Totally overshadowed by the 1983 cartoon Dungeons & Dragons™, in which several children ride a Dungeons & Dragons™ themed roller coaster only to find themselves transported into the magical realm of Dungeons & Dragons™. At no point should it be assumed that this was a typical 1980s scheme to sell merchandise.
I have a hard time seeing how there’s any genre of entertainment that can exclusively belong to a single country. I can see how there might be a genre that’s the exclusive work of a single artist. But if there’s a genre being made by multiple artists, why should those artists be limited to a single nationality?
The first Witch World book was an isekai involving Simon Tregarth, who got on the wrong side of some mob boss, being given an escape by going through a portal. The second book in the series also involved Tregarth. After that, the series was all about people born in that world, so they don’t qualify as isekai.
This reminds me: There’s currently a lot of controversy as to whether a group formed by a Korean entertainment company, but which contains no Korean members, can be called K-pop.
I disagree. If a Japanese band produces music that sounded like rock, I’ll call them a rock band. If an American animation studio produces a series that looks like anime, I’d call it anime. Same with K-pop. If K-pop can be defined as a specific style of music, with its own unique look and sound, then there’s no reason why it can’t be made by anyone anywhere in the world.
Even if a word can be used to refer exclusively to works from a specific country, I think it’s absurd to insist on that when the word, in that country itself, isn’t so restricted.
Anime is not a genre. In America, it refers to animation made in Japan which is helpful if you like those, just like you might like Hollywood movies or blockbusters. A Hollywood blockbuster is not a genre but it will share many style similarities.
But even that gets tricky. What if a Japanese company makes some of it but outsources other aspects to Korean or American companies? At what percentage does is switch from an “anime” to something else. What if an American company produces something and outsources a lot of the work to a Japanese studio? Is that an American cartoon or an anime? I have no idea and don’t care enough to define it.
Isekai is a sub-sub-genre. It took off in popularity in Japanese light novels in the early 2010s and quickly started being ported to anime. They developed their own stamp on the bigger portal fantasy sub-genre (death mechanism like truck-kun, OP protagonist for reader power fantasies, some interaction with the reincarnation deity that brought them to this world, probably a harem or multiple love interests, video game mechanics usually with a quest menu only the protag can see). It’s so popular that things that would not be isekai but borrow a lot of those tropes are seen as isekai (e.g. Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to a Starter Town).
Is isekai only Japanese? No. Anyone can write a story using the framing device and tropes. But it’s so heavily influenced by Japanese cultural tropes that its hard to label Western media or other as isekai as they won’t borrow enough of those tropes.
Would a Japanese person refer to the Narnia books as isekai?
I assume so since it’s still “Another World”, but it wouldn’t be the first thing that pops in their head as an example of an isekai. Same with Alice in Wonderland.
Just like if I asked you for a Superhero story, you wouldn’t immediately picture Astro Boy or Kamen Rider which don’t follow the American comics tropes.
There is manga of the Narnia books.
Plugging the title into Amazon Japan, the description on an edition of the book
Contains the characters for isekai (異世界).
Google translated, that description is:
Digory and Polly, who wander into another world with a magic ring, accidentally revive the evil queen sleeping in the abandoned city and bring her back to London. In an attempt to return the queen who causes a commotion in the city to her original world, she touches the magic ring again, but she finds herself in another world. There, a lion was about to create a new country… Volume 1 (7 volumes in total) depicting the creation of Narnia and its first adventures. Published in the ``chronological order of the story’', which the author recommended during his lifetime.
So, maybe?
Well, sure, it wouldn’t be the first thing that pops in their head for lots of things. It’s no surprise that Japanese media is more popular in Japan and English-language media is more popular in English-speaking countries.
I wouldn’t picture Astro Boy as my first thought as a superhero, not because he follows different tropes, but simply because, like most Americans, I haven’t read/watched Astro Boy.
