How to make good women's Isekai again?

[Fireminer]

If you look at old works like Fushigi Yuugi or Rayearth, they were very much the creations of their era, yet even today they stand as solid stories on their own. Why can not female-centric Isekai of today do so? Or is there anyone write Isekai with a female protagonist?

(I admit, I have not been catching up with newer shows, and the only example of this category I watched recently was Sengoku Night Blood, which prompted me to make this thread.)

[erneiz_hyde]

There are actually a lot of these novels. One of the tropes with female isekai nowadays is being reincarnated as a Duke's daughter and/or an originally evil lady in a fictional world, but there are others.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

There are actually a lot of these novels. One of the tropes with female isekai nowadays is being reincarnated as a Duke's daughter and/or an originally evil lady in a fictional world, but there are others.

Do those types of stories get made nowadays for live-action Japanese television or not adapted at all?

It's not hard to imagine a show like Akagami no Shirayuki-hime with an isekai premise. "Something happens" one day, and a girl wakes up to discover she's now a medieval herbalist who meets a handsome prince.

I haven't seen anything like Juuni Kokuki or Escaflowne for over a decade. There are female characters in the game-based isekai shows like Log Horizon or Konosuba, but neither of those shows has an individual female protagonist like Youko.

Flip Flappers has isekai features, but rather like in Noein, the girls come and go between "reality" and "Pure Illusion." FF is also largely episodic until the last few episodes.

[Solace]

I'm not sure what exactly changed but just from looking at many popular manga/novels you just don't see those kind of Escaflowne or Inuyasha female led/driven styled plots anymore. It's an aspect of the 90's, early 2k's anime culture that's been lost for now, I think.

Escaflowne is still amazing, imo. Holds up incredibly well.

[IceHism]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Do those types of stories get made nowadays for live-action Japanese television or not adapted at all?

No, Japanese dramas aren't so desperate that they need some online webnovel to make a story nor can they try everything under the sun and see what sticks. They'll just take some award winning novel or a manga or make their own.

[Sackett]

Well... only female Isekai I can think of is Maid to Mother which is shoujo fluff, but interesting in that the main character is mainly doing things like introducing mayonnaise to the new fantasy world.

Although, if you are looking for something Inuyaha-ish there is always Rinne, where I actually do like the female lead quite a bit.

[Fireminer]

Originally Posted by Solace

I'm not sure what exactly changed but just from looking at many popular manga/novels you just don't see those kind of Escaflowne or Inuyasha female led/driven styled plots anymore. It's an aspect of the 90's, early 2k's anime culture that's been lost for now, I think.

Escaflowne is still amazing, imo. Holds up incredibly well.

Which is a shame, really. I mean, series like Escaflowne really show how awesome are anime semi-epics.

[Haak]

Does "Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?" count because I'm pretty sure that's really popular. But since most isekai have devolved into "the kind of fantasy RPG I'd like to play and what I'd do in it" for the authors, I guess it's a case of whether that fantasy RPG genre is as popular with the female demographic as it is with the males.

Unless you want an actual classic isekai, in which case we need to address the wider issue of how the "Coming of Age" element of isekai died and the genre descended into inane, unambitious escapism. (One of the many reasons Re:Zero actually worked)

[Sackett]

Well, that's pretty easy. Isekai used to always be "Voyage and Return" stories. A person (usually a teenager) is thrown into a new and wondrous world, then discovers danger in this world. He has to overcome this danger and various other challenges, in the process developing as a human and growing up. He then returns home to the mundane world, having been changed by the experience.

The point is about the main character being changed by the experience. It represents a yearning to grow and develop through challenges that are clearer and more easily confronted than the challenges in the real world. (ie A monster to destroy instead of homework to do).

The challenges are supposed to be hard and scary and the character has to struggle to overcome them - and then he returns, having matured for the better. Basically it's a yearning for an adventure so that you can grow up.

Chronicles of Narnia, Alice and Wonderland, Inuyasha, all sorts of stories fit this mold.

Nowadays though kids don't want to mature and live in the real world. The want to escape the world they live in. So isekai stories now almost never involve wanting to return to the new world, because who would want to go back to the real world? Most also don't involve maturing or overcoming difficulties. Instead you get characters who show up in a new world, and they got some kind of cheat ability (even if it's just knowledge from a previous life) that suddenly elevates them to mastery level. Then they use this cheat ability to easily gain wealth, power, women, or whatever it is that fills their appetite. Yearning for an adventure so that you don't have to grow up.

