Oh no my original statement was a generalization, I am well aware of the fact that there is no such thing as absolutes. I have read some isekai that I enjoyed, some that sought to break free of the mold, and do their own thing, hell I've even read some unoriginal isekai that I liked just because the story was solid. Although I am not sure who the credit the quality to, the translator or the author.
It's like asking who started sci-fi. Reincarnation stories is an old idea, the only thing new about it is the fact that we like calling it now in its japanese terms.
Didn't say other isekais were not present before that. It's just that like Sena said. It's THE reference in recent times that made people solidify the word's definition. It's after Mushoku that the term became popular. But i'm curious, what started the sci-fi genre ? Star Trek, star wars or something else ? Like the old movie with the monkeys.
Hahaha if you put it that way, than most genre (or troupes.....or whatever they're called) are basically like that too they're all similar, Like all those junk food level xianxia out there. Just a matter of which one taste better, or what flavour we prefer. Also, is there an isekai boom? I noticed more of them got anime adaptation recently.
Define "isekai". If it's about being transported to another world (usually a world of fantasy), then it's Older Than Dirt. One of the most well-known examples of modern literature would be Alice in Wonderland, and that's just cheking the most recent period. If you mean, however, the first novel of the 21st century trend that merges generic shonen harem (total, partial or hinted), trip to another world and trapped in the game/reincarnation with no way back... that's difficult to tell. It may have even been a since deleted novel that died an unknown death. I just went to TV Tropes (not troupes, a troue is a group of people that act together in plays or a group of people that are part of a travelling performance or a theatre house), but just the quote at the start was from The Wizard of Oz... PS. I think that Kyou Kara Maou and the 12 Kingdoms predate Zero no Tsukaima.
It's just like @Goblin Sleuth said. In readers' minds, "Isekai" came to be associated with certain (mostly unflattering) characteristics, just like the "Swastika" came to be viewed as Nazist, even tho it holds an entirely different significance in other cultures (like Hinduism, for example). It's more about connotation than actual meanings.
Now that I'm thinking about it, being transported to another world was really popular in 90s anime. Escaflowne, Fushigi Yuugi, El-Hazard, Now and Then Here and There, Dual!, Magic Knight Rayearth, Those Who Hunt Elves, Digimon, Monster Rancher, Jura Tripper, Legend of Himiko (sort of). I said the opposite. It was popular before Mushoku Tensei, and Mushoku Tensei itself contained a lot of references to pre-existing isekai cliches.
It became difficult to read isekai as I had enough of it I read about 300 isekai novels with 30 romcom school life and 3 CN novels and 30 Korean novels so what next?
Yeah, but I think it was around that period of time(dunno if Mushoku Tensei was indeed the cause) where a certain subtype of isekai started trending IMO( guy or girl dies, maybe with regrets, gets revived in new world with mad cheats). I always felt Rayearth was slightly more towards mahou shoujo though, and fushigi yugi mc is quite balanced compared to....well, majority of the mainstream isekai protags nowadays.
I guess we should define what we mean by isekai. If we define it as reincarnation/travel to another world, then there are numerous popular anime/manga (or even other types of literature) that definitely predates Mushoku Tensei. If we define isekai as a weak-willed (standard Japanese beta-type) protagonist on Earth getting another chance on another world, complete with special powers/abilities and a harem, then I would say some 90s anime/manga series like the El-Hazard original series (not the OVA) popularized the trope. If we define isekai specifically as a weak-willed (standard Japanese beta-type) protagonist getting ran over by truck-kun to go to another world, then ya I can see the argument of Mushoku Tensei popularizing that. But then, by that definition, anime like Konosuba wouldn't be considered isekai since the protagonist didn't originally die to truck-kun.
Mary Shelley. It's honestly what she's best known for. Practically the only thing she's known for that I'm aware of really. I'm absolutely certain you're familiar with her work too: Frankenstein. Unless you mean the movies/TV series specifically? In that case, it's probably some silent film that doesn't exist anymore and that no one but your great grandparents or a film historian has ever even heard of.
That's right. The modern trend of what isekai novels look like now were popularized by Zero no Tsukaima and Mushoku Tensei, but there were lots of popular isekai novels before that. The vast majority of these had female protagonists, and they tended to be quite different from the current batch, but they were still definitely isekai novels. They also tended to be much better too. Chinese second chance novels aren't really a genre unto themselves. They're just a (not particularly distinctive) subgenre of transmigration books. Originally transmigration novels started as the Qingchuan (清穿 - literally traveling to the Qing Dynasty) genre; which had female protagonists going back in time to take part in adventures in the Qing Imperial court. One of the earliest of these works would be Tong Hua's "Bu Bu Jing Xin". Technically the first transmigration novel is Huang Yi's "A Step into the Past", but I don't think that the descent from it to the current transmigration genre is very clear.