In linguistics there’s the concept of “False friends”, words that sound the same in 2 languages but mean different things. Similarly, there are words that mean different things in Britain than they do in America. If you say, “Joe is pissed”, in the US it means he is angry. In Britain it means Joe is drunk.
Manga simply has a different meaning in Japan than it does in the US. So does anime. I defiine these mediums as works produced by Japanese publishers originally in the Japanese language, at least in part for the Japanese market. It’s a bright line conceptually. But here’s the thing: I’m not aware of any plausible edge cases, empirically speaking. They may exist. They don’t exist in quantity. So I stand by my definitions.
Maybe my definitions will break down one day. That’s ok: language evolves. So for those who say, “I can’t see why not…” I say, “Show me an example. Or two. Or more.” I agree with the hypothetical in a general sense, but I think my definitions fit current usage and what’s currently available. (Point of information: Japanese anime studios routinely subcontract part of their work to South Korean animation studios. So I center my definition on the publishers and production committees.)
Manga-influenced works have existed since at least the 1980s and probably earlier. But that’s a different thing. Zot! isn’t manga (and never pretended to be).
Hypothetical edge case! Japanese resident born in another country self-publishes a manga, which is in the Japanese language and created for a Japanese market (specifically a comic-con in Japan). Is that really a manga? A: Yes it is: your original nationality doesn’t matter. My definition is centered on the publishing environment and market.
My definition of an isekai (having seen more than I really wanted) is as follows: A work that involves generally one (though sometimes more) protagonist finding themself suddenly in a different world for some reason (death, summoning, unexplained transfer) that runs on a role-playing game type power system and is often a power fantasy.
Now, that doesn’t catch everything. Sword Art Online (but really only the first part of the first season and basically all of Alicization) has people stuck in a virtual world, not a different physical universe. Konosuba is a comedy, no power fantasy there. Ascendance of a Bookworm uses her knowledge of her former life to “invent” new products but she’s still a generally powerless child. Handyman Saitou is literally that, a guy with a variety of mundane skills but no actual power. Then they start getting even weirder, like reincarnations as spiders and slimes and vending machines, into a dating sim, and so on.
To me, isekai is mostly a loan word to describe a specific related type of Japanese media and stories. It’s also a very modern type of genre based on using a number of tropes and mechanics invented in the last fifty years. Other authors have created works in the general isekai style (Solo Leveling is absolutely huge and is from Korea, for instance, with a Japanese adaptation for anime) but to me there’s a specific Japanese-ness in the storytelling to make it an isekai.
My thoughts exactly, particularly with the pattern of the main characters not starting off as heroes but growing into it by experience in the new world they’ve entered. Extra bonus that time flows differently in the two worlds. Some other examples would be the Thomas Covenant series (certainly weird and creepy enough for a good anime) as well as the Outlander books for time travel.
Retract and revise, since definitions should follow usage. Manga data websites will often have a number of highly ranked works originally published in Korean or even Chinese. They are sometimes called Korean manga or Chinese manga, but they are generically referred to as manga (in the English language). So manga they are. There might be some original English language works on those websites, though I haven’t seen any. At any rate, there aren’t enough (or they aren’t sufficiently ranked) to have the word manga refer to them. The Korean and Chinese works are influenced by Japanese manga, but can generally be IDd within a few pages. Still: usage rules.
Rather than refine my definition further, I’ll just invoke mutatis mutandis and be done with it. I’m not aware of a comparable issue with anime.
I suppose on some of the sites they are called “Chinese manga” / “Korean manga” or just manga, but on more savvy sites they are called and catogorized as manhua and manwa.
I see that Japan has a term “international manga” for “Non-Japanese manga”
(I originally saw the term here):
There’s also the 1971 series Lidsville in which a kid falls into a magic hat to find himself in a magical world of anthropomorphized hats. I assume that was a typical 1970s scheme to sell drugs.
No, it was a more innocent age. That show was intended as a scheme to sell hats.