Now don't get me wrong, standard qualifier from an avid anime watcher, yes, isekai fantasy anime was always generally considered pretty trash. I consider it the junk food of anime where you know it's terrible for you but you kind of watch it anyway and I've sometimes found it entertaining because the studios redeem the shows with decent character writing and backstories.
The last couple of shows overall have been so bad it's surprising and it's almost woke levels of shittiness and I hope this is just a blip because it's summer anime but how do you manage to fuck up such a basic premise as making an interesting fantasy story? It doesn't have to be original or even amazing, just make it decent. I'm seeing the newer stuff come out and it's like they've shamelessly copy-pasted scenes and plastered them onto the new characters and their budget is clearly very low because you've got the poorly rendered 3D monsters problem again.
Maybe Frieren raised my expectations way too much but even by Isekai trash anime standards it's been a particularly poor showing at the moment. Once you notice all the shit they do to cut corners in animation like literal slideshow scenes with audio ( It's usually a hotspring scene or they're 'wandering' around a market ) it's really hard to unsee it and I despise studios that do this.
Trash is always a subset of anime. Sometimes there's more of it, sometimes there's less. I don't think just because there's a fair bit of trash fantasy/isekai this season means it's all going downhill or that we're all doomed.
If anything, it might just mean there's less focus on isekai, which could even be a good thing. This is just a few studios churning out trash in a genre that was oversaturated. It's just like in video games; there have been times were FPS's, for example, were super popular, and got churned out all the time, then the good ones gave up on it, and we were left with trash.
Also, just out of curiosity, what animes you are objecting to?
I Parry Everything and Hazurewaku instantly made me cringe, I hope there's a shift away from isekai for sure, they've milked that style of anime until dust is coming out. Never really expected those types of anime to be good but again from a technical standpoint I was surprised at how bad they were. Oh and yes, the OP hero tropes have been a thing for awhile too, some are okay, but I Parry Everything just seemed to be as mentioned in the OP copy-pasting scenes from other shows.
"I Parry Everything" is the latest in the line of manga/anime with a retarded premise that pretends it makes the OC an underdog, like "In this world where a man's value is based on how fast he can make a girl cum, all I have is this lousy ability to find the G spot without fail!" that's insulting to the audience's intelligence.
Most isekai/RPGlite, are written so stupidly it's like they never even played a videogame they claim to be based off of. Shield Hero, Redo of Healer, Bofuri, etc.
Yeah whodathunk that parrying, one of the fundamentals of swordsmanship, could be useful!
The genre has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for awhile now. It speaks volumes that isekai/regression/cultivation have only managed to produce a handful of actually good series (and not the equivalent of "it tastes good if you close your eyes and eat around the nasty bits) in the last 15 freaking years.
If the genre is heavily saturated, then we should have seen a plethora of high quality entries among all the junk due to sheer volume, but instead it's been a swamp of derivative, unimaginative garbo.
Ahhhh fuck. Those just came out today, it looks like? Now I'll have to watch them and decide for myself.
I hope they keep some but, yeah, it's certainly been overused.
I haven't seen the ones you're talking about yet, but I think last season may have been worse. New Gate was slightly entertaining trash; Chillin' in Another World was cute and enjoyable, but still kind of trash; Reincarnated Aristocrat was fairly trash; Re:Monster was decent funny trash; and then Banished Former Hero and Reincarnated as the 7th Prince were both just utter trash.
Fact is though, isekai will always have some percentage of utter trash. Some seasons it's almost one hundred percent, others it's pretty low. It's hard to read trends, since it can quite quickly change pretty dramatically. This or next season could be the best isekais ever, for all we know.
I'd advise you to read the Manga for the Aristocrat one, don't know if they're doing another season for the anime but in the Manga they have a whole war arc and even bring in advanced tactics of using flying magical drones for the targeting trajectory for magical artillery.
Honestly, in the case of that one, it's mostly personal bias; I don't like the super young MC thing. It's just kind of weird, and it doesn't matter if it's good or not, it's hard to get into. Really not my thing.
That's fair, I wonder if you enjoyed Kaiju No 8 for the older protagonist?
I did enjoy Kaiju No 8, but not because of the older protagonist. I just don't enjoy the super child-like characters, is all. Well, at least in the action sense. As part of a family (Spy x Family, for example), anime children can be adorable. But as action MCs I just find it off-putting.
