Where did this isekai subgenre come from?

Isekai has become popular since 2013 thanks to the anime sword art online [although the novelist himself said that Sao is not an Isekai novel even though the story is Isekai really swears]. However, isekai anime existed long before that.

If we were talking about Inuyasha and Digimon, would you call the two anime isekai? Probably not. But by definition it is isekai. So, what is isekai and what is its history?

and read too

• eating rules with chopsticks
• Print Or Digital Which is Better Reading comic
• meaning of nakama power in anime

What is isekai?

Literally, isekai means a different world. An anime/manga/novel whose characters move from another world to earth. Examples of this type of anime are hataraku maou-sama and Kobayashi-san chi no maid dragon.

Isekai history

The early history of isekai

The inspiration for the modern isekai story came from the 1951 Disney film: Alice in Wonderland. At that time, this film was very influential in Japan. Many anime are inspired by Alice in Wonderland, for example, Pandora Hearts.

It is difficult to determine what the first isekai manga was, but the manga ouke no munshou [1976] is one of the oldest isekai manga.

Many say that the first isekai anime was the sci-fi mecha aura battler dunbine [1983].

In the 90s, isekai manga was popular among women. Many shoujo manga have an isekai theme, for example inuyasha, fushigi yugi, tenkuu no escaflowne, red river, and from far away. However, that does not mean there is no isekai shounen. Some examples are Digimon and el-hazard.

In the early 2000s, the popularity of isekai began to decline, especially among women. However, that doesn't mean Isekai doesn't exist at all. Isekai didn't die until here.

Narou, zero no tsukaima, and fanfiction

And in 2004, a website called shousetsuka ni narou [shortenedly called narou] was launched in Japan. This website is more or less the same content as Wattpad. Human-made web novels and fanfiction. At that time, the majority of narou readers were women. However, everything changed with the arrival of the light novel Zero no Tsukaima.

Zero no Tsukaima tells the story of Saitou, a young man from Japan who was summoned to another world to be Louise's "pet". Because of its popularity, the light novel inspired the writer at Narou to write a fanfiction about Zero no Tsukaima.

This fanfiction was the initial foundation for the current isekai light novels.

Seeing that there are too many fanfictions, finally fanfiction was banned on Narou in 2012. There should be no more fanfiction on Narou.

What happened to these fanfiction writers? Some of them ended up writing their own stories with a premise similar to zero no tsukaima. Yes, they started writing isekai web novels.

However, that doesn't mean the isekai web novel didn't exist before 2012. Some examples are log horizon [2010] and sao [2004, not from narou].

Mushoku tensei explosion and sao success

After five years of failing to enter the light novel market, Rifujin Na Magonote started writing a web novel on Narou with the title Mushoku Tensei. The web novel was first released in 2012.

The mushoku tensei formula is not a new formula, but a combination of previous isekai stories. Even magonote-sensei was inspired by eroge [like rance] to include fanservice elements in the story. However, it was this formula that eventually became the inspiration for many new web novels on narou.

Mushoku tensei is very successful in narou. In fact, the web novel has several times become the most popular web novel on Narou.

In addition, the anime adaptation of sword art online in 2012-2013 was very successful. Novel publishers and anime production committees are interested in looking at the web novel market. The web novel that was on narou finally rose to the surface and was adapted into a light novel and anime.

This is what started isekai until now.