A lot of isekai stories have war arcs featuring massive armies.
Turns out, animating thousands of people fighting is difficult.
This leads to the war arcs feeling really underwhelming.
Some stories know how to circumvent this by scaling the conflict down to manageable levels.
Most isekai follow a similar formula — our MC is sent to a medieval high fantasy world, into a kingdom that faces a looming threat of monsters, Demon King, or another, much more evil kingdom. The story beats might vary between stories, but just like slice-of-life and harems have an almost obligatory beach episode, it feels like isekai has an obligatory war arc. And it’s usually a mess.
The curse of an isekai war arc
We’ve seen this many times before in countless isekai stories. The Kingdom is under attack, and the enemy army is 50 000 men strong! The Kingdom barely musters an army out of multiple squabbling fiefs, and it’s only 30 000 men strong. Luckily, MC is on their side, and they are using every bit of their power to turn these losing odds around—
And this climactic battle just looks sad.
In I Shall Survive Using Potions! (Potion-danomi de Ikinobimasu!), Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement (Rougo ni Sonaete Isekai de 8-manmai no Kinka wo Tamemasu) and How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom (Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki), these armies of tens of thousands of people fighting for their lives are represented by two school buses and a clown car’s worth of combatants, all waiting for their turn, taking a swing or two, and going down — because yes, turns out animating thousands of people is a bit difficult!
Meanwhile, Overlord’s battles have been plagued by bad CGI since day one, so few people are surprised Madhouse managed to ruin even the most chilling part of the original story — though it’s not even exclusively the fault of said bad CGI. The camera direction once again makes armies look downright tiny and understaffed, the shots of massive eldritch monstrosities lack the sense of scale, and even the shots of horrifying slaughter are directed like it was an educational video about how a tree is turned into a table. Gee, it’s almost like small scale fights require a different presentation from epic clashes between massive armies!
Isekai specifically about war is often better
Not all is lost, though. Some isekai stories are made SPECIFICALLY about war, and the studios adapting these stories know perfectly well what they are getting into. A lot of these stories are even written in a way that allows for better adaptations!
The Youjo Senki adaptation is a prime example of this. Studio NUT did not have a budget for something that required too high of a production, and if you pay TOO much attention to animations and camera work, you start to notice all the little cut corners. However, the setting itself is a huge help — the story is about dogfighting aerial mages, meaning it featured a lot of battles between small groups boasting omnidirectional mobility. Battles that could, yet not HAVE to feature detailed backgrounds, complex machinery or, thank Being X, horses.
Drifters is another great example of this. The centerpiece characters are Drifters and Enders — isekaied historical figures fighting with the fate of humanity at stake. Sometimes, they lead one or two dozens of local combatants each — which still keeps battles relatively small-scaled, avoiding that feeling of almost comedic detachment that plagues the genre. Sure, Black King’s army is practically a tidal wave of bodies — but even when they are featured in fight scenes, they don’t need to engage a similarly sized army, only those few dozens of elite soldiers.
And it seldom changes.
Summary:
A lot of isekai stories have war arcs featuring massive armies.
Turns out, animating thousands of people fighting is difficult.
This leads to the war arcs feeling really underwhelming.
Some stories know how to circumvent this by scaling the conflict down to manageable levels.
Most isekai follow a similar formula — our MC is sent to a medieval high fantasy world, into a kingdom that faces a looming threat of monsters, Demon King, or another, much more evil kingdom. The story beats might vary between stories, but just like slice-of-life and harems have an almost obligatory beach episode, it feels like isekai has an obligatory war arc. And it’s usually a mess.
The curse of an isekai war arc
We’ve seen this many times before in countless isekai stories. The Kingdom is under attack, and the enemy army is 50 000 men strong! The Kingdom barely musters an army out of multiple squabbling fiefs, and it’s only 30 000 men strong. Luckily, MC is on their side, and they are using every bit of their power to turn these losing odds around—
And this climactic battle just looks sad.
In I Shall Survive Using Potions! (Potion-danomi de Ikinobimasu!), Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement (Rougo ni Sonaete Isekai de 8-manmai no Kinka wo Tamemasu) and How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom (Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki), these armies of tens of thousands of people fighting for their lives are represented by two school buses and a clown car’s worth of combatants, all waiting for their turn, taking a swing or two, and going down — because yes, turns out animating thousands of people is a bit difficult!
Meanwhile, Overlord’s battles have been plagued by bad CGI since day one, so few people are surprised Madhouse managed to ruin even the most chilling part of the original story — though it’s not even exclusively the fault of said bad CGI. The camera direction once again makes armies look downright tiny and understaffed, the shots of massive eldritch monstrosities lack the sense of scale, and even the shots of horrifying slaughter are directed like it was an educational video about how a tree is turned into a table. Gee, it’s almost like small scale fights require a different presentation from epic clashes between massive armies!
Isekai specifically about war is often better
Not all is lost, though. Some isekai stories are made SPECIFICALLY about war, and the studios adapting these stories know perfectly well what they are getting into. A lot of these stories are even written in a way that allows for better adaptations!
The Youjo Senki adaptation is a prime example of this. Studio NUT did not have a budget for something that required too high of a production, and if you pay TOO much attention to animations and camera work, you start to notice all the little cut corners. However, the setting itself is a huge help — the story is about dogfighting aerial mages, meaning it featured a lot of battles between small groups boasting omnidirectional mobility. Battles that could, yet not HAVE to feature detailed backgrounds, complex machinery or, thank Being X, horses.
Drifters is another great example of this. The centerpiece characters are Drifters and Enders — isekaied historical figures fighting with the fate of humanity at stake. Sometimes, they lead one or two dozens of local combatants each — which still keeps battles relatively small-scaled, avoiding that feeling of almost comedic detachment that plagues the genre. Sure, Black King’s army is practically a tidal wave of bodies — but even when they are featured in fight scenes, they don’t need to engage a similarly sized army, only those few dozens of elite soldiers.
