Good media that should never have been made

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

GTA3. Everything has to be a fucking open world game now ever since, it just snowballed out of control.

 

[Atatata]

If you're talking about what inspired modern day isekai, it wasn't really Sword Art Online, though SAO did popularize the "narou web novel to anime" idea.

Looking through interviews, videogames like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Rance seem to pop up the most. Probably why green is a popular color for main characters.

 

[Cryptojew]

Code Lyoko, Captain N: The Game Master and plenty other Western animations about people visiting the virtual world started the thing that we all call "Isekai". And worst of all, most Isekais have the same weeb shit tropes like "fwendiship :3", huge breasts to capital on coomers and incompetent writing, all topped off with a eye candy artstyle (Literally Anime-looking shit).

Also I'm not fucking kidding when I'm saying this, not a single one of them is good, I like very few Japanese animations (I like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure for example) because it's always cliché fanservicey and just downright incompetent and it pisses me even more that this shit was born from something that was very interesting and done tenfold better than the japs could (Jojo is proof that, if a Jap is not trying to appeal to literal coomers, they can actually make good stuff) have ever done.

BTW, decided to make a shitpost about it 2 months ago, wanted to bypass youtube's copyright claim shit, so I added dumb shit onscreen to "conceal" the clips.
View attachment 3332728

The animations showing up on the right in this order: Sword Art Online (Probably the shittiest of them all TBFH), Shield Hero Rising, So I'm a Spider, So What?

Isekai has been a thing since Alice In Wonderland, dude. Probably since before that, even.

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

Isekai has been a thing since Alice In Wonderland, dude. Probably since before that, even.

I'd argue that The Chronicles of Narnia is the first textbook Isekai, down to the kids being summoned to the other world, given powers/weapons, and then made rulers of it after vanquishing the villain. Up till then, most otherworld stories involved people being taken to fantasy worlds, but either having to get rescued from the fairies or dying instantly of old age when they come back (like Urashima Taro.)

The Twelve Kingdoms is probably my favorite anime Isekai, because the heroine is completely clueless when she shows up and has a completely awful time, just as you'd expect would happen when a pampered first world kid with no self-esteem travels to an ancient magic Japan land. She eventually stops being whiny and learns to be a hero, but it's a painful slog.

My favorite character of the TV series (not the book) is a classmate of the main character that also gets transported to the other world, who acts like hot shit, thinking she'll have an easy time of it, since she's always been a fan of Isekai and thinks that she's finally getting her wish to be the hero of one. She gets disappointed.

 

[Jason Wynn]

Code Lyoko, Captain N: The Game Master and plenty other Western animations about people visiting the virtual world started the thing that we all call "Isekai". And worst of all, most Isekais have the same weeb shit tropes like "fwendiship :3", huge breasts to capital on coomers and incompetent writing, all topped off with a eye candy artstyle (Literally Anime-looking shit).

Also I'm not fucking kidding when I'm saying this, not a single one of them is good, I like very few Japanese animations (I like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure for example) because it's always cliché fanservicey and just downright incompetent and it pisses me even more that this shit was born from something that was very interesting and done tenfold better than the japs could (Jojo is proof that, if a Jap is not trying to appeal to literal coomers, they can actually make good stuff) have ever done.

BTW, decided to make a shitpost about it 2 months ago, wanted to bypass youtube's copyright claim shit, so I added dumb shit onscreen to "conceal" the clips.
View attachment 3332728

The animations showing up on the right in this order: Sword Art Online (Probably the shittiest of them all TBFH), Shield Hero Rising, So I'm a Spider, So What?

.hack/sign I thought was decent because it’s much more atmospheric and moody and focuses on character development and the mystery of The World. It’s by no means a masterpiece but it’s a cut above everything else you mentioned (which I agree with)

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I don't know what specifically to blame this on, but as a former zombie lover I've grown to dislike the orgiastic scientific zombie apocalypse where HuMaNs ArE tHe ReAl MoNsTeRs and there is a checklist of cliches (fucking cannibals) and miss the supernatural magic zombies that mob your small town because you violated an Indian burial ground or whatever.

