Editing Isekai (section)

==Why do people hate it so much?==
As noted above, stories of people entering other worlds are nothing new, and speaks to a common desire to experience strange and exotic lands. Yet Isekai stories still get a lot of flak for many reasons. Besides there being way too many anime/manga that are all basically the same story with slightly different premises, it boils down to a number of common gripes:

* The biggest one is that rather than trying to tell a compelling and interesting story, too many Isekai stories are just the basest wish fulfillment fantasies for the lonely basement-dwelling neckbeard. Most of the other complaints are derived from this one.

===Gripes about the worlds===
* While most isekai stories used to be about the protagonist wanting to escape the otherworld to get back to reality, it has become increasingly common for the protagonist to not be able to go back or them not even wanting to go back. As a result, most isekai stories could easily work as regular fantasy stories with few alterations, making the whole isekai aspect pointless.
* The worlds travelled to are so god damned painfully bland and unoriginal, usually the JRPG version of the [[standard fantasy setting]] at that. Not only is this oversaturated but, coming from ''an Asian nation'', why in all the Yama hells bring your characters into Not Thirteenth Century Catholic Germany all the time? When Westerners do it to (say) Arabian Nights they get called "Orientalists" [[weeaboo|or worse]]. Suppose we spot each other this on condition we don't make our counterparty DAMN LAME. Seriously, where in the proverbial fuck are our Mesoamerica's, the Middle-Eastern civilizations, the South Asian and Southeast Asian ones? Hell, even in the European setting that every single Isekai is teleported in, it is blatantly cut-and-paste when in reality, Medieval Europe was shockingly diverse in terms of beliefs, culture and architecture. The orthodox buildings of the Byzantines for example, looks completely different from the Gothic architecture of Western Europe or the paganistic runes of Northern and Eastern Europe. So even in the very setting it is trying to emulate, Isekais are blander than wall paste.
**This is most likely because the ''Dragon Quest'' vidya gaems are some of the best-selling media of all time in Japan, so basically every Japanese kid is nostalgic for their fantasy land with slimes and magic swords; but are niche and usually flop everywhere else, so it just comes across as a bunch of bland RPG pastiches ripping each other off.
* And because they're JRPG the isekai will often go so far as to define the world in terms of ''RPG mechanics''. We shit you not. People in isekai worlds speak of levels, classes, and experience as real and tangible things as opposed to the mechanical abstractions fa/tg/uys normally recognize them as. Outside of Isekai stories that actually take place inside of tabletop or videogame RPGs, this is inexcusable. To make matters worse, this has started appearing in [[Goblin Slayer|fantasy series that aren't isekai]]. Seriously, say what you want about SAO, but at least ''it has the excuse of being inside an actual video game'', so the RPG mechanics makes sense in-universe. But when a 'supposed' fantasy world does it? It automatically breaks several levels of immersion. There is nothing more off-putting than a medieval setting suddenly having a voice announcement out-of-fucking-nowhere to let MC-kun know which class to level up.
* The worlds of Isekai frequently (read "almost always") have a problem with what's known as a "Second Order Idiot Plot". An Idiot Plot is, of course, a plot that only happens because everyone involved is an idiot (and it can be done well; see, for example, ''Burn After Reading''); but a Second Order Idiot Plot is a plot that only happens because ''everybody in the world'' is an idiot--frequently, either some obvious solution is overlooked for dumb reasons, some obvious phenomena is ignored, or some baldly obvious lie is widely accepted.  This is generally abused to create easy problems for the protagonists to solve.
* Magic being treated as a "I Win" button. Every single overpowered Isekai protagonists (And friends!) are only overpowered due to the aid of some [[Bullshit|bullshit]] magic enhancement. Name me <u>'''''ONE'''''</u> Isekai protag who became powerful largely based on his/hers swordskill with no magical bullshit enhancements involved. Now, in a ''good fantasy'' with a ''good'' magical system such as Witch Hat Atelier or Full Metal Alchemist, magic (Or whatever it is called in the setting) has both a set of universal rules that grounds the user from being a one-man army and has its own limitations and issues that prevent it from going all out. For Witch Hat Atelier, magic is ''drawn'' rather than spoken and one must have ''years'' of training to properly draw all the runes and glyphs that will affect the type, power and size of the magic. And even then, the type of spells one can cast is heavily regulated and restricted; creating a self-limitation to avoid another magical world war like before. For Full Metal Alchemist, extremely dangerous alchemy is incredibly risky as under the Laws of Equivalent Exchange, the alchemist in particular must be willing to sacrifice something that is a part of him/herself in the process. Therefore, greatly limiting the overall affects of alchemy unless you are willing to literally give up your humanity in the process. But in shit Isekais (Read: All of them), the MC can just know a very convenient spell he pulled out of his ass and nuke the goddamned place, without any limitation whatsoever. And even with limitations, the protag can just find a loophole and handwave it out of existence, making said limitation [[EPIC FAIL|''utterly pointless''.]]
