The Isekai genre and the resurgence of the serial novel.

Serial novels have been a thing for a while to the point they have already been forgotten, it started on diaries aimed for certain demographics in Europe during the 19^th century, they resurged again during the first decades of the 20^th century as pulps in the USA and gave birth to the comic industry which eventually replaced them.

After that the serial novel was mostly a flickering existence in very specialized magazines, but the people’s attention was on the new technologies and the ways of enjoying entertainment and the new media they brought along.

Now the internet has paved the ground for everyone to make their voice heard, and read, this has led to a resurgence of the serial novel, now known as Web Novel.

As with several other instances of modern media this sparked in japan and spread to the world, first to Asia and eventually to the west.

Because they rely on the internet for creation and distribution web novels tend to deal with juvenile themes as of general, this means stuff like adventure, battles, personal importance and romances with extremely attractive people are a given and nothing coagulates this themes like the isekai genre.

Isekai means “Another world” and refers to people who for some reason are taken outside their native world and transferred into another, this almost always means they are taken from this world and receive some kind of special power during the transfer but there are exemptions.

Isekai novels are mostly produced to be a light read, this by itself is neither good nor bad as is more about the entertaining value. Just like a cheap car or a heavy duty machine can be better depending of the intended use.

Still, isekai is a genre meant for fun and this is a very important factor to consider when analyzing it, a fun work can receive some leeway in the (lack of) depth and care it was built with, as long as it’s fun. Therefore is no surprise to see most of the isekai novels being low cut products that rely on safe tropes to create generic adventures. This again is no problem as long as one is clear about the product being offered and what one expects to consume.

In more colloquial terms “Isekai is trash, and i am a raccoon feasting.”

A bored reader visiting the library

As long as one recognizes the genre is made for fun there is a vast amount of stories that can be enjoyed, is not a matter of lowering our standards but a matter of being honest about them.

And yes, there are some rare cases of really, really good works.

So, what are these stories about?

At this point we can divide them in two main branches: western and asian.

Asian novels can be further divided in japanese, chinese and korean.

Japanese works can be even further divided in male and female oriented.

A thing all this stories tend to have in common is magic and the Main Character (MC for short) receiving some kind of power so useful is directly called a “cheat power,” or simply a “cheat.”

Ye olde tradition of cheats dates back to the age of empires and further back

A cheat tends to be a good narrative device if it has clear limitations and needs extra elements to work, if not then it tends to clog the narrative flow until the story dies of staleness

Let’s say for example the cheat is the ability to influence people’s mind, a good cheat would limit how person can be influenced and would require the MC to convince the person of a certain point of view before the cheat can act and transform them into extremists of that point of view. A bad cheat would simply brainwash them the moment they meet each other.

The first example could evolve into the MC setting up the scenarios to convince the people to follow him while the second example would rapidly become boring as the MC can brainwash everyone he comes in contact with.

For males the cheats tend to be battle powers and the stories oriented towards battles and adventure, it’s to be expected that a lot of beautiful women will pop out from behind every rock, tree and grass to accompany him on his adventures... and he will never touch them because that’s how the japanese herbivore men rolls.

For women the cheats tend to be powers with a social weight, abilities like poisoning or healing which will put them in important positions without relying on brute force, instead of battles there is social intrigue and instead of beautiful women there are handsome men of high status orbiting the MC... who will do nothing and will still gain their full devotion because that’s how romance rolls.

It’s interesting to note that as the japanese society becomes more isolated by social customs and work pressure those stories have increasingly included more and more instances of MCs living a “slow life,” a lifestyle characterized by having no pressure, no worries and time to enjoy the small pleasures of life.

Japanese stories often become bothersome because they are big on following social customs and it can become annoying to see so many MCs enduring social pressure when they have received incredible magic powers.

The usual setting is an european medieval-esque fantasy world with institutions such as an adventurers’ guild that regulates the paid extermination of monsters and other guilds to give flavor like the mages’ guild, tamers’ guild and so on. There are monarchies with the standard european nobility ranks and the magic and monsters tend to be heavily influenced by the game Dragon Quest, which in turn is an adaptation of the western fantasy previously amalgamated in Dungeons & Dragons as seen from the japanese eye.

