Isekai is something of a touchy subject. It’s a simple concept, turned into a complex genre, which has then gained something of a bad reputation. And, I have to admit, the reputation is not entirely undeserved. Modern Isekai shows have a very tight list of genre tropes and expectations, which is why I called the genre complex. There are a ton of things that go into the common perception of an Isekai show. The style, the feel, the harem, the cheat ability, the power fantasy. And despite the fairly strict formula, these shows are everywhere. They’ve been mass-produced in recent years, and to an extent the torrent is still ongoing. With that kind of volume of shows that are so massively similar, it’s inevitable by Sturgeon’s Law alone that the average quality is going to be on the low end.
Perhaps because of this, most Isekai shows will have something about them that’s a good-faith attempt to be unique. They don’t have a lot of room while remaining perfectly in-formula, though, so in addition to a battery of ‘unique’ cheat abilities, you get shows that pick an element of the formula and either subvert it, or at least attempt to sell themselves on subverting it. KonoSuba, as a parody, is sort of the model for subverting just about everything, but more will just pick a trait. The Harem might be subverted by leaning more into romance, or the Power Fantasy might be subverted by going with the “starts out absurdly weak” trope (though these characters often become broken strong very quickly with powers that follow the Magikarp growth pattern, itself not really being a subversion of the power fantasy).
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