I miss when zombies were scary because they eat people alive and are walking corpses instead of when zombies were just meat puppets to be killed with chainsaws

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I was chewing over how to make this fit the topic of the thread:

I read, on another Internet forum, this brilliant post about the problem with most modern fiction.
The argument goes that great fiction is almost always the product of real lived experiences. That doesn't mean memoirs or realistic fiction, necessarily. But it's fiction written that is inspired by reality. Starship Troopers is about spider aliens getting shot up by power armor wearing soldiers, but half of it is a big boot camp sequence and it was written by a naval officer who had to go through boot camp. Lord of the Rings, well, that isn't lived experience as such but it was written by a man who was extremely well-versed in mythology and folklore. Orwell had firsthand knowledge of the horrors of totalitarianism. And so on and so forth.

So somebody who has some life experience, some interesting perspective of the world, will write a book or movie or TV show or whatever it is. And people will like it, and they will use those ideas and make a genre or subgenre out of it. And, in the process, the work is degraded to some extent, but it may also be polished a bit and so overall it gets better. But at least there's still some connection to reality. But then, the work gets copied again. You've got people reading the work that was derived from the original, not even necessarily reading the original.

Over time, the new work gets so removed from its origins that you're left with writers who have no reality behind what they write, just fiction about fiction, and it goes up its own ass and becomes worthless. Whedon-speak is maybe an example of this happening to dialogue, dialogue based on dialogue based on dialogue so far back that it loses any resemblance to how people actually talk.

I think there's something to this.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

Isekais are older than hand writing. Humanity always had an obsession with new worlds that are better than the hard work they were born to.

Yeah Isekai has always been a common story idea for centuries, it's just more common to see now due to more information and more light novels being adapted to animation.

And like with all genres, there's often more shit series than good ones.

 

[Commander X]

The old "something popular that unintentionally spawned a horde of lesser imitators" bit applies to...wait for it...wait for it...the late Robert B. Parker's Spenser series of detective novels. Or at least the early entries. The first four novels, published in the 1970s (The Godwulf Manuscript, God Save the Child, Mortal Stakes and Promised Land) were a needed kick to the dick of the P.I. mystery sub-genre, which had sort of lost it's way. They made a strong impression on those looking for a successor to still influential authors Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald. These early books are certainly strong, if somewhat derivative, particularly of Chandler's work. But they were good reads, and introduced an intriguing new detective whose success and popularity had a long-lasting effect on the mystery genre and hard-boiled PIs in literature. Spenser was an ex-Mass. state trooper and investigator for the Boston D.A. office, a gourmet cook who pumped iron, a poetry quoting ex-boxer, a sensitive guy who didn't mind having to get physical. A romantic with a code who still went Down Those Mean Streets and whose closest ally, Hawk, used to be an underworld enforcer.

Now after awhile, success (books on the bestsellers list and a hit TV show based on his series) and Parker's own literary pretensions got in the way. The entries in the late 80s and early 90s tended to be thin gruel, padded out, the plots by the numbers. Spenser could get a bit smug before but he morphed into an unbearably self-satisfied wisecracker, with plenty of "pithy" back and forth between him and his lady friend Susan Silverman (oh and their fucking cutesy dog Pearl, bleah), which had plenty of reviewers and readers wondering if Parker had lost "it". He didn't do so badly with other characters in later years (Jesse Stone, the Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch western novels etc.) but whatever happened to the Spenser series, at least the earlier entries were still there for the reading.

Now, nothing inspires imitation like success and other popular detectives in the past have inspired imitators from blatant to "same basic idea but can stand on their own" - Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Spillane's Mike Hammer, John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee, I could go on and on and so did Spenser. Not all of these creations by other authors were bad (Robert Crais' obviously inspired PI Elvis Cole came off as a wisecracking clown but grew into his own) but for awhile the Spenser clones were rampant in the 80's and 90s and even into the Aughts and it was a dismal part of the period for Hardboiled crime fiction. They wore out their welcome pretty fast but there have been So. Many. Of. Them.

