I’ve read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp, the Axis of Time series by John Birmingham, the Conrad Stargard series by Leo Frankowski, the Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson, Household Gods by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove, the Lost Regiment series by William R. Forstchen, the Nantucket trilogy by S.M. Stirling, The Practice Effect by David Brin, the 1632 series by Eric Flint, and the Videssos series by Harry Turtledove. These are all works in which a person or group of people are unexpectedly sent back back in time or into a fantasy world, stranded there, and forced to adapt to their new circumstances. Generally while adapting their new circumstances in return.
Anyway, I’ve never really had a good term for describing this genre. It’s not exactly time travel or alternate history or fantasy although it sometimes overlaps into those genres. But today I learned the term Isekai, a Japanese term which means “different world”, which seems to apply.
However all of the examples given of isekai works are Japanese. So does the term strictly apply only to Japanese works? Or is it okay to say, for example, that A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is an early isekai novel?
Me and my friend were joking that Alice in Wonderland was isekai. If Alice is isekai, so is Connecticut Yankee. Of course a true anime fan (nerd) might disagree.
Disagree. While the term itself is Japanese, it’s used by other, non-Japanese societies to describe similar scenarios - the same genre is popular in Korean and Chinese pop culture as well, and they all borrow pretty freely from each other in an effort to copy the next big thing.
And there’s plenty of overlaps with other, related sub-genres, the whole “stuck in a VR game that you can’t log out of” morphs into “the online game I was playing became real in a fantasy world” and so on and so forth.
Use it, anyone who knows the term will get it, but some may be overcome with nerd-rage. It’s still a useful term.
BTW, the reason you ran across “isekai” is probably because there is a massive fad for it in Japan right now, both “played straight” and as parody of the genre.
No, actually the reason I ran across it was because I heard a reference to another SF genre, grimdark, and when I was looking that up, I found a general list of SF genres and began looking up the terms I didn’t know.
My understanding is that a portal fantasy is when a person or persons are unexpectedly transported to a fantasy world. So I felt it didn’t cover works where a person or persons traveled to the past.
Coincidentally I just started reading All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai. The link will provide the charming set up that instantly got me to grab a copy.
Isekai most frequently involve fantasy worlds. And sometimes you’ll see the reverse, where fantasy characters end up in the “real” world setting. Returners, or screwed up summoning/banishing spells. It’s got a lot of little sub-genres and crosses.
“a Japanese genre of science or fantasy fiction featuring a protagonist who is transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world.”
The discussion of isekai that I’ve read imply that it covers a wide variety of Japanese works. Broad enough to cover the OP IMHO: I would characterize those works as, “Examples of what the Japanese call Isekai.”
Wiki seems to think that Isekai is a subgenre of portal fantasy though, presumably portal fantasies created in Japan. They note correctly that Japanese Isekai has developed its own story conventions.
I conclude that usage is still evolving. I strongly prefer to refer to manga and anime (when speaking English at least) as Japanese-only creations. (In Japanese, the words simply mean comics or animation.) FWIW, I don’t feel the same way about the Isekai term. If the Japanese folk tale Urashima Taro, is considered Isekai, then I’m inclined to define the term broadly. Heck, I see from the IGN article that in Japanese any fantasy world setting is considered Isekai. Huh.
Twitter:
The common understanding is isekai = in another world
Isekaitensei = reincarnation in another world
So Isekai in English is properly translated as Isekaitensei in Japanese.
Read the comments on the IGN article. The general consensus is that the article is pretty poorly written and the internet rando it quoted was an idiot. See, for example, the Japanese titles of a large number of Isekai series: