Talking to a Private Isekai Author

Talking to a Private Isekai Author

Joe: I spoke to an isekai author who wished to remain anonymous. They’re a veteran writer whose works have been translated into multiple media projects. Some of the conversation has been heavily edited to maintain their anonymity, but I kept what I believe to be the main spirit and overall accuracy of the conversation.

This conversation has been stitched together from multiple, much longer exchanges. My apologies for any of the awkward phrasing there might've been. Translation by me, checked by Kei. My comments are in bold.

Note: Any and all edits will be to clean up spelling and grammar. Any major content edits will be notified here.

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Hello, thanks for taking the time. I have a few questions if that’s okay. First off, I want to note that your stories have a really strong focus on female protagonists. I think it’s a great approach, but why do you tend to write female characters?

Thanks for the comment, I’ll answer as best I can.

Thing is if you’re a male protagonist, what tends to happen is that you run into women, form a harem, and then it becomes a love story between men and women. I didn’t want that, instead, I wanted to focus on a story that placed less of an emphasis on gender relations, so I focused on female protagonists. So even if the protagonist runs into men, there’s no need for the main character to glob onto them. It’s natural to assume that women don’t need to stick with men they’re not romantically interested in, and that lets you write without dealing with awkward gender relations. I mean, I didn’t want to write that hero – the dense male hero who’s suddenly oblivious to a woman’s feelings for him.

What’s also interesting is that despite having cheat abilities, your characters are really notable for being calm and humble. Based on your experience, why do you think isekai characters tend to have cheat abilities?

You’re in a foreign world. You have no idea what’s going on. If a young girl is in that world, without special powers or anything, she’s pretty much dead. For an ordinary girl, you need special skills if she’s going to play any sort of active role. That’s how cheat powers come about. In short, we can look at it this way: to stop the story from being full of nonsense, problems, and incongruencies, you need to tolerate what is essentially that one big lie that’s upheld by ninety-nine truths. That ‘lie’, in this case, is the cheat ability.

On the topic of difficulties of female characters in another world, what are some of the differences facing female characters compared to male characters?

The truth of the matter is, if there’s a girl who’s young and beautiful and she’s got a cheat power, she’s going to be targeted by a lot of powerful people, up-to-and-including the rich, powerful, and criminals. I mean, they’d want to exploit her and her power, hoping to use her, but maybe also to take that power, possibly infusing it into their bloodline.

Ah. Well, what do you think about how women are portrayed in isekai now? Do you think the premises of harems, slavery, prostitution, etc., are because of an otaku reading audience?

In this sort of world, there’s going to be slaves, bigamy, prostitution, etc. I do think on some level the sheer frequency of these tropes is otaku wish fulfillment. You know, the whole “You can easily get a beautiful girl and she’s never gonna betray you.” 

Yet on another level, it’s also the view of women as tools, not as human beings. They often a device that fulfills a role. I vehemently despise that, so even if the story has a criminal slave, I never want to write a story about a female slave being bought by a hero. Women, by virtue of their expressive individuality, tend to flourish best when they have their freedom. 

On the topic of audiences, where do you see the isekai genre going? Do you see it becoming more or less popular?

I think it’s been fairly stable right now. The sales per book have declined simply because there’s so much more supply. However, that’s offset by the fact that despite average salves per book, the total number of books overall is increasing. The content, frankly, seems stale, or at least exhausted, but they’ll still keep pumping them out. I mean, the romance genre has been going for hundreds of years, but that’s never gone away, haha. Then again, we did assume something similar with the fictional war genre in Japan (trans note: kaku senki, 架空戦記, see: Zipang as an example), and look at where that is now, it’s almost gone. But that had a glaring flaw – you can only approach the topic of “what if” in a war so many ways. For narou-kei, I don’t think we have that problem.

So then if people are getting into this next generation of writing, and they want to write female characters without stereotypes, what would you suggest?

