The “Hero’s Journey” Is Nonsense
If you replaced &quot;The Hero&#x27;s Journey&quot; with the (Japanese-anime) word &quot;Isekai&quot;, I get the same feeling here.<p>&quot;Isekai&quot; is the &quot;Trapped in another world&quot; trope that suddenly became popular for anime&#x2F;manga in the last 10 years. But the basis of the story has been backwards-applied to Wizard of Oz, a Kid in King Author&#x27;s Court, and even 90s shows like Digimon, Escaflowne, and .Hack&#x2F;&#x2F;Sign.<p>Except &quot;Isekai&quot; as a concept didn&#x27;t exist until relatively recently, within the past decade or so. There&#x27;s no way Mark Twain was thinking of that concept when he wrote &quot;A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur&#x27;s Court&quot; over a hundred years ago.<p>---------<p>Furthermore, a lot of the tropes associated with the Isekai genre can be applied to plenty of other stories (including the Hero&#x27;s Journey). Harry Potter, for example, hits overpowered main character, travel to effectively another world hidden amongst people (Hogwarts), magical &#x2F; fantasy tropes (classical monsters), etc. etc.<p>----------<p>There are however, certain tropes and storytelling devices that are popular amongst people. When you take an &quot;average person&quot; and stick them as the main character, with few defining features... it allows for the reader &#x2F; watchers to &quot;self-insert&quot; themselves as the protagonist.<p>See Harry Potter who comes from Muggle society, The Connecticut Yankee who represented a modern American from Mark Twain&#x27;s era, Dorethy from Kansas, or the legion of Isekai protagonists from Kagome (Inuyasha), to Kirito (Sword Art Online). You give the main character a degree of wish fulfillment, including adventure, romance, and overall a positive and uplifting story. And a lot of people will like it. (The notion of &quot;The Outsider&quot; from Westerns and Japanese Samurai films also hits this trope)<p>-----------<p>We can see that &quot;The Hero&#x27;s Journey&quot; in fact follows a lot of similar patterns with &quot;Isekai&quot; itself even. Adventure is thrust upon the protagonist in the form of &quot;The Isekai&quot; moment (the moment where the protagonist is teleported to another world somehow).<p>-----------<p>I think &quot;The Hero&#x27;s Journey&quot; is largely the same. Its a backwards application being applied forwards. A concept created in 1944 that tries to unify stories from centuries or millennia ago, and tries to distill them into a singular &quot;pattern&quot; that works for today&#x27;s audiences.<p>No different from &quot;Isekai&quot; these days (though on a shorter timescale: a concept from the past 15 years that very well could be applied to stories from 100 years ago). Now excuse me, I have some trash anime to watch...<p>EDIT: The trolls will joke that &quot;Saving Private Ryan&quot; is an Isekai. The WW2 front was a very different life, and the &quot;Isekai&quot; moment was getting off the boat and onto the shores of West Europe. They can&#x27;t go back until they&#x27;ve accomplished their mission, so its an Isekai, trapped in another world.