Funny Pictures Thread. It begins again

This one's going out to @Dave - Futurama is technically an Isekai.
Yeah, no... if anything isekai's are a subset of the larger trope of "person gets displaced from usual surroundings".

I mean, Truck-kun didn't go to the trouble of releasing all those souls from their meat-bags just to be confused with a refrigerator, or "natural" sleeping gas, or a wrong turn at Albuquerque...
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Yeah, no... if anything isekai's are a subset of the larger trope of "person gets displaced from usual surroundings".

I mean, Truck-kun didn't go to the trouble of releasing all those souls from their meat-bags just to be confused with a refrigerator, or "natural" sleeping gas, or a wrong turn at Albuquerque...
Plenty of bona fide isekai-right-there-in-the-title stories have no truck kun. Some of them find mysterious doors/gates where they shouldn't be, some are summoned through magic ritual, some die in their sleep and are reincarnated, some just look down and look up and there they are looking at elf tiddy.

Bugs bunny's wrong turns are not isekai because he is still in his own world in his own time.

Army of Darkness is an isekai.
Futurama is an isekai.
An argument could even be made that The Martian is an isekai.
 
Bugs bunny's wrong turns are not isekai because he is still in his own world in his own time.
LIES!!!!




Plenty of bona fide isekai-right-there-in-the-title stories have no truck kun. Some of them find mysterious doors/gates where they shouldn't be, some are summoned through magic ritual, some die in their sleep and are reincarnated, some just look down and look up and there they are looking at elf tiddy.
Truck-kun set all those up to confuse you, obviously.

It's just like Satan and all those fossils.


Army of Darkness is an isekai.
Futurama is an isekai.
An argument could even be made that The Martian is an isekai.
I don't think time travel (even when one way) should count, since you're technically in the same world/universe. Same thing with space travel. Or going to the centre of the earth.

The term isekai is simply more useful as a particular sub-genre of the overall trope IMO.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I don't think time travel (even when one way) should count, since you're technically in the same world/universe.
Well, that's a religious argument already going on among the fandom. If you travel time, technically you have entered a different multiverse/timeline by virtue of the very action, sooo....
 
Well surely at this point you don't mean to argue BTTF rules are still valid?
Come to think of it, the original marvel comics version (well, the 1st retcon, since i think i recall DoFP actually first implied the future stopped existing) was even crazier the the BttF one, since the changed timeline remained 616, while the future the traveller was from became an alternate reality...

But anyway, if we go by multiverse rules, that only applies to travelling back, since going to the future is pretty straight, and we're actually doing it right now... being suspended while time passes wouldn't really count as time travel.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
That should settle the debate, then! :devil:
WE GOT 'IM, BOYS...



But anyway, if we go by multiverse rules, that only applies to travelling back, since going to the future is pretty straight, and we're actually doing it right now... being suspended while time passes wouldn't really count as time travel.
I'd argue that travelling forward does count, because you're becoming untethered from all the infinite decision points between your origin and destination that branch. So technically, going forward is even MORE adrift than going backwards, because going back in time you're just going back over a series of already-made decisions, then starting forward again down a different branch.
 
I'd argue that travelling forward does count, because you're becoming untethered from all the infinite decision points between your origin and destination that branch. So technically, going forward is even MORE adrift than going backwards,
TIL, we're all in an isekai, since we're constantly moving forward in time...
 

GasBandit

Staff member
TIL, we're all in an isekai, since we're constantly moving forward in time...
At no point are we becoming untethered from the continuum and forced into unfamiliar circumstances though. That's kind of central to the concept.

I would argue there's some threshold for chronotemporal distance from your origin that must be met for it to be considered isekai - though I'm not really sure exactly what the magnitude of that threshold should be. Connecticut Yankee? Yes. Futurama? Yes. Planet of the Apes? Yes. BTTF? Ehhhhh not really.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
That could easily describe a ship wreck, or even your parents moving you to a new country...
You're no longer talking about time travel. That stipulation was specifically for the context of time travel qualifying for Isekai.

Stop moving goalposts.
 
You're no longer talking about time travel. That stipulation was specifically for the context of time travel qualifying for Isekai.
Yes i am, since the person reading this is in the future of the person who wrote the above.

That was the point about travelling to the future without being able to go back, a-la Futurama. Being in suspended animation isn't technically time travel. And since we're talking about thing being technically isekai...

...

But anyway, we're overcomplicating things.

I'd say those things don't qualify as isekai for the same reason why not all animation qualifies as anime, even though that's the etymology of the word.
 


Alas, the Halforums Discord is not Clyde-enabled.
I feel like just knowing the ingredients without knowing any of the details (such as quantities, equipment, safety precautions, etc) is a good way to blow yourself up.

Now, having said that, I kinda wanna try this out.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I feel like just knowing the ingredients without knowing any of the details (such as quantities, equipment, safety precautions, etc) is a good way to blow yourself up.

Now, having said that, I kinda wanna try this out.
Certain other literature I've read simplifies the recipe down to just "big vat of gasoline poured over styrofoam peanuts, mix and add one or the other until you get the consistency you want." But yeah don't do that, I don't want to be the guy who put the idea in your head that led to the fire that makes you homeless or dead.
 
Certain other literature I've read simplifies the recipe down to just "big vat of gasoline poured over styrofoam peanuts, mix and add one or the other until you get the consistency you want." But yeah don't do that, I don't want to be the guy who put the idea in your head that led to the fire that makes you homeless or dead.
Oh don't worry, it wouldn't be your fault, I would be blaming that guy's grandma.
 
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