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Isekai rule
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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That's just being lazy. Just incorporate all that into the story organically, like everyone else has to.
Frieren is currently doing this perfectly
My favorite example of this is Redline. There's exposition, but it's basically all in the form of news broadcasts about the racers.
Redline is wonderful.
How is explaining things to a character that doesn't know them inorganic? If anything that's a lot more natural than characters just going out of the way to explain things everyone in the universe already knows. It's just another way of letting the audience know what's up, it's not horrible and evil and lazy just bc some anime you don't like do it
Or, and hear me out on this, you could not rely on infodumping and sprinkle your worldbuilding into the background. Y'know, make the world feel like an actual lived in setting by showing and not telling.
If an isekai isn't also doing that already that's just the writers being lazy. I haven't watched a lot of isekai, but as a plot device it's just a more escapist flavor of outsider character, something used in lots of speculative fiction as an excuse to explain major events or broad strokes of worldbuilding.
Maybe isekai is just really bad for replacing more interesting world building with exposition or just having really shallow worlds, that seems accurate from what little I've seen and heard. I just don't think clueless outsider characters are a bad storytelling device when used in tandem with environmental storytelling and other less expository world building techniques. Obv showing is a lot better than telling for 99% of situations, but in settings or stories that need some exposition I think explaining stuff to an ignorant character is far from the worst way to do it. Though isekai and similar stuff is usually too escapist for me, and I prefer most stuff just being in its own setting without those kinds of strings attached