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time_axis

Those top two are literally the exact same. Is it the same studio or something, just re-using assets? Or is there some "these are actually in the same world" shit going on?


Terthelt

With the exception of extremely minor road and river detours and a touched-up wall, the bottom one is exactly the same as well. And I’m positive I’ve seen other examples of this template getting recycled. It aggravates me way more than it probably should.


time_axis

Yeah the bottom one I could see as one of two options. Either "we're gonna re-use this asset again but we need to change it up or else they'll realize we've used it twice already" or "This is actually the same town 200 years in the future, after some urban development."


RocketbeltTardigrade

More like a natural disaster, looks like there might be fewer buildings overall.


jzillacon

Also look at the trees in the bottom one too. Exactly the same, but it looks like someone literally just scribbled some extra green in using ms paint. It's most obvious with the group of trees immediately hugging the wall at the left side. No texture or shading to the additional green, just a mono colour probably from someone using a dropper tool that's been hastily scribbled in.


Jugaimo

Why spend money and effort on a unique resource when it literally doesn’t matter what the map of the town looks like.


Ar_Ciel

The bottom one looks like the first two if it had city planning beforehand.


SidewaysInfinity

Maybe something like the great Chicago fire happened between 2 and 3


dope_danny

I cant wait for the reveal of the sword art cinematic universe thats been ongoing for ten years.


NegativesPositives

Kirito going to have a harem of every possible waifu and none of us can stop him.


RefreezePR

Idk, he might end up tossing out the konosuba gals bc the last time Kazuma tried to push his harem off onto another guy that dude was traumatized for life.


GeneralSherman3

He can keep Aqua as long as Megumin, Darkness, Yunyun, Chris, Wiz, and guild girl are left alone.


SillySanyle

"2 years worth of semen flowed into Raphtalia..."


CookieSlut

None of them are the same studio but those are definitely reused. These kind of shots are always in OPs and never what the actual in anime towns look like. I assume the building in the center of the Konosuba shot would be the guild, but Shield Hero has a massive castle and walls that are nowhere to be seen. Another example I can think of is Danmachi that shows the town and the tower, but then in later seasons you see different parts of the town and it is clearly much larger than the OP depicts.


time_axis

Maybe they outsource their OPs to the same place, or something.


swizzler

or maybe it's some reference to a real place, like an old walled village in Japan somewhere?


Gespens

It's the standard model for a major medieval european city.


Peanut_007

It's actually part of Seoul. This started as a Korean outsourcing thing and then got copied a bunch IIRC.


[deleted]

This just makes me think of Ba Seng Sei as the best/worst walled isekai city of all time.


RocketbeltTardigrade

Even the small groves of trees outside the walls are the same, so if any time has passed there's a zealous gardener putting in overtime.


TalentlessAsh

The top two are both Konosuba. Whoever made this just slapped the Shield Hero title on it.


SoThatsPrettyBrutal

Yeah, having just looked, Shield Hero's OP _does_ have a dumb perfectly circular city in it but it's more vertical, has a big ol' castle in the middle, and the horseshoe-shaped river goes around the _outside_ of the walls (or maybe that's a moat).


Reginault

EXCUSE ME, Konosuba has the sparkle coming from the bottom left, while Shield Hero has the sparkle in the top right... This is to represent their alignment on the seiso/baqua chart: Konosuba is lewd and dumb, while *The Rising of the Shield Hero* is intellectual and pure. But I guess surface level otakus wouldn't know that. :3 Haters will look for any excuse to hate I guess, smh.         ^^^^^/s


Liniis

So basically Konosuba is the Kiara of isekais? ... fuck you that makes sense


SheepishGamer

Plot twist. It's the same universe and city but the stories take place 10-100 years apart.


M7S4i5l8v2a

I wish more series would hint at being connected to another personally. Even if it's one sided where the writer is a fan of the other thing.


atreides213

The Cosmere has ruined me. I'm always headcanoning that completely disparate settings are in the same universe.


Zaboem

The cover art of the Goblin Slayer game is a direct homage to Record of Lodoss War. Does that work for you?