The most common theme is being summoned to fight a demon king who is threatening humanity and if there is no overarching plot the MC will most likely spend his lives as an adventurer, variations exist, of course, but this are the basic templates.

There is also the case of characters being thrown inside the world of a story they know, most typically a videogame as they have several endings and most typically a romance game for women, this are known as otome visual novels, although you will find the occasional male MC.

In china the social situation is different and they give A LOT of importance to social perception, which they call “to save face.” Take the corona virus for example, when it started the medical practitioners voiced their concerns but the government tried to cover up a case of an epidemic “to save face” in front of other countries, their measures can be investigated by the people interested, but saves to say they worsened the situation simply to avoid looking bad and now they look even worse.

This translates to the novel industry, in chinese stories is not rare to find arrogant characters who get extremely enraged because their public image was tainted by the actions of the MC... or MCs who do the killing when someone looks at them wrong.

In chinese stories is not rare to see a character saying:

“How you dare to resist while i'm trying to kill you! You are offending me!”

If done properly this scenario is perfect for high action stories filled with amazing battles, if done poorly is just a rinse of repeat cycle of finding the next arrogant bad guy and killing him.

The usual settings are two, one is Wuxia which can be translated as “Martial hero” and involves martial arts, fantasy martial arts. Just imagine a kung-fu movie with more muscle and more qi and you get the idea.

The other setting is called Xianxia or “Immortal hero” and involves super magical powers, in this setting powers are a mixture of martial arts and meditation known as “cultivation” and is a derivation of the religious idea of meditating to shed mortal desires and achieve a higher state of being.

Except that here “achieving a higher state of being” literally means it, as the characters sort of evolve into more super powered versions of themselves as they meditate and then they find another super powered dude and duke it out.

In even simpler terms Wuxia is Dragon Ball with heavy personal drama and Xianxia is Dragon Ball Z.with super magic and planet traveling

The settings are imperial China for both but i am particularly fond of xianxia as it often involves several worlds or levels of existence that the MCs can travel through, in some cases the magical worlds have interesting shapes like the giant petrified corpse of some incredibly powerful dude or the most common one of a continent floating in space.

In this settings there are few female examples but women are pretty much the same than in the japanese setting, poisoners and healers in a high society environment, there are exceptions and some novels do feature women cultivating to achieve immortality but are usually lighter in mood and very often they are comedies and romances.

Instead, china has developed a subgenre of romances set in current times that involve the super beautiful, rich and powerful... pretty much regular romance novels set in china, which is kind of boring.

I almost forgot to mention it, the chinese also have the "Infinity" subgenre which basically means making stories by stealing elements from whole genres, Infinity Horror means monsters from all franchises show up, now try the same with superhero movies, fantasy books, videogames and so on. only possible in a country where intellectual property means so little

Is mostly in chinese and korean works where we see the “Regressors,” MCs who lived their lives and by some occurrence went back in time and now have a second chance to redo their lives and fix what once went wrong, japanese web novels also have regressors but i think the chinesse pioneered the isekai version with the novel A Step Into The Past.

In any case a character being a regressor is a very common occurrence in xianxia and wuxia, genres where knowledge of powerful martial arts and magical techniques can greatly change the fate of someone who practices them from early life and provides a cheat that still requires the person to put up some effort, another element greatly valued on this two genres.

In Korea there is a heavy interest in videogames and it’s the place where electronic sports took off big time, because of this korean novels heavily include power tiers and tiered progression. From here there are three main models.

In one the modern world is invaded by magic in one form or another, usually by gates connecting Earth to another world or worlds where magic and monsters reside, this eventually leads to a world that is very much the same except that now people with magic power make a living by killing monsters and selling their parts to corporations and governments.

The second model is the modern world being destroyed in an apocalypse that in most cases is the first model going out of control and monsters destroying civilization, in this post-apocalyptic scenario the people have to survive and rebuild using their new magic powers and futuristic technology.