Either this continues, feeling fake and unsatisfactory as a story - or the author begins having frustrations set in, until finally it all comes crashing down in a tragedy and the hero dies horribly while the world around them rejoices at his justly deserved death.

It all feels to me like kids to day are extremely alienated from others. Alienated from their families, their school mates, peers, everyone. Probably preferring their online persona over real life interactions.

Basically just a diluted but widespread form of Evercrack addiction, with the attendant side effects, just more dilluted so people don't notice right away.

[0cean]

You could always try to find some old anime everyone forgot or never knew in the first place, that fit the description. Like Strange Dawn.

Times have changed. The people growing up on that type of story probably want to write something different than just a lose copy of old works. Just wait for the next generation around 2030 to maybe rediscover this type of story as something cool again.

[Haak]

Funnily enough, I just encountered this:
I Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags…

I've only read the first chapter of the manga but it's surprisingly funny so far.

[erneiz_hyde]

Well, just for the record, the top 3 "female protagonist" "isekai" WN in Narou (going by cumulative points) are these 3:
1. Kumo desu ga, nani ka?
2. Watashi, nouryoku wa heikinchi de tte itta yo ne?
3. Honzuki no Gekokujou

(1) starts as a nariagari/survival story of a female high school student who was reincarnated as a spider (the lowest and weakest class to boot) deep in a continent-wide labyrinth. It's fun reading how she climbed the ladder of the food chain, but near the end the power creep is pretty much Dragon Ball level.
(2) is a ORE TUEEE type story but with female protag. The MC wanted to reincarnate an average life in her new world, but the god interpreted that "average" across all species, including god-like beings like dragons so she ended up waaaaaaay stronger than normal humans. Also, yuri undertones.
(3) is...I actually haven't started this yet. But the basic premise is a bookworm reincarnated into a world where books doesn't exist (not even paper I think), so she started things to roll the tech gear running so the world can catch up to printing press age. By the way, the MC is so addicted to books she's physically hurting when she's not reading something after some time. That is on top of her already frail body that can drop dead anytime from illnesses or injuries (I think she's 10 years old when she remembered her previous life).

[Sackett]

Originally Posted by Haak

Funnily enough, I just encountered this:
I Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags…

I've only read the first chapter of the manga but it's surprisingly funny so far.

Wow, I went to look at this, and I've ended up reading several chapters. Though I don't think it's what the OP was looking for it's definitely different from what most of the "reincarnated" stories are like.

In fact, I kept thinking to myself that this has to be one of the great stories being retold in a new form. About chapter 20 I suddenly realized - this is The Secret Garden - only with reincarnation, and otome game tropes. EDIT: Or a retelling of Pollyanna, though of course Pollyanna and The Secret Garden are the same story at the core.

Also, I love the nickname the commenters came up with for the heroine: "Bakarina"

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

Well, just for the record, the top 3 "female protagonist" "isekai" WN in Narou (going by cumulative points) are these 3:
1. Kumo desu ga, nani ka?

I was only passing by this thread.. then saw your description for that. Tried it, and it's surprisngly fun to read. Thanks. ^_^

[Fireminer]

Originally Posted by Sackett

Well, that's pretty easy. Isekai used to always be "Voyage and Return" stories. A person (usually a teenager) is thrown into a new and wondrous world, then discovers danger in this world. He has to overcome this danger and various other challenges, in the process developing as a human and growing up. He then returns home to the mundane world, having been changed by the experience.

The point is about the main character being changed by the experience. It represents a yearning to grow and develop through challenges that are clearer and more easily confronted than the challenges in the real world. (ie A monster to destroy instead of homework to do).

The challenges are supposed to be hard and scary and the character has to struggle to overcome them - and then he returns, having matured for the better. Basically it's a yearning for an adventure so that you can grow up.

Chronicles of Narnia, Alice and Wonderland, Inuyasha, all sorts of stories fit this mold.

Nowadays though kids don't want to mature and live in the real world. The want to escape the world they live in. So isekai stories now almost never involve wanting to return to the new world, because who would want to go back to the real world? Most also don't involve maturing or overcoming difficulties. Instead you get characters who show up in a new world, and they got some kind of cheat ability (even if it's just knowledge from a previous life) that suddenly elevates them to mastery level. Then they use this cheat ability to easily gain wealth, power, women, or whatever it is that fills their appetite. Yearning for an adventure so that you don't have to grow up.

