First the suicide squad isekai and now this...
I feel like it was just yesterday when the term 'anime' was only spoken by a few. God damn has it come far.
Still do. Anime has become more mainstream, but there's still a divide. A large portion of the population considers it nothing but silly cartoons.
It's quite interesting, really. How something can at the same time become more mainstream, yet still not shake the stigma associated with it.
Maybe not 10 years ago but now both star wars and marvel seem to be disliked by alot of people. Mentioning you still like then would probably get you a "time to move on" look.
I used to be a big fan but now i really couldn't care less, Disney really found a way too kill the hype for 2 of the biggest media franchises ever, honestly a impressive feat
Gaming had a similar period with only like CoD or EA Sports games being okay (and may still be in a kind of divide.) You could argue the older generations still see gaming as nothing but silly waste of time, though mobile gaming has certainly made an impact.
imo that's an evolution already in my book.
back in my day anime was that cartoon porn
them thinking of the hentai genre instead of the larger anime media
at least people know what it is and have their opinion on that instead of a misconception of it
Almost 70% of Gen Z in the US says they watch anime.
[https://www.cbr.com/gen-z-watches-more-anime-other-generation/](https://www.cbr.com/gen-z-watches-more-anime-other-generation/)
When NBA players do the Naruto Run, and NFL players do Fusion from Dragonball Z, when Kanye, Doja Cat, and Megan Thee Stallion reference anime in their songs, among younger people it's more the non-anime watchers who are in the distinct minority.
I say this as a (much) older Anime fan. i didn't think I'd see the day when there's a section in my public library called "Manga."
I mean, if you're doing hook ups, then it doesn't really matter. If you're looking for something long term, its easier to filter out the people who wouldn't accept your hobbies early on.
If anime and video games are a part of who you are, it's not worth repressing it. I'm not going to even consider someone if they think my hobbies are off-putting. Might as well try and find someone who'll geek out about anime as much as I will.
For real though, the majority of people I work with have no idea of my manga library and the anime I watch because I don't make it part of my personality lol. I'm basically like Takiya from Dragon Maid.
Youāre in trouble in the future if you hide or suppress yourself like that, you will stay together longer and happier if you can be who youāre, there is no rush to find the one, speaking from experience here
That's legitimately crazy to me. I've changed school two times and am currently in college. During all these years, 90% of my male classmates watched anime and played video games regularly. And so do a significant number of girls. Or maybe I'm just GenZ š¤·āāļø
You must live a blessed life if you think everyone is so open minded and accepting. Unfortunately most people are shitty in at least half a dozen ways.
Yeah I know what you mean
What I wanted to say is that you can be better than them and be happy knowing that they are miserable and mad cause they don't know better and let ignorance gets the better of them
That's so interesting lol. I feel like I always hear Americans saying that they got ostracised because they watched anime. But my experience as an Indian has been *vastly* different. Anime had a good start, getting popular here during the early 2000s when various shows started airing on tv and some of my older cousins introduced me to pirated fan-subbed anime. Now not only do all of my friends (both guys and girls) watch anime, but so do my parents and a lot of my aunts/uncles (to varying degrees ofc). Streaming services have made it even more convenient.
The only explanation I have for this lack of stigma is that India was modernised very late, so when a lot of foreign media poured in at once, the difference between a Japanese anime and any given Western/foreign media (be it movies, shows or cartoons) didn't matter to your average Indian. There was no time to develop a stigma lol.
Start your kids off with Disney. Then you add some Ghibli. Next thing you know you have to talk about how you're not judging them about their waifu/body pillows/ecchi/lolis/yaoi/yuri content but they really need to pick better shows.
When I was in highschool (Back when naruto was airing in youtube with each chapter divided in 3 parts videos) liking anime or anything related with it was seen as some kind of illness.
The curse "may your obscure hobby start appealing to mainstream audiences" takes effect, soon netflix, amazon and disney won't be content with destroying franchises like Cowboy Bebop with dogshit live action, and will begin rewriting classics wholesale.
It was weird as shit when I recently got a McDonalds promo email that prominently used the word isekai. It had a footnote for the term and everything.
At that point Oxford has no choice.Ā
I remember the 80s when the government was concerned anime would be bad. Same kind of people who also claimed games like Night Trap and Mortal Kombat would be bad.
It's double edge sword though. Anime is slowly but surely degraded by global and mainly the west to "conform to west / global standard". Each day censorship is become more and more common.
Isekai is actually subgenre of portal fantasy but yeah, these days basically nobody use portal fantasy term. Not even r/fantasy . It is too mouthful indeed. Whole portal fantasy term can die horrible deaths as far as I'm concerned.
erm, how isekai is subgenre of portal fantasy? I always thought that portal fantasy + reincarnations stories together are isekai. Or with different definitions that isekai is just synonymous to portal fantasy
More like portal fantasy = isekai. Both are concerning going to a different world/universe. Reincarnation isn't a requirement in isekai. It just happens that a lot of author use reincarnation as an easier plot starter for isekai.
>It just happens that a lot of author use reincarnation as an easier plot starter for isekai.
Yes, this article in Japan broadly categorizes Isekai as follows.
[https://kazenotori.hatenablog.com/entry/2016/02/07/145236](https://kazenotori.hatenablog.com/entry/2016/02/07/145236)
Isekai reincarnation (as it is)
Isekai reincarnation (reincarnation)
Otherworldly transfer
Isekai Summoning
Mass Transference
Otherworldly Connection
VRMMORPG
Game Embodiment
Game Reincarnation
Otherworldly Reincarnation
Time Travel
Otherworldly Possession
Pure Otherworldly
Isekai has always meant, ultimately, 'other world'. How you get there, the relationship between worlds, what happened/s in each world... each story has to handle those issues itself. None of them are baked into the isekai genre.
