What's with all the sekai saikyou stuff on isekai manga

[RizkyArrydesta]

This is an open discussion about OVERUSED tropes in isekai manga...
Please,drop your rant here 😄

 

[unnoticedkouhai]

My hatest trope is when the main character revolves around a great plot. But, once the male or female lead shows up... they just automatically swoon for them? Then the intricate plot just disappears and poof the story just revolves around getting the two leads together. Another one I dislike is when the leads instantly fall for one another, like hello? It's just chapter two? Hello?

 

[flash87]

@unnoticedkouhai agreed. Dude gets sent to a world to save it then hung up in a harem for 57 chapters.. boring.


Another one I hate is hat they immediately forget everything about Earth (or wherever they come from). So many isekai could just be (bad) fantasy as they forget all of the info they learned from their past life or fail to implement any knowledge about common things like cleanliness, healthcare, technology etc. on backwards ass worlds... mostly because they find some ass.

 

[Teddy]

Til they do, and absolutely reinvents the industrial revolution.

 

[ABCsOfLife]

What's a "Sekai Saikyou"? I get the gist it's isekai related, but what is it?

 

[Kendama]

@ABCsOfLife It means "the world's strongest" (or most powerful by extension). Which is, of course, the main self-inserting ego trip of the readers isekai authors target.

 

[sterven]

Why is that most of them are culinary experts? They almost always know how to make mayo or soy sauce from scratch, oh and lets not forget they know how
to farm rice too it's like their born with that knowledge or something.

 

[ABCsOfLife]

@Kendama Ah I see, thanks for the explanation.

Now then, I feel I might have mentioned this somewhere before but I do hate it when the MC is OP and know they're OP but they want to play pretend like "I'm just normal person! I'm gonna do something normal people would do" and then they start going around like killing some awesome beast or clearing a high ranked quest and then they will go around to other people faces and act like "Huh?! Isn't this normal??? Oops, looks like I 'accidentally' do something not normal! Forgive me *tee hee*"

Like this one that I read awhile ago they were going around like
"Oh! I was given a massive mansion! But it's so dirty and in disrepair. Oh well, I guess I'll clean and fix the mansion myself in an instant with magic"
And there's the follow up bit where the parents tell them to decorate their house and they goes like
"Guess I put this large dragon in the middle of the house, nothing special."

Du.. wha.. just because you got thrown in the fantasy world does not mean you should throw away your common sense you ass, ffs.

 

[schlo]

i'm tired of the mission to save the world from some demon, along with way OP. I would love to see the person thrown into another world not have a major earth shattering mission. You've got a whole new world. Have the character explore it and show us all kinds of neat stuff through travels and exploration. I wouldn't mind if they have some powers above average but not OP or are able to take advantage of some of their knowledge but it should be limited, most people don't know how to create the things we use today.

 

[Tamerlane]

WHY IS THE "BIG BAD" ALWAYS CALLED "THE DEMON KING?" Like seriously? Can we not think of a more creative title? Is this a reference I'm unfamiliar with? Can we develop the archetype a bit more or expand upon it? Drives me a bit insane...


All the Daemonic stuff reminds to much of Warhammer and if you're going to use demons, at least have them like they are there where they all aren't one faction and they embody aspects of humanity taken to their logical extremes. It's boring to see no strife within a faction tbh @Schlo

 

[Pika]

I'm actually more pissed about the fact that people just write off fantasy as isekai even if the manga/anime isn't isekai. So they drop it before even giving it a chance...

Yeah, I also dislike the "I'm the protagonist, so I know everything, from cooking to everything in Sun Tzu's Art of War". I also dislike the isekai stories that doesn't have to be isekai. Y'know the type that having past memories have literally no boon or anything relevant. Isekai for the sake of being isekai...

 

[schlo]

@Tamerlane I'm not saying there can't be strife. Tons of comics, tv shows, books have problems and strife it just isn't at the world level. It would take place in arc's or even across arc's. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet has plenty of strife but no world threat, no massive destruction potential.

To me exploring and having a variety of encounters across cities and even countries let's you have plenty of encounters and all kinds of troubles and discussions (aimed at the reader). Since there could be so many different arcs and encounters it also allow the story to continue and grow rather then being milked like it seems some stories are. Of course it takes someone willing to write rather then retell a trope.