Huh I was going to try I parry everything but that looks like I missed a bullet, I'll only check it out if I get 3 recommendations from some content creators I watch
So far I've just watched shikanoko nokonoko koshitantan partly because they seem to be using CGI as a meme and mostly so I can FINALLY get past this meme lol
They aren't rings of power bad, even the most dull ones that I skipped are THAT bad, they just either or both suffer from poor quality in terms of animation or HOW it's adapted (how much they include from the original story) or the story itself is a bit too generic.
They never just blatantly insult their audience like rings of power does.
It's true, they're not woke levels as of yet, some of the lower budget studios though might start cucking themselves for that DEI money though you never know. They've certainly been getting there with how much they cut corners in their production and the extremely poor editing or writing. Mentioned this already but the blatant copy-pasting of scenes or using the exact same lines was extremely jarring.
I think there has been tons of trash anime for decades, but a lot of it didn't make it to the west, even with fan subs. Pretty much every season still has a small handful of quality shows, even if it's just one or two.
Frieren really is head and shoulders above the rest. I do love some isekai series like Overlord or Konosuba, but they basically are a different genre.
Judging this season's crop of isekais without factoring in Suicide Squad Isekai and not even waiting for Quality Assurance in Another World to air.
The last Fantasy Anime I watched was Ranking of Kings and I thought that was excellent.
I don't know I always disliked most isekai anime. You say Frieren raised your expectation but it is THE OUTLIER. It's one of those anime that has really good overarching theme and relevant setting. The main character is almost a mary sue but you can't help but like her enough because she seems to have very firm belief in something and not for shallow reasons either and she is the central figure that actually carries the plot.
Do you remember anime called Coffin Princess Chaika? It had great premises and compelling mystery but it kind of lost its charm along the way and became a bit forgettable towards the end. Personally I still like that anime but I'm not sure if anyone remembers it. I figure most fantasy and isekai anime have that same kind of quality. It has great premises in the beginning but somewhat loses its plot and becomes tropey. I find it extremely common in Isekai anime especially.
Chaika on the front page?
SHOCKING TRUTH!
Chaika was awesome. Definitely felt super rushed though so I got the novels and have been meaning to get around to them one day, but I can never find the time....
It depends on two things for a good fantasy anime:
Quality of original content
Quality of adaptation
Because of how popular fantasy isekai is the same way regression is popular in South Korea and cultivation in China, some studios think they can cut corners leading to people thinking that fantasy in general is basic and leads to a self fulfilling stigma. I've seen TOO many good stories ruined by cost cutting studios that the deserve a 'Fruit Baskets' treatment and quality adaptation.
There are some EXCELLENT stories that have fantasy elements still available, one I'd love to see a quality adaptation is The Galactic Navy Officer becomes an adventurer as it combines sci fi WITH fantasy with commander of an AI Starship having to land on a planet after a sustaining damage to find it a medieval like society with magic. That would be a great anime IF they treated it right.
I feel like the Japanese have been allergic to sci-fi lately, if it's not any kind of mecha they're not interested, even though they've done some fantastic sci-fi anime in the past.
It's harder to do escapism in Sci fi than fantasy and Asia REALLY loves escapism right now.
Escaflowne would like a word with you.
On an interesting note, isekai used to be a genre targeted more towards a female audience. The more astute of you might be able to find some meaning in this fact, and relate it to the broader social climate we are currently experiencing.
Escaflowne didn't even have a tank. And it sure as hell didn't have the confidence to go full Ash Williams.
The animation corner cutting is widespread. I forget what it was I saw a couple of weeks ago, it wasn't fantasy or isekai, but it was a static drawing with insane camera panning all over. They didn't even bother with some stock effects overlaid. I think it was a battle so they could have done some smoke or sparks or something that moved to hide the still image.
Fantasy need a bit more life and creativity pumped into it and to stay away from the video game tropes. I know it's an isekai but I'll use Konosuba as an obvious example. It has jobs, parties, levels, mission quests, and is basically a video game being played by Kazuma. That is fine in a comedy isekai story like that but I see it seeping into stories that aren't. Goblin Slayer is close because it nearly has all 4: ranks instead of levels, no character has a name just their job, and obvious mission quests, and just straight up parties. Frieren, despite how good it is, still has jobs and parties and almost has levels in the form of mage guild ranks (very coarse).
Record of Lodoss war is hard to beat even if that is just a D&D game turned into a story but we need more like it and LOTR and even just some sword and sorcery like Conan, the barbarian not the detective. Don't use the word "party". Surely there is a Japanese word you could use with a meaning like gang, group, band, fellowship?
Hentai is bland too.. either its too vanilla or art style is trash.