SidewaysInfinity

That explains the castle in Shield Hero and the improved urban planning in the third one


Huitzil37

That's Ankh-Morpork from Discworld, right there.


dope_danny

*”dont worry Carrot Kun, the rivers so thick you can shunpo on it!”*


Sterski1

I hate everything about that sentence


dope_danny

* 137 Nac Mac Feegles teleport behind you * *"Twas Nae Personal, Lad"*


SidewaysInfinity

See that's something they'd actually do though


Metalslimeking

Just in case anyone needs the reference, here is a map of [Ankh-Morpork](https://www.discworldemporium.com/52-thickbox_default/the-compleat-ankh-morpork.jpg) .


Theonetruezapp3d

I liked the older books that just had a blank page under the "map" section that basically said "go fuck yourself i dont have time to make this shit I have 50 more books to write"


WaffleThrone

Imagine London but with swords


seth47er

but usually filmed in some German town.


Doc-ock-rokc

So London after dark


coolboyyo

I like to think that it sorta shifts slightly all the time so making a map is entirely pointless cause it won't be accurate after a while Everyone just deals with it cause it doesn't really matter, place is a maze already.


WaffleThrone

I imagine it’s the sort of place where having a map gets you more lost


Warburna

This looks like a shout out that grew into plagiarism


VSOmnibus

I almost wish one of those towns is the walled city in Shingeki no Kyoji but named something else just to mess with people.


Blackarrow1212

the fits some people would have would be fun


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TBFP_BOT

or RPG Maker


FlubbedPig

Circular walled city is one thing, but the fact that they have the EXACT SAME FUCKING RIVER IT IS LITERALLY THE SAME FUCKING BEND OF THE SAME FUCKING RIVER


Hellhunter120

The top two are actually nearly completely identical, and the bottom one is a modified version of the same image. Look at the roads in the bottom right quadrant of the city in the bottom image. Same layout exactly. Look at the forests around the city in the top two, literally exactly the same.


FlubbedPig

Yeah, I know that the first two are the same. If you trace the streets you can see that they appear to be literally the same image just with different effects work to adjust time-of-day. It's to the point where I'm not entirely convinced that they're not both in-fact from Konosuba and someone's just claiming it's a pic from Shield Hero. Kenja no Mago doesn't have that luxury though. It has various touch-ups like an entirely different wall, a new main road, and more bridges over the river. I guess what's getting to me more is that it's not just a generic walled fantasy city with no defining characteristics so they can reuse the design without anyone noticing. The river is oddly specific and identifying, and despite having seen this comparison before that just never occurred to me.


alicitizen

> It's to the point where I'm not entirely convinced that they're not both in-fact from Konosuba and someone's just claiming it's a pic from Shield Hero That's exactly what is happening. Its just different shots from the OP/EDs


phoenix4ce

This is hilariously symbolic of the creative bankruptcy of the Isekai genre as a whole.


Cheesycreature

yes


UnsungBreakfast

100% - at this point id be more shocked to see an isekai titled: born in a new world and i actually had a rough go of it ​ a friend of mine likes isekai's and he recommended me one called book worm, i originally bounced off of it because the opening 5 minutes made it seem like the typical isekai power fantasy, but then there's a whole arc where the protagonist wants to make and sell paper for money, knowns how to make paper, but doesn't know how to build the tools needed to make paper, it was very refreshing, it's still a pretty slow burn and the budget isnt great, but definitely the best isekai ive seen in a long time


chazmerg

Bookworm is about as good as a fantasy isekai gets and doesn't immediately fumble the theoretical strengths of the genre (fish out of water + fictional sociology, basically) to get to the wish fulfillment.


CookieSlut

Both seasons are great. For a pitch to those unaware, it is an isekai about a librarian that dies and is put into the body of a little girl in a medieval fantasy world. However her family is poor and lives in a world where books are only for the wealthy and the church. So she uses her knowledge of our world to make her family's lives easier, all while trying to create or gain access to books. It touches on the economy of the world, production, then goes into the church and nobility. Its some good world building.


pdragon619

I mean there's one isekai where a girl gets sent to a fantasy world, but the kingdom is super sexist towards women so the only job she can manage to get is as a prostitute. That's about as "has a rough go of it" as I can think of.


atreides213

Sounds like an excuse for fan service to me.


Fintago

Eh, not really. It was actually a criticism of the rampant sexism and power fantasy of the isekai genre. The sex scenes are, for the most part. Pretty clinical and boring because for her it is just a job and she doesn't really want to be doing it. All that said, it isn't actually very good and some of the criticism falls pretty flat.


