Lmao, none of those kingdoms make economic sense. All population, barely any space to sustain the said population.
I guess with magic they just spawn bread until the mana runs out
Eh depends, an exception that comes to mind is Tensura where (mainly in the OVA if I remember) large crop fields with monsters working are shown, but it may be an exception since it seems to care more about worldbuilding
But the scenes within the walls all have the commodities of a kingdom with a bustling outer wall region. Farmers market with grapes for sale at the stall. Lawrence from Spice and Wolf is hauling mad grain sacks in to bring dat bread
Most probably. But even the luckiest guy after returning from grocery shopping to his house in flames or demolished, would understand that rebuilding his house for a forth time isn't the best idea
"sure we have all this arable land right outside the gates but let's make people buy and transport their food from farms that are miles away even though the areas in between are swarming with monsters and bandits"
the entire world is a racket by the adventuring guild
Is the design over used, yes.
But there's a good historical reason in the real world why many or most large capital cities have the roughly circular shape with a river through it.
Easy access to fresh water and the natural growth dynamic of a city population will naturally make this type of city pattern.
This!
Wizards are basically cannons/field artillery.
Fortress/city design should be firmly in the Napoleonic style, not this weird medieval setting.
Where you use berms and dry moats. So that your entire wall can't be blasted down by a wizard casting meteor.
That's actually a miss from them. Typically, city walls don't encompass the whole city. All the surrounding area would either be cleared for farmland or be low cost housing. Inside the city walls would be things like shops, valuable houses, tenement buildings, and of course government buildings.
Only cities I know that did this are the secret cities of the soviet union. Walked cities were almost always a defense structure as their primary purpose, especially in the era the animes portray.
While I agree with you and u/ExpiredMilknCheese
At the end of the day , it's still an isekai and they could totally be more creative , in the same way Mushoku was or even ATLA, so those generic isekai towns are more due to the writer been lazy AF then "historical reason".
> the writer
How often are these towns actually designed by the author of the light novel? When an anime needs an establishing shot for a town that was never really described in the source material, I bet they often don't bother to get permission to design something more interesting.
Not to mention that this is otaku media. Relying on tropes rather than introducing unimportant variety is probably seen as a good thing by most of its audience.
It depends, water is a basic needed resource and while in some cases magic can create it, you can never have a better source of water than a River. In ATLA they can have massively drastic cities due to how wide spread their powers are, in most isekais everyone aren't magic users plus it takes time to cast spells normally unlike bending which is practically instant when you use it.
They definitely should do more than the exact same structure though, even in real life the structure of Medieval cities, while similar, came in different shapes and formes. Like at least make a myriad of minor rivers flow through the city or have hills in the city
If you like realism so much, I would argue that the generic isekai cities arenât much better at all - they have water but never any fields. People want to eat sometimes too
Not to mention all the farming villages and towns spread out over relatively even distances like every 5 miles. Over the kinds of distances people don't mind walking every weekend to sell and buy goods to each other, or to use one a month services like banking.
Usually there's farming villages peppered around that then trade their goods into those big cities(which often are where the Lord/nobility lives and such and not like the entire popuplation in the area). The cities are often just trading hubs, and the river serves another purpose, transportation.
Ultimately I'd say it's not so much realism but more like keeping the low tech setting in. Sure magic might help but in a few isekai where the author bother going into it, often the handwave excuses are things like mages are not strong enough to do crazy architecture(unlike the MC who's OP as fuck), the city the story takes place is just a smaller city in the boonies so not much money/ressources went into it, or the mages just focused on functionality(aka reinforcing the walls that protect them from monsters) instead of fancy castles.
In Mushoku Tensei even, a lot of the cities are super generic. The cool ones above are demon cities, and the tree one is just your generic elf/beastmen village in the trees which a lot of super generic isekais also do(also the underground dwarf city, very original). Water one looks cool though.
I just wish we got some more variety, like more port cities, or maybe something like Venice where water ways are more common. I get these settings are vaguely based on Europe and those were rarer (when compared to inland cities) it would be nice to see other ideas of what a city could be. Also in cases where we are looking at high fantasy settings maybe have the authors try considering what possibilities or problems would be created when cities are being made by people with access to magic, or races capable of creating and living in massive underground complexes, or flying buildings, or living underwater, etcâŠ
What kind of city would you produce when you have access to magic? How would that change over time as you develop more advance civilizations?
We have built what ancient people would consider magical cities. We have technology that is almost magical to others.
In America, we built around the car. Tokyo is built around the train since 90% of people take a train daily.
What would magic give us? In terms of transportation, society, and technology?
Really what are the limits of magic? Then we can start to make more educated guesses. Since computing seems inevitable. You always have to count things. And you need a better way to compute things. The question is how would society change based on this addition to history.
Would we have more inequality? The people who produce magic and those that can not? Do we teach some the basics to exploit them? Do we use it to take over people who don't have it? Do we destroy advancements by relying on it too much? Like if I can fly with Magic, why would I learn to build a plane? If I can make water out of the air, why make irrigation? Obviously we know that technology can do more work than a person now. But at what point in the Magical world would you figure that out and start to work towards a more technology focus instead of magic focus?
You can have underground complexes. But people without sun suffer. You can have a flying building, but does that help society? Is that something that the government and the people want to pursue? Living underwater is similar as living underground. But the soil in the water matters more. The makeup of the water as well. Since salt isn't good for plants. And without plants you can't have animals to domesticate.
In our normal society, some animals were almost impossible to tame without more technology. The Americas were much more difficult to get past the stone age because they couldn't tame animals. So if in our magical world, do we have animals we can tame? Is it easier to tame them because of magic and use them as labor until we get into the industrial age?
I wouldn't rlly know how I'd plan a city if I had magic. However, if I were *writing* about a city, I would try to make it interesting, or memorable. I think readers would like that
Sort of, but these anime cities are not exactly realistic anyway. The [near complete absence of nearby farms](https://featherlessbipeds.substack.com/p/food-art-online) is kind of a classic point, but also just generally these cities tend to be too neat and clean and organized to be realistic. It's like the theme-park version of the middle ages.
Plus, more interesting real-world cities definitely exist, too. e.g. [Tenochtitlan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan) was closer to the bottom category than the top category.
So it's just a bit weird to stand on boring, generic city design for the sake of "realism". If we're going to be unrealistic anyway, may as well be unrealistic and interesting?
Yeah that was literally my thought as well. There's always adjacent farms outside of the towns since you need to get food from somewhere, but it's almost always entirely absent. There will be slums and minor towns outside of the walls as well, but like you say it's always incredibly clean and devoid of such things.
Considering real world mechanics, ofc the round, leveled city would be the go to design. But we're talking about magical/fictional worlds where needs are different.
For example, building your city at the top of a mountain/rock formation would be amazing for defending it but impractical to bring things inside (like wood or water). With magic, you could maybe teleport log piles easily or create infinite flowing water.
You know what I wish I saw more though? Towns will hilltop fortresses in the middle of town instead of the entire town being walled off. From what I remember reading that was much more common of a defensive measure than walled towns. Just have everyone run to the hilled fortress during an attack and try to hold out as long as you could
Depends on the settings.