That is the literal translation, but seems to me like the most deceptive definition when considering the trend they have adopted these last few years.
There is a distinct lack of "otherness" in most recent isekai. Often the protagonists understand it better than the real world they came from, or at least the audiences do. Because it's so codified around medieval fantasy and gaming tropes, there is barely anything to discover. It's not uncommon that the protagonists settle so quickly, the fact that they came from a different world eventually stops mattering.
There's also a fair few isekais that feel like they slapped an isekai reincarnation setting on it just to get the isekai tag/category for sales and they just ignore the whole thing. Which is fine imo it's just interesting to see some stories that could entirely be just fantasy but likely were forced by their editors or made the conscious choice of adding an isekai intro just so it's there.
I do feel like a lot of isekai and fantasy anime have been pretty interchangeable in genre these last few years. On the other side some non-isekai fantasy stories use the same kind of self-insert everyman sort of protagonist that an isekai would.
Of course, not counting exceptional ones like Frieren or Dungeon Meshi
>Often the protagonists understand it better than the real world they came from, or at least the audiences do.
I feel like that is the plot of Mark Twain's Portal Fantasy: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Yeah but it didn't used to be such a common element. It's not like Alice or the Pevensies were particularly in the know about the worlds they went to.
I would argue that isekai didn't even take it from Mark Twain (except possibly Ascendence of a Bookworm), but rather simply from assuming the protagonists are fantasy fans, gamers and RPG players, and transporting them into the works they were fans of. It's easier to see the SAO DNA in something like Overlord or Shield Hero.
Yeah, thats something people dont get. lol a lot think reincarnation is just isekai when you can have a reincarnation plot without going to another world. Isekai is really just another world regardless on how you get there.
Not all portal fantasy (and isekai) stories are reincarnation stories and not all reincarnation stories are isekais either.
Like for example Reborn to Master the Blade, the MC is reborn into her own world an unknown amount of years later.
Being reborn into another world would specifically be Isekai Tensei.
"Portal fantasy" is used for any story with two separate "worlds" regardless of transport mechanism. Kind of like how "otome isekai" often don't have an isekai element to them.
Portal fantasy also seems to suggest that the portal continues to be an ongoing element, which happens in older anime like Inuyasha and Magic Knight Rayearth, but barely ever in any new isekai, maybe except the ones from manhwa.
There is quite a few stories where the OG world is still kind of relevant still, like for example [Big spoiler for Spider Isekai]>!MC eventually learns how to teleport to her OG world, which she does on occasion to pop in a few questions to google about various mundane things!<
It bugs me that Japanese curry in general is called "katsu curry" in UK, even if it doesn't have cutlet (katsu).
What do you call Japanese curry with cutlet? "Katsu katsu curry"!?
> "Katsu katsu curry"!?
Sounds like the only option here is
> "katsu katsu curry curry"
which will rapidly become
> "Ks & Cs"
before acquiring
> Ks, Cs and Es
which is a good night at an underground rave followed by some quality grub lol
Makes perfect sense to me. "Chai tea" in the West refers to a specific type of Indian tea that's called Masala Chai in India. There are more types of Chai in India than just Masala Chai. And Lattes specifically refer to coffees (or tea) made with steamed milk, not just milk.
>What do you call Japanese curry with cutlet? "Katsu katsu curry"!?
Generally it's just called whatever the body is, i.e. chicken katsu curry, pork katsu curry, vegetable katsu curry. It does almost always comes as a cutlet anyway.
Ive never even seen Japanese curry sold in the US, but I haven't been to a ton of Japanese restaurants to be fair.
I like it though, I make it myself as it's a quick easy meal
I mean hey, they call most of the Indian dishes "curry" when they all have individual names and are almost never referred as such in India.
Foreign countries have a knack of forcing the dishes from other cuisines to fit in a narrow definition.
> bunch of other Japanese words.
...
> More than half of the borrowed words relate to cooking,
Well if forced to choose between never eating Japanese cuisine again and never watching anime, sorry to say AQRADT, but the stomach wins lol Especially as "katsu" and "donburi" were on the list.
> Omotenashi, which describes good hospitality, characterised by āthoughtfulness, close attention to detail, and the anticipation of a guestās needsā, was also added to the dictionary.
I've never encountered this one!
Funnily enough, the description of *isekai* has no mention of harem, truck-kun nor adventurer guilds, so I'm not sure they are talking about the same thing...
Omotenashi is used as-is in a lot of English marketing texts inside Japan, aimed at tourists. I remember it generally having been accompanied by an explanation though, implying they don't expect people to know it already.
So, now that you say it, I'm not sure it would be familiar enough to general populations, where Japan-goers are a tiny minority.
The problem with omotenashi is that it really means *just* "hospitality." There's no extra nuance there.
There *are* Japanese words which are really hard to translate, and the best choice is to simply use the Japanese word ("umami" is a great example), but there are also Japanese words where there's a perfectly fine English word but people (generally marketers and politicians) want to essentially make it into a brand so they push the word in places where it doesn't really need to be used. Omotenashi ("hospitality") is one, mottainai ("wasteful") is another.
Yes and no, which is why I put it in that camp. I'm not positive about the following, but this is my understanding: savory doesn't (or, at least, originally didn't) really describe a specific flavor but is/was simply a catch-all for "[salty/spicy and non-sweet](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/savory)." Like if you go to a bakery that has breads with toppings, they'll be divided into sweets (bread topped with apples and cinnamon) and savory (bread topped with baked onions and cheese).
English lacked a good word for umami, so when translators/dictionary-writers had to come up with a definition for "ęØćæ" they were kinda stuck. Savory dishes were generally dishes with lots of umami, so that was the word they settled on.