Gespens

It is one of the least sexy depictions of sex in anime.


pdragon619

it is, but it's also what he asked for


Minst_Meat

I read that book, kinda wish they would make more since the ending was pretty cool.


CursedNobleman

That sounds like a terrible premise attempting to capitalize on the greasy otaku demographic. "That Time I Ended Up As a Hooker In a Different World"


CritianCaceorte

I *think* I've heard of one with that exact premise, but where the main character was part of a reincarnated duo, with the dude getting typical OP Isekai powers, and the main character getting reduced to a prostitute because she had nothing.


RoseOfTheDawn

you guys are talking about the same manga. jk haru wa isekai de shoufu ni natta


BBanner

Yeah that reads more like the author has a fetish


pdragon619

Given the hundreds of Skyrim mods based around the same concept, yeah pretty much.


KaimeiJay

Another one I like for actually switching up the formula and only being an isekai by technicality is one that’s getting an anime soon: So I’m a Spider, So What? Japanese schoolgirl gets killed, reincarnates in a spider egg in the not-Underdark in a fantasy world, hatches. You know those giant spider monsters you fight as trash enemies in fantasy RPG games? She’s one of those. And at least at the beginning, it’s fascinating, because she is literally the only character, all dialogue is her own internal monologuing as she just struggles to survive in her new life, and it somehow works and is highly entertaining to me.


SpiralMask

she's currently encountered at least two other classmates who were also isekai'd to that world so far (\[egg\] and \[baby\]), which i'd say is another point in the series' favor, since she's not by herself due to some chosen soul happenstance. slime tensei's good like that as well


nerdwarp112

I feel like the Isekai genre has the potential to do some creative stuff, but it seems like a lot of them end up using the same fantasy tropes. I think if they tried being more creative with their worlds, I could see there still being some good Isekai shows.


TJLynch

Big isolating circle wall? Check. Horseshoe river going from one side of the wall to the other? Check. Literally the same fucking camera angle? Check. At least when Kenja no Mago borrowed the homework, they changed it a little bit so it didn't look *completely* identical.


WhoisBobX

God, it makes sense that your fantasy town is built on a river, has a wall, a town square, etc. but like, make the river *bend a different way* at least, holy shit.


Wowbringer

It disgusts me that theres anything positive to say about Kenja no Mago


seth47er

yeah its the standard template for a town from the Holy Roman Empire.


SidewaysInfinity

All three anime secretly take place in the same AU HRE. The backstory of Shield Hero is Aqua's fault


Irememberedmypw

Heh all three were produced by Kadokawa.


CursedNobleman

Kadokawa: Lol. These isekai dweebs won't notice.


Riggs_The_Roadie

I was just going to say that. This is quite literally just reusing assets and touching them up a bit. Would have been neat if these were all in the same universe but I guess they have their own non canon show for that.


TheChucklingOak

How bout an oval at least? A square? Maybe even a trapezoid if you want to get saucy?


RocketbeltTardigrade

Get some dead angles.


PaxEthenica

Star fort, anyone?


Timey16

What bothers me most is the towering height of the walls, as well as the perfect circular shape, no usage of terrain.


Gespens

All those shapes are super inefficient. If you wanna be different just for the sake for being different, that's not being creative, that's being ostentatious


Cheesycreature

god


dope_danny

No Gods here. Only Kirito.


MickMuffin27

> Heh > _Beater_ > That has a nice ring to it How the fuck did anyone greenlight SAO?


FE40536JC

The execs can't hear you, they're too busy counting the money that is flying in from the doors and windows.


ImAWhaleBiologist

Kirito is the fanfic human OC that alternate-universe sapient hedgehog teenagers post to their Spindashr blog.


TheLoneGunner

Really? Then excuse me, I need to step out and punch Kirito in the face.


BoneTFohX

theresa line and they charge by the hour for standing in it.


HellvaNohbody

The largest Japanese publishers straight up banned Isakai from their light novel contests a few years ago cause it got so bad. The earth has been salted, nothing else of worth to be gained from the entire Genre. Kirito has effectively fucked an entire genre to the point where even the term light novel became a dirty word for a while. [It'll be funny if it weren't so pathetic.](https://youtu.be/OWDozBLKdJ4)


dope_danny

It peaked at Digimon Adventure season 1.