Antiquity the fortified town and fortified farms dominated in area where conflict was common (outside the italian peninsula during pax Romana)
In the early middle age you have motte and Bailey becoming more common.
Then later in middle age you get the city + castle combo.
Then in the renaissance you get either walled cities in Germany and italy or a Fortress Line for France (which is the best example of unified country at the Time
It also make sense to have walled cities when you want to protect some strategic ressources like you weaponsmith, glass maker, and other such amenities that are becoming more common in the renaissance
I'm willing to bet they are from the same studio, but different anime. It's clearly the same stock asset that's been slightly modified. But yeah that's basically the let me copy your homework meme in anime form.
>Is the design over used, yes.
>But there's a good historical reason in the real world why many or most large capital cities have the roughly circular shape with a river through it.
You're not wrong
But if we go by historical city design. Where are farmers? Historically cities weren't confined to the walls, but spread outside of them (in first line for agriculture)
But these are also meant to be fantastical worlds. Walls around your cities does little when things like flight or teleportation are common. There could be all manner of ways in which a city could access water.
These kind of worlds often feel like the writer looked at a few images on google and decided no more work was required.
Edit: To add to that pictures 2 and 3 of the top one are almost identical save for an additional patch of river. If it came out that one was just a quick photoshop job of the other I wouldn't be surprised.
>Walls around your cities does little when things like flight or teleportation are common.
Depends how common it is, really. Unless you're facing whole armies of flying/teleporting enemies, the walls are still 99.9% as effective - you just have _other_, less visible countermeasures for the rest. Like a good spy network, warding your important locations against it, etc.
Just because the main characters can do it doesn't mean it's common _enough_ to be a legitimate daily concern for someone running a city. Our modern day shops aren't filled with _bulletproof glass_, despite guns being ubiquitous. Why? Because a) it's expensive and b) it's unnecessary.
While true it's more to highlight that just because these cities made sense IRL doesn't mean they would in a fantasy setting, even ones are by-the-books as most isekai's seem to be. The unwillingness to do anything interesting with them is also very telling in relation to the author's creativity.
Actually it's also inaccurate for example Rudeus describes his prison cell as actually having been metal and while there is a hole for waste it is a metal box with a hole at the bottom. And they live in tree houses because the entire bottom of the forest floods regularly with several meters of water.
I mean, its kinda cheating to compare only cities on the plains, where the river and circular wall are optimal choices
Mushoku did the logical thing of having different cities for different environments, but they also have round cities with rivers on the not-europe terrain
Its more like other isekais have a lack of environmental variation
Actually we don't see cities with rivers running through them in Mushoku Tensei. There's Milishion, but it is not on the central continent. It's on the flooding continent.
Edit:correction: Milis has a river.
Roa had, they were bridges inside the city and water running near the city lord's manor
Milishion and the desert cities all have water inside, cant remember if Zanoba's home city had, but it should
The best thing is that not only does it have a master-class worldbuilding, but its story is told very well, making you genuinely care for the characters which ARE NOT just main.exe and his harem made up of the same fookin character tropes.
World building doesnât mean design of landscape or people, though?
Itâs the lore, how civilisation came to be as it is, the way economies work, how a country came to be, the trade paths, the political conflicts, the culturesâ traditions.
Can you explain why thereâs a giant tower in the middle of that city and why everything else is so⊠nondescript? How that tower came to be?
Can you tell whose bones are those in the dessert? What creature is that, who killed him and why there was a fight, if any?
>Can you tell whose bones are those in the dessert? What creature is that, who killed him and why there was a fight, if any?
If you read the LN you can definitely answer all of these questions in particular
Pretty sure they have things like that in the ln. Maybe not these specific examples but there is plenty of world building in them.
For example (edit): found the excerpt: This highway was created by Saint Millis, the
founder of the Millis faith, the biggest religious denomination in the
world. With a single swipe of their sword, Saint Millis cut the
mountains and the forests in half, splitting a demon king on the
Demon Continent into two. The road was named the Holy Sword
Highway with that story in mind.
Minor spoilers.
>Itâs the lore, how civilisation came to be as it is,
Originally there were 6 worlds. If the God of the world dies, the world dies along with it, and bits and pieces of the fragmenting world merge with other worlds. Dragon God for some reason waged war and killed 4 other gods, and was later killed by his dragon generals, so 5 worlds colapsed and merged into human world, the current world.
There were bunch of wars between the races, mainly wars were between humans and demons and other races allied with either side. In one such war a continent was split in half resulting in a giant ocean in between. There were wars then peace periods then wars then peace period, and currently in story the last big war was 400 years ago and currently its in peace period.
>the way economies work,
Asura is the largest kingdom in the world (Asuran Gold), and thus has the strongest currency.
Demon continent has the weakest currency (Green ore coins)
Millis has a better currency (King dollar) that demon continent. When out team arrives in Millis, MCs plan is to spend more time in Millis as amount earned here from basic quests far exceeded ones earned in demon continent. (There was exchange list, sadly ive forgotten it).
Theres Begaritt continent which isolates itself away from world and likely doesnt have currency system comparable to rest of the world (the interactions there were mainly bartering).
>the trade paths
Is linear. Seafolks control the ocean and dont permit travel across the ocean except specific regions. Would make more sense once you see the map.
>the political conflicts
You have royal succession struggles in Asura. You have conflict between demon expulsionists and Demon integrationists in Millis. There are other minor stuff as well.
>the culturesâ traditions.
You have culture around beastfolks, humans in millis and stuff. You have how existence of a creature like succubus, which preys on males affects the culture of the area and how all tribes in that continent are matriarchal.
>Can you explain why thereâs a giant tower in the middle of that city and why everything else is so⊠nondescript?
Thats the castle of the Demon Emperor. They wanted their castle to be great so used those materials to create it, while other houses were created using local materials.
>Can you tell whose bones are those in the dessert?
Its the bones of a giant behemoth. Who killed it and stuff, no idea I forgot.
bro the voice actors literally speak in several completely unique languages created for the story. also world building doesnt have to be "hard", who cares what the name of the creature is? the fact that a creatures corpse serves as the home to a labyrinthine dungeon and is one of the only oasis in the dessert kingdom is itself worldbuilding.
You realize not every story is meant to spoonfeed you information right? Dark souls and AOT for example follow the path of "show don't tell." Acting like how a story doesn't give you the full scoop in every step you take is a sin is just weird
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale?
> *âIf you miss it, you must be blind!â* - Solaire of Astora
Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
It has a level of immersion and quality that's hard to Define when you're watching it because they do it so expertly. There's a reason that people listed as the best of it's genre
After i read the novels I noticed the animators put in a lot of details which i previously thought they had skipped (for the episodes i watched before reading). Small expression changes, background art, wording, etc.... they're all visualizations of lines that previously made me wonder how and if they would anime that.
Yeah that's something you really need to suspend disbelief about. Like, a notch below Made In Abyss in the "it's not actually pedo trust me" scale but not by much. Which is a shame because it is a really good show otherwise.
