According to The Guardian, The Oxford English Dictionary's latest update added 23 Japanese words to its lexicon. Included among these Japanese terms like is one of the most popular anime genres: isekai.
Oxford English Dictionary's official website defines isekai as "a Japanese genre of science or fantasy fiction featuring a protagonist who is transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world."
While Isekai has been colloquially understood in the U.S.anime community as an genre where a character is teleported into a fantasy world — be it through a VR device à la Sword Art Online or vehicular incidents with a white truck, the term has been slightly misapplied. According to the Tokyo-based Twitch streamer Celina, isekai's means "the story takes place in a totally different world from our real world." Meaning classic fantasy shows fans wouldn't consider to be isekai like Record of Lodoss War and contemporary anime like Delicious in Dungeon and Frieren: Beyond Journey's End could be considered isekai. Turns out the anime community's popularized definition of isekai is referring to its sub-genre.
"If it's some modern dude getting reincarnated to another world, it's called isekaitensei," Celina wrote on X/Twitter.
Celina continued in the thread, saying isekai's original definition doesn't just restrict itself to a fantasy setting either, meaning sci-fi stories can technically be an isekai as well. By that logic, Square Enix's 2017 action role-playing game, Nier: Automata, was an isekai before Sword Art Online studio A-1 Pictures turned it into anime last year.
This would probably explain why the popular fantasy anime Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation isn't called Musoku Isekai. However, other upcoming anime like the aptly titled Suicide Squad Isekai doesn't help clear up the anime community's ongoing confusion over the word's proper definition.
Grammatical history lesson aside, the Oxford dictionary will likely not have to iimmediately make an addendum to its definition on isekai. According to The Guardian, editors at the Oxford English Dictionary collaborated with researchers from the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies to define isekai and other commonly borrowed cooking-related Japanese words like katsu. This would suggest the word's original definition has shiftted from its originial meaning to fit with anime fan's populalrized misuse of its subgenre. To be fair, isekai rolls off the tongue easier.
If you take anything away from this article — aside from isekai being recognized in the Oxford dicionary of course — Nintendo and Ilumination's The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the second most successful isekai movie ever, coming second to Studio Ghibli's Golden Globe and Oscar award-winning film, The Boy and The Heron.
Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow them on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh.