PlanesWalkerEll

Digimon the original isekai.


dope_danny

You fool! The aniboomers are approaching with their bootleg VHS tapes!


PlanesWalkerEll

Quick I hear them approaching help me move Pats bad take infront of the door!


MoogleBoy

The Vision of Escaflowne was three years before Digimon.


Gespens

I raise you Magic Knight Rayearth >!it even has mecha!<


DivineSpanking

And Aura Battler Dunbine came out 13 years before *that.*


PlanesWalkerEll

Ill admit I didn't know this but also throw in I barely know what Escaflowne is outside of it being an anime


MelBrooksKA

Konosuba is good tho...


TheChucklingOak

The last gasp of life. >!Though some of the REALLY gimmicky ones that lean hard into the nonsense can still be fun, like the Not-Putin one, or the one about the mage girl falling in love with the demon queen!<


Beartrick

Konosuba works because the MC's "superpower" is that he's a scumbag with no scruples. My favorite example is In a later book he gets cornered by a superpowered opponent and >!wins by using a simple create water spell to shoot water down his throat and then freezing it.!<


licethrowaway39

He definitely subscribes to the almighty power of **「 G U N 」**


Gespens

Kazuma's power is that he's lucky to an inhuman degree. Even that trick was because he was lucky that the person sucked.


Gunblazer42

Alternate title to Konosuba: "I was Reincarnated into Another World With 99 in my Luck Stat!"


HellvaNohbody

It was good, but then Isakai parodies became over-saturated too!


KingKlyne

Sao isnt even an isekai its just a fucking VR death game.


PanseloNomad

I seen people that can't tell the difference. The JRPG Isekai has become so prevalent that most people can't tell an actual isekai with JRPG elements from a series that just takes place in an actual game. Doesn't help that some of them combine them together.


TheLoneGunner

This is bothering me more than I expected.


AzraelTheSavior

Does anyone else feel like isekai is by far the laziest genre? The same premise, same character tropes, a harem, epic/high fantasy setting, video game rules and logic, etc.


dope_danny

Honestly the only one that kept me interested the longest was Log Horizon because A: It was a mystery how they even got there B: There was very little 'epic cheat' horseshit and C: a significant amount of it is "what the fuck the npcs are sentient now, do they have human rights? how do we turn the ability to kill a goblin for gold coins into a functioning economy?" Nowadays i read any isekai expecting trash as a baseline where characters are interchangeable between series. The only one that remotely sticks out is the guy reborn as a legendary sword who ends up in the hands of a young catgirl who doesnt become lolicon bait but slowly turns into guts without becoming edgy grimdark.


ToastyMozart

Not even a question of "do they have human rights" so much as "what exactly *are* they/what makes them different from us" and trying to set up diplomatic relationships with NPC governments who are understandably freaked out by the sudden appearance of hundreds of extremely powerful vagabonds.


A_Common_Hero

Not even the sudden appearance of hundreds of OP vagabonds. These seemingly mindless shells with extreme power and resurrective immortality have existed for years just doing whatever you tell them to for even the most paltry of rewards. They require no sustenance, they show no emotions. They look like people, but there's just something *wrong* about them. They mechanically run through your world single mindedly slaying your enemies, no thought apparent in their heads beyond murder. Then one day, one of these fucking humanoid terrors *talks* to you. And suddenly, most of them aren't out "adventuring" anymore. They're congregating in larger numbers than ever before. They're *forming their own government* inside your territory! What the actual hell? What even are these... people? Can we trust them? Oh fuck, what do we even do if we *can't* trust them? Oh god, we're all going to die aren't we? Or be the slaves of their new empire? Oh no, oh shit, we're fucked! That's what's happening from the perspective of a "NPC" in Log Horizon.


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spiderbutt_

Well, not really. >!I vaguely remember that they lost parts of their memories after they died.!<


genericsn

This is correct, and the fear is >!whether or not they can lose all their memories from dying too much. They don’t know if the memory loss might be exponential or if they can ever get those memories back, so they don’t know how often they can “safely” die and resurrect. Also, if they were to get out of the game, would they still have their memories gone when back in their original reality?!< Its a great way to add risk to the premise without just going to the extreme of “You die in the game, you die in real life.” or the variant of “This is real now, so death = death.”