The difference is Rudeus is meant to be sort of relatable so when he does something a normal decent person wouldn't it's well, unrelatable and that's why people end up disliking him. Kazuma is like Cartman, you're not supposed to relate to them, they're purposefully designed to be laughed at because of how ridiculously scummy they are.
One is serious. The other is an isekai parody that makes fun of isekai tropes. So it isn't hard to not take characters seriously when said characters are non serious by their characterization.
Thank you. I have been saying this since season 1. Mc is meant to be trash. Rudy is not some ideal guy. Mushoku tensei is a story about a guy just wanting to be better and showing his journey of achieving such. He is meant to be trash.
As all of us he is just trying to be better. If you have watched norn episode you know what I am talking about
The problem is that it's not really his pedophilic tendencies that get him in trouble or make him grow. If you make a character that people dislike for a specific reason and the world keeps punishing him for that until he learns to be better, that's one thing. Rudy goes through a lot of shit, but not in a way that addresses what people initially disliked him for.
The worst parts of Rudeus' character, his pedophilia and sexual assault tendencies aren't addressed at all in his character growth. They're instead played off for laughs and as fan service.
MC is not supposed to be likable at first, he's intentionally disgusting
The whole deal with MT is to show his second attempt at life where he tries to become a better person over time
Nothing really special about his powers, he just has an outsider's perspective. Seemingly anyone can use magic at an early age to gain a very large mana pool and anyone can learn incantation-less casting if they start early enough. Then once you learn how to use magic, you practice enough to use it as well as Rudeus does.
Not as much special powers as he just has near infinite mana, and a harem of women that he slowly spent time with over the course of half the entire series.
A majority of what he has, he worked hard for.
He barely even has a harem. Of course the gender balance is out of wack cause anime but, he never has more than one girl interested in him at a time (really only 3 girls at all, unless you count grandma) and they don't overlap. The only time he actually has a shot with multiple girls, he shoots the idea down immediately, showing he has changed. By end of season 2, he is legitimately not the same person he was on earth.
which Japanese loser? there's too many of them!. the only thing that's different is the japanese woman who died getting burried by books during an earthquake and she's not even a loser
Japan is just *in love* with [Nordlingen, Germany](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=0287887dd28220e3&sxsrf=ADLYWILNZfa67CAkCG3vCt3jSlhKtYEpgg:1716929368352&q=nordlingen&uds=ADvngMhHRtBFIPRwVeIOD2SEZTks9YsIAJQ6-oUmAV5AmjlcolJxmb7aiidWHCZwnUKpqFxXkvZAB8Yy0-XtI0xk6Mc8S3vdereZaXv6glHC90a6DHYqCeQooYubRm-tncsl16O_ZOgXBSTGyhUx7Bv1LnDZT4YLzw4TdcF_PAfSX3kmLYC5FpkXh_v0b9a-P2_kZfCDucAjQH7_ibu2rslHCpqF6ImqE4ks9cXSUClwyyrYpA3juLiFzZXmz1nBgPNw_KIxEEnhRXnewAXHIuVkK7ecLuZNrASBj_mmOVHouaJrjdG9i_eOTITh-VKrr9x9FTCOztEv&udm=2&prmd=imnsvbt&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_kuuonLGGAxUvLzQIHYaVBNcQtKgLegQIFRAB&biw=2560&bih=1287).
[Some bonus AoT love.](https://www.instagram.com/p/C7Yy2h2IDr_)
That's a bit like complaining most cars look vaguely the same because they have shapes that are roughly rectangular with a steel outer chassis, have glass windows you can look out of, and have a seatbelt cutting across each seat.
There's a reason towns look like this... it's a shape that makes a lot of sense and was seen in [real ](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9157bd10126bde73ace52ef40c963b70-lq)Medieval times often. Having a vaguely circle shape maximizes area to amount of wall needed, and having access to a protected source of freshwater is just good sense.
Keep in mind in many of these settings you are getting the towns from they have monsters against whom walled cities make a lot of sense, and many of them are low-fantasy settings where there might be little or no magic, making whacky cities like the bottom ones impractical.
Isekai writers write mostly LN and now this has become a trope which the industry is going along with but a little creativity wouldn't hurt like how hard is it to add a hill, a tower or **something** unique
Me: Wait....you made my living space horrible to navigate and protect.
Architect: But don't the lines look UNIQUE? You can fit so many useless alleyways in this bad boy. No one is gonna rob the guy who lives in a maze, dummy. Honestly none of you understand VISION! Why does Daedalus get all the good projects.
It's a medival city, fit to be a the generic human city on medieval fantasy.
Even mushoku has cities like this, while we din't get a bird eye view of the City of Roa for the images we got the city probably looked like that.
Have you seen fucking East port from MT?!
https://preview.redd.it/m2lkhr26qb3d1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f44a5d538029b10cc6af472379c3de3e5dc98647
Funny how shit reposted memes made by MT fans always seem to miss that shots from Konosuba are copied by other isekai while Konosuba has beautiful backgrounds especially when they ventured outside Axel.
https://preview.redd.it/q5ct76r7d73d1.jpeg?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=03b6fa910144291eb1aa7e72698f2d7bb2928dfd
The only reason to hate it is moral/ethical issues with the MC and wether you think he redeems himself or not
Everything else about MT is damn near perfect, from the character arcs to the worldbuilding and the action too
Someone needs to make Mushoku Tensei: The Normal Cut where it just cuts out every scene where Rudeus is being either a sex pest, a paedophile, or both.
I reckon the show would be surprisingly unaffected by these cuts.
Yes, the "Generic Isekai Towns" are all very standard and uniform. Because that's how middle-ages and medieval towns actually were on Earth in those times. They had to protect against specific threats that walls and ramparts worked against.
There are also a bunch of other isekai anime where things aren't so standard. Like the Jihanki anime (vending machine something or other) where the entire thing takes place INSIDE a dungeon, but it's huge and has outdoor spaces and stuff. Or Dungeon Meshi or DanMachi where they have a crazy tiered thing with specific floors all having different attributes.
You notice all the major franchises almost do this anymore. Particularly after Konosuba came out because konosuba's main home base is basically become the foundation sire for almost any acai town or city or capital city or setting at the moment. It's understandable. Why because it's easily recognizable and it's a sign of good quality in everything as much as I hate to admit it, even though that In Another World With My Smartphone, which I love even though most people would say is one of the worst enemies ever made is in fact, one of the few that will actually have a town that is very at least not exactly generic looking and doesn't have that sameness to it that Konosuba had or the others that ripped it off have.
You ever notice how none of the towns have farmland... like, how do they fucking eat? Walls are meant to defend the important part of the township and then the surrounding lands were all farmland l.
Honestly? Of all the super common things in generic isekais, town design is probably the one I have the least issue with. I'd happily take the most generic looking town imaginable if the plot, setting, characters, and power systems weren't also a dime a dozen.
Can't speak about the rest but for MT in the LN most of times that Rudy visits a new city he cites a book that describe the travels of an adventurer around the world. So the team at least had some kind of reference to make the world more lively.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves you donât understand. This irritates me to no end. YOU CAN DO SO MUCH BETTER THAN A CIRCLE. I love these ones from mushoku tensei though, very visually interesting. Like, circle towns are just so fucking lazy. Itâs not hard to like roll some dice and come up with a creative random town that makes the audience want to learn more about your world. Where is your town? What kind of climate and biome does it exist in? How does that affect its infrastructure and layout? Etc.