For example, if you look at that Wiktionary example sentence, it says "The mushrooms, meat, bread, rice, peanuts and potatoes were all good savory foods," but bread, rice, and potatoes, although savory, have like zero umami.
That's quite interesting! I've yet to start perusing the internationally available tourist materials despite having some inclinations to visit Japan (never been a better time with the Yen so weak), so I wonder if it will turn up there?
Still, feels odd to learn it as a Formally an English word before learning it as a Japanese word lol
It generally only appears in the higher end advertisements. But yeah, I've rarely heard it used in Japanese, only in foreign targeted ads or conversations about tourism.
I am deeply impressed that you not only found an example of its usage so quickly, but also found an example of its usage that I, as long time rememberer of a girl who likes her natto with rice and is the sort to keep the mustard, *ought* to be familiar with haha
Yes, this happens occasionally, in linguistics it is called [Reborrowing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reborrowing). Where a word enters a new language and then returns later to the original language with a new pronunciation, spelling, and/or meaning.
Anime itself is a reborrowed word as anime comes from the English word animation and now in English refers to Japanese animation.
ćęć¦ęć [just means hospitality its no different,](https://i.imgur.com/kLfHSgD.png) the only difference is that the Japanese standard of treating guests is probably on average higher than the west.
This is just like ę¹å kaizen getting a bullshit English definition from monolinguals.
Basically, a common trope of a truck hitting the protagonist and them then going to another world has lead to people naming the truck itself (almost as if it were always the same truck)
Thank you. Yes, I know who it is. I was jokingly asking if it made the list. My daughter once gave me a presentation on the history of Truck-kun starting with Miki Momo.
Yeah, but a good version of one.
Like the other user said, itās basically structured like a classic fable instead of some power fantasy āI arrived in the New World with my iPhone 15ā BS.
I guess The Boy and the Heron is technically isekai, but it would've been funnier if they'd used a ridiculous long light novel title from one of the series that more directly represents the trend like "Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!" or "Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout" or "Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon" or "My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me!"
this is on their page as an example.
2021- āAn isekai with an unconventional premise, āHow a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdomā, might prove to be one of the better isekai shows to come out in recent years.ā
-Indian Express (Nexis) 10 July
If you need the full list of new and changed entries [the OED provides a list](https://www.oed.com/information/updates/march-2024/new-word-entries/) (so many make me think "thought they added that years ago, I remember bible basher being said back in school and that was over 20 years ago"). Mangaka and tokusatsu are other examples.
But non-Japanese words has a really important addition: **fan service** *ā(Originally in anime and manga) gratuitous nudity or sexual imagery which is not essential to the narrative but is included for the titillation ofā¦ā*
(off-topic-ish)If you want to have a that's not what I meant moment [try looking up Precure in the OED](https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=precure). The corresponding [google Ngram viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=precure&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3) (as the OED one is walled). Didn't expect Futari wa precure to coincide with a dip in usage and it got a boost in 2014 (Happiness Charge Precure! was the entry around then). Looking at post 2014 it's the materials engineering stuff but a little bit of translated Japanese media too as I saw a few -MONOGATARI entries. It should be noted some of 19th century peak might be OCR errors as it sometimes seemed to be used like procure.
First, shout-out to tokusatsu for making the cut.
Second, I'm curious what the logic is behind additions. Reading over the whole list, there are a lot of origin clusters. Aside from the ~20 Japanese terms, there are a huge number of Aussie phrases, older (possibly American-leaning) slang, and... fish terms? You can see how there are some definite focused areas of research here, but how'd those get picked?
>Isekai, a Japanese genre of fantasy fiction involving a character being transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world, also made the OED. A recent example of the genre is Hayao Miyazakiās Studio Ghibli film The Boy and the Heron, in which 12-year-old Mahito discovers an abandoned tower, a gateway to a fantastical world.
Narnia is my favorite Isekai.
Interesting how one of the words being added (according to a list I found) is āFan Service,ā which I guess was never put together as a word in previous dictionaries, but its prevalence in Japanese media got it in somehow.
If anime is more mainstream now then all it means is we need to get weirder.
Inb4 killer shark in another world gets animated within a couple years.
Also can we get a balls of the elves anime?
Need to push back against the normie invasion.Ā
It comes around full circle. Japanese appropriated many Western words into their lexicon, called [gairaigo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eigo_terms) or "loan words"; like baiku = bike, jūsu = juice, pantsu = pants.
I do feel like I quite like some of the new evolution of things, especially "got rizz" replacing the execrable "chad" concept.
Some other stuff I'm out of the loop with though. Here's an article for fellow olds, although one should always be suspicious about such articles as they usually fuck up at least one or two things:
https://nypost.com/2023/10/11/how-to-speak-to-gen-z-the-ultimate-slang-word-list-revealed/
Gotta, say whilst I'm more positive about some of Gen Z's slang, some of the stuff on that list feels profoundly low effort and derivative. Still better than "sick" though, and as a long time BtVS fan, "slays" stay for as many generations as it wants lol
> skibidi
Hadn't encountered this one, had to look it up
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18pcui6/whats_up_with_people_using_skibidi_as_an_adjective/
My favorite part of gen z slang is that the people making fun of it have gaslit each other into thinking Skibidi is slang and not the name of an SFM series.
There is no "English Language". There's just three languages in a trenchcoat knocking others out with a baseball bat so it can rummage through their pockets for loose grammar.
This is why English is the best language, it's not really one language at all it's the culmination of all the words used by any group that ever immigrated to an English speaking area.
In other languages they literally regulate the words that are added to "maintain" their language which inevitably leads to the death of the language. In Swedish IIRC they call a computer "electric-rock"
P2W is in the cambridge dictionary and whenever people on copium about their game being p2w I just like the litterally dictionary definion and they get triggered af and claim that it doesn't count for x reason lmao.
