Isekai anime are still here to stay.
Summary:
Some fans say that Frieren is going to end the era of isekai.
Frieren’s worldbuilding isn’t that different from that of the isekai series.
These days, one anime usually doesn’t start a trend for something.
Some fans refer to Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (Sousou no Frieren) as “the savior of fantasy anime.” In their opinion, it is going to resurrect fantasy as a genre that is separate from isekai and prompt more unique takes on the genre to appear.
Others, though, are not so optimistic — and there are some good reasons to believe it won’t matter that much.
Frieren is probably not ending the era of isekai
Of course, Frieren’s popularity is undeniable. It is undoubtedly one of the defining anime of the early 2020s, and many fans believe it will get a second season at some point. How much it impacts upcoming anime, though, remains to be seen.
While some believe that the anime is going to end the era of isekai, others don’t really think it’s going to matter that much. The number of isekai per season hasn’t been shrinking, indicating great popularity of the genre — and there’s no reason to believe Frieren will change anything.
The target audiences for it and isekai anime don’t overlap that much, and there’s no reason they couldn’t coexist.
Others say that Frieren isn’t even that different from isekai anime — at least from the point of worldbuilding. Yes, the story is unlike any we’ve seen in isekai, but the general aesthetics aren’t that unique.
We love Frieren for how it takes a normal fantasy setting and tells a touching story in it — the execution is what matters.
It’s pointless to say that it’s a trend-starter
You also have to consider that for Frieren to spawn many successors and revolutionize fantasy anime, these supposed non-isekai fantasy anime have to be adapted from something.
After all, we barely get anime originals these days. However, among both manga and light novels, works that tend to lean into the classic fantasy subgenre don’t perform as well.
In the end, it’s just too early to tell how impactful Frieren will be. While some compare it to anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Sword Art Online — both of which heavily impacted the industry and their own genres — it’s just too early to make that comparison. It’s understandable why some would be skeptical about it.
In the current era of anime, so many series come out each season that it’s very hard to pick “genre-defining works” that set the trends by themselves. Otaku have so much to choose from that a single work usually doesn’t change the industry’s approach to the entire genre