Write them based off your partner. Write them based off your sister. Write them based off your childhood friend. Write them based off your friend. Get rid of this delusion of control and I dunno, pull them out of the Dirac sea. If you’re not completely invested in the character, then why should the reader?

More broadly, what can readers and authors do to promote better feminine depictions in isekai?

Well, women aren’t “handy tools to strengthen male heroes” or “playthings”, so the authors should focus on women as people – lively people – who are equal to their male counterparts. Readers, conversely, should support works that do this – buy the books!

One of the things I’ve noticed is that with the explosion of kuuki-kei, nichijou-kei, and kirara-kei kind of works, isekai heroes seem to skew male. Do you think that observation is true, if so, why?

Sorry, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “skew.” We used to have protagonists from other worlds with a sense of justice, overcoming difficulties, and defeating enemies through the power of motivation and effort. Readers loved it. But I think they’ve started to distance themselves from those ideas. So things like “Even if you don’t work hard, you’ll get a power from a goddess,” and “A girl will suddenly confess to you or shower you with her love even if you don’t really do anything,” it means you don’t have to worry about failing to taking risks.

That’s kind of where we are – you’re sent to another world, surrounded by beautiful girls and an easy, calm life without any danger. These kinds of stories are becoming more frequent, but it feels like they’re all the same with little variation. It sells well, sure, but it’s hard to be a huge hit. And while they’re going to keep pumping them out, I think that kind of story as it stands isn’t really a good idea for newcomers who want to debut, even if they aren’t interested in pursuing writing these stories full time.

My bad, I think I was a little unclear. So, since many isekai stories tend to focus on male characters, why do you, as someone who likes to write female characters, think that’s the case?

Ah, okay. Well, most syosetu authors and readers tend to be male. Many male authors, as a result, tend not to write women very well because they aren’t good at getting into a woman’s mindset. So rather than trying to think of a protagonist who’s self-assured and go-getter – someone who acts – women are oftentimes relegated to a decoration or trophy. Furthermore, male readers love superimposing themselves on isekai protagonists who are go-getters who are popular with women. In this case, it makes financial sense to sell based on guys surrounded by a ton of beautiful girls. 

Was there a female character in another work that had a great influence on your own work?

Oh, there’s a countless number of science fiction novels, manga, and women in anime and manga. In narou works, I’d say the hero of The Majesty and I, and Yuna from Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear.

But was there a favourite?

I’ve got a lot of favourite works, but I never thought, “I like this person in particular.” I mean, it’s like looking at sushi, steak, or melon, and then you have to say who’s your favourite, and it gets really hard to compare novels between each other, haha.

So moving onto a more general topic – why a fantasy setting? What’s the appeal?

If you don’t use an isekai fantasy setting, you can’t do monsters and dragons. You can’t use magic without raising some questions or concerns. If the science lags behind Earth, then you don’t need to reflect modern science. This is helpful, cause when we’re talking about the verisimilitude of science, authors would run into “history police,” who’d love to say “there’s no such invention during that time period,” “potatoes don’t grow in that region,” “what’s the horsepower of the carriage?” These kinds of folks – they’re called “Potato Police” - love to make those kinds of arguments. With isekai, there’s no such worry.

I mean, if it’s not Earth, then you don’t need to – and can’t – collect material or perform surveys. I have a colleague who’s writing historical fiction, and they’re having a hard time of it…I’m writing fantasy, it’s very easy, haha. 

I’ve never seen “Potato Police” before. Is this a new concept?

Nope, it’s a common phrase used in online articles and blogs when you’re starting out as a novelist. The most notorious ones are “Archery Police” and “Potato Police,” and they come up in a lot of circles.

Well, how did you start writing isekai? Did you have a piece that clicked with you?

Hmmm, nothing comes to mind. I’ve been reading for a while – and loved it – novels, comics, technical books, anime, you name it. It all comes together too: stuff about boats, survival games, all kinds of stuff – it all helps my work. And that’s just the beginning of it.