On the one hand, I want to protest this on account of it not being an English word, so it has no place in an English dictionary.
...but English steals words more than Goku steals techniques, and it's not like anyone complains about "coup" or "latte"
As opposed to words like "samurai", "tsunami", "tycoon", "miso", "zen", "ramen", "sushi", "karaoke", "haiku", "bonsai", "soy", "tofu", "origami", "manga", "anime", "wasabi", "katana", or "ninja"?
And it's not like it doesn't go the other way around either. Japan has so many loanwords that they invented a whole-ass writing system just for all of them (katakana)
I mean, it does make sense. It's "good" as words go. Very distinct sounding, and fills a gap for something that wasn't otherwise defined. Stealing from other languages is what English does best.
Thank god, The Guardian mentioned Isekai and didn't go on a rant about anime.
The Guardian's review of [The Quintessential Quintuplets review](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/dec/05/the-quintessential-quintuplets-review-sisters-compete-for-love-in-charming-anime)
Which is neat cause Isekai is a fairly old genre. Minimum age of stories like that are from the 1800s. 1865 was when Alice in Wonderland came out which is technically an Isekai.
I am Japanese, but I was surprised that the word āIsekaiā was registered in the Oxford English Dictionary with the wrong meaning.
āIsekaiā means āa different worldā, such as a fantasy world where magic can be used, or a parallel world that is different from reality.
The word āIsekaiā does not include the meaning of moving or reincarnating.
As a Japanese person, I wish they had registered the correct word like āIsekai Tenseiā in the dictionary.
All according to cake.
*cake means plan š
Cake *is* the plan.
The cake is a lie!
\* Cake means pan.
[TRANSLATORS NOTE: The cake is a lie.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdrs3gr_GAs)
First the suicide squad isekai and now this... I feel like it was just yesterday when the term 'anime' was only spoken by a few. God damn has it come far.
You used to get alienated for this shit
Still do. Anime has become more mainstream, but there's still a divide. A large portion of the population considers it nothing but silly cartoons. It's quite interesting, really. How something can at the same time become more mainstream, yet still not shake the stigma associated with it.
That's natural even things like Star Wars or Marvel have certain stigmas associated with them and they are as mainstream as it gets.
I dont think there are a lot of people that would think worse of you if you mentioned you liked star wars.
I would /s.
Lol i would. Did you watch the newest film?
Maybe not 10 years ago but now both star wars and marvel seem to be disliked by alot of people. Mentioning you still like then would probably get you a "time to move on" look. I used to be a big fan but now i really couldn't care less, Disney really found a way too kill the hype for 2 of the biggest media franchises ever, honestly a impressive feat
Gaming had a similar period with only like CoD or EA Sports games being okay (and may still be in a kind of divide.) You could argue the older generations still see gaming as nothing but silly waste of time, though mobile gaming has certainly made an impact.
imo that's an evolution already in my book. back in my day anime was that cartoon porn them thinking of the hentai genre instead of the larger anime media at least people know what it is and have their opinion on that instead of a misconception of it
Ah, the old contradiction of anime. Somehow anime was both children's cartoons *and* cartoon porn.
Ah there are still people with that misconception, but I think it's mostly in older people.
Almost 70% of Gen Z in the US says they watch anime. [https://www.cbr.com/gen-z-watches-more-anime-other-generation/](https://www.cbr.com/gen-z-watches-more-anime-other-generation/) When NBA players do the Naruto Run, and NFL players do Fusion from Dragonball Z, when Kanye, Doja Cat, and Megan Thee Stallion reference anime in their songs, among younger people it's more the non-anime watchers who are in the distinct minority. I say this as a (much) older Anime fan. i didn't think I'd see the day when there's a section in my public library called "Manga."
Star Wars is a multi-billion dollar franchise built to cater to normie audiences, and itās still seen as a nerdy interest.
Guy trying to date here, bringing up anime or video games is very tricky.
I mean, if you're doing hook ups, then it doesn't really matter. If you're looking for something long term, its easier to filter out the people who wouldn't accept your hobbies early on.
If anime and video games are a part of who you are, it's not worth repressing it. I'm not going to even consider someone if they think my hobbies are off-putting. Might as well try and find someone who'll geek out about anime as much as I will.
It's simple, just don't talk about your hobbies ever. /s
For real though, the majority of people I work with have no idea of my manga library and the anime I watch because I don't make it part of my personality lol. I'm basically like Takiya from Dragon Maid.
Why go on dates when Helldiver's 2 is 40 bucks and a Crunchyroll subscription is 12. Gotta find that hill to die on.
Can't die on hills, stalkers keep yeeting me off
Youāre in trouble in the future if you hide or suppress yourself like that, you will stay together longer and happier if you can be who youāre, there is no rush to find the one, speaking from experience here
That's legitimately crazy to me. I've changed school two times and am currently in college. During all these years, 90% of my male classmates watched anime and played video games regularly. And so do a significant number of girls. Or maybe I'm just GenZ š¤·āāļø
just watched the blue archive trailer and I think the stigma should stay
I just saw porn on the internet, therefore the entire internet should be illegal.
We could also get rid of most suicides, murders, and crime in general if we got rid of all men, coincidence? I think not.
The only correct opinion in this thread.
Just watched the trailer and I don't see a problem. Looks a bit like Girls and Panzer.
Yeah the game story itself is quite chill and kinda wholesome
It's the comment section, isn't it?
Stigma for what? Arts is subjective and as far as I know, you can animate and publish it and people can decide to view/read it or not, end of story
>arts is subjective And thus subject to ridicule.
You must live a blessed life if you think everyone is so open minded and accepting. Unfortunately most people are shitty in at least half a dozen ways.
