#deja thoris deserves better

[girddlepatchilles]

So I’m responding to this post, but I’m not reblogging because I’m really not interested in Lily coming after me, but I just wanted to gush for a moment.

So, to the point: isekai/portal fantasy/whatever you want to call it, have been around for years and the fact that the genre shows up in many different places is just so damn cool! The theme of a “normal” person going through a portal/doorway/whatever to go into another world shows up in plenty of myths and legends. Many stories about the fair folk talk about mortals being taken away to the fairy realm through portals and the like. In Japan, the story of Urashima Taro involves a young fisherman travelling to the Dragon Palace and staying there for what he perceives as three days before returning to his village. Upon his return he finds out it has been three hundred years! Again, this is a theme that also shows up in stories regarding the fair folk in parts of the UK and Europe, this shit is universal.

The Urashima Taro story is believed to be the forbear of the modern Isekai genre in Japan. Interestingly enough, an animated adaption of the story made in 1918 was one of the earliest anime created. What I also find quite interesting is many modern Isekai don’t seem to include the “when I return so much time has passed” aspect of the original folklore. In fact, it’s fairly common for the protagonist to just remain in the fantasy world and just not leave. Part of this is due to how the protagonist got there (here’s looking at you truck-kun), but from what I have seen, there aren’t that many Isekai where the protagonist goes home in the end.

This, of course, is very different to many of the portal fantasies in English language literature. The first instance of what would become portal fantasy comes to us from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland written in 1865. In it, the titular Alice follows a white rabbit down a hole and into Wonderland, where she experiences a strange world quite unlike our own. Unlike some of the more well known portal fantasy books, Alice’s adventures end when she wakes from a dream. The sequel Through the Looking Glass continues to explore the theme of dreams. Jules Verne would later produce Off on a Comet (Hector Servadac) in 1877, while Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court would come out in 1889. A Connecticut Yankee is also an early example of time travelling appearing in speculative fiction (H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine would come out in 1895). One of the most well known portal fantasies is of course C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia which saw the plucky protagonists being transported to Narnia through wardrobe, painting and various other means. Ironically enough, the final novel in the series The Last Battle involves several of the previous characters being allowed to remain in Narnia because they had died in a train accident on earth (an early example of truck-kun?).

Portal Fantasy and Isekai are both great forms of escapism, especially if it’s the kind of story where the protagonist ends up in a fictional setting they had previously read. I was a big fan of the Narnia books as a kid and another of my favourite books was a series where a group of Aussie kids ended up in Arthurian myth and tried to change how things turned out. I’m pretty sure I got rid of those books at some point, otherwise I’d be tempted to re-read them to see if they hold up. I’m not much into Portal Fantasy or Isekai these days (I read more fluffy romance, domestic fluff, speculative fiction, queer romance and fiction, fantasy, sci fi and gay cooking manga), but I can still see the appeal to a lot of people. I get a little side-eye-y when I see characters use their modern knowledge to “improve the lives” of the people in the fictional world they inhabit, but some authors and show runners have managed to do so in a way that doesn’t seem too bad. If I had to pick an Isekai I’ve seen that I loved, it would probably be The Devil is a Part-Timer! which is an example of a reverse Isekai. (It’s really great, go watch it!)

So... yeah. Just a little gushing from me.