Years ago on a mailing list, the crime fiction author George Pelecanos came to Parker's defense

“...My opinion is that the countless imitations of the Spenser books — and there are many — have tarnished our perception of the originals. We’re tired of Spenser’s sons so we’re tired of Spenser. Put it in another context: a young person looking at Bullitt or The French Connection today might yawn at “just another car chase,” but those car chases were groundbreaking and mind-blowing at the time of their release.”

And "Spenser's Sons" keep bubbling up unfortunately. I had skimmed this one book and later came across this review by the owner of the Thrilling Detective website I couldn't disagree with:

It marks the debut of private eye ASHE CAYNE, a poorly imagined, two-dimensional Spenser clone who lacks the wit, charm or staunch moral code of Robert B. Parker’s hero.

Okay, yes, he’s a big, tough ex-cop who works as a private detective, packs a gun, reads lots of books and can quote, without much prompting, Shakespeare. He cooks with gourmet flair, and generally has a taste for the finer things in life, from fine wines to his own reflection.

Unfortunately, he lacks any sense of humor or humility—he’s mostly just an insufferable boor with a sense of superiority that just won’t quit. He even has a small dog, a large gym rat sidekick with underworld ties who’s even more dangerous than he is, and a smart, sexy girlfriend who picks at her food.

Mind you, there are significant differences. It’s Chicago, not Boston, and Cain’s wealthy, black and obsessed with golf. And unlike Spenser, Cayne only takes the cases that interest him, thanks to his being independently wealthy.

See? Completely different character!

 

[Kiwi & Cow]

.hack/sign I thought was decent because it’s much more atmospheric and moody and focuses on character development and the mystery of The World. It’s by no means a masterpiece but it’s a cut above everything else you mentioned (which I agree with)

Never heard of this before, I probably would've mentioned it if I did, but that sounds interesting, so I'm going to give it a watch.

I miss when zombies were scary because they eat people alive and are walking corpses instead of when zombies were just meat puppets to be killed with chainsaws

Zombies were always like that, nothing has really changed over the years. The only exception is with the Zelda series, the zombies in OOT were scary as fuck.
Also what do you mean by they're just meatpuppets to be killed with chainsaws? My first thought was DOOM, but there's no zombies in it, the closest thing to that are imps and possessed soldiers.

Isekai has been a thing since Alice In Wonderland, dude. Probably since before that, even.

Except that Alice in wonderland isn't a Isekai.

 

[WULULULULU]

Fuck it, put Dark Souls (and by extension Demons' Souls and Kings field) in this thread.

• Obnoxious fanbase with a "git-gud" mindset sprinkled with elitism and troondom coupled with constant dick-sucking
• Basically made dark fantasy popular again, unfortunately all imitators of dark fantasy after DS' popularity are shit
• Massively created a filter between gamers and journalists that it showed how big of a gap it is and how detached majority of the capital-G-Gamers are compared to actual games
• Soulslikes. Every. Fucking. Where

 

[IDanceonTrannyGraves]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer for ruining TV dialogue for the next 25 years.
Oh, but I don't think Buffy is good.

Off topic but please for the love of God explain to me why people like danganronpa. Starting reading the VN and it's some of the stupidest shit I've ever seen how do people take this seriously.

I like the first game, it's fun and it sets up an interesting premise/mystery. You can either roll with the goofiness or not. The games get progressively worse and the ending to the third one is shit. Honestly, I would recommend the first one and say stop after that.