Either this continues, feeling fake and unsatisfactory as a story - or the author begins having frustrations set in, until finally it all comes crashing down in a tragedy and the hero dies horribly while the world around them rejoices at his justly deserved death.

It all feels to me like kids to day are extremely alienated from others. Alienated from their families, their school mates, peers, everyone. Probably preferring their online persona over real life interactions.

Basically just a diluted but widespread form of Evercrack addiction, with the attendant side effects, just more dilluted so people don't notice right away.

While I agree with you in general, your post only tells how bad these modern Isekai can be, not female Isekai in particular? One could ask why are these escapist shows targeted men rather than women?

[Cloudedmind]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

While I agree with you in general, your post only tells how bad these modern Isekai can be, not female Isekai in particular? One could ask why are these escapist shows targeted men rather than women?

Women have them to, there just in otome games where you get to romance a bunch of hot guys. Basically isekai involving women leads isn't really dead, just moved to another medium with a way bigger romance focus of course. The OP mentioned Sengoku Night Blood, which is also a game, and there are quite a few otome games with a similar premise. Ikemen Sengoku which got a short anime recently, but it completely removed the female MC, who gets transported back in time in the game. Period Cube, female lead gets stuck in a video game. Kamigami no Asobi, female leads gets transported to another world where she gets to romance a bunch of gods, and the game also got an anime a few years ago. Amnesia, not sure if this one qualifies as an isekai or not but the female lead ends up in a bunch of parallel worlds, and the game also has an anime. There are others I've either played or heard about, but can't remember the names of at the moment.

[dragon1412]

The issues that come to my mind is the way the main character depicted, the Main female lead nowadays, in Isekai particular, no longer carry the story like old books. For example, Inuyasha, leaving the male character aside, we can see that Kagome main conflict was always her relationship with Kikyou, as a matter of fact, different from current gen main female, Kagome realize she like Inuyasha quite quickly, and that deepening her conflict with Kikyou, who she is supposedly reincarnated from, the conflict effectively carried entire romance part of the story and Kagome ultimately deal with it on her own. Unlike current female lead who wait for the guys to do literally everything or to be so powerful that such issues never appear. ( for those who are interested, I'm in team Kikyou)

This also prevalent in the case of Fushigi Yuugi, which arguably a better case since it is also an Isekai type, starting with the traditional, Miaka carry the story on her own, and arguably, she took action and initiative, and the whole books is revolved around the relationship between Yui and Miaka, the guys are just extra for romance and stuff, we can see clearly their will, motivation and especially goal, something that Isekai in general, both male and female lead lack. The same apply to Genbu Kaiden, Takiko carry the entire story on her own, she confused, and ultimately find her goal. Personally I like Genbu over the the original

In regard to the Issues with Isekai, as mentioned above, 1 things I noticed, is that Isekai MC issues is having no goal, I could understand the whole thing about going to another world, since the question back in the long past is, why bother going back with the world over there so much better and you care more about people there. But the recent MC of Isekai have no goal, or very shallow one, for example, we don't actually knew what the MC have to accomplished, or want to except making harem and being strong or just leisurely living, this apply to both female MC and male MC, they effectively don't grow, or having any character developments, since in most case they are too strong or being protected too well to get any issues, and the MC is aimless, making the issues worse, yet they are being put in a situation that demand them to. So the results is a sense of repeatition and boredom, since Isekai used old template for different type of MC

We can see the clear differences in novel of Isekai type because of this, for example, Re:0, The MC found his goal, as short term as a repeat goal, and struggling towards that goal, in that course of struggling, he grows, he change. In the other side of structre, who take the opposite to the extreme, is Death march, the story is revolved around leisurely and lightly, which make it stand out, and the charm of the story is revolving around that. Now take a look at other books, I will take my stand here and criticized Mushoku tensei for once, is pretty generic and actually took all of this faults, it is just that the story is well written and cover this issues with the gods war, but MT actually hitting all of this problem, which is why it is less stand out compare to Re:0 and DM who is noticeable enough to get anime. The same apply to most Isekai other, they are either summoned to other world too strong for any of them, and they just fighting all the time, completely meaningless in the long run, no worldbuilding whatsoever due to the story nature. The world involved them seem small, even in Main female case, you can't see any place other than some specific revolved around MC, and MC have no intention of breaking their shell. For example, the other famous template is MC got summoned to fight demon and MC just don't care and leave, which effectively kill any possible development in that direction.