* Since some Isekai protagonists are so powerful, no one in the new world is capable of opposing them; that includes the cliche "great demon king" who had terrorized the world for centuries only to get one-shotted by the MC in one chapter, thus erasing any conflict and tension and making the story even duller. Other type of villains like high-status types (king, nobles) or anyone in the world whom had grudge or a bone to pick with the protagonist may be introduced, but due to how the human civilization of the other world [[Medieval Stasis|are incapable of advancing their technology]] in most isekai, [[Always Chaotic Evil|these villains]] are arrogant, ignorant, and often underestimate the MC and their otherworldly knowledge (see the Emperor from GATE). Therefore, they will inevitably get their asses handed to them by the MC and their modern Japanese knowledge + JRPG cheat stats when they tried to sabotage or kill the MC's party and fail again and again. In short, Isekai lacks proper and inspiring villains.
* Speaking of Demon Kings/Lords: the main villains of an Isekai are almost usually this and, like the very world they live in, look generic as fuck, resembling more of a hot bishie dude with horns than some monstrous abomination. This isn't limited to ''just'' the 'demon lord' however; nearly any monster in an Isekai is also blatantly generic-- stock D&D dragons, goblins, orcs, trolls, giant spiders, etc. You want them in? Fine, but at least have the creativity to give them an interesting backstory, character design and motivation beyond "RAAAWR! ME TAKE OVER THE WORLD!". If your antagonist(s) looks like it was copied and pasted from Microsoft Word, then you have created an uninteresting and boring adversary, and nothing is worse in a story than to be ''boring''.
* Badly-done racism. This one is especially unforgivable considering that racism has been a way of life in Japan for hundreds of years and you'd think they would understand something about it by now. Having drama where the humans hate the elves or the beastfolk is fine. The part that so many series forget is setting up an actual reason that so much bad blood exists, and considering exceptions such as sailors and merchants (who are historically the least racist bunch in real and imagined existence) who don't care whom they do business with. They even fail to consider that maybe some of the characters might have different opinions on the other races or ''simply do not care'' when a light elf sees another elf of delicious chocolate variety, because God forbid there be any dimensions to the cast. Of course, setting up the world to be full of people who are spiteful for absolutely no reason means that your main character gets to show off how ''accepting'' and ''benevolent'' he is compared to the backwards fantasy peasants. Which brings us to...

===Gripes about the protagonists===
[[File:Stock-isekai-protagonist.jpg|400px|right|thumb|No author has yet managed to even notice the main male character customization menu for their Isekais, so they have to stick to changing hair and eye color.]]
* Isekai protagonists tend to be [[Neckbeard|big fucking nerds]] who immediately recognize what's all about and exploit it, often aided by [[Plot armor|unreasonably high stats relative to their abilities in real life.]] The unstated implication is that the overweight slimeball watching/reading the isekai story would be just as successful as the protagonist because of his [[Trivial Pursuit|valuable and hard-earned RPG knowledge]], as opposed to not even being able to understand the language spoken by anyone there (or them understanding you- I hope one of your skills is charades) and dying of cholera a week later. 
* The protagonist frequently is overpowered in a way that puts him way ahead of his peers, despite lacking any useful combat, intellectual, or even social skills from his homeworld. Rarely does the protagonist have to put that much effort in overcoming his obstacles and is often deemed "The Chosen One" or "Special Blooded" by what amounts to GM fiat. Just like a unique snowflake.
* Even more offensive protagonists will be actively unlikable or even outright repulsive, despite not suffering any consequences for it.
