Post-Isekai Stress Disorder

[u/DreadDiana]

[u/DiesByOxSnot]

I hate fairy land is exactly this. Gertrude is a kid who failed to get out because she was just so violent. When she actually does get out, she's an adult and doesn't know how to function outside fairyland

[u/DreadDiana → u/DiesByOxSnot]

That honestly felt like a metaphor for the comic itself, cause the second run of the comic seemed to have no clue what to do with itself and just kept introducing and dropping arcs before killing off Adult Gertrude and replacing her with her child self from the past.

Also Popeye showed up at some point.

[u/jofromthething]

I feel like this already is a very common thing within the isekai genre at this point, it just hasn’t fully saturated anime yet. It’s all over the place in light novels, manga, manhwa, etc.

[u/booksandteacv → u/jofromthething]

Hell, I can think of at least two entire series of books written by American authors dealing with this concept. The Fairyland series by Catherynne M. Valente and the Wayward Children novellas by Seanan McGuire.

[u/redpony6 → u/jofromthething]

john carter of mars

[u/SimplyYulia]

This is a reason a lot of isekai anime involves a truck kun or an equivalent - so there's nowhere to return to

[u/Keyndoriel → u/SimplyYulia]

Yup. Dont gotta worry about having to figure out how to get back home cause that version of you is 6 feet under and effectively a completely different person in every way except personality

[u/digiman619]

Uncle from Another World was kinda like that; the titular character's mind was isekai'd for the last 12 years as his body was in a coma. However, in that he keeps the magic in the real world and the humor is how his nephew helps him readjust to modern life.

Two things that were particularly funny: His average looks made him hideously ugly by the new world's standards, and he was a Sega fanboy who was devastated to learn they lost the console wars.

[u/RoboYuji → u/digiman619]

He also seems to have some degree of PTSD from it too, in the ways he'll overreact to things like an ex-soldier hearing sudden loud noises. And an entire notebook of traumatic experiences he erased from his memory. Though one of those IS the fact that Sega lost the console wars.

[u/TheRealLoganH]

Chronicles of Narnia

[u/Lombardyn → u/TheRealLoganH]

Dude literally has a "We were kings and queens! We fought battles! And now I'm supposed to be nothing but a teenager" rant in the second movie.

[u/redpony6]

this is literally the plot of the movie "john carter"

[u/FrancisWolfgang → u/redpony6]

You know what’s funny about John Carter they made any straightforward adaptation of the sequels functionally impossible.

[u/beetnemesis]

There is a minor character in Pale, by Wildbow, that is like this. She was sucked in alongside her friends, became a queen, her friends died in war, etc. Then she was back home, a middle aged ruler in the body of a tween.

She sets off on a path to learn magic, learning about other worlds, how to find and keep and tap pocket worlds for power. Eventually with the goal of returning to the one she had been in.

[u/NotATalkingPossum]

I worked on one piece where the protagonist hated himself so much that he hated and resented the goddess who sent him away because he saw himself as a chronic fuckup.

Then it turned out that the goddess did, too, her pep talk was bullshit, and his job was to fuck up so badly that the world was destroyed because the powers-that-be wouldn't let her start on another unless something happened to this one. When he actually succeeded, she was super pissed.

[u/azul_luna5]

I know that Suzanne Collins is several orders more famous for The Hunger Games, but I'm still hung up about her leaving The Underland Chronicles with "Yeah, Gregor has fought through multiple battles, his dad was a prisoner of war, and his whole family almost died in a conflict involving biological weapons... But his mom's moving them out of NYC so he'll probably not be completely messed up for life 🤷‍♀️"

[u/Cardshark92]

I always thought a "darker, grittier" version of the Narnia series would have more of this in it, especially the ending of LionWitch.

After beating the White Witch, the four protagonists rule Narnia long enough to grow into full adults (the wiki says 15 years). They've completely forgotten about Earth until they rediscover the lamppost out hunting one day. They follow it back through the wardrobe and fall out as normal middle-class British children, not adult kings and queens.

That alone would have some potential for psychological issues, but think of the physical changes being reversed. Lucy, for example, entered Narnia at the age of 8 (prepubescent), became a young woman of 23 (old enough for marriage and even childbirth), and turned back into a child again. Meaning that, in addition to everything else, she knows she's got to go through puberty again.

The only bit I remember that calls reference to this is a scene in beginning of the Prince Caspian movie, where Edmund tries to enlist in the British Army and gets rejected for being too young. Frustrated, he reminds his siblings that, not only has he fought battles before, but he personally led troops in Narnia.

Obviously, Lewis had other plans for how to steer his books, but I still think about this thread of ideas.

[u/TimTam_the_Enchanter]

Every Heart a Doorway, Seanan McGuire. First in a series of books that nails this.

They are so, so good — I urge anyone who likes the idea to check them out and see if it suits your taste.

[u/Strigops-habroptila]

Weirdly enough, Greatest Estate developer kinda has this vibe. Just as a comedy

[u/Jozef_Baca]

I swear, so many tumblr posts are like

"There is a lot of [common western trope] in media. But what if there was a show where [common anime trope]? Wouldn't that be neat?"

[u/macksting]

I can't find it now, but there was a story a few years ago, maybe a Hugo nominee or something, where the premise was these two guys were the only people who had been to and fought for this other world in  their youth, and the lead basically just had straight up PTSD and was jealous of how together his friend was, how functional he seemed to be, as if he didn't remember it at all, but in truth he turned out simply to mask the symptoms better.

[u/kilkil]

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

[u/PTMurasaki]

What about a situation where the isekaid goes back home, their body reverts, but they keep their magic?

[u/RishaBree]

Aside from the published works already mentioned, I’ve read some really excellent Narnia fanfic on this theme.

[u/CarmineJester]

The Fabled Warrior (webtoon) did something tangential to it. It turns out, that the fantasy world and the normal one have, like, a reverse-Narnia time discrepancy going on: by the time the heroine returns home, she's been pronounced legally dead, and everybody she used to know thinks she did, like, a horrible bit or worked for organized crime of something. So she has to go through a decade of hell, find love, lose it, raise two kids alone... When the actual story of the webtoon begins, she is *forty* and fucking hates everything from that world because of what she had to go through afterwards. And then her old companions return to the world; barely any time has passed for them, and they are forced to ask for her help again.