Isekai

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

-Winston Churchill

Death is sad. Isekai lightens the blow.

Anime can have amazing themes western media never hits. Isekai translates to “other world”. It’s a genre of storytelling where the protagonist dies and comes back to life in another universe. The protagonist is reborn, summoned, or takes over the consciousness of an existing entity. It’s a one way door. There’s no going back to their past world and life. The structure of Isekai leads to powerful storytelling.

Story Structure

When introducing a story, especially a new world, you do it through the lens of an apprentice who is learning it themselves. Someone has to be new and learn along with the audience. The apprentice is typically young or else they would already know the world. So you’re forced to follow a child or inexperienced newbie as they grow on their journey.

In an Isekai, you follow an adult who just happens to be in a child’s body. You follow them from birth onward. Maybe it’s an average 34 yr old in a baby’s body. Maybe it's a sixty year old who was the best assassin in the world.

There are sometimes gods involved. Maybe there’s a higher being or power who chose to reincarnate the dead individual to accomplish a great task. The reincarnated individual is often a virgin who had died in a senseless accident while trying to be good. I wonder if it’s because there are a lot of virgins in Japan who watch these shows. It seems to be a theme.

Anyway, the reincarnated individual has to learn the natural rules, laws, and customs in the new world. They’re skeptical of existing world-views and instead, reason from first principles. Their first principles thinking breaks existing dogma. Adults will say a magic system works one way, then the protagonist figures out how it actually works.

The reincarnated protagonists use existing knowledge from the modern world and apply it to their new world, e.g., the protagonist invents moisturizer and sells it to the women in town to create great wealth and gain influence.

Evolution

The first Isekai were about a loser in our world dying then being reincarnated in a fantasy world with magic, mythical creatures, and granted ridiculous powers. This is the most common trope. Then, it kept evolving.

There are realistic Isekai where the reincarnated humans start at the lowest level and struggle to kill the weakest of beasts. Satirical isekais where they become gods immediately. There’s an isekai where someone is revived in another world as a slime. It’s called That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. In another, they’re revived as a sword. It’s called Reincarnated as a Sword. There’s another where the protagonist is reincarnated as a vending machine. It’s called Reborn as a Vending Machine. That’s how many isekai stories exist.

Isekai writers went from reincarnated people all the way to inanimate objects. They made so many that they gave up on names and went literal. The crazy thing is… it still works.

Life Experiences

Isekai have the added dynamic of a child or teenager going through physical and emotional extremes, when they’re really an adult. The protagonists learn lessons and have experiences in this second life that force them to grow. When they become a teenager, they know what that means for their body and hormones.

They take lessons from their past life to revisit regrets and deep insecurities. Maybe they were afraid of strangers and learned that strangers are generally good people. Or they learn how to make new friends, negotiate, or become a leader.

Isekai sometimes have others who are also from the protagonist’s same universe or different universes who were brought into the same world they all now live. It’s a fun way to think of reincarnation. Even if you didn’t have a massive impact on the world in this life, maybe you’ll be reincarnated and be one of the most important/influential people in your next life. You even get to keep all your memories. Just keep it secret or demons may kill you.

Reincarnation

The pessimistic view is that Isekai pushes escapism and procrastination to the extreme. It’s ok if you’re a loser in this life, as maybe you’ll be reincarnated and be awesome in your next one. The optimistic view is that Isekai shows meaning in life. There’s meaning in our failures because they’re taken to our next life. The protagonists grow by reflecting back on their past lives’ and deciding to go down different paths. They decide to be better humans. The pessimistic and optimistic views are both true.

I think about death a lot. More than anything, death motivates me. The truth of life being finite pushes me to accomplish things. Everyday, I’m running out of time. We all are, and it may abruptly end at any moment.

I’ve had numerous near death experiences. One happened in the first hour I was born. The doctor wanted to give me codeine, but my mom said her third cousin is allergic to codeine and told them not to. The doctors refrained. I was deadly allergic to codeine; I would have instantly died if she hadn’t stopped them.

It’s nice to think that maybe we’ll be reincarnated in a new world. It’s even nicer to think we’ll still have all our memories. It’d be overwhelmingly sad to lose everyone we know. But at least they’d live on within our memories.

When done right, isekai stories add meaning. I’m looking forward to isekai being applied in western storytelling.