* And on top of that, 99.9% of the time, the protagonist has an all-female <s>harem</s> party who hang on his every word. [[Mary Sue|Is this starting to sound familiar?]] (Note, in particular, that usually these female party members exist purely to provide fanservice and be [[waifu]]ed. On top of this, they're fairly likely to be noticeably underdeveloped and/or cliched.) While this is not necessarily a bad thing, there are countless examples of lazy writers going way too far with it and turning the characters into caricatures or pulling the rug out from under the readers and going from harem to vanilla romance. It's at the point where the openly pornographic isekais are actually an improvement because they don't pretend that said harem is anything ''but'' a collection of sex objects.  
** To further expand on the female character issue: look, we in 1d4chan ''hate'' Mary Sues with a passion. But you know what is just as bad as a female Mary Sue? A soulless, living pair of tits. Since nearly none of the female characters in this sort of situation have any agency, they are literally just there for an unfunny boob joke or sexual harassment 'joke'. The end result is that your 'waifus' are boring and replaceable as fuck who are just as painfully blank as the protagonist ''and'' antagonist. In the end of the day, we like characters who are interesting, tits or not, and parading around these characters like trophy wives when the protag most ''definitely'' did not do anything to ''earn'' their love and affection is insulting to our collective intelligence.
** This gets doubly, egregiously worse if said harem contains blatant [[Loli|lolibait]] and that the author tries ([[Fail|and always fails]]) to justify it by giving us tired-ass lame excuses like she is either a [[Bullshit|thousand years old,]] [[Derp|it is somehow considered legal in the setting,]] or worse of all, protag-kun is an actual [[Lorgar|pedo or child molester]] but is somehow considered A-okay because he is now in the body of a [[Shota|little boy.]] This in itself is already considered atrocious, regardless of how unnecessary it is and that depicting such acts without even the strongest condemnation of it ''in-universe'', should raise the mother of all red flags on what the story is trying to tell us. But the stupid gets worse when certain zealous fans do the mother of all mental gymnastics to [[EPIC FAIL|defend this shit.]] No bitch, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is probably a ''fucking duck''.
***Jobless Reincarnation deserves to be called out here. Doesn't matter if it has good animation, okay world building and praise as the "Father of Modern Isekai". If the whole ethos of the plot is that it is a 'redemption story' like many of its fans like to promote, than it better seriously deal with the MC's blatant history of pedophilia, child grooming, child molestation and the creation of child pornographic material (in his past life at least). Look, you can write stories detailing such serious topics, but it must be handle with as much care as Schindler's List. Jobless Reincarnation however? Nearly every case of the MC attempting to sexually assault a young pre-teen, the show [[Rage|treats as a joke with circus music.]] Does the MC becomes repentant, does he gets severely punished, does he suffer any consequences from this? No. He does not. [[RAGE|In fact, he ends up marrying into a harem of the three girls he fucking groomed from the get go.]] His only 'karma' is that he became impotent, but that itself is a joke of a punishment, given his predator relationship is orders of magnitude worse. The show ''tries'' to sympathize with the MC by giving him a 'tragic' backstory (Read: its bullying, fucking tiresome), but having a tragic backstory does not excuse his monstrous behaviour. Jobless Reincarnation is still a power fantasy, the ''WORST'' type of power fantasy, as it <s>gives</s> rewards a convicted pedophilic piece of shit with a loving middle-upper class family inside the body of a little boy, filled with little girls of which he can prey on with little to no consequences, whilst becoming powerful and praised as a hero at that. As a 'redemption story' it [[fail]]s to comment on the MC's biggest flaw and worse, treat his actions as a joke and even rewards his grooming in the end. At best, it makes the series callous, at worse, ''dishonest''. This shit can make or break readers and watchers. You want to watch/read a ''good'' redemption story where the MC actually faces his past crimes and tries to make amends? Read Vinland Saga.
* Almost all the protagonists in isekai stories have either a tragic or "NEET" background. Again, not necessarily bad but definitely overused. This gets worse when they are all generic manga cliches. But some tragic backgrounds are so specific it's as if the author inserted their own past there.
* As if the above wasn't enough, too many isekai MC are [[edgy|edgelords]]. For most of them, their reason for being edgy is how they were abused, betrayed, NTR'ed or disowned by either the MC's school classmates, other isekai'ed people, or society as a whole. Some really awful isekai have their MC doing really edgy shit like mass murder, owning/buying slaves, and rape but still be portrayed as morally in the right, like, y'know doing it anyway but at least accepting you've become a monster yourself, which sounds like special pleading.

