I’m aware of a few early isekai works from like the 80’s to 90’s (Dunbine, Elf Hunter, and quite a few western Choose Your Own Adventure books and pulp novels fall into this category). It seems to be that as a trend, the premise is that the main character wants to get back to the “real” world and that usually drives the main plot.
Then theres a big trend of Isekai light novels (and related anime etc) in the later 2000’s to today. These almost exclusively seem to feature characters who just want to live a life in their new fantasy world. Literal escapism, even. Konosuba is notable for being very popular, maybe being around the start of this trend, and the main character is given a task to complete and be returned to the real world, but he just ignores it.
I guess we can speculate on whether this means people got more miserable in the intervening time.
I’m aware of a few early isekai works from like the 80’s to 90’s (Dunbine, Elf Hunter, and quite a few western Choose Your Own Adventure books and pulp novels fall into this category). It seems to be that as a trend, the premise is that the main character wants to get back to the “real” world and that usually drives the main plot.
Then theres a big trend of Isekai light novels (and related anime etc) in the later 2000’s to today. These almost exclusively seem to feature characters who just want to live a life in their new fantasy world. Literal escapism, even. Konosuba is notable for being very popular, maybe being around the start of this trend, and the main character is given a task to complete and be returned to the real world, but he just ignores it.
I guess we can speculate on whether this means people got more miserable in the intervening time.
Funny enough the webnovels tend to mention why protagonist doesn’t think of the real world, but their anime doesn’t go over it much.