They do the isekai thing so then the world building happens naturally as we watch the clueless dork explore the fantasy world and encounter stuff.
Otherwise you have to find ways to explain stuff to the audience when the characters grew up in that world and should already know all about it, so don’t need to discuss things.
Otherwise you have to find ways to explain stuff to the audience when the characters grew up in that world and should already know all about it, so don’t need to discuss things.
…you mean worldbuild organically like any other story set in a universe that isn’t our own? Countless shows and stories have been doing that for centuries, why should anime get a special little exception?
Hard to do with the axe hanging over your head. “Sorry, but chapter 3 didn’t score high enough in our magazine poll so we’re killing your serialization.”
And for centuries they have been struggling to find good ways to present that newly built world in a natural way. Just because good examples exist doesnt make it an easy thing to accomplish. Bad fantasy stories have also existed for centuries.
You may call it lazy, but you gotta admit that with isekai settings presenting a new world is easy and natural.
And its not like only animes use that. Harry poter, Narnia, Peter Pen, Alice In Wonderland, Tron Legacy etc etc… All have clueless main characters finding themselves in a new world.
The first work of art to find an “easy and natural” storytelling shortcut gets to reap the benefits. By the 79th work to abuse the same shortcut, the novelty has worn off and the downsides to the plot become clearer. A cliche is born.
It’s well and good to say “stories have failed plenty without including cliches”, but do understand what you are defending – an eternity of knights on white horses, "I am your father"s, third acts speeches about the power of friendship, women in refrigerators. Personally I think it’s probably healthy that some tropes become cliches and die.
I think this is often what amnesia is so common in fiction, too, despite being extremely rare in the real world. It provides a convenient plot device, both to perform exposition and for some inevitable gotcha behind either their identity, how they lost their memory, or some other major revelation from their past (seriously, has there ever been a case of amnesia in fiction where they didn’t conveniently forget some big, plot relevant thing?).
One way to do it is to start with a character that is native to the world but new to the social circles and strata of the story. So that the specific contexts of the story are also new to the character.
Maybe start the charachter in a profession that exsists in our world. The farmboy start like in wheel of time. Or the butcher start like in soaring the heavens. After all most pre industrial people wouldnt have traveled far from their place of birth and wouldnt know much about the world at large.