For any anime fan who has been in this entertainment medium for some time, it is no surprise that in Japan anime of the isekai genre are tremendously popular, because obviously a story with a plot about being reincarnated or transported to another world with powers, magic and fantasy, sounds very exciting and interesting.
Although in Japan, despite the fact that this formula has been exploited and explored from different angles to exhaustion, its popularity continues to grow. A situation that in the West is very different, as recently on Reddit has become very popular a debate about how “suspiciously” all the protagonists of these isekai anime have a very similar design to those of another very popular and pioneering work of the genre.
Japanese fans defend the isekai genre and believe that criticism of these works is “exaggerated”.
It turns out that following the release of a new visual of the seasonal isekai anime “Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World?” (Naze Boku no Sekai wo Dare mo Oboeteinai no Ka?), where we are introduced to Kai Sakura Vento the male protagonist and Rinne the “waifu” protagonist with blonde hair. There has been quite a commotion in the forum mentioned above, where several foreign fans have commented that they are “tired” of all these anime having “Kirito” and “Asuna” as main characters.
This “complaint” was born because in the forum they argue that it is very curious to see how all the male protagonists of these works always have black hair, a sword and some kind of black coat or hood, while the “waifu” is always blonde, has some kind of armor or simply needs to be saved in some way. All this alluding to the fact that they are a blatant copy of the plot and characters of “Sword Art Online“, one of the first isekai anime and the one that laid the foundations of the genre.
Quickly, this debate reached the Japanese forums, where Japanese fans came out in defense of the gender in several comments. First, many argued that the design of the male protagonists with black hair and eyes is based on the phenotype of Japanese men, whose physical features are “like this,” and also mentioned that using this design made it easier for male audiences to “identify” with these characters.
Next, several fans said that although Asuna from “Sword Art Online” is not blonde, the isekai anime that subsequently came out, were inspired by this work and that the vast majority of these series use blonde hair in the protagonist “waifus”, it is because in Japan a girl with these physical characteristics is quite attractive. So it was not very difficult to deduce the reason why this type of hair color of the “waifus” in several of these works of reincarnation in another world.
On the subject of swords and armor, Japanese fans said that since these are works where most of the characters live and the plot takes place in “magic and fantasy” worlds, the most common thing in these stories is to use these types of tools and not to walk around with “guns” or anything that is out of the aesthetics of these worlds.
Finally, the fans said these works were adapted to what the target audience likes, which in Japan is basically male characters that they “can identify with physically” and “beautiful blonde girls with great attributes” so criticizing these anime and calling them all copies of “Sword Art Online” was something very exaggerated.
