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[scriver]

My post got eaten by the internet so I'll just post this little query for you to argue about: is Harry Potter Isekai?

[Reelya]

Probably not, because Hogwarts is inside the real world and you can enter and leave it at will. If Hogwarts was isekai, then a series about boarding school or going to prison would be isekai.

Almost anything could be called isekai then. If you consider the Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey stuff, then you have the "ordinary world" of the characters then they enter the "special world" where they have to learn the rules that apply to them, then at the end they emerge back to the "ordinary world". This is one of the most common overall plot structures. A good example is The Shire in Lord of the Rings. The Shire is the default "ordinary world" of the Hobbits, and everything else in Middle Earth is the Special World. If we start saying that Hogwarts is isekai because Hogwarts is a hidden location in the real world, then what about for example, Skull Island in the King Kong movies? There are plot elements of isekai that of course are the same as any other "fish out of water" story, but that goes as much for, for example, "Beverley Hills Cop" or Jackie Chan going to the wild west in Shanghai Noon as it does for any isekai.

Yeah, so Harry Potter isn't isekai because a school isn't a world, no matter how much magic there is. And otherwise, isekai would also be so broad as to be useless as as description. It's best that isekai is reserved for describing people transported to alternate dimensions/worlds.

If there are any grey areas / edge-cases, i'd be inclined to pick ones like Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars / Barsoom novels, and the type of ones with a hollow earth and entire races / nations down there that don't connect with the surface.

[Frumple]

Uh, yeah, HP is explicitly not isekai. The concept/genre is based on someone getting transported to another world/dimension (the word itself more or less literally means 'different world'), usually (though not always) with no way back and without much in the way of consent or warning. Hidden societies and whatnot just don't fall under its umbrella. Hollow earth stuff would probably be close-ish, but generally if it's on the same planet (or you used common infrastructure to get to another one) it just doesn't count.

If you were looking for more western or classic examples that could slot into the concept, well... the wiki page on the subject has some good ones. The Wizard of Oz probably counts, ferex

[Flying Dice]

By that logic nearly every cultivation novel is a multiple-iteration isekai, which sounds remarkably fitting in terms of quality connotations.

[pikachu17]

You know, in My Hero Academia, its said that Deku's quirk is a lot like All-Mights. Except, how is this case?
Does All-Might appear to glow when he uses his power? No.
Does his power hurt himself? No.

[Egan_BW]

Someone should rewrite Alice in Wonderland but with isekai tropes.

[Tack]

The glowing is for our benefit. The injury is because he hasn’t toughened up to the power enough yet.


Also, Alice as an isekai is worrying.

[Frumple]

I'm like 80% sure there's multiple "reincarnated/transported into wonderland" stories out there, really. Can't recall if I've seen one done raw isekai style, but...

By that logic nearly every cultivation novel is a multiple-iteration isekai, which sounds remarkably fitting in terms of quality connotations.

Lots of cultivation novels are definitely isekai, yeah, inasmuch as the term can be applied generally to begin with. I wouldn't say nearly every one, but plenty are.

... that said, the general morass of cultivation novels largely share general quality level with isekai even when there's not fairly explicit overlap otherwise. If I've noticed a broad brush difference between the two, it's that, perhaps terrifyingly, isekai tends to have more ethical main characters doing less heinous things less regularly.

[Egan_BW]

Forgive my ignorance, what's a cultivation novel?

[Cruxador]

Forgive my ignorance, what's a cultivation novel?

A novel centering around the cultivation of qi in order to become much more powerful and, eventually, immortal. It's a classic element of xianxia, and since xuanhuan is basically a mix of xianxia and western genres it's also common in that.

EDIT: Here's a deep and insightful comparison between that and the Japanese LNs:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Frumple]

It's not necessarily Qi and the immortality bit is fairly conditional, but yeah, more or less. Think MMORPG scaling mechanics as a core plot point without necessarily having an explicit system... with more or less exactly what that means vis a vis the MC (and others) level of power. Gather power units, level up, gather more power units. Cultivate your whatever until you can break mountains and kill gods. _{Probably commit genocide at some point or another, or at least murder lots of people and steal their stuff.}

I read more than is probably healthy (because holy shit the main characters tend to be some variety of scum), mostly because they're one of the few bits of fiction where people fairly regularly bludgeon each other with parts of the landscape. If you ever see me mention punch magic or fooxia, it's probably a reference to this stuff.

[Zangi]

You know, in My Hero Academia, its said that Deku's quirk is a lot like All-Mights. Except, how is this case?
Does All-Might appear to glow when he uses his power? No.
Does his power hurt himself? No.

All-Might literally passes on his quirk to Deku.
Deku is still a young teen.  Sure, he is physically fit by the time he attain's All-Might's powers, but that is just the very minimal requirement to attaining the power. 
Deku does not have the benefit of growing into All-Might's quirk, as other teens of his age had with their own quirks.  Deku also has the issue of handling a quirk which is basically the epitome of raw power in the My Hero Academia universe.  Deku hurts himself because he can't properly control this immense new power, all his attacks are at 100% power.  It becomes less of an issue as the series progresses/Deku grows and learns.

The glowing is more creative license of animators, rather then... canon.

[NRDL]

It's also possible that the way One For All is expressed is different, depending on the user. I don't think Nana Shimura was shown ever using the power, so we can't be sure everybody else used the power like All Might. No reason to think Deku is just this weird electric green outlier.

[JoshuaFH]

There's also just the matter that One For All increases in strength as it is used and cultivated by its holder. So Deku has a stronger version of it than All Might had, in addition to having a weaker body that can't handle it. It logically progresses that if the quirk continues to be passed down, it'll eventually just become a worthless quirk that is way too fucking strong for anyone to use it, killing the holder on any usage whatsoever; though at that point it'd probably only ever fall into the hands of people who have an additional quirk of amazing personal durability or self-healing or somesuch.

[pikachu17]

You are somehow missing my point, Zangi.
I am not asking why it hurts Deku.
I am asking why in-universe people say that the two powers are similar.
True, we have always known the reason that it hurt Deku.
However, it doesn't hurt All Might. That was my point. To people in-story, that would be quite a difference.
They don't know the reasons why it hurts Deku (or at least at the time. I am not up to date).
I guess the glowing lines being non-canon means I only have the slightest of legs to stand on until he gets extra non-All Might-like power.