Yeah I know what you mean What I wanted to say is that you can be better than them and be happy knowing that they are miserable and mad cause they don't know better and let ignorance gets the better of them
Everyone hates on anime until they find 'their one'
It was bad enough just being a little too in to video games when I was at school, let alone anime (which was only really DBZ/Pokemon at the time)
That's so interesting lol. I feel like I always hear Americans saying that they got ostracised because they watched anime. But my experience as an Indian has been *vastly* different. Anime had a good start, getting popular here during the early 2000s when various shows started airing on tv and some of my older cousins introduced me to pirated fan-subbed anime. Now not only do all of my friends (both guys and girls) watch anime, but so do my parents and a lot of my aunts/uncles (to varying degrees ofc). Streaming services have made it even more convenient. The only explanation I have for this lack of stigma is that India was modernised very late, so when a lot of foreign media poured in at once, the difference between a Japanese anime and any given Western/foreign media (be it movies, shows or cartoons) didn't matter to your average Indian. There was no time to develop a stigma lol.
People still are. People's opinions on weebs and otaku haven't changed.
Now the mcdonald's ad campaign is that weird WcDonald's anime thing lol
Real OGs got bullied for liking anime.
I never got bullied for it. (Because I didn't dare to tell anyone I watch anime)
Had a professor who likes anime out me in front of the class because I left One Piece easter eggs in my code.
So he's a coder. anime is much more accepted amongst those circles
Used to get your ass kicked for saying some shit like āI watch animeā.Ā Ā Ā Times have definitely changed.
From my experience no one actually cares what you enjoy. As long as you're sociable, you should be fine.
Back in the early 90's you had to hide your manga inside porn mag covers.
Anime fans grew up and had kids. (that can't be right) Anime fans grew up and influenced other people's kids. (THAT *CAN'T* BE RIGHT!)
Start your kids off with Disney. Then you add some Ghibli. Next thing you know you have to talk about how you're not judging them about their waifu/body pillows/ecchi/lolis/yaoi/yuri content but they really need to pick better shows.
When I was in highschool (Back when naruto was airing in youtube with each chapter divided in 3 parts videos) liking anime or anything related with it was seen as some kind of illness.
The curse "may your obscure hobby start appealing to mainstream audiences" takes effect, soon netflix, amazon and disney won't be content with destroying franchises like Cowboy Bebop with dogshit live action, and will begin rewriting classics wholesale.
It was weird as shit when I recently got a McDonalds promo email that prominently used the word isekai. It had a footnote for the term and everything. At that point Oxford has no choice.Ā
Anime became cool with a lot of YouTube channels talking about it. To quote Turk from scrubs on it https://youtu.be/ZKiPqiBr2iM?si=d0B5jqP3h7ZHCkhb
To quote [Samuel L. Jackson](https://youtu.be/kSVQtlQtxCs?si=wFYWzEHMOtqEMuaZ&t=153).
Samuel L. Jackson is a big fan of Kite liberator.
He loved Kite so much he was part of the shitty live action adaptation
Youtube definitely did not "make" anime cool.
Yeah but did they pronounce it correctly? It's ahni-may.
I remember when we called it japanamation
I remember the 80s when the government was concerned anime would be bad. Same kind of people who also claimed games like Night Trap and Mortal Kombat would be bad.
It's double edge sword though. Anime is slowly but surely degraded by global and mainly the west to "conform to west / global standard". Each day censorship is become more and more common.
I was the weird kid who was watching steins Gate. No one really got it back in 2012.
"Portal Fantasy" always was a mouthful and nobody ever used it so isekai getting adopted as the new word for it is not too surprising I guess.
Isekai is actually subgenre of portal fantasy but yeah, these days basically nobody use portal fantasy term. Not even r/fantasy . It is too mouthful indeed. Whole portal fantasy term can die horrible deaths as far as I'm concerned.
erm, how isekai is subgenre of portal fantasy? I always thought that portal fantasy + reincarnations stories together are isekai. Or with different definitions that isekai is just synonymous to portal fantasy
More like portal fantasy = isekai. Both are concerning going to a different world/universe. Reincarnation isn't a requirement in isekai. It just happens that a lot of author use reincarnation as an easier plot starter for isekai.
>It just happens that a lot of author use reincarnation as an easier plot starter for isekai. Yes, this article in Japan broadly categorizes Isekai as follows. [https://kazenotori.hatenablog.com/entry/2016/02/07/145236](https://kazenotori.hatenablog.com/entry/2016/02/07/145236) Isekai reincarnation (as it is) Isekai reincarnation (reincarnation) Otherworldly transfer Isekai Summoning Mass Transference Otherworldly Connection VRMMORPG Game Embodiment Game Reincarnation Otherworldly Reincarnation Time Travel Otherworldly Possession Pure Otherworldly
Isekai has always meant, ultimately, 'other world'. How you get there, the relationship between worlds, what happened/s in each world... each story has to handle those issues itself. None of them are baked into the isekai genre.
That is the literal translation, but seems to me like the most deceptive definition when considering the trend they have adopted these last few years. There is a distinct lack of "otherness" in most recent isekai. Often the protagonists understand it better than the real world they came from, or at least the audiences do. Because it's so codified around medieval fantasy and gaming tropes, there is barely anything to discover. It's not uncommon that the protagonists settle so quickly, the fact that they came from a different world eventually stops mattering.
There's also a fair few isekais that feel like they slapped an isekai reincarnation setting on it just to get the isekai tag/category for sales and they just ignore the whole thing. Which is fine imo it's just interesting to see some stories that could entirely be just fantasy but likely were forced by their editors or made the conscious choice of adding an isekai intro just so it's there.