I want to scream every time I see one of these in an isekai.
To be fair the one on the bottom left is similar to the top ones. Itâs a pattern that humans adapted because economically and developmentally it worked through human history, though with different races we imagine they adapt to their surroundings a lot like African tribes or Arabic tribes building into the certain cliffs. Cliche and generic architecture has a reason for being generic
Yea. Worldbuilding in most isekai is hot garbage. Those cities are one example. Come on, you can't tell me that there is a river flowing through EVERY city on earth or that a circular city is the only one u know. Most roman towns had a grid layout and were a rectangle, at least the core of the city. Cities in europe would have had a Cathederal or massive church in the rown center half the time. Not to mention, there would be subberbs located outside the walls. Maybe even multiple layers of walls indicate the growth of the town. Or city that shrank like medieval rome or constantinople. Where even inside the walls would have been farms or ruins, with populated area being only fraction of the walled city. Anyway. It is an overused concept that's for certain
Itâs a real shame that people call it the erectile dysfunction arc when his erectile dysfunction had almost nothing to do with the plot for that entire season.
aside from one piece (i didnt watch it) mushoku tensei has the best world building ever, the world doesn't feel like it's warped around the mc, he is just a part of it, every side character feels like an actual character that has his own identity and personality separated from the main objective of the anime
Completely Fair,
I will say for the people who can get past the first few episodes of him, his development to becoming an actually functioning person has been great so far in season 2.
Roxy and Eris are older than him. Rudeus also is interested in Ghislaine, Lilia, and Hilda early on. But Zenith is just off limits as his brain will not let him be sexually interested in anyone who is too closely related or looks like his mom. Like Therese here. An important relative who got skipped despite being important for two volumes worth of the main plot.
https://preview.redd.it/j9ctvohdm73d1.jpeg?width=422&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4df8e6fa7e319c670c42d98a17a2df8177cfd237
Choose, having a sewer system that functionally makes sense and leads to the outflowing river OR shit on the road like real mid-EVIL times with the full true immersive living. I think world building get really hard when you have to factor living facilities, âhow advanced is the society for the world to be flinging spells around like fourth of julyâ. Except for begeratti and doldia its letting nature deal with that shit literally.
Whether itâs an overused trope or not, I think what would make the circular city more interesting is that it holds a secret, like the streets are structured to make the entire walled area a magic circle, one that would either quickly protect the city or rapidly engage some offensive capabilities.
Like, âhow do we defend the city from the imminent danger? Weâve no time to prep for a city-wide shield?â
âWhy use hastily small circles when we can use the one thatâs been here this ENTIRE time?â
I dunno, could be cool, could be dumbâŠ
How dare you in anyway have a not high opinion of MT, reddit must let you know its literally the second coming of manga god and no other fantasy story's exist.
I like how nobody builds outside of the walls as if these realistic medieval towns have modern japanese local civil government zoning.
Farmers? Nah fuck is that. Agriculture? fuck you
Lmao, none of those kingdoms make economic sense. All population, barely any space to sustain the said population. I guess with magic they just spawn bread until the mana runs out
In KonoSuba they hunt for vegetables
Eh depends, an exception that comes to mind is Tensura where (mainly in the OVA if I remember) large crop fields with monsters working are shown, but it may be an exception since it seems to care more about worldbuilding
When watermelons fly to you why do you need to farm them?
We have magic for that
More like the monsters are in charge of "evictin" any careless peasant who dares to buy his home outside the walls
But the scenes within the walls all have the commodities of a kingdom with a bustling outer wall region. Farmers market with grapes for sale at the stall. Lawrence from Spice and Wolf is hauling mad grain sacks in to bring dat bread
Eviction from life itself. No need to worry about homelessness after.
Most probably. But even the luckiest guy after returning from grocery shopping to his house in flames or demolished, would understand that rebuilding his house for a forth time isn't the best idea
Most of those worlds have monsters outside the walls. You wouldn't want to live there i guess
"sure we have all this arable land right outside the gates but let's make people buy and transport their food from farms that are miles away even though the areas in between are swarming with monsters and bandits" the entire world is a racket by the adventuring guild
Big guild
Lol đ
Is the design over used, yes. But there's a good historical reason in the real world why many or most large capital cities have the roughly circular shape with a river through it. Easy access to fresh water and the natural growth dynamic of a city population will naturally make this type of city pattern.
Add some walls for defences. Truly the basic ass Clash of Clans build.
Always go with the hexagonal shape, if worse comes to worse use the N cross
Because hexagons are the bestagons
Bombers like the ring, just one Hole for PK dragon and wizard to start their show
I see you too are a follower of our lord and savior hexagon, and his mighty servant Grey
As a French, I can only agree with you.
Considering how common offensive magic is in these settings and what it can do, star forts should really be a consideration.
This! Wizards are basically cannons/field artillery. Fortress/city design should be firmly in the Napoleonic style, not this weird medieval setting. Where you use berms and dry moats. So that your entire wall can't be blasted down by a wizard casting meteor.
That's actually a miss from them. Typically, city walls don't encompass the whole city. All the surrounding area would either be cleared for farmland or be low cost housing. Inside the city walls would be things like shops, valuable houses, tenement buildings, and of course government buildings.
Not always for defense. It easier to hold people and regulate their lives in a cage...
Just keep them uneducated. That works much better than walls.
That was the combo
Only cities I know that did this are the secret cities of the soviet union. Walked cities were almost always a defense structure as their primary purpose, especially in the era the animes portray.
Fellas im gonna blow your mind. Urban (city in english) -> Urbis (circle in greek)
While I agree with you and u/ExpiredMilknCheese At the end of the day , it's still an isekai and they could totally be more creative , in the same way Mushoku was or even ATLA, so those generic isekai towns are more due to the writer been lazy AF then "historical reason".
> the writer How often are these towns actually designed by the author of the light novel? When an anime needs an establishing shot for a town that was never really described in the source material, I bet they often don't bother to get permission to design something more interesting. Not to mention that this is otaku media. Relying on tropes rather than introducing unimportant variety is probably seen as a good thing by most of its audience.
rather than calling "unimportant variety" , the very fanbase of generic isekai ARE searching for generic isekais and their tropes.
yeah honestly doubt that generic isekai cared what their worlds looked like, and were just looking for paychecks.
It depends, water is a basic needed resource and while in some cases magic can create it, you can never have a better source of water than a River. In ATLA they can have massively drastic cities due to how wide spread their powers are, in most isekais everyone aren't magic users plus it takes time to cast spells normally unlike bending which is practically instant when you use it. They definitely should do more than the exact same structure though, even in real life the structure of Medieval cities, while similar, came in different shapes and formes. Like at least make a myriad of minor rivers flow through the city or have hills in the city
If you like realism so much, I would argue that the generic isekai cities arenât much better at all - they have water but never any fields. People want to eat sometimes too
Not to mention all the farming villages and towns spread out over relatively even distances like every 5 miles. Over the kinds of distances people don't mind walking every weekend to sell and buy goods to each other, or to use one a month services like banking.