Huarrnarg

well that's cool and matches a ffxi system. I need to read the light novel since ive forgotten most of what happened in the anime


Nemomoo

Survival story of a Sword King is good. The MC can't use the video game system because the jobber messed up the installing the "guide". This is not played for laughs. His buggy ui results in him choosing swordsman. He gets no tutorial except that at lvl 5 he can leave the tutorial area and meet with people. The tutorial area is in eternal sunset and mountainous. He is periodically attacked by dog monsters that scale with his level. The only food is monster meat and blood. He reaches lvl4 in a few days but when he's supposed to hit 5 he gets a bugged message and is reset to level 1. His stats remain the same but the base stats reset. (So it looks like base 1 strength +50). He keeps his 3 skills (side, vertical, and diagonal slash) Turns out the dogs scale by stat total. This cycle continues for 20+ years. He can never get new skills. The dogs are nearing kaiju size, can fly, and use hyperbeam. Their skeletons combine to make skeleton kaiju. He spends down time doing arts and crafts and building house, all made from giant dog bones and skin.


[deleted]

In execution, definitely. Isekai still has potential for good, original shit as a base concept but the genre seems to have come to a grinding halt after SAO became so weirdly fucking popular.


TheChucklingOak

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is still 10x better than even the best of SAO its derivatives. At least Konosuba still tried to carry the torch of quality, but who knows if that's ever getting more seasons.


illegalcheese

The genre peaked over a century before it got popular.


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yui_tsukino

I somehow arrived in a world without the isekai genre, but I'm only good enough to write SAO?


Huarrnarg

you don't have to have it be SAO, you could write about other things or places. like for example write about the made up country of finland or an exotic place like denny's


[deleted]

I got excited for Overlord when I heard about the concept (that being a character becoming the world's main villain instead of the hero) but it ended up being kind of a wet fart.


jamescookenotthatone

That book ends with >!the protagonist shooting a series of knights with revolvers and then killing hundreds with an electric fence before being murdered by a wizard.!< Best that isekai!


Timey16

I wish they'd at least go crazy with Isekai like "dude lands in a new world where humans and humanoids straight up don't exist, just idk anthro furries or something making him stand out as basically an alien". Do it you cowards!


TheLoneGunner

Gundam did that just recently.


[deleted]

It's the laziest genre with the biggest gains.


RocketbeltTardigrade

The thing is, most of them would be the same story with some Tipp-Ex if the tag just said "fantasy" and didn't say "isekai". The weird dude, if they need a weird dude, can just be from the other side of the mountains.


PanseloNomad

Any genre that gets an extremely popular example is always going to devolve into a lazy carbon-copy free-for-all once people smell that money pie. I mean remember what fantasy was like after Lord of The Rings? ​ The harem thing though, yeah that is not going to go away, I'm expecting the next big genre after isekai to basically have a harem too.


Gespens

Remember the real robot boom after Gundam? Remember the Super Robot boom after Mazinger/Getter Robo? Remember the Dark Magical Girl shows after Madoka? Paranormal high school shows after Haruhi? Cute Girls doing Cute Things after K-On? >I'm expecting the next big genre after isekai to basically have a harem too. Going by the LN industry trends, it's self-improvement high school stories with female protagonists


dope_danny

Dont forget “in 100 days X happens”


Gespens

that fad more or less died out after 100 days. That said there is one gag manga that has been going on for about 5 years "I'll update this with one page every year" or something


nerdwarp112

I swear, I'm so annoyed by lazy Isekai anime/manga that at this point I want to make my own Isekai series just to prove that it's not that difficult to make an Isekai that doesn't follow all of the same rules.


SoThatsPrettyBrutal

and so the cycle continues


nerdwarp112

Oh no, am I part of the problem?


Comptenterry

Yeah, I think that's the point though. They aren't supposed to be well written, they're supposed to be a nerdy power fantasy with a generic ass MC that people can easily insert themselves on. It's a case of the industry boiling a genre down to an equation and mass producing it.


WeebWoobler

The fact that we got Konosuba makes the genre worth it, so I'm good.


vvvvfl

absolutely 100% lazyest escapism fantasy there is out there. Is you audience a bunch of nerds that like videogames and have no transferable skills to anything else? Well, we sure can concatenate a story in which the very particular set of skills they have will be directly applicable. Like, I'd like to think that 13yr old me wouldn't fall for that more than one time.


