The Oxford English Dictionary’s latest update adds 23 Japanese words - "Isekai" is now officially part of the OED.
The Oxford English Dictionary’s latest update adds 23 Japanese words - "Isekai" is now officially part of the OED.
More than half of the borrowed words relate to cooking, while Kintsugi, the increasingly popular art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer is also included
It's official. You're not an otaku nerd anymore if you say Isekai but someone with an extensive vocabulary. Don't let anyone tell you anything else!
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What does it mean though? Serious question, I don’t watch animes
Okay, so Fantasy or sci fi with a real world protagonist so to say. Interesting that happens enough to make a sub genre lol
Japanese and Korean media are wayyy beyond saturated with isekai series. I mean just look at this shit: https://isekai.fandom.com/wiki/Isekai_Series
Shit they made that Suicide Squad Isekai anime
Written by Tappei Nagatsuki and animated by Wit Studio and OP by Calli Moriope. I'm neither a fan of shounen, nor the Suicide Squad IP but even I believe it's probably going to be good.
Wait hold up, Nagatsuki is working on it? Sheeesh
isekai itself isnt any magical new subgenre, it just that the number skyrockete past 2010 so they more or les made it a big thing. it itself is related to portal fantasy in a western sense.
examples of western portal fantasies include titles like the chronicles of Narnia, Wizard of Oz, and Harry Potter and such.
You have a whole world of isekai waiting for you
I think it’s a two fold thing: one a reflection on shitty living/working conditions where the salary-man/office lady needs an escape from life and this lets them relate, and two it helps ground a person in the reference of the new world by feeling they could be there too.
I noticed they studiously avoided using the phrase "light novel".
I just tried, and they don't have a definition for that phrase.
The best match that the OED came up with was "railway novel" defined as:
railway novel, n. A light novel, typically in a cheap edition, suitable for reading on a railway journey.
It's explained in the article.
Isekai, a Japanese genre of fantasy fiction involving a character being transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world, also made the OED.
As the other users have mentioned, its a genre about going to another world, and its real big in Japan right now, but you're definitely familiar with it in some form.
After all, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe is technically Isekai.
Its actually really fun to look back and figure out what classic things are.
The New Testament was isekai?
"My Father Is A God, So I Was (Re?) Incarnated In A Manger And Started A Religion"
"Isekai" is "another world". Everything else is debatable.
Some are rather strict on isekai being a trope: the protagonist of the work is transported or reincarnated into another world. Some however see it as a genre, defined by the presence of the trope and potentially additional factors (such as resemblance to other isekai works).
Fish out of water story
a Japanese genre of fantasy fiction involving a character being transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world