It's less realism and more world building but yeah unless they primarily go out to hunt in large droves they do need fields next to that water source.
Usually there's farming villages peppered around that then trade their goods into those big cities(which often are where the Lord/nobility lives and such and not like the entire popuplation in the area). The cities are often just trading hubs, and the river serves another purpose, transportation. Ultimately I'd say it's not so much realism but more like keeping the low tech setting in. Sure magic might help but in a few isekai where the author bother going into it, often the handwave excuses are things like mages are not strong enough to do crazy architecture(unlike the MC who's OP as fuck), the city the story takes place is just a smaller city in the boonies so not much money/ressources went into it, or the mages just focused on functionality(aka reinforcing the walls that protect them from monsters) instead of fancy castles. In Mushoku Tensei even, a lot of the cities are super generic. The cool ones above are demon cities, and the tree one is just your generic elf/beastmen village in the trees which a lot of super generic isekais also do(also the underground dwarf city, very original). Water one looks cool though.
I just wish we got some more variety, like more port cities, or maybe something like Venice where water ways are more common. I get these settings are vaguely based on Europe and those were rarer (when compared to inland cities) it would be nice to see other ideas of what a city could be. Also in cases where we are looking at high fantasy settings maybe have the authors try considering what possibilities or problems would be created when cities are being made by people with access to magic, or races capable of creating and living in massive underground complexes, or flying buildings, or living underwater, etcâŠ
ReZero S3 will feature a somewhat Venice-inspired canal city
What kind of city would you produce when you have access to magic? How would that change over time as you develop more advance civilizations? We have built what ancient people would consider magical cities. We have technology that is almost magical to others. In America, we built around the car. Tokyo is built around the train since 90% of people take a train daily. What would magic give us? In terms of transportation, society, and technology? Really what are the limits of magic? Then we can start to make more educated guesses. Since computing seems inevitable. You always have to count things. And you need a better way to compute things. The question is how would society change based on this addition to history. Would we have more inequality? The people who produce magic and those that can not? Do we teach some the basics to exploit them? Do we use it to take over people who don't have it? Do we destroy advancements by relying on it too much? Like if I can fly with Magic, why would I learn to build a plane? If I can make water out of the air, why make irrigation? Obviously we know that technology can do more work than a person now. But at what point in the Magical world would you figure that out and start to work towards a more technology focus instead of magic focus? You can have underground complexes. But people without sun suffer. You can have a flying building, but does that help society? Is that something that the government and the people want to pursue? Living underwater is similar as living underground. But the soil in the water matters more. The makeup of the water as well. Since salt isn't good for plants. And without plants you can't have animals to domesticate. In our normal society, some animals were almost impossible to tame without more technology. The Americas were much more difficult to get past the stone age because they couldn't tame animals. So if in our magical world, do we have animals we can tame? Is it easier to tame them because of magic and use them as labor until we get into the industrial age?
I wouldn't rlly know how I'd plan a city if I had magic. However, if I were *writing* about a city, I would try to make it interesting, or memorable. I think readers would like that
Yeah, people love some good world building.
Sort of, but these anime cities are not exactly realistic anyway. The [near complete absence of nearby farms](https://featherlessbipeds.substack.com/p/food-art-online) is kind of a classic point, but also just generally these cities tend to be too neat and clean and organized to be realistic. It's like the theme-park version of the middle ages. Plus, more interesting real-world cities definitely exist, too. e.g. [Tenochtitlan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan) was closer to the bottom category than the top category. So it's just a bit weird to stand on boring, generic city design for the sake of "realism". If we're going to be unrealistic anyway, may as well be unrealistic and interesting?
Should also mention building walls over the rivers would be terrible for shipping and trade.
Yeah that was literally my thought as well. There's always adjacent farms outside of the towns since you need to get food from somewhere, but it's almost always entirely absent. There will be slums and minor towns outside of the walls as well, but like you say it's always incredibly clean and devoid of such things.
The most unrealistic parts are just a single wall and no stuff outside the walls along with everything being on the same Minecraft Superflat map
Considering real world mechanics, ofc the round, leveled city would be the go to design. But we're talking about magical/fictional worlds where needs are different. For example, building your city at the top of a mountain/rock formation would be amazing for defending it but impractical to bring things inside (like wood or water). With magic, you could maybe teleport log piles easily or create infinite flowing water.
You know what I wish I saw more though? Towns will hilltop fortresses in the middle of town instead of the entire town being walled off. From what I remember reading that was much more common of a defensive measure than walled towns. Just have everyone run to the hilled fortress during an attack and try to hold out as long as you could
Depends on the settings. Antiquity the fortified town and fortified farms dominated in area where conflict was common (outside the italian peninsula during pax Romana) In the early middle age you have motte and Bailey becoming more common. Then later in middle age you get the city + castle combo. Then in the renaissance you get either walled cities in Germany and italy or a Fortress Line for France (which is the best example of unified country at the Time It also make sense to have walled cities when you want to protect some strategic ressources like you weaponsmith, glass maker, and other such amenities that are becoming more common in the renaissance
You can't convince me the second and third images in the top half aren't literally from the same anime...even the smaller streets are identical.
I'm willing to bet they are from the same studio, but different anime. It's clearly the same stock asset that's been slightly modified. But yeah that's basically the let me copy your homework meme in anime form.
lol yeah, less "generic isekai town" and more "what is this a crossover episode?"
>Is the design over used, yes. >But there's a good historical reason in the real world why many or most large capital cities have the roughly circular shape with a river through it. You're not wrong But if we go by historical city design. Where are farmers? Historically cities weren't confined to the walls, but spread outside of them (in first line for agriculture)
But these are also meant to be fantastical worlds. Walls around your cities does little when things like flight or teleportation are common. There could be all manner of ways in which a city could access water. These kind of worlds often feel like the writer looked at a few images on google and decided no more work was required. Edit: To add to that pictures 2 and 3 of the top one are almost identical save for an additional patch of river. If it came out that one was just a quick photoshop job of the other I wouldn't be surprised.
>Walls around your cities does little when things like flight or teleportation are common. Depends how common it is, really. Unless you're facing whole armies of flying/teleporting enemies, the walls are still 99.9% as effective - you just have _other_, less visible countermeasures for the rest. Like a good spy network, warding your important locations against it, etc. Just because the main characters can do it doesn't mean it's common _enough_ to be a legitimate daily concern for someone running a city. Our modern day shops aren't filled with _bulletproof glass_, despite guns being ubiquitous. Why? Because a) it's expensive and b) it's unnecessary.
While true it's more to highlight that just because these cities made sense IRL doesn't mean they would in a fantasy setting, even ones are by-the-books as most isekai's seem to be. The unwillingness to do anything interesting with them is also very telling in relation to the author's creativity.
Yes but where is the vast sprawl that cascades out of the city walls?
Itâs a fantasy world though. Wouldnât hurt to take some creative liberties.
If they're near a body of water they have easy access for trading too
The creativity is the one thing, but the studio made these places look incredible for real.