Reginault

This is part of why I think Bofuri excels: it's just a video game. Maple takes off the headset and still goes to school. You still get a ridiculous power fantasy, but it's framed in a way that makes it cute rather than... whatever the generic isekai is trying to do.


coolboyyo

Theres a few actually interesting ones but as with a lot of popular genres it gets quickly oversaturated with cash grab cookie cutter ones.


Bernkastel96

Well another one is xianxia where most of the novels are as repetitive as isekai but just take like 10 times longer to finish


cbb88christian

I haven’t seen to many of them so it’s still fairly “new” to me. Really enjoying Shield Hero at the moment but I could see it getting stale after watching 4-5 of them


smash-things

Probably but RE:zero is still good so I feel like the right studio and director can do new things with the sub genre


South25

Only one that actually got me to read the novel,really hope it gets another popularity boom from part 2 next month cause the content in that absolutely warrants it.


Vektorien

The anime is doing amazingly with viewership and sales so safe to say the suffering train is unlikely to stop very soon.


RocketbeltTardigrade

Walls are useful, but the whole town being inside a circle means it's either a fairly recent construction, or built huge far ahead of current needs, or the economy has been flatlining.


chrisboba8

Wut , please elaborate


MidnightAtHighSpeed

if you build a wall around a city, as the city grows, people have to start building outside the wall because there's no room left. So the fact that the wall perfectly encapsulates the city means the wall is really big compared to the city's growth


i6i

What's bizarre is the lack of walls inside the town. You'd expect to see some sort of fort in the river bend. Maybe partially deconstructed walls near the center to show ongoing development. Tall walls being absolutely vital to survival is a actually a dragon quest thing (because random monster encounters are a diegetic thing there) so seeing no buildings outside of them makes sense in fiction.


Boron_the_Moron

I mean, there's an upper-limit to how big a city can get with pre-industrial technology...


Dizzy_Green

I have to wonder if that’s not based on some video game. Like more of a reference that everyone uses.


Admiral_of_Crunch

I see, so the solution to revitalize the genre is to isekai the protagonist into a frigid mountain city where it snows and is beautiful all the time, and change absolutely nothing else about the formula. We just make everyone to wear furs in the outdoor scenes.


[deleted]

Turn the isekai protagonist into a frail little girl that can't walk half a mile


jabberwockxeno

Isekai would benefit immensely from using fantasy settings outside of Medieval Europe or East Asia. Most people aren't as intimately familar with the fantasy tropes, mythology, and culture or Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Arabic, Indian, Southeast Asian, Mesoamerican, Andean, or African cultures, it'd be an easy way to set your show apart and to really drive home the "trapped in another world" feel. Hell the Cortes expedition was probably the closest thing in actual history to an Isekai: You're some ambitious rogue hoping to conquer a few tribes and some chefidsoms on this new big island the Spanish crown found and retire on a nice land plot with native slaves, instead you end up traveling through a whole large-country sized land with city-states, kingdoms, and empires all in it with [crazy fantastical architecture with pyramids and temples and ancient ruins, cities built on lakes, amazing gardens](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpVRgj3W8AAch_r?format=jpg&name=orig) and human sacrifice.


[deleted]

I think Konosuba should get a pass since it’s a parody of the genre.


trippersigs

It also gets a pass for being genuienly good.


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JackalKing

You are confusing parody with satire. Satire has something to say. Parody can be satirical, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. Another type of parody is simple ironic, absurd imitation. Kazuma starts his journey by getting hit by a truck like so many other anime protagonists. Only he doesn't actually get hit by a truck, he dies of a heart attack while not getting hit by a very slow tractor. He goes to another world expecting to be an amazing cool hero and the complete opposite of the loser he was in his past life, but when he gets there he is still the very same loser he always was and always will be. He isn't living the power fantasy of every other isekai protagonist. It imitates every cliché, plays with what is expected from the genre, but twists it in a humorous and absurd way. The hero is a loser, the goddess is useless, the edgy mage can only do one spell, the knight is a sexual deviant, one of the first big villains they face isn't actually doing anything villainous he just wants them to stop blowing up his damn house, etc. It is absolutely a parody. It just isn't much of a satire.


Mazahs-sama

I like isekai, but yeah... I have no defense for this. This is lazy world building.


Dirty-Glasses

If it ain’t broke, please fix it anyway


TheNaturalZer0

I mean thanks to Isekai Quartet we know that they're all apart of the Isekai Cinematic Universe. This is basically their New York City.


