The unrepentant dirtbag protagonist is definitely one of the enjoyable things about KonoSuba.
I chalk up the “HikkiNEET to work-obsessed” trope as part of the wish fulfillment of isekai. One of the reasons people give up on RL is because of the lack of consistent rewards. If working really hard suddenly gave you a harem of compliant beauties, piles of gold, and widespread social validation it becomes easier to sustain. Compared to RL where working really hard makes more money for your boss.
This. I think it’s really important to understand hikkikomori and NEET as a result of capitalist alienation, rather than personal failings. In that sense, isekais tend to have an implicit critique of capitalism, though it’s nowhere near coherent.
I would hesitate before I’d call it a critique in its inheritance. Could you differentiate an isekai from any other type of fantasy story or fairy tale? Surely the poet who wrote Beowulf didn’t actually slay a dragon. His story was far more engaging and interesting than whatever he was doing in the 10th century. I would much more quickly put a label of “wish fulfillment” than “capitalist critique” for these stories. In my mind, I think of the anime studio who needs easy an way to put a self-insert into a medieval setting. You don’t have time as a studio to get an audience to love a down-trodden minstrel turned street urchin if you only get one season, but you can immediately sympathize with a hikkiNEET in a wacky situation.
You don’t have time as a studio to get an audience to love a down-trodden minstrel turned street urchin if you only get one season
I mean, this book is called name of the wind and it would probably make a pretty popular tv show if the adaptation ever saw the light of day. the author hooks you by showing the hero after his fall in the frame narrative and the meat of the story is him recounting his life to a biographer. by the time his parents parents die and he becomes a street urchin, you’re deeply invested in the story and I think a decent TV show would try and get him off the streets and into the university in that first season. that is to say, you do have time given a half-decent narrative and characterization.
genre fantasy, including portal fantasies/isekais, can be self-inserts, but they really don’t have to be. the Thomas Covenant series is famous for being a deeply engaging work of art, a portal fantasy, and featuring one of the most loathesome protagonists ever. the worst part is that he doesn’t even need to be. the audience is primed by the story to forgive him at every turn and yet he manages to be unforgivable.
self-inserts are really just a sign that 1. the author is new at this or 2. the author is churning this out for cash. they’re wholly a defect in the story and replacing them with a real character always improves the story.
I’ve written an unpublished novel where an alienated protagonist finds a way to travel in between a modern day city and a spell-flinging world without electricity myself. The idea is that it’ll become a trilogy where he stats out flagrantly rude and becomes outright toxic & deranged not only in the fantasy world, but in the real one as well. This turns him into a social media darling and a fucking scourge on his acquaintances. This is before he ultimately and begrudgingly being a catalyst to save both worlds having learned nothing about morals or the world’s rich lore in the process (of which I’ve written other novels).
I say this because 1) I love talking about it and 2) I’ve always instinctively disliked wish fulfillment fantasy where hard work gets you opulent pleasures.
