Now that isekai has firmly established itself as a subgenre in western storytelling (although it has always been there in some form), it got me thinking about what to call the subgenres of isekai itself.

If isekai itself is being transported to another world/universe, and reverse isekai is someone from another world being transported to ours… Then what do we call someone from another world being transported to another other wold? Or someone from our world being transported to another time in our world? Do these have names already?

Setting aside if we like or appreciate isekai, if they don’t have genres names yet I thought it’d be funny to come up with our own. What do you think we should call all the sub-subgenres?

  • @NickKnight
    1•10 months ago

    Well now, I’m not offended or anything, you asked a question and I’m answering it with my opinion. That’s just it, where do we draw the line? What about travel books? On the origin of species was written on the other side of the world in a time where that kind of travel was crazy dangerous. is that an isekai? What about Woman marrying against her will and going to another city far enough away she know no one or anything and especially not the local customers? What about Rabbit the great and powerful? He travels from one kingdom rules by necromancers to a world where magic itself is different. is that enough travel? Your question is valid. The answer is no, not because you asked a bad question but because the more you stretch the definition the less it means anything. Pride and prejudice isn’t an isekai. If you broaden isekai to cover it than you just made it into the word: Book.

    • @[email protected]OP
      2•10 months ago

      Hmmm… You raise a good point, but you also raise the question about the validity of “portal fantasy” - eg where do you draw the line?

      On a gut feeling I kind of agree about time travel to times where humans exist, and maybe time travel in general. But setting aside time travel, what is difference between traveling to another city, another planet, another galaxy, another universe, and another reality? It’s just a different scale of difficulty returning, right?