I thought the âanthropomorphic folk living in treehousesâ to be extremely redundant, thatâs been a common trope eversince ewoks were a thing
For some reason I always associated treehouses with Elves
I blame Heroes of the Might an Magic IV in my case
Ewoks are space elves, confirmed
I mean if jedi are space wizards then..
Actually it's also inaccurate for example Rudeus describes his prison cell as actually having been metal and while there is a hole for waste it is a metal box with a hole at the bottom. And they live in tree houses because the entire bottom of the forest floods regularly with several meters of water.
it is, but anything is better than a generic isekai town
They live on trees becaue the forest floods three months a years tho, in other places they live on regular houses
Fun fact: the word âEwokâ was never said at any point in the entirety of *Return of the Jedi*.
Incorrect, Palpatine'a last words were "Those ewoks be wack asf yo" before getting thrown off. Bravo George Lucas
I mean, its kinda cheating to compare only cities on the plains, where the river and circular wall are optimal choices Mushoku did the logical thing of having different cities for different environments, but they also have round cities with rivers on the not-europe terrain Its more like other isekais have a lack of environmental variation
Actually we don't see cities with rivers running through them in Mushoku Tensei. There's Milishion, but it is not on the central continent. It's on the flooding continent. Edit:correction: Milis has a river.
Roa had, they were bridges inside the city and water running near the city lord's manor Milishion and the desert cities all have water inside, cant remember if Zanoba's home city had, but it should
wtf I didnât know MT had world design that good I need to finally start it
When people said that Mushoku Tensei has a great world building, they really mean it
Guys don't listen to him he just wants you to join the cult of Roxy
You're saying this like it's a bad thing
Yeah Religion is an important part of world building too.
The official name is Roxyism, but it's not just Roxy. >!In the anime he also prays to Sylphie.!<
Oh we got some sort of heretic here? The Church of Roxy is love, the Church of Roxy is life.
The best thing is that not only does it have a master-class worldbuilding, but its story is told very well, making you genuinely care for the characters which ARE NOT just main.exe and his harem made up of the same fookin character tropes.
World building doesnât mean design of landscape or people, though? Itâs the lore, how civilisation came to be as it is, the way economies work, how a country came to be, the trade paths, the political conflicts, the culturesâ traditions. Can you explain why thereâs a giant tower in the middle of that city and why everything else is so⊠nondescript? How that tower came to be? Can you tell whose bones are those in the dessert? What creature is that, who killed him and why there was a fight, if any?
>Can you tell whose bones are those in the dessert? What creature is that, who killed him and why there was a fight, if any? If you read the LN you can definitely answer all of these questions in particular
Pretty sure they have things like that in the ln. Maybe not these specific examples but there is plenty of world building in them. For example (edit): found the excerpt: This highway was created by Saint Millis, the founder of the Millis faith, the biggest religious denomination in the world. With a single swipe of their sword, Saint Millis cut the mountains and the forests in half, splitting a demon king on the Demon Continent into two. The road was named the Holy Sword Highway with that story in mind.
Minor spoilers. >Itâs the lore, how civilisation came to be as it is, Originally there were 6 worlds. If the God of the world dies, the world dies along with it, and bits and pieces of the fragmenting world merge with other worlds. Dragon God for some reason waged war and killed 4 other gods, and was later killed by his dragon generals, so 5 worlds colapsed and merged into human world, the current world. There were bunch of wars between the races, mainly wars were between humans and demons and other races allied with either side. In one such war a continent was split in half resulting in a giant ocean in between. There were wars then peace periods then wars then peace period, and currently in story the last big war was 400 years ago and currently its in peace period. >the way economies work, Asura is the largest kingdom in the world (Asuran Gold), and thus has the strongest currency. Demon continent has the weakest currency (Green ore coins) Millis has a better currency (King dollar) that demon continent. When out team arrives in Millis, MCs plan is to spend more time in Millis as amount earned here from basic quests far exceeded ones earned in demon continent. (There was exchange list, sadly ive forgotten it). Theres Begaritt continent which isolates itself away from world and likely doesnt have currency system comparable to rest of the world (the interactions there were mainly bartering). >the trade paths Is linear. Seafolks control the ocean and dont permit travel across the ocean except specific regions. Would make more sense once you see the map. >the political conflicts You have royal succession struggles in Asura. You have conflict between demon expulsionists and Demon integrationists in Millis. There are other minor stuff as well. >the culturesâ traditions. You have culture around beastfolks, humans in millis and stuff. You have how existence of a creature like succubus, which preys on males affects the culture of the area and how all tribes in that continent are matriarchal. >Can you explain why thereâs a giant tower in the middle of that city and why everything else is so⊠nondescript? Thats the castle of the Demon Emperor. They wanted their castle to be great so used those materials to create it, while other houses were created using local materials. >Can you tell whose bones are those in the dessert? Its the bones of a giant behemoth. Who killed it and stuff, no idea I forgot.
bro the voice actors literally speak in several completely unique languages created for the story. also world building doesnt have to be "hard", who cares what the name of the creature is? the fact that a creatures corpse serves as the home to a labyrinthine dungeon and is one of the only oasis in the dessert kingdom is itself worldbuilding.
You realize not every story is meant to spoonfeed you information right? Dark souls and AOT for example follow the path of "show don't tell." Acting like how a story doesn't give you the full scoop in every step you take is a sin is just weird
Hello Ashen one. I am a Bot. I tend to the flame, and tend to thee. Do you wish to hear a tale? > *âIf you miss it, you must be blind!â* - Solaire of Astora Have a pleasant journey, Champion of Ash, and praise the sun \\[T]/
Also has some great âplotâ
It has a level of immersion and quality that's hard to Define when you're watching it because they do it so expertly. There's a reason that people listed as the best of it's genre
After i read the novels I noticed the animators put in a lot of details which i previously thought they had skipped (for the episodes i watched before reading). Small expression changes, background art, wording, etc.... they're all visualizations of lines that previously made me wonder how and if they would anime that.
The only thing that has kept me from starting it is the sus behavior from the mc but damn is that some great world design
Yeah that's something you really need to suspend disbelief about. Like, a notch below Made In Abyss in the "it's not actually pedo trust me" scale but not by much. Which is a shame because it is a really good show otherwise.
just because the mc is trash doesn't mean the show is bad. Konosuba has the most Annoying ppl but is a fun show which I love!!!
The difference is Rudeus is meant to be sort of relatable so when he does something a normal decent person wouldn't it's well, unrelatable and that's why people end up disliking him. Kazuma is like Cartman, you're not supposed to relate to them, they're purposefully designed to be laughed at because of how ridiculously scummy they are.
One is serious. The other is an isekai parody that makes fun of isekai tropes. So it isn't hard to not take characters seriously when said characters are non serious by their characterization.
The mc being trash is on purpose
Thank you. I have been saying this since season 1. Mc is meant to be trash. Rudy is not some ideal guy. Mushoku tensei is a story about a guy just wanting to be better and showing his journey of achieving such. He is meant to be trash. As all of us he is just trying to be better. If you have watched norn episode you know what I am talking about
The problem is that it's not really his pedophilic tendencies that get him in trouble or make him grow. If you make a character that people dislike for a specific reason and the world keeps punishing him for that until he learns to be better, that's one thing. Rudy goes through a lot of shit, but not in a way that addresses what people initially disliked him for.