===More General Gripes===
* You ever notice how Isekai titles are always extremely long and ridiculously specific? Apparently Japanese adolescents are too busy to read the blurbs on light novels and manga, so they just put the blurb right in the title. How lazy can you get?
* While many stories are just copycats of one another, some will ''attempt'' to put an "original spin" on the genre, usually by adding a gimmick, such as the protagonist being a LITERAL VENDING MACHINE or a slime that can absorb powers. If done well, the story has some value in being interesting and exploring otherwise ignored facets of an overused genre. Done poorly, it comes across as just plain tiresome, especially if the gimmick is the only thing keeping the story afloat when the characters and plot fail to impress.
* [[weeaboo|O MY GLORIOUS NIPPON STEEL FOLDED OVER 9000 TIMES]]. Basically, just to show how self-righteously superior the Japanese and only the Japanese are compared to the other world.  Generally, it involves the reincarnated protagonist being homesick for their Japanese food and introducing amazing new flavors to the fantasy world: <s>jelly donuts</s> rice balls, soy sauce, and miso paste are the most common. Despite Japan and Asia in general being a huge market for Western fast-food chains, the protagonists are always treated as big fucking deals for introducing soy sauce over rice.  [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|Katanas are also introduced in the other world to prove their superiority]], though exaggerated sword bullshit is the norm for Western and Eastern fiction alike. 
** GATE is worth calling out here as the worst or at least one of the most infamous examples of this, where the Japanese military in a medieval fantasy world is wreaking havoc with their modern weaponry against villains with single-digit IQ or self-preservation. This is not exactly unreasonable nor immersive breaking to imagine, even for the decidedly modest Japanese Self Defense Force, but it’s taken to the point where it comes across as a distasteful, tone deaf, juvenile power fantasy and a cheesy (but icky, like spoiled brie) recruitment ad targeting otaku: "Want to be a real hero? We kill more <s>orcs</s> fantasy Romans before 9AM than most <s>Paladins</s> barbarians do all day!" Which is expected with the author being a [[Blood Pact|right-wing JSDF veteran]]. Call it "Hard Otaku Making Hard Decisions (While Hard)".
*"Japanese" language or Japanese traits (black hair, white skin) being something sacred or ancient or special in the isekai world. Usually used to mean that some "undecipherable script of the Ancients" is just 21st-century Japanese carved on a plaque somewhere without any further development. If the author is going for cheap [[Edgy|edge]] boosts, anything related to the Japanese is a symptom of a curse or a demonic heritage. And it's just as stupid as African natives suddenly worshipping white people as gods.
* Some of the edgier Isekai have a tendency to deal with such serious issues as rape, [[slavery]], racism and genocide... which would be fine, if they didn't usually do so in such an immature, sociopathic and/or poorly handled way that you start to hate either the author's suspected age group, the whole nation of Japan (or whatever country produced it), or humanity in general just by association with this edgelord garbage.
* Even worse are the ones that are blatantly hypocritical or edgy regarding darker issues of mankind. For example, slavery is depicted as an immaturely handled "bad thing" (It's ok to abuse, kill, or use up slaves in deadly forced labor if no good user buys them- even ancient societies had standards for such issues), but when the protagonist also invests himself in that practice, all of a sudden, it is considered okay since he is considered a 'hero' and therefore, a 'good guy'. Because gosh, what our MC is doing couldn't possibly be considered slavery since he treats his property with such care and tenderness... '''No.''' Fuck off with that gaslighting [[bullshit]]. Either slavery is a bad thing or a good thing, no in-betweens. You can't have your cake and eat it too, especially with extremely dark topics like this. To pull this stunt reeks of dishonesty and bad faith. It reaches ludicrous levels of retardation when a righteous and good kingdom with plenty of magic to bypass labor, complete with knights and paladins and kind kings, has a bustling, legal slave trade where women are so ill-kept it's counterproductive to their value, a vampire noble can buy and drain an entire stable of girls and the burnt corpses get discovered, and everyone shrugs it off an an oopsie.
* Constant reuse of the same mythological terms. Always expect to hear about the big gods of Olympus, always expect a half-assed version of Norse Mythology, and so on. This is especially egregious in any setting where you see multiple pantheons coexisting in the same area.