When I was a kid, I wanted to do two things, and one of them was become a science fiction writer. A while ago, when I was unsure about what to do, I read a story from Let’s Become a Novelist and boom, I remembered my old dream and I thought, “yeah, let’s write a novel!”

What’s the appeal of writing isekai in general?

You can pretty much do anything. It’s up for grabs. Like, I don’t get emails from people clamoring, “It’s historically inaccurate!” You can write about monsters or magic, and hell, you can use high tech science of a super civilization too. Regardless of any religion in the text, you can have higher life forms of God. It’s super convenient, and if you run into snags, you can just say, “It’s not a past Earth, it’s a different world!”

So this might be a strange question, but do you think Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz are isekai?

I absolutely think so! Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz are both tunnels to a different dimension, both written about women in another world, and in both cases, the author is male. In a lot of ways, they’re pretty similar to the current syosetu story.

Huh, that framing of Shousetsuka ni Narou and the similarities in Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz is pretty interesting. I hadn’t thought of that. I guess, on this topic, what would be the earliest isekai you remember? And on a related note, it’s interesting because here in the West, Sword Art Online is often considered to be isekai. Do you agree? Or do you classify it differently? I see it’s discussed on a lot of blogs.

Hmmm, I think it’s hard to pin down the first isekai story. John Carter of Mars is, of course, isekai. However, then you have Japanese mythology, with stories of going into Yomi, the underground world of the dead, as well as the story of Urashima Taro, who visits the underwater kingdom on a turtle.

I mean, the turtle is recollective of a flying saucer – it’s like a UFO, and then Taro comes back, it’s many years forward in Japan, so you have things like the “Urashima Effect” in sub-FTL, getting its name from the story. Or, hmm, I guess it’s not really a different world but a different planet, haha.

I mean, there are many stories about going to worlds of hermits (senkai) as well. I dunno, it’s hard to say.

But I don’t think SAO is another world. It’s a “brand new” game where you login, but you can’t log out from it. I think that’s different from the isekai story. Isekai should be a different world, an unknown world, because the game world would be the same as “playing in a sandbox” or “miniature garden made in our world.” It’s a different genre from the isekai model, I think it’s called VRMMO-kei. 

Gotcha. That’s interesting you mention the flying saucer. I hadn’t considered Urashima Taro in that sense. Linking that together with science fiction, is science fiction normal in isekai? I don’t see it that much.

Isekai has a lot of science fiction influences. You’ve got fantasy-like isekai controlled with races with advanced science, fighting races that might represent or maintain older, prehistoric science and technology. I mean, that’s the case with Philip Jose Farmer’s The Maker of Universes and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John of Mars. I like these devices for the same reason as magic – it helps slotting things together to make sense! I mean, you don’t have to explain why something exists, but you can use “aliens” or “ancient technology” as a reasonable description.

But in my case, I like to explain magic in a particular way because I’m an old science fiction an and I have a huge love and passion for that kind of stuff.

As a veteran writer, is there any advice you can give to newcomers?

Sometimes people might think, “okay, there’s a book I like or want to emulate,” so they write a story that’s very similar. And sure, it could sell – but will it sell more or become more popular than the original work? Is it going to impress people or capture an audience? Moreso, is this the work that they really want to write?

I mean, after I die, these novels – this writing – is the only proof I have that I existed. So for me, it doesn’t matter if it becomes popular or it sells. Write what you want, get in touch with publishers, be confident. Don’t settle with works that you’ll regret later. Express yourself – and your dreams – on the paper.

There’s a method of analyzing what sells, looking at what’s chart-topping and writing “books that sell.” And hell, you might have to do that as work for a living. But that’s just not for me. I want to live my life without regrets, doing what I love, and just living happily. I feel like I’ve been reincarnated into a different world, I’m living my life and living it to the fullest!