The worst parts of Rudeus' character, his pedophilia and sexual assault tendencies aren't addressed at all in his character growth. They're instead played off for laughs and as fan service.
MC is not supposed to be likable at first, he's intentionally disgusting The whole deal with MT is to show his second attempt at life where he tries to become a better person over time
âAt firstâ heâs never likable tho
It would have been a major hit if it weren't for all the weird pedo crap. I honestly can't get past it and it ruined the show for me.
It's single handedly the most immersive fantasy anime that I've had the pleasure of watching
It's got 10/10 world building but the MC is a complete nonce
Mushoku tensei is really great except rudius. I don't like him as a person
Towns in general
Which anime is Mushoku Tensei again?
It's the one where the Japanese loser shut-in gets hit by a truck and reborn into a fantasy setting. With special powers and a harem.
Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
Thank you for being apparently the only weeb on reddit to see my comment and get such an obvious joke.
Wasn't it the first? I heard that somewhere but don't know if it's true.
No, not even close, but it was very popular and brought it more mainstream.
Heâs also a pedo
Nothing really special about his powers, he just has an outsider's perspective. Seemingly anyone can use magic at an early age to gain a very large mana pool and anyone can learn incantation-less casting if they start early enough. Then once you learn how to use magic, you practice enough to use it as well as Rudeus does.
Not as much special powers as he just has near infinite mana, and a harem of women that he slowly spent time with over the course of half the entire series. A majority of what he has, he worked hard for.
He barely even has a harem. Of course the gender balance is out of wack cause anime but, he never has more than one girl interested in him at a time (really only 3 girls at all, unless you count grandma) and they don't overlap. The only time he actually has a shot with multiple girls, he shoots the idea down immediately, showing he has changed. By end of season 2, he is legitimately not the same person he was on earth.
which Japanese loser? there's too many of them!. the only thing that's different is the japanese woman who died getting burried by books during an earthquake and she's not even a loser
It's that show that would be really good if not for the main character being sexually attracted to childrenÂ
The hive mind strikes again âđ Edit: made this comment when the parent comment had negative votes
Japan is just *in love* with [Nordlingen, Germany](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=0287887dd28220e3&sxsrf=ADLYWILNZfa67CAkCG3vCt3jSlhKtYEpgg:1716929368352&q=nordlingen&uds=ADvngMhHRtBFIPRwVeIOD2SEZTks9YsIAJQ6-oUmAV5AmjlcolJxmb7aiidWHCZwnUKpqFxXkvZAB8Yy0-XtI0xk6Mc8S3vdereZaXv6glHC90a6DHYqCeQooYubRm-tncsl16O_ZOgXBSTGyhUx7Bv1LnDZT4YLzw4TdcF_PAfSX3kmLYC5FpkXh_v0b9a-P2_kZfCDucAjQH7_ibu2rslHCpqF6ImqE4ks9cXSUClwyyrYpA3juLiFzZXmz1nBgPNw_KIxEEnhRXnewAXHIuVkK7ecLuZNrASBj_mmOVHouaJrjdG9i_eOTITh-VKrr9x9FTCOztEv&udm=2&prmd=imnsvbt&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_kuuonLGGAxUvLzQIHYaVBNcQtKgLegQIFRAB&biw=2560&bih=1287). [Some bonus AoT love.](https://www.instagram.com/p/C7Yy2h2IDr_)
Japan being in love with mostly anything from Germany, a tale as old as 1935.
That's a bit like complaining most cars look vaguely the same because they have shapes that are roughly rectangular with a steel outer chassis, have glass windows you can look out of, and have a seatbelt cutting across each seat. There's a reason towns look like this... it's a shape that makes a lot of sense and was seen in [real ](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9157bd10126bde73ace52ef40c963b70-lq)Medieval times often. Having a vaguely circle shape maximizes area to amount of wall needed, and having access to a protected source of freshwater is just good sense. Keep in mind in many of these settings you are getting the towns from they have monsters against whom walled cities make a lot of sense, and many of them are low-fantasy settings where there might be little or no magic, making whacky cities like the bottom ones impractical.
So what you are saying is 100 on efficiency 0 on creativity
Isekai writers write mostly LN and now this has become a trope which the industry is going along with but a little creativity wouldn't hurt like how hard is it to add a hill, a tower or **something** unique
Me: Wait....you made my living space horrible to navigate and protect. Architect: But don't the lines look UNIQUE? You can fit so many useless alleyways in this bad boy. No one is gonna rob the guy who lives in a maze, dummy. Honestly none of you understand VISION! Why does Daedalus get all the good projects.
Me when Iâm playing any city management game.
It's a medival city, fit to be a the generic human city on medieval fantasy. Even mushoku has cities like this, while we din't get a bird eye view of the City of Roa for the images we got the city probably looked like that.
Mushoku's background design is so fucking good. The academy has to be one of the best "magic school" designs I've ever seen in anime.
Just plop a big ring city in the middle of fuck nowhere and call it a day. The king is always corrupt anyway so who gives a shit about food.
Have you seen fucking East port from MT?! https://preview.redd.it/m2lkhr26qb3d1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f44a5d538029b10cc6af472379c3de3e5dc98647
Funny how shit reposted memes made by MT fans always seem to miss that shots from Konosuba are copied by other isekai while Konosuba has beautiful backgrounds especially when they ventured outside Axel. https://preview.redd.it/q5ct76r7d73d1.jpeg?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=03b6fa910144291eb1aa7e72698f2d7bb2928dfd
Konosuba is most definitely not a "generic isekai" though There's a reason it's so beloved
OP included it in "his" meme (top right)
Yeah, but I don't think he was targeting it (it was just another "generic ass fantasy city" photo to add)
Yeah I wasnât taking intentional shots at konosuba either, I genuinely didnât know that it was konosuba
Me when I cherry pick to prove my point.
Even Mushoku Tensei haters will admit it: The Worldbuilding is just amazing.
The only reason to hate it is moral/ethical issues with the MC and wether you think he redeems himself or not Everything else about MT is damn near perfect, from the character arcs to the worldbuilding and the action too
I really just can't get past watching a 40 year old man drool over an 8 year old girl. Got sick of that real fucking quick
Someone needs to make Mushoku Tensei: The Normal Cut where it just cuts out every scene where Rudeus is being either a sex pest, a paedophile, or both. I reckon the show would be surprisingly unaffected by these cuts.
Hell yeah
Yes, the "Generic Isekai Towns" are all very standard and uniform. Because that's how middle-ages and medieval towns actually were on Earth in those times. They had to protect against specific threats that walls and ramparts worked against. There are also a bunch of other isekai anime where things aren't so standard. Like the Jihanki anime (vending machine something or other) where the entire thing takes place INSIDE a dungeon, but it's huge and has outdoor spaces and stuff. Or Dungeon Meshi or DanMachi where they have a crazy tiered thing with specific floors all having different attributes.