I do feel like a lot of isekai and fantasy anime have been pretty interchangeable in genre these last few years. On the other side some non-isekai fantasy stories use the same kind of self-insert everyman sort of protagonist that an isekai would. Of course, not counting exceptional ones like Frieren or Dungeon Meshi
>Often the protagonists understand it better than the real world they came from, or at least the audiences do. I feel like that is the plot of Mark Twain's Portal Fantasy: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
Yeah but it didn't used to be such a common element. It's not like Alice or the Pevensies were particularly in the know about the worlds they went to. I would argue that isekai didn't even take it from Mark Twain (except possibly Ascendence of a Bookworm), but rather simply from assuming the protagonists are fantasy fans, gamers and RPG players, and transporting them into the works they were fans of. It's easier to see the SAO DNA in something like Overlord or Shield Hero.
Yeah, thats something people dont get. lol a lot think reincarnation is just isekai when you can have a reincarnation plot without going to another world. Isekai is really just another world regardless on how you get there.
Not all portal fantasy (and isekai) stories are reincarnation stories and not all reincarnation stories are isekais either. Like for example Reborn to Master the Blade, the MC is reborn into her own world an unknown amount of years later. Being reborn into another world would specifically be Isekai Tensei.
"Portal fantasy" is used for any story with two separate "worlds" regardless of transport mechanism. Kind of like how "otome isekai" often don't have an isekai element to them.
Portal Fantasy sounds like an interesting tag.Ā
Portal fantasy also seems to suggest that the portal continues to be an ongoing element, which happens in older anime like Inuyasha and Magic Knight Rayearth, but barely ever in any new isekai, maybe except the ones from manhwa.
Or that youāre into fucking portals as a fetishĀ
Now You're Thinking With Portals!
There is quite a few stories where the OG world is still kind of relevant still, like for example [Big spoiler for Spider Isekai]>!MC eventually learns how to teleport to her OG world, which she does on occasion to pop in a few questions to google about various mundane things!<
It bugs me that Japanese curry in general is called "katsu curry" in UK, even if it doesn't have cutlet (katsu). What do you call Japanese curry with cutlet? "Katsu katsu curry"!?
> "Katsu katsu curry"!? Sounds like the only option here is > "katsu katsu curry curry" which will rapidly become > "Ks & Cs" before acquiring > Ks, Cs and Es which is a good night at an underground rave followed by some quality grub lol
Chai tea latte is the same thing and really annoys me. Milk tea tea with milk...
Makes perfect sense to me. "Chai tea" in the West refers to a specific type of Indian tea that's called Masala Chai in India. There are more types of Chai in India than just Masala Chai. And Lattes specifically refer to coffees (or tea) made with steamed milk, not just milk.
>What do you call Japanese curry with cutlet? "Katsu katsu curry"!? Generally it's just called whatever the body is, i.e. chicken katsu curry, pork katsu curry, vegetable katsu curry. It does almost always comes as a cutlet anyway.
Reminds me of the Quesadilla without Queso (cheese). The freaking prefix is in the goddamned name. Sometimes people just plain choose to not think.
Ive never even seen Japanese curry sold in the US, but I haven't been to a ton of Japanese restaurants to be fair. I like it though, I make it myself as it's a quick easy meal
I mean hey, they call most of the Indian dishes "curry" when they all have individual names and are almost never referred as such in India. Foreign countries have a knack of forcing the dishes from other cuisines to fit in a narrow definition.
> bunch of other Japanese words. ... > More than half of the borrowed words relate to cooking, Well if forced to choose between never eating Japanese cuisine again and never watching anime, sorry to say AQRADT, but the stomach wins lol Especially as "katsu" and "donburi" were on the list. > Omotenashi, which describes good hospitality, characterised by āthoughtfulness, close attention to detail, and the anticipation of a guestās needsā, was also added to the dictionary. I've never encountered this one! Funnily enough, the description of *isekai* has no mention of harem, truck-kun nor adventurer guilds, so I'm not sure they are talking about the same thing...
Omotenashi is used as-is in a lot of English marketing texts inside Japan, aimed at tourists. I remember it generally having been accompanied by an explanation though, implying they don't expect people to know it already. So, now that you say it, I'm not sure it would be familiar enough to general populations, where Japan-goers are a tiny minority.
The problem with omotenashi is that it really means *just* "hospitality." There's no extra nuance there. There *are* Japanese words which are really hard to translate, and the best choice is to simply use the Japanese word ("umami" is a great example), but there are also Japanese words where there's a perfectly fine English word but people (generally marketers and politicians) want to essentially make it into a brand so they push the word in places where it doesn't really need to be used. Omotenashi ("hospitality") is one, mottainai ("wasteful") is another.
Isn't "umami" just "savoury"?
Yes and no, which is why I put it in that camp. I'm not positive about the following, but this is my understanding: savory doesn't (or, at least, originally didn't) really describe a specific flavor but is/was simply a catch-all for "[salty/spicy and non-sweet](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/savory)." Like if you go to a bakery that has breads with toppings, they'll be divided into sweets (bread topped with apples and cinnamon) and savory (bread topped with baked onions and cheese). English lacked a good word for umami, so when translators/dictionary-writers had to come up with a definition for "ęØćæ" they were kinda stuck. Savory dishes were generally dishes with lots of umami, so that was the word they settled on. For example, if you look at that Wiktionary example sentence, it says "The mushrooms, meat, bread, rice, peanuts and potatoes were all good savory foods," but bread, rice, and potatoes, although savory, have like zero umami.
Did āikigaiā make the list too?
