Why did SAO's success kick off a boom of "isekai" copycats instead of a "VRMMO" boom? SAO is a VRMMO story, not an isekai at all.
>Pic related
is an example of the kinds of copycats that should have been produced en masse, as opposed to nonsense like Death March and Isekai Smartphone.
What SAO's success kicked off wasn't "isekai", but "web novels becoming light novels".
It just so happens that among those web novels were isekai which were getting pretty popular.
It's responsible for Overlord getting animated and that's bad enough.
There were plenty. A lot of the times they kind of merged into the same thing.
Basically all Isekai these days use VRMMO systems for their world anyway, they just wanted to go full wish fulfilment so having it be just a game would run contrary to that since then they'd have to be boring mediocre NEETs at times, rather than god incarnated with a million bitches wanting to suck their non-virtual dick
so an Isekai is just a VRMMO without the logging out. Isn't the "can't log out" arc the shortest arc in the whole of SAO ironically?
Shit I didn't know about this. While we're at it, Needles sequel when?
The longest arc (not yet animated) also has that idea, and actually kinda goes full isekai, with a whole simulated civilization living inside another world, with only a few references to the game-like system the inhabitants take for granted.
From the creators of Needless?
VRMMO has rules and confines that they need to adhere to or else they get called out for not knowing the subject material
Isekai allows authors to make up their own rules
Fans of VRMMO WNs are mostly past fans of MMOs, so they tend to show rejection against bullshit balance breakers
It's much easier to write wish fulfillment in an isekai setting
Did SAO actually kick off the isekai trend in web novels? Thought it was Mushoku Tensei.
It could definitely be attributed for the popularity of uninspired game mechanics in isekai, though.
The artist is from Needless, the original story is a narou WN and a new author's first work. But it seems the chief editor of HJ liked it enough to track down the Needless artist to do the manga, among other things.
Nah, SAO was the first Web Novel to become a Light Novel, and subsequently exploded in popularity. This prompted other web novels to be picked up as Light Novels, and amateur Japanese writers began flooding the web with their shitty fics as some of them got picked up.
It just so happened that Isekai became a very easy story to write after a few cliches were established, and everyone just used the same template for a story.
Nemesis is really cute.
Agreed.
Wish they could have just had some volumes of ALO dungeon raiding instead. The new movie's story was an embarrassment.
It was a combination of lot of things like mentioned, it wasn't specifically SAOs success mostly narou WNs started getting harvested and turned into LNs. The popular stuff over there became reincarnation/transfer type isekai even in 2009 you already had a lot of them like legend of the white kingdom, but then stuff like Goblin Kingdom/Re:monster prompted more monster reincarnations while MT basically created the whole child reincarnation 'subgenre' which yes had a huge influence on syosetsuka.
Then you also have Kenkyo Kenjitsu and a others that had influence on shoujo, otome isekai titiles and the whole thing just blew up.
Because it's better to be dead in real life than to be alive in real life.
>ALO dungeon raiding
What, like Caliber, or that that Extra Edition special? Pretty sure they find that kind of stuff boring, which is why the show seems to simplify it so much.
As for the movie, eh. It was ok. They kinda went and rehashed some plot-points from Alicization, which I found weird.
The movie's way of getting Suguha out of the way is also disappointing, seeing as the staff says the only reason they did it was because Suguha is too strong in real-life, she would have beaten Edgy too soon in the movie.
>while MT basically created the whole child reincarnation 'subgenre' which yes had a huge influence on syosetsuka.
Too bad most of the copycats miss the point about being given a second chance at life and overcoming the personal flaws that wasted their first life, and instead they just double down on "Oh my God this five year old child is a genius I will serve him for life"
That's because you aren't looking at the big picture. SAO gave a sense of actually being in a different world rather than "just a game" The moment you can't logout, the setting you are in is disconnected from "our world", it's essentially isekai at that point. When you read Japanese articles talking about isekai boom, most tend to reference how it began with the SAO anime.
Most people don't like being confronted with their own flaws and insecurities, so of course the copy-cats would strip out the parts that make the author feel uncomfortable about themselves.
>SAO gave a sense of actually being in a different world rather than "just a game" The moment you can't logout, the setting you are in is disconnected from "our world", it's essentially isekai at that point.
Which come to think of it, was rather the point of Heathcliff's god complex and the reason he created the death game in the first place.
It's still funny how SAO's
>he had the fastest reaction time as measured by the game, so the guy running the show gave him Dual Wielding as part of his effort to create a narrative of hero-tier players who will defeat the final boss
morphed over time into
>I'm going to another world, so naturally I must will be granted some cheat-like power, because all reincarnators are granted a cheat-like power, that is just how it works.
>What, like Caliber, or that that Extra Edition special? Pretty sure they find that kind of stuff boring, which is why the show seems to simplify it so much.
Can't be helped Kawahara ain't exactly a gamer to have know how to write a well done raid unlike Overlord or LH authors that have reasonable TTRPG/MMO knowhow.
SAO is shit, but the fact that IMAI Kami did the art for the OP pic was enough for me to pick it up. This is a fucking fun read.
>that chapter 1 cliffhanger
Exactly the issue with most narou entries right now. They keep using the already established popular templates by their predecessors which just seems to be the safest way to go.
Too bad it's being scanned at the speed of slow.
Well, you could argue that playing it safe and following the leader is a problem much older than isekai.
IIRC Kawahara mentioned playing MMOs in a couple of his afterwords, like I think in the second volume he wrote that Kirito in that volume was partly based on how he perceived endgame players as a lowbie?
SAO wasn't from Narou was it?
I think it was on the author's personal blog. But narou is easier to get exposure on.
I remember at the time Caliber and Rosario were considered to be a significant step up from the GGO arc before it.
>Imai Kami is now forced to draw a shitty manga adaptation
J U S T
>shitty
It's actually surprisingly well written, one of the few exceptions to come out of that garbage heap that is narou. The author knows how to pace the story, knows how to set up future plot points ahead of time, knows how to create a network of character relationships that doesn't have all connections run via the MC, knows how to write characters besides the MC who could easily be the protagonists of their own stories, and knows how to write female characters who aren't harem members. It's also just playing a game, no "if you die in the game you die irl" or "you can't logout" nonsense.
I'm a sucker for female villains.
As far as what's translated so far all the villains have been male but I think they're foreshadowing a couple of female ones, one of whom is very smartly dressed
Funnily enough China and Korea are ridiculously into the pure VRMMO genre, even though it really never picked up steam in Japan outside of SAO.
Chinese and Koreans probably spend more time on PCs and PC games than Japanese. Most young Japanese don't even know how to use a keyboard let alone a PC, and interact with the Internet exclusively via their phones.
how do they even survive?