It was the reflection of a Japanese-American senator who came back to Japan to find that all his old friends became wealthy, and seemingly lost their "spirit". I find it ironic, because the mangaka puts America in a good light in the senator reminding both the viewer and the characters of the manga to not consume too much and not to lose their Japanese spirit and heritage, yet America is one of the biggest countries that pushes capitalism and consumerism. So, to me, it's ironic that the Japanese-American senator is sick of the wealthy lavish displays of food from his old Japanese friends. Though, it makes sense given his background that maybe he's also tired of American displa

Week of March 26

This week was about Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and various others like Neon Genesis Evangelion . I had already watched Akira  and I think animation wise and setting wise, it is a great work of art. However, I believe that the story itself from the film does not make much sense. Akira  was adapted from a much longer manga, and thus had to be condensed for the film, which explains a bit of its problems. Despite this, I still think that it is an outstanding and lasting work of art, just because of the animation and themes. I didn't read too deep into Akira  upon my watchings of it, because it is rather fast paced and disjointed. You're not able to grasp everything like in the manga, because it doesn't cover all of it. The manga has much more detail and subtly, which I tend to find as a problem with many of these long manga to anime adaptations. Akira lead to the growth of anime's popularity internationally so I think it deserves to have a place in history for its influen