I still like the idea but I’m tired of the power fantasy aspect. “Oh no! I’ve been killed/summoned/found a portal and now I’m in a fantasy world! At least I’m incredibly overpowered and/or my modern knowledge gives me god like status!”

The ones where the character still struggles to get by tend to be good still because they have to have some kind of story involved other than “average person conquers another world by being OP”

Edit: also characters whose only connection to their old life is a token scene in the first episode/issue where it shoes them get isakai’d and it’s never a bearing on the story again. It’s just shoehorned into a bad story because isekai is popular.

I'm more sick of the harem trope than the isekai trope, between that and fan service beach days I don't even feel like trying new shows sometimes

My main critique of the genre is how lazy it's done. There's nothing wrong with having the MC reincarnated, transported, or made overpowered. One Punch Man has a massively overpowered MC but it's still really good. The problem is that they're all low effort cookie cutter stories that are just checking items off a list.

They're also fairly unrealistic. "Gasp...is this that isekai thing I've been reading about? I guess I'll go join the Adventurer Guild and get a super dangerous job killing monsters despite the fact that I've never been in a dangerous situation before."

There's no way all these random people will just calmly accept finding themselves in another world with no freaking out or depression setting in first.

The thing I don't like is how much of it is RPG themed but written by people who have never played any.

I still like the concept, it's just that 90% of the stuff that uses said concept is terrible. I mean, Isekai is only an initial premise, you need A LOT more to make a good anime.

When I watched Frieren the best thing was that it was no fucking isekai. It's still competence porn, but at least she is not a middle aged man who died lonely in his bedroom. Just a classic fantasy world. Loved it

There are decades worth of good anime out there. If new stuff isn't doin it for you, pick up a show from spring 2006 or something. A lot of trash comes out every season (and always has) but nobody is forcing you to watch it.

Portal fantasy in general is fine( think like inuyasha or digimon as old version of isekai). The issue is the isekai that are just mindlessly cloning each other with some new way to be OP.

Isekai is more of a setup than an actual genre.

If they weren't isekai, they'd just be shitty fantasy. Isekai allows writers to skip a bunch of steps and start with a fully-formed character the audience can relate to.

Nope. I'm over it.

The market is oversaturated and it's time to pivot to a new genre

I made this joke in another thread, but it's relevant here too. Anime lately in a nutshell is basically:

"Problems of a Paladin: I became the strongest hero and broke the villainess heart for the 7th time with a cheat code to chill out and be the best protector in another world! Why am I a loser in this time loop????"

Probably not, but after something like 2 decade of zombie shit everywhere i will take ANYTHING over it. Also there are good isekai, bad isekai and chinese isekai where the only thing coming of it is the protagonist using modern Earth idioms and perfectly assimilating otherwise.

Dungeon Meshi is good, and not Isekai.

I'm willing to compromise with the isekai setup.

You're in a new world. There's magic and sword play and monsters to fight. You get some skills and abilities that give you a decent chance to survive. I'm perfectly fine with that setup.

But what I want once you have been given that setup is an interesting world to explore.

Interesting characters to meet.

Actual challenges and hardships that have to be overcome by the main character.

Real relationships with people that have their own goals in life.

And character growth that happens organically given the constraints of the system.

We have far too many Mary Sue protagonists who never failed anything and never do anything wrong and who have so much power and are just so kind and giving in every single way and everybody loves them and nobody could beat them even if they didn't love them.

We have far too many villains whose entire character Arc is "hurr durr look at me I'm a villain".

And for some reason when those villains get converted into sidekicks they always become comical parodies of their former selves.

And finally, even in a harem situation, the main character should neither be asexual or a man whore. Let him have some feelings about the person he's with and not automatically fall into some unspoken love scenario with the women around him.

If you're going to have romance at all in your isekai anime, let the guy actually have some preferences and pick one person and stick with them.

Like I get it you've got to give people a taste of the familiar but the taste of the familiar is only to lure us in. Once we are in, you need to give us something new and strange and stressful and worrisome and make us doubt the outcome of the next series of events that are going to happen.

The anime doesn't have to be good, it just has to make you interested in the lightnovel, which is where the profits are. With that in mind, the cheaper the anime can be produced the better. This is probably why there are so many shitty isekai and they keep coming.

I'm sick of TRASH Isekai, not all Isekai. There's still a good and original Isekai every now and then, but those are rare. Most of them are just fan service, harem bullshit.

Isekai's are overdone. I want to see "the worst thing that can happen to your people is for them to fall into the hands of a hero" stories.

no, i havent been watching anime at all for a good while because of this

You very much are not. However, that's how things always work out, a new theme appears and fascinates people, then everybody and their mom start using it for many years until it gets strip mined. Another comment mentioned zombies as an example, you can hardly see new zombie apocalypse stories these days because it's been overused already, before that i believe it was vampires, and other prominent themes have preceded those and passed. Isekai as a trope is still extremely popular to the point that stories that don't even need it get it tacked in as a prop to help it get popular. It's the way these things happen, and will continue until the next fun thing appears. Then it becomes just another trope to be used at the right time.

It too will pass.

I stopped liking anime at all.

The last memories I still liked are Psychopass, Tokyo Goul (till season 2) and Elfen Lied.

Maybe there are more anime that I remember as good but I miss the gore and sadness of anime which those 3 share.

I did watch some isekais and I hated all except one where a lil boy learned magic without splling it, meanwhile his dad wanted him to learn sword fights.

Been sick of them for close to a decade now

No

I really like the genre, I am mostly sad it's mainly very short ones with a single season. Would love something longer again like SAO. But I also don't watch a lot to begin with

Disclaimer: Coming here from all, so I might not be the audience you're looking for.

I don't tend to just browse for new releases that might be neat, but I've noticed this from the outside as well. Just through the stuff I run into under reccomendations on streaming services and sites. There's a ton of anime coming out that's either isekai, harem, power fantasy, or a combination of those themes.

I think there's potential for some really good shows within those areas, but like most media, I feel that you're more likely to find quality by stepping back a bit and waiting to see what holds up over time.