Some people get quite frustrated with isekai (and not just isekai) anime that have ridiculously long titles. Why would the author try to fit the whole synopsis into one sentence? Why wouldn't they just use one word and be fine with it, explaining the specifics of the plot in the summary, where it should happen?
There is an explanation for that. Most of the recent anime are adaptations, either of manga or of light novels. Some of these works were first published online, mainly on the self-publishing site Shōsetsuka ni Narō, which was launched in 2004. It's a nice site where aspiring authors can show their works to the world, but it has one flaw: it doesn't have a place for a summary.
So authors decided to make the titles of their works as self-explanatory as possible, just to lure the right audience in at the first glance. That's why we have light novels like A Herbivorous Dragon of 5,000 Years Gets Unfairly Villainized, or As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World, or I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability. All of these, by the way, got manga and anime adaptations — and those adaptations kept the ridiculously long titles.
This trend is not new: the amount of characters and words in titles has been steadily increasing with the need for authors to cram as much plot as possible into them since, coincidentally, 2004, and then started increasing rapidly in 2010 and further. The only reason we are noticing this increase only in the past few years is because these light novels are being adapted into the more mainstream type of Japanese media (for Western audiences, at least) — anime.
Around this time isekai started gaining popularity, so the amount of isekai-themed light novels also increased, and that led us to believe that long titles are mainly a thing reserved specifically for isekai.
But it's not: other light novels that were published in the past ten years also have absurdly long titles. There's No Way a Side Character Like Me Could Be Popular, Right? is a romantic comedy that received a manga adaptation, The Girl I Saved on the Train Turned Out to Be My Childhood Friend is a more dramatic type of romance that also has been adapted to manga, but these titles are still quite long.
So no, it's not isekai's fault that modern anime's names don't fit into our screens: it actually started with the light novels.
Long Live Web 2.0!
Some people get quite frustrated with isekai (and not just isekai) anime that have ridiculously long titles. Why would the author try to fit the whole synopsis into one sentence? Why wouldn't they just use one word and be fine with it, explaining the specifics of the plot in the summary, where it should happen?
There is an explanation for that. Most of the recent anime are adaptations, either of manga or of light novels. Some of these works were first published online, mainly on the self-publishing site Shōsetsuka ni Narō, which was launched in 2004. It's a nice site where aspiring authors can show their works to the world, but it has one flaw: it doesn't have a place for a summary.
So authors decided to make the titles of their works as self-explanatory as possible, just to lure the right audience in at the first glance. That's why we have light novels like A Herbivorous Dragon of 5,000 Years Gets Unfairly Villainized, or As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World, or I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability. All of these, by the way, got manga and anime adaptations — and those adaptations kept the ridiculously long titles.
This trend is not new: the amount of characters and words in titles has been steadily increasing with the need for authors to cram as much plot as possible into them since, coincidentally, 2004, and then started increasing rapidly in 2010 and further. The only reason we are noticing this increase only in the past few years is because these light novels are being adapted into the more mainstream type of Japanese media (for Western audiences, at least) — anime.
Around this time isekai started gaining popularity, so the amount of isekai-themed light novels also increased, and that led us to believe that long titles are mainly a thing reserved specifically for isekai.
But it's not: other light novels that were published in the past ten years also have absurdly long titles. There's No Way a Side Character Like Me Could Be Popular, Right? is a romantic comedy that received a manga adaptation, The Girl I Saved on the Train Turned Out to Be My Childhood Friend is a more dramatic type of romance that also has been adapted to manga, but these titles are still quite long.
So no, it's not isekai's fault that modern anime's names don't fit into our screens: it actually started with the light novels.
