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.