Rumiko Takahashi’s Inuyasha became hugely successful in the west when its anime adaptation began airing on American television during the early 2000s. In finding their true loves in another world, these protagonists would often then be faced with the dilemma of having to choose between returning home or staying in the fantasy world. Isekai manga produced during this time all followed average teenage girls who were whisked away to high adventure in new worlds, where they encountered magic, epic battles, and, more often than not, romance. Isekai manga was extremely popular among the shojo, or young girl, demographic during the 1990s with Yuu Watase’s Fushigi Yugi emerging as a breakout hit alongside works such as Kyoko Hikawa’s From Far Away, Chie Shinohara’s Red River, Shōji Kawamori’s The Vision of Escaflowne, and CLAMP’s Magic Knight Rayearth. These are not as common as regular isekai, but they do pop up occasionally, as in coolkyousinnjya's Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid. Reverse isekai are stories where someone from a fantasy world is brought in to our normal, everyday world.
With characters who are reborn into their new isekai world, such as in Fuse’s That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, the plot is more nebulous and may revolve around characters simply trying to survive in the unfamiliar setting. The traditional plot of an isekai story revolves around the main protagonist trying to find their way back to their home world through a series of quests or adventures, such as CLAMP’s Magic Knight Rayearth. Video games have proven a new and popular setting in modern isekai with some characters becoming trapped or transported into their favorite games, as in Reki Kawahara's Sword Art Online, or worlds that are similar, like in Kugane Maruyama's Overlord. Sometimes these new worlds may simply be a different time period like in Chie Shinohara’s Red River or Rumiko Takahashi’s Inuyasha. In isekai stories, the main protagonist must be either physically/mentally spirited away to another world, or reborn into this new world in a new form more powerful than their previous one. That phrase hits on the core difference between isekai manga and other adventure stories. Prior to using isekai to describe the genre, these titles were described as "trapped in another world" manga.
Although the concept has been around for centuries, the term "isekai" is relatively new and has only been used within the past decade or so.
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