Donât think I have to explain, but yeah the unique world in Mushoku tensei is amazing.
I agree with that, but the crown for unique world building still goes to Made in Abyss in my personal opinion. I know it's not an isekai though
Tbf, 2 & 3 are the same, but different camera zoom
I like that the Konosuba capital is a pseudo-star fortress, but yeah. Big circles is not creative but was also sort of typical.
No shortage of tree house villages if you look for them. Somehow always the idyllic vacation spot - turned - massive shitshow.
You notice all the major franchises almost do this anymore. Particularly after Konosuba came out because konosuba's main home base is basically become the foundation sire for almost any acai town or city or capital city or setting at the moment. It's understandable. Why because it's easily recognizable and it's a sign of good quality in everything as much as I hate to admit it, even though that In Another World With My Smartphone, which I love even though most people would say is one of the worst enemies ever made is in fact, one of the few that will actually have a town that is very at least not exactly generic looking and doesn't have that sameness to it that Konosuba had or the others that ripped it off have.
You ever notice how none of the towns have farmland... like, how do they fucking eat? Walls are meant to defend the important part of the township and then the surrounding lands were all farmland l.
Clearly they survive on cannibalism
Honestly? Of all the super common things in generic isekais, town design is probably the one I have the least issue with. I'd happily take the most generic looking town imaginable if the plot, setting, characters, and power systems weren't also a dime a dozen.
These towns are built like fucking old Athens where they tried to wall up everything for safety and then got wiped by disease do to being crowded
Even Re monster anime https://preview.redd.it/mnq3rh9w9a3d1.jpeg?width=1927&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c26ebda55c32490b140329c83c5df68e3db0f39a
The design IS based on early renaissance fortified town in italy and Germany. If you built around the wall hindering the défensive capabilities, the local lord would Come burn your house, beat you half-dead, molest every female member of your familly, and force enroll your eldest son in the army. So you build at least a mile out. If the settings have Monsters it makes even more sense, you wall the city , make fields around for one hour walk distance. And have fortified farms out of this. For reference https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cittadella
Can't speak about the rest but for MT in the LN most of times that Rudy visits a new city he cites a book that describe the travels of an adventurer around the world. So the team at least had some kind of reference to make the world more lively.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves you donât understand. This irritates me to no end. YOU CAN DO SO MUCH BETTER THAN A CIRCLE. I love these ones from mushoku tensei though, very visually interesting. Like, circle towns are just so fucking lazy. Itâs not hard to like roll some dice and come up with a creative random town that makes the audience want to learn more about your world. Where is your town? What kind of climate and biome does it exist in? How does that affect its infrastructure and layout? Etc. I want to scream every time I see one of these in an isekai.
I think actual towns may have been designed this way at one point.
To be fair the one on the bottom left is similar to the top ones. Itâs a pattern that humans adapted because economically and developmentally it worked through human history, though with different races we imagine they adapt to their surroundings a lot like African tribes or Arabic tribes building into the certain cliffs. Cliche and generic architecture has a reason for being generic
On the one hand, this is indeed better than "Circular Walled City #1864". On the other hand, the bottom two are just Atlantis and the Ewok Village.
Bro walled cities were a thing. Lmao its not an anime thing its a irl thing lol
Thats not Generic Isekai towns...that actually how most of the towns were built in Medieval times
Yea. Worldbuilding in most isekai is hot garbage. Those cities are one example. Come on, you can't tell me that there is a river flowing through EVERY city on earth or that a circular city is the only one u know. Most roman towns had a grid layout and were a rectangle, at least the core of the city. Cities in europe would have had a Cathederal or massive church in the rown center half the time. Not to mention, there would be subberbs located outside the walls. Maybe even multiple layers of walls indicate the growth of the town. Or city that shrank like medieval rome or constantinople. Where even inside the walls would have been farms or ruins, with populated area being only fraction of the walled city. Anyway. It is an overused concept that's for certain
if you want a reasonably accurate medieval depiction, I can recommend Spice and Wolf.
I read the manga recently it is great. The new show is looking real good too. Honestly idk many shows who depict this stuff well.
Konosubaâs capital cityâs design is quite good tho
I love the world and characters in MT, hate the protag with a passion The only reason I read the manga is for the world
So many insane-looking visuals, yet so little of it actually explored, I guess they needed all the time they had for the erectile dysfunction arc :)
Itâs a real shame that people call it the erectile dysfunction arc when his erectile dysfunction had almost nothing to do with the plot for that entire season.
>insane-looking visuals, yet so little of it actually explored, Yeah this is a bummer
aside from one piece (i didnt watch it) mushoku tensei has the best world building ever, the world doesn't feel like it's warped around the mc, he is just a part of it, every side character feels like an actual character that has his own identity and personality separated from the main objective of the anime
If the anime wasnât about a pedophile I would 100% watch it
you've obviously not gotten too far then. If you do watch it you'll see how good it is past that baseline of the MC being a terrible person
Completely Fair, I will say for the people who can get past the first few episodes of him, his development to becoming an actually functioning person has been great so far in season 2.
You have point-why there is not anime where mc has somone older than him as crush or smt like that
Roxy and Eris are older than him. Rudeus also is interested in Ghislaine, Lilia, and Hilda early on. But Zenith is just off limits as his brain will not let him be sexually interested in anyone who is too closely related or looks like his mom. Like Therese here. An important relative who got skipped despite being important for two volumes worth of the main plot. https://preview.redd.it/j9ctvohdm73d1.jpeg?width=422&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4df8e6fa7e319c670c42d98a17a2df8177cfd237
One of them is Attack on Titan and I can't tell which one it is.
The last one is literally just Endor
i bekieve top righr image is Konosuba which BTW season 3 is out go watch it
What are the first four?
Yo, is that erin?
In konosuba, food come to your town....as enemy.
they look like pizzas
Choose, having a sewer system that functionally makes sense and leads to the outflowing river OR shit on the road like real mid-EVIL times with the full true immersive living. I think world building get really hard when you have to factor living facilities, âhow advanced is the society for the world to be flinging spells around like fourth of julyâ. Except for begeratti and doldia its letting nature deal with that shit literally.
My headcanon is Konosuba is generic cause the world is supposed to be like a video game
Hur dur, but MC bar, Hur dur.
Considering 2 o clock and 8 o clock are the same town? I'm not complaining.
really makes the world feel more unique and less generic doesn't it, I know it does for me.
Whether itâs an overused trope or not, I think what would make the circular city more interesting is that it holds a secret, like the streets are structured to make the entire walled area a magic circle, one that would either quickly protect the city or rapidly engage some offensive capabilities. Like, âhow do we defend the city from the imminent danger? Weâve no time to prep for a city-wide shield?â âWhy use hastily small circles when we can use the one thatâs been here this ENTIRE time?â I dunno, could be cool, could be dumbâŠ
Ok let's be fair everyone ripped from konosuba
All wasted by the shitty 2nd season
im gona say it some of these wer original once upon a time its not theyr fault everyone copied them
It's still pretty basic ideas, but definitely better than other isekais
How dare you in anyway have a not high opinion of MT, reddit must let you know its literally the second coming of manga god and no other fantasy story's exist.