 

[Kurtis Trent]

- Motherfucking P.T. is a plague that will not go away, it damaged horror gaming for a decade! Lorebait, streamerbait, corridor walking simulators with no good plot - they all came from this shit, thanks Konami.
- same about Silent Hill 2 and how it ruined psychological horror
- Deadly Premonition did this to Swery because every single game he made ever since is just him trying to make another Deadly Premonition. The Good Life was such a disaster even his diehard fans turned on him

 

[armoreddinnerjacket]

Seems that the moral of this thread is that doing something well and becoming successful is it's own curse, as everyone and their uncles will then imitate you and turn your idea into trash.

 

[Kiwi & Cow]

Got to love how much my post shitting on Isekais triggered the site's weebs.

So here's another one, free of charge: Anime in general was a mistake, for the few good animes there are, there are a plethora of shitty ones, it would've been better for humanity if anime was banned on a worldwide scale.

 

[Peru oso donas]

Got to love how much my post shitting on Isekais triggered the site's weebs.

So here's another one, free of charge: Anime in general was a mistake, for the few good animes there are, there are a plethora of shitty ones, it would've been better for humanity if anime was banned on a worldwide scale.

Isekai is trash, but i believe it was kind of retarded to blame 3 western cartoons from the 2000s as patient zero, especially when SAO is right there, and light novels, where most Isekais get adapted, are the niponese equivalent to YA novels.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

Isekai is trash, but i believe it was kind of retarded to blame 3 western cartoons from the 2000s as patient zero, especially when SAO is right there, and light novels, where most Isekais get adapted, are the niponese equivalent to YA novels.

Not to mention isekai is one of the oldest tropes for centuries

 

[Kiwi & Cow]

Isekai is trash, but i believe it was kind of retarded to blame 3 western cartoons from the 2000s as patient zero, especially when SAO is right there, and light novels, where most Isekais get adapted, are the niponese equivalent to YA novels.

What spawned those Japanese Isekais then? Literally the whole premise of those shows is that the protag is trapped inside a video game and must escape it or they must go there to save the world/his friends. Code Lyoko: The characters have to go inside a virtual world to prevent the apocalypse. Captain N: The protagonist is trapped inside a video game. Matrix: Both of the above, except it's not a video game, just a fake virtual reality.

It's not hard to connect the dots together. Those western TV shows are what inspired the likes of SAO which would then create copycats to capitalise on its popularity, BTW Captain N was made and aired in the 90s, so check your facts straight next time.

Not to mention isekai is one of the oldest tropes for centuries

Yes people have imagined people visiting MMOs since the year 666, yeah sure bro.

 

[Atatata]

What spawned those Japanese Isekais then? Literally the whole premise of those shows is that the protag is trapped inside a video game and must escape it or they must go there to save the world/his friends. Code Lyoko: The characters have to go inside a virtual world to prevent the apocalypse. Captain N: The protagonist is trapped inside a video game. Matrix: Both of the above, except it's not a video game, just a fake virtual reality.

It's not hard to connect the dots together. Those western TV shows are what inspired the likes of SAO which would then create copycats to capitalise on its popularity, BTW Captain N was made and aired in the 90s, so check your facts straight next time.


Yes people have imagined people visiting MMOs since the year 666, yeah sure bro.

Sword Art Online isn't actually an isekai, its an mmorpg anime, same vein as say, Bofuri. One can argue it has "isekai" elements, but the characters to go back and forth and play other games.

Isekai aren't all "trapped in a videogame" in fact, those are a minority. Literally, the term just means "transported to another world." A lot of the time they don't come back. Mostly because getting isekai'd usually means dying, stereotypically by getting ran over by a truck.

 

[byuu]

What spawned those Japanese Isekais then? Literally the whole premise of those shows is that the protag is trapped inside a video game and must escape it or they must go there to save the world/his friends. Code Lyoko: The characters have to go inside a virtual world to prevent the apocalypse. Captain N: The protagonist is trapped inside a video game. Matrix: Both of the above, except it's not a video game, just a fake virtual reality.

SAO existed before Lyoko as a light novel.

Am I the only one who read Otherland? That was also about people trapped in a virtual world.