I've been watching a lot of anime lately (because most of the stuff made in America cartoon/movie wise has been crap the past few years) and a lot of it is Isekai type stuff (OMG am I sick of harem anime!!!!!) and it always gets me thinking, if YOU got pulled into another world and blessed with power, would you be a hero are a jerk?
The typical story for a Isekai is you got hit by a truck in the real world (or over worked yourself to death but I think that's just a Japanese thing) and awake either before god(s) who gave you powers and dropped you into the new world or reincarnated you as a baby/child there OR you skip that and end up in a kingdom who summoned you (summoned 90% of the time is the hero path and 10% you're sold as a slave with powers to kingdoms). So any way you do it, you are now in a new fantasy world in a healthier (younger) body with blessings that will allow you to get stronger and be a hero and fight a demon lord or what ever. Given this new power/strength AND your mind from your old life, what do you do?
I can't recall the name of the anime now but one I watched the MC was treated poorly by people who found out he was from another world as the vast majority of other worlders who came there used their powers only for their own benefit so they had a bad name for themselves. I can easily see this happening as a lot of folks have had rough lives IRL or never known power so just being thrown into another world with high strength or magic powers would lend to them flexing that muscle when some one annoyed them. It might even lead to them switching sides and being the villain of the story. Why save the kingdom for some king when you could be the king and they can't really stop you?
I think Rise of the Shield Hero ranks among my favorite Isekais (the first season, it got worse each season after in my OP) because it makes more sense for characters to gain power through training and combat (leveling up as it was) and eventually become super powered instead of just entering the world able to take down every monster there with no effort or training. That sort of 'Mary Sue' style character just seems like lazy writing to me; how can you build tension and have a interesting character if they are simply the best at every thing from start to finish and no one offers them a challenge?
Now obviously there's a lot of variables you'd have to consider and what type of world you ended up in would really change things so I'll throw out two stereo typical Isekai ideas and you can pick on and explain how you feel you'd handle that world/life (no TL;DR comments, just some thing short works).
1 - you open your eyes and find yourself surrounded by knights and mages, being told you were summoned to that world to help fight the demon lord and his army. You are rushed by the mages to touch a orb and find out you are the hero with (insert weapon/magic/ect you want class wise) and while you are already powerful, they plan to give you some training and let you go fight monsters attacking their kingdom to get more power/items/ect and advance until the day you battle the demon lord (who for some reason is just sitting in a castle waiting as you kill his minions and gain power).
2 - you open your eyes and find yourself before a god(ess) who welcomes you to a second life in a new world. They offer you the usual normal abilities (understand/read/write native language, an item box power, and Identify so you can see info on things you look at) to help you live in the world and then ask what role you'd like, allow you to choose a power set that will allow you to live the life you want. After picking, they say they'll drop you in the woods outside a city and allow you to life the life you always wanted (hoping you'll have a good one and make the world a better place for everyone).
Both of these are similar but the second one allows you more freedom with less expectations but with either you could easily just do what ever you wanted to do. With the first one you could start demanding payment and rewards every time you saved any one or any place, use your status as hero to justify being a jerk to commoners (specially if in that world the nobility does that any ways), form a party or a harem or buy slaves, ect. You could even just go rogue and abandon the hero idea and explore the world. The type of world would change things obviously, with it being more challenging is there were adventurers with powers like yours or if powers/magic were uncommon, the kingdoms were at war or there was high levels of crime, ect.
But over all, how would such a sudden change effect YOU? we can all say easily we'd step up and be the hero or do the right thing but really think about it for a moment. You're now in a fantasy world and you're one of if not the most powerful one there. Say you see some thug beating up a street orphan who bumped into him. Do you save him? Do you just scare the thug? Do you cut loose on the thug and leave him as a corpse on the floor? You are powerful now and if there's other powerful people in that world they'll probably challenge you to test you and make themselves look better or get jealous of you so how do you handle them? Do you get tired of every one constantly asking you for help or healing or what ever? Every action or choice you make could shape this world so do you know how things work and plan ahead? Shield hero was great at pointing that out as the other heroes treated the world like a game and made every thing worse for the people so the MC had to go around cleaning up their messes.
This is mostly a thought exerciser but fun to fantasize about too, specially for people who like RP or anime.
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4 weeks ago
14 Jan 2025 04:54 CET
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