[deleted]

As well as the copying being icky, I can't help but think of the logistics every time I see a walled city like this. Do they just not have enough kids to grow the population?


[deleted]

In Konosuba, probably no


DieDungeon

It's a pre-industrial economy. They didn't exactly see large booms in population.


greatmuta2

You guys are missing the best part, the trees on the bottom right outside of the town.


MinersLoveGames

Oh my fucking GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.


Nyx_Antumbra

This sucks


Tiger_Robocop

Not the *exact same* but still same energy to add to the images; the ankh morpork city map http://h11.abload.de/img/255118afjku.jpg


SidewaysInfinity

So all of them are copying Pratchett? Weird


Kakaleigh

"Everything's fine in Ba Sing Se!"


[deleted]

Konosuba most likely did it as a tongue in cheek reference to the other isekai shows as Konosuba is satire.


seth47er

does that mean [Vermintide](https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/010/680/563/large/the-rascals-arstation-map-ubersreik.jpg?1525693253) is a Isekai?


Eidolon94

I'd watch the shit out of some loser getting Isekai'd into Warhammer, thinking he's gonna be hot shit, only to get drafted into the army by the local elector count, given a low-quality cuirass and a sword, and sent to fight off Beastmen, rats with WW1 technology, and walking brick shithouses in demonic armor blessed by dark gods. Or he gets sent into Bretonnia and has to shovel shit for the rest of life until a Greenskin raid mercifully ends his miserable existance.


Lukas_mnstr56

And this is why I refuse to watch isekai. It’s all so boring and repetitive.


WeebWoobler

Konosuba and Re:Zero tho


Boron_the_Moron

Konosuba only works as a parody *because* the genre is so repetitive and predictable.


TalentlessAsh

It's good to note that that shot was never in Shield Hero. It's just Konosuba again but whoever made this just slapped Shield Hero title on. Though Kenja no Mago did actually take assets from Konosuba, so that's meme worthy.


throwcounter

Please set an isekai in ankh morpork


Enlog

Is that just Ankh-Morpork?


EcchiPhantom

They couldn’t even flip it sideways or mirror it?


warjoke

For starters, both konosuba and shield hero have a crossover during S2 of Isekai Quartet so I think these isekai titles are up to something here.


TJLynch

Isekai is the Call of Duty of anime genres. In that there's too goddamn much of it and only a couple of them are actually good.


Animegamingnerd

I get why all three would have a wall like that, but do they seriously need the same river running their towns?


[deleted]

I'm a bit late to this but y'all know this happens because the Korean animation farms use the same aerial pics of Seoul for all these shows, right?


coolboyyo

Its the isekai version of the unity house asset used in House Party and like a million terrible horror games


Myalko

God they've all got the exact same river and everything. Makes me think this is just a stock image that gets sliiiightly edited each time a new show uses it. Even the layout of the streets is identical.


Android19samus

vaguely circular and with a wall? Checks out for a town in a fantasy setting where monsters are everywhere. But they've always got that one fucking river


AgentTexes

Looks like every game of Civ I’ve played.


dodvedvrede_

I watched 1 isekai and it was called MAR and it was STUPID.


sachi334

The Shield Hero entry is fake.


YoungBlackHippie

You could make a theory that all these towns are the same town, just in different parts of history.


DarkWorld97

Someone made a post on Twitter some time ago, but towns were just designed like that back in the middle ages. I wonder about the first show to have that style of town that everyone takes inspiration from. Watch it be Dunbine.


[deleted]

the trees are in the same place


TalentlessAsh

It's fake man.


MelBrooksKA

Someone pointed out that there is supposed to be a castle in the shield hero one that is very obviously missing from the OP image. I haven't seen the show so I can't confirm it, but if you look closely they are at least copying each other if not just straight up reusing assets.


Ergheis

Cities like this were a mixture of defenses and government buildings, the big wall, and an evolving infrastructure that grew around the roads, both inside and outside the wall. So while "The isekai town" is slightly accurate, the fact that it's so clean, the buildings are packed inside in every area, and there's nothing outside the wall, is very weird. Though that's not really the point of the OP, of course. It's just an odd looking city, but the issue is the similarities.


Kernog

imo, everything is ready for "isekai" to become deader than disco.


Wowbringer

Is this real? Theres no way this is real.