China and korea produce many post-apocalyptic novels but i see them mostly as koreans because those two models have very similar bases and mostly differ in how well the current world holds up when the magic arrives, interestingly the japanese don’t produce much post-apocalyptic stuff. I cannot pin point exactly why.

The third model is virtual reality, in this scenario the MC lives in the near future where full-dive Virtual Reality videogames exist and must earn money by playing the game and obtaining rare items to sell to other players in exchange for real money.

There are people who already do this in regular multiplayer computer games so it’s not far-fetched to think it will go that way if virtual reality is ever achieved, there are examples of VR novels in china but they are mostly korean and the japanesse produce VR novel variations but none about selling stuff to make a living, they do make novels about people trapped inside videogames or being transported to worlds based on videogames.

Just wait until Nintendo makes a hybrid portable version of those big-ass capsules

Korean fantasy is overwhelmingly male and instead the korean females have developed a subgenre of romances set in current times that involve the super beautiful, rich and powerful... mostly regular romance novels set in korea, which is kind of boring.

These genres of novels exploded by feedback and have been producing more and more niche stuff with the occasional exceptional work. By the power of the internet many have been translated and can be found with ease, this eventually led to the westerners writing their own novels.

The average westerner goes by a process like this one.

-Seeing cartoons as a child, specially superheroes.

-Seeing cartoons leads to watch anime.

-The superhero cartoons lead to superhero comics, which leads to manga, the asian comics on which anime is often based on.

-Anime leads to manga.

-Whatever the path followed once a person discovers manga there are tons of fan-translated works ready for consumption, once one has read a lot one would find an isekai adaptation of a novel, which in turns leads to the novel.

-Japanese isekai are the most creative and the juvenile stories give a sense of liberation and are easy to read, but often the passiveness of the herbivore MCs leaves the readers with desire for something less socially constricted.

-This leads to chinese novels and their violent MCs.

-Once the novelty of the arrogance wears off korean novels are next and their world building and stratified elements are a breath of fresh air.

-Eventually korean novels become stale and we become aware of the western novels, both as readers and writers.

Western web novels are a curious bunch because the readers only become writers only when they are tired of reading, which means they have already sampled plenty of works and are compelled to make anything different out of pure tiredness.

Because of this western novels are very varied on themes and are way harder to categorize than asian novels, instead it’s easier to divide them on “Interesting concepts that were abandoned after a few chapters” and “Long running/Completed novels.”

I will eventually talk about western novels but let’s end it with the asian ones.

In general the japanese novels are the most varied and most of the novels i am currently reading are from japan, a good reason for this is the way formal publishers have taken these novels. Japan has sites where people can write and the readers can rate the works, and if a story gets popular enough some editorial may pick them up for physical publication which is called a Light Novel and includes around ten illustrations per volume.

The most interesting novels (or the ones average enough to be safe bets) can get a manga adaptation and even an anime, which would catapult them into global fame.

China is different and some of the sites where people write their stories on give money to their writers based directly on votes given by the readers by means of “tickets” of which inner workings i am not familiar with.

The point being that a story generates money as long as it’s popular and the chinese manga and anime market are too small to support several shows every season, this means the novel itself it’s the only source of income the writer will have... as long as the novel is still being written.

This leads to chinese novels becoming extremely long and overly repetitive in an attempt to extend their duration. There are great chinese novels but overall they are the weaker of the bunch.

The korean market on the other hand doesn’t have an anime market that can compete with japan, not even by far, but their manwha (korean manga) market is growing nicely and while many of their novels are so-so they gain a lot of intensity when converted to comic format. And while japan has a robust manga market the end goal of manga is to print the works and sell volumes but the korean have the digital market as their main consumer and their manwhas are on full color.

Then, japanese web novels are the most original and diverse, korean web novels tend to get repetitive but the manwha adaptation gives them so much style and personality its completely worth it and while china has some masterpieces the great market is mediocre repetition, not completely unexpected from the land of pirate products.

This is from Solo Leveling, a manwha where the MC kills and enemy and becomes stronger, then kills another and becomes stronger, then kills another and becomes even stronger, that's pretty much it but it does with so much style it never gets boring

I will eventually give some recommendations on asian novels but it will be another time because i like to talk about works in detail.