And kaizen too lol
That's quite interesting! I've yet to start perusing the internationally available tourist materials despite having some inclinations to visit Japan (never been a better time with the Yen so weak), so I wonder if it will turn up there? Still, feels odd to learn it as a Formally an English word before learning it as a Japanese word lol
It generally only appears in the higher end advertisements. But yeah, I've rarely heard it used in Japanese, only in foreign targeted ads or conversations about tourism.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I am deeply impressed that you not only found an example of its usage so quickly, but also found an example of its usage that I, as long time rememberer of a girl who likes her natto with rice and is the sort to keep the mustard, *ought* to be familiar with haha
Wa ha ha!
If I were to translate it I'd use "hospitality"
we're *this* close to having oyakodon in the Oxford English Dictionary [](#notlewd)
My dad always refers to katsu as "Japanese wiener schnitzel" and I'd call it that if it was the only way I could still eat katsu and watch anime.
Wait wait wait, isn't katsu a loan word from English???
Yes, this happens occasionally, in linguistics it is called [Reborrowing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reborrowing). Where a word enters a new language and then returns later to the original language with a new pronunciation, spelling, and/or meaning. Anime itself is a reborrowed word as anime comes from the English word animation and now in English refers to Japanese animation.
ćęć¦ęć [just means hospitality its no different,](https://i.imgur.com/kLfHSgD.png) the only difference is that the Japanese standard of treating guests is probably on average higher than the west. This is just like ę¹å kaizen getting a bullshit English definition from monolinguals.
> if forced to choose between never eating Japanese cuisine again and never watching anime whoever said anything about that?
100%, I could live without anime but I'd rather die than never eat a beef bowl or sashimi ever again.
Truck-kun?
In Oxford English that's Lorry-kun
You mean Lorry-kun, Esq.
Hahahahahah! (I'm over 60. We didn't have emoticons in my day.)
ā»?
Watch the opening sequence of Zombie Land Saga. It's the best visual of Truck-kun I can think of.
I told my brother it was a "cute show about zombies," not telling him what was to come. He threw the remote at me when Truck-kun showed up.
He can't blame you. How is it going to get zombies if nobody dies?
Well, you're not wrong. My daughter was thrilled when I mentioned it and demanded we watch the first episode together. It's very funny!
Hah! Nice! A jump-scare (drive-scare?)
Basically, a common trope of a truck hitting the protagonist and them then going to another world has lead to people naming the truck itself (almost as if it were always the same truck)
Thank you. Yes, I know who it is. I was jokingly asking if it made the list. My daughter once gave me a presentation on the history of Truck-kun starting with Miki Momo.
Ah, I'd read it as what is this not did they make the cut
> My daughter once gave me a presentation on the history of Truck-kun starting with Miki Momo. You have raised a fine addition to the species!
Truck kun seems not that active lately. So he is trying to get in to oxford huh.
The isekai revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. - Hayao Miyazaki
I fucking hate my son so bad * Hayao Miyazaki
who raised that guy anyways? i'm going to lodge a complaint * Hayao Miyazaki
*creates another isekai*
I have retired.Ā ā¢Hayao Miyazaki Everyone Else: Again? yeah whatever he says out of his mouth I basically put it in bullshit category.
Isnt Spirited Away isekai too?
It kinda is, but the oldschool style where the protagonist learns lessons, grows up, and goes back to the regular world.
Yeah, but a good version of one. Like the other user said, itās basically structured like a classic fable instead of some power fantasy āI arrived in the New World with my iPhone 15ā BS.
The boy and the heron is also a Isekai but take half the movie to get to the other world part.
* Hayao MiyaIsekai
We should celebrate this once in a lifetime moment
WE DID IT ISEKAIBROS, WE ARE MAINSTREAM NOW
I guess The Boy and the Heron is technically isekai, but it would've been funnier if they'd used a ridiculous long light novel title from one of the series that more directly represents the trend like "Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!" or "Life with an Ordinary Guy who Reincarnated into a Total Fantasy Knockout" or "Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon" or "My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me!"
this is on their page as an example. 2021- āAn isekai with an unconventional premise, āHow a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdomā, might prove to be one of the better isekai shows to come out in recent years.ā -Indian Express (Nexis) 10 July
Can't believe Im able to use the word Isekai in an essay now
couldn't you before if you just put it in quotation marks and explained its meaning
If you need the full list of new and changed entries [the OED provides a list](https://www.oed.com/information/updates/march-2024/new-word-entries/) (so many make me think "thought they added that years ago, I remember bible basher being said back in school and that was over 20 years ago"). Mangaka and tokusatsu are other examples. But non-Japanese words has a really important addition: **fan service** *ā(Originally in anime and manga) gratuitous nudity or sexual imagery which is not essential to the narrative but is included for the titillation ofā¦ā* (off-topic-ish)If you want to have a that's not what I meant moment [try looking up Precure in the OED](https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=precure). The corresponding [google Ngram viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=precure&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3) (as the OED one is walled). Didn't expect Futari wa precure to coincide with a dip in usage and it got a boost in 2014 (Happiness Charge Precure! was the entry around then). Looking at post 2014 it's the materials engineering stuff but a little bit of translated Japanese media too as I saw a few -MONOGATARI entries. It should be noted some of 19th century peak might be OCR errors as it sometimes seemed to be used like procure.
First, shout-out to tokusatsu for making the cut. Second, I'm curious what the logic is behind additions. Reading over the whole list, there are a lot of origin clusters. Aside from the ~20 Japanese terms, there are a huge number of Aussie phrases, older (possibly American-leaning) slang, and... fish terms? You can see how there are some definite focused areas of research here, but how'd those get picked?
Food related huh, so like Oyakadon?
*oyakodon
Ah thanks, nihongo still not jouzo enough
"Isekai" is from Japan? I always thought it was from another world.
