Exploring Isekai offers the first comprehensive study of isekai in anime, manga and light novels in which characters from the “real world” are transported, summoned, reincarnated or trapped in fantastical realms.
Challenging the misconception that isekai is mere escapism, the volume brings together an international group of contributors to consider how the genre reflects contemporary anxieties, desires and social structures through game-like world-building, moral frameworks and recurring underdog heroes. Examining classics like Spirited Away (2001) alongside globally popular series such as That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (2013–25) and Overlord (2015–), the volume traces the thematic and aesthetic evolution of isekai, revealing how these narratives reimagine identity, labour and belonging in an increasingly digital and transnational world.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes on the Use of Japanese Language
Part One: Isekai in Historic Perspective
1. The First Anime Isekai: Aura Battler Dunbine’s Origins and Cold War Fears — Shintaro Mizushima and William B. Ashbaugh
2. Isekai Enactment in Millennial Japan: Mediating Violence in Now and Then, Here and There — Brett Hack
3.Worlds Beyond, Selves Within: Mythopoeic Metamorphosis in Select Isekai Anime — Ananya Saha
Part Two: Understanding Isekai
4. Exploring Isekai: The Window into Another World — Michael Cserkits
5. Alice in Borderland and Beyond: Examining Existential Crises through an Isekai Manga — Alayna L. Vander Veer
6. Open for Otherworldly Business: Work, Life, and Fantasy in Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement — Zach Long
7. Intersecting Media: Game Systems as Narrative Tools in Kumo desu ga, nani ka? — Giovanni Tagliamonte
8. The Social Significance of Isekai: A New Narrative Type in the Age of Fiction? — Jessy Escande
Part Three: How Fiction Influences Reality
9. Sokushinbutsu and Isekai in Takahashi Rumiko’s Inuyasha — Jon Morris
10. Creation of a New Transcendent: Religious Affordance in Overlord and My Next Life as a Villainess — Barbara Greene
11. “Now Go, and Don’t Look Back”: Spirited Away, Anime on the Global Stage, and Extratextual Isekai — Zoe Crombie
Part Four: Gender Perspectives on Isekai
12. Queering Isekai: The Executioner and Her Way of Life — Travis Nishii
13. Power, Transhumanism, and Gender Differences in Preference for Isekai Anime — Stephen Reysen, Thomas R. Brooks, Courtney N. Plante, Sharon E. Roberts, Kathleen C. Gerbasi, Rhea Joshi, and Cole Rehbein
14. Control, Autonomy, and Slavery in Isekai — Yaochong Yang and Matthew Valenzuela
Contributor Biographies
General Index
Index of Non-Japanese Novels and Fiction Authors
Index of Anime/Manga/Light Novels
About the Author :
Shintaro Mizushima is Associate Professor of International Studies and English Communication in the College of Letters at Ritsumeikan University, Japan. He is the author and illustrator of Manga de wakaru danseigaku [Learn men’s studies through manga] (2016).
William B. Ashbaugh is Professor of History at SUNY Oneonta, USA. He teaches East Asian history, World War II, anime and manga history, and US foreign relations. He also serves on the editorial board of Mechademia: Second Arc, the leading journal of East Asian popular culture.
Review :
With isekai booming in popularity all around the world, this book is essential. Packed with experts and enthusiasts like Zoe Crombie, Barbara Greene, Yaochong Yang, and Michael Cserkits, this exciting text is perfect for the bookshelves and coffee tables of fans and scholars alike. Whether you research isekai, or simply love it, this piece is worth your time.
Exploring Isekai is a compelling investigation of a much known narrative type to young people, gamers, anime, and manga fandoms; yet it also reflects the fairy tales and narratives of many older fictional narratives we have all grown up reading and fantasizing of since childhood. Each chapter investigates the many unique facets and peculiarities of the genre, and how many pertain to key issues within current cultures, and especially to Japanese culture.
