The previous “big thing” in anime and manga was slice of life and I’ve heard people theorize that slice of life fizzled because it was depictions of an idealistic life that most viewers had no way of replicating or connecting with. Therefore, viewers who initially felt comforted by slice of life eventually became angst ridden when they realized that they’d never do anything more than watch fictional characters do fun things.

Isekai may be a reaction to that angst because it offers a clear (if fantastical) line from angsty worker or student to power fantasy. However, even Isekai is dying down now and it’s not clear what the next big thing will be.

So yeah, capitalism.

It’s the epitome of escapism.

Or maybe just a fad, like the fucking zombie mania were for the sad and dreary 2 decades.

Analysis: capitalism cannot help but beat a dead horse. Whenever anything becomes slightly popular, it must be mined and hollowed out in the search for every cent of profit.

.hack and SAO made this genre become impossible not to core out, and unfortunately weebs will watch anything so the hollowed out husk of the genre is still bleeding money 20 years later.

There’s an interview with Vijay Prashad that comes to largely the same conclusion about superhero movies.

I wrote a big essay that was basically what you already said, only with way more pointless words. But it was kind of pointless and didn’t say anything, so I deleted it.

So instead, I’ll talk about my own experience with these sorts of people. I often draw art for the sort of people who are the prime target for isekai stories, and they are just generally very poorly socialised. They often have a poor understanding of boundaries or what might make other people uncomfortable. They’re usually not terrible people or anything, just lonely guys who struggle with human connection and have found a quick and dirty “diet” version in the form of parasocial relationships with their favourite anime character.

So yeah, the problem is dehumanisation under capitalism.

Zomb 100 is not technically an isekai but it is way more direct about how much he hates working at a black company (company that gives forces people to work unreasonable hours) and just so happy that he doesn’t have the capitalism responsibilities anymore so he tries to make the best of living in a zombie apacolypse. Its funny to watch a guy use his optimism to make the best of an objectively bad situation.

Most of entertainment is designed to help people escape from their miserable alienated experience under capitalism.

Anime is not popular only in Japan. Its popular in many countries. Ive heard some stories about russians committing suicide because they wanted to get isekaied.

Isekai concept after death is kind of a promise of heaven. People don’t want to be bored after they die and they reincarnate to live an interesting life rather than praying all of the time. An opportunity to feel like one matters in contrast to living where you are a replaceable cog in a machine that doesn’t care for your well being, and it being difficult to find friends as an adult.

it’s not so complex:

having shitty life in capitalism

being indoctrinated to not fight against capitalism and being sadly passive

some event takes you to another place where there’s not capitalism

now you can be active and try to make a “good capitalism” from the scratch!

It’s an escapist thing because people’s lives are so shit under capitalism they want to imagine being the protagonist.

Add to this it’s easy as fuck to start any Isekai story. You barely need any backstory or world building initially. “I was some asshole working a desk job. I fell into video game world.” That’s it. World built. Everyone watching these shows gets the idea. They know what a desk job is. They know about fantasy style video games. It’s all super relatable and thus anyone can throw this thing together.

On the other hand if you had a similar story but it wasn’t an Isekai but following a person in that magical world, you actually have to get to know the character somewhat. What’s their motivation? What makes them special? Why is this their story? Etc, etc. It requires a lot more writing, and actual good writing to do this. These are all things answered instantly by the Isekai genre so why go through the trouble of it when you can just have some asshole in the “real world” get tossed into it?

Now for Skibidi toilet

Honestly I think it has more to do with the Syosetu the platform and its genre classification system that inadvertently setoff this unholy chain reaction with a positive feedback loop. More readers click on the high fantasy section due to a few popular titles in the beginning, more writers write high fantasy because there’s more readership, etc. until the whole platform is dominated by that one genre. It sets off a chain reaction as publishers heavily recruit from the platform, anime adaptations happen from LN, etc. until it dominated the sphere.

Power fantasy itself being popular has as much to do with the daily webserial format that is popular in Asia for pulp fiction imo. You see the same trend of the main character not being subject to hardship for extended amount of chapters in Chinese web serials as well, and Chinese people have a positive outlook on society, future, and the economy comparatively speaking. It is harder to keep the readership engaged throughout shorter daily chapters so every chapter has to be overloaded with positivity instead of taking a few weeks to set up the payoff.

well, u answered your own question i guess, i was discussing about that in a other place, my conclusion is capitalist realism, this world is fucked so get to another to live a happy life.

Power fantasies playing on disenfranchised people, its not that deep.