On a different note, I'm kind of tired of the guy always being a gamer. Yeah know all aren't but it seems like so many are.

 

[Tamerlane]

That's actually why I like the 40k daemons so much because each type has so much personality and character to it that they feel like a series of interconnected species @Schlo

So like the Bloodletters of Khorne capture the bellicose and utter fury they represent by taking design cues from a multitude of sources such as sharks and bulls, whilst keeping traditionally daemonic aspects to them which combine into a creature that looks like its ready to spill blood in an utterly degranged assualt

Spoiler

Similarly, the Plaguebearers of Nurgle, and the nurglings which are often seen as minor daemons who squish with cartoony and exaggerated expressions, captures the nature of Nurgle as both a bringer of despair, with the rotting husks of the plague bringers and their diseased and rotting figures capturing the twisted and unholy nature, and a twisted embodiment of perverse joy and child-like happiness, with the friendly and mischievous nature of the nurglings contrasting their blighted and grotesque appearance for cartoonish results.

Spoiler

Spoiler

I could go on about the contrasting animalistic influences on Slaaneshi daemons and how they capture the hedonistic and primal desires of Slaanesh or how the twisted forms embody what Tzeentch represents, but I think you get my point. It's a shame that often for Daemons in isekai we get the same old "succubus, bull monster, etc." with mostly western influences and Japanese of how daemons appear, and seem to follow the same stereotypical patterns. I'd like to see more creativity with daemons and how they act, their general designs, as well as how they fit in universe thematically and lore-wise.

 

[crazybars]

@Tamerlane

It stems from Oda Nobunaga's, who was the Original Demong king by reputation. The buddhist storytellers hated him because he sacked Mount Hiei so he was called the Demon King of the 6th Heaven, aka Maou of *blah blah blah. Maou is an extremely loaded term in Japanese as a lot of Oda's reputation and values were attached to the term.


https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DemonKingNobunaga

 

[Excelsior]

Proper exposition and world building can be too hard for the average narou writers so here's some RPG tropes & mechanics. "It's character development & growth guys I assure you, look his level is increasing, 'growth' right?"

/s... or is it?

(That said I still unironically enjoy some of them anyway so eh)

 

[Tamerlane]

Shit I never made that connect. I've always been a fan of the Sengoku period so I should have assumed that the origin of the term should have been that...I feel stupid now, but thanks for your help. @crazybars

 

[RizkyArrydesta]

so many response and thoughts!!
this is great, so I will try to make a list of these useless tropes, and take note of em.
I am planning to make an isekai manga in a near future, and i hope I can give a better story than the rest of the isekai mobs

 

[Greenfrost]

I think they need to calm down with some of the twists. Like Seriously, What's next? Some guy gets summoned as a hero, but with a body made of spicy chili?

 

[Treason]

If we're talking about overused tropes in Isekai, it definitely has to be slavery. "Oh no, as a result of pandering to our primary middle-high school aged young male demographic we have a plain-looking, unathletic protagonist with the personality and charisma of a dishrag. We can't write convincing scenarios worth a damn to explain why people would voluntarily follow him without him being the 'chosen one' or having money, but that would conflict with the 'does not want to stand out' personality trait and 'underdog that is secretly OP' tropes. I know, let's just have slaves fall into his lap! That way we don't have to put much effort into the writing, AND we can make him look morally superior to the native population when he initially refuses to own slaves/wants to free them later while still getting in that jailbait loli harem all Isekais have for those reader counts!"

And let's not forget protagonists that all know how to cook a wide variety of dishes from scratch despite lack of ingredients/cookware/food preservation technology, GLORIOUS NIPPON FOOD CULTURE, and somehow every isekai MC knowing how to mix gunpowder or four-field crop rotation by heart.

 

[shouldsleep]

@sterven mayo and rice aren't really culinary wonders.

Rice's whole survival adaptation is that it survives in waterlogged areas where other grass (basically its only relevant competition) won't survive. Its only problem is where could it be found.

Mayo is just oil, something sour and egg mixed together. No cooking needed and shit. It should be the easiest thing to make in isekai settings so long as you know how it tastes (or read the back label).