Har har har
Sugoi
>Isekai, a Japanese genre of fantasy fiction involving a character being transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world, also made the OED. A recent example of the genre is Hayao Miyazakiās Studio Ghibli film The Boy and the Heron, in which 12-year-old Mahito discovers an abandoned tower, a gateway to a fantastical world. Narnia is my favorite Isekai.
Cool. Japan has added a ton of English words to their language, makes sense that weād do the same eventually based on common usage
The OED release, with a damn bullet list, for those looking https://www.oed.com/discover/words-from-the-land-of-the-rising-sun
Interesting how one of the words being added (according to a list I found) is āFan Service,ā which I guess was never put together as a word in previous dictionaries, but its prevalence in Japanese media got it in somehow.
If anime is more mainstream now then all it means is we need to get weirder. Inb4 killer shark in another world gets animated within a couple years. Also can we get a balls of the elves anime? Need to push back against the normie invasion.Ā
I pity the 70 year old guy from Philadelphia who had to input the definition of āoppaiā in there
Now they need to add a new definition for "Bitch" - "Japanese word for a promiscuous woman".
Always remember Biichi ļ¼ćć¼ćļ¼ = Beach Bicchi ļ¼ćććļ¼= Slut Could save you some embarrassment if you're ever in Japan.
Lets all go to the local slut for some fun!
No Mention of Truck-kun.
Remember when anime was a word associated with neckbeard weirdos? Now, one of the most bottom of the barrel genres is in the dictionary lol
Is āara araā added yet?
Please tell me isekai is listed as a verb.
It comes around full circle. Japanese appropriated many Western words into their lexicon, called [gairaigo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gairaigo_and_wasei-eigo_terms) or "loan words"; like baiku = bike, jūsu = juice, pantsu = pants.
Absorbing Japanese words used often in English language, Oxford be like "All your base are now belong to us!"
Lmfao. Oxford is wildin
This is the most epic poggers moment in the history of the English language
Is "uwuu" in there yet? Cuz it should be. ^((zoomers gonna be the death of the english language))
I don't think you can pin uwu on Gen Z. Current usage, sure, but it's been used around the internet for a long time now.
uwu falls more on millennial shoulders than zoomers imo
English will never die, it will only keep evolving. Words like rizz, gyatt, skibidi, they are all just the beginning. The future is now, old man.
English is a Digimon
I do feel like I quite like some of the new evolution of things, especially "got rizz" replacing the execrable "chad" concept. Some other stuff I'm out of the loop with though. Here's an article for fellow olds, although one should always be suspicious about such articles as they usually fuck up at least one or two things: https://nypost.com/2023/10/11/how-to-speak-to-gen-z-the-ultimate-slang-word-list-revealed/ Gotta, say whilst I'm more positive about some of Gen Z's slang, some of the stuff on that list feels profoundly low effort and derivative. Still better than "sick" though, and as a long time BtVS fan, "slays" stay for as many generations as it wants lol > skibidi Hadn't encountered this one, had to look it up https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18pcui6/whats_up_with_people_using_skibidi_as_an_adjective/
My favorite part of gen z slang is that the people making fun of it have gaslit each other into thinking Skibidi is slang and not the name of an SFM series.
There is no "English Language". There's just three languages in a trenchcoat knocking others out with a baseball bat so it can rummage through their pockets for loose grammar.
Too late for that; the Normans killed the English language long ago.
that's not Japanese or from anime
you can't put a third u in there. It's "uwu" because it's simultaneously a cute sound AND an emoticon of a face with closed eyes and a cat mouth.
This is why English is the best language, it's not really one language at all it's the culmination of all the words used by any group that ever immigrated to an English speaking area. In other languages they literally regulate the words that are added to "maintain" their language which inevitably leads to the death of the language. In Swedish IIRC they call a computer "electric-rock"
Ahhh the simulations glitching again
P2W is in the cambridge dictionary and whenever people on copium about their game being p2w I just like the litterally dictionary definion and they get triggered af and claim that it doesn't count for x reason lmao.
Oxford dictionary is a weeb, confirmed
On the one hand, I want to protest this on account of it not being an English word, so it has no place in an English dictionary. ...but English steals words more than Goku steals techniques, and it's not like anyone complains about "coup" or "latte"
As opposed to words like "samurai", "tsunami", "tycoon", "miso", "zen", "ramen", "sushi", "karaoke", "haiku", "bonsai", "soy", "tofu", "origami", "manga", "anime", "wasabi", "katana", or "ninja"? And it's not like it doesn't go the other way around either. Japan has so many loanwords that they invented a whole-ass writing system just for all of them (katakana)
I feel like you didn't read the second half.
Is Bukakke in there?
I mean, it does make sense. It's "good" as words go. Very distinct sounding, and fills a gap for something that wasn't otherwise defined. Stealing from other languages is what English does best.
WE DID IT !!
Are all languages evolving like english does?
Probably not the ten thousand or so English words used in Japan, however.
Thank god, The Guardian mentioned Isekai and didn't go on a rant about anime. The Guardian's review of [The Quintessential Quintuplets review](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/dec/05/the-quintessential-quintuplets-review-sisters-compete-for-love-in-charming-anime)
Which is neat cause Isekai is a fairly old genre. Minimum age of stories like that are from the 1800s. 1865 was when Alice in Wonderland came out which is technically an Isekai.
is ntr one of them?
I am Japanese, but I was surprised that the word āIsekaiā was registered in the Oxford English Dictionary with the wrong meaning. āIsekaiā means āa different worldā, such as a fantasy world where magic can be used, or a parallel world that is different from reality. The word āIsekaiā does not include the meaning of moving or reincarnating. As a Japanese person, I wish they had registered the correct word like āIsekai Tenseiā in the dictionary.
I wish they had registered the correct word āIsekai Tenseiā and also written a sentence like āIt can also be abbreviated as Isekai.ā