What I find interesting about the isekai trope is that it’s a portal fantasy where usually the hero doesn’t go back through the portal. The traditional way of looking at a hero or heroine’s journey with a trip, literal or metaphorical, to the underworld is that then at the end the MC goes back, changed, to their “real” world and decide to stay or leave their community from there.
Usually that choice is taken away with isekai type stories and the actual ending is going to see them adapt to this new world, and flourish, fail to do that, or change the new world and flourish (or end horribly lol). This can lead to what western audiences consider unsatisfying or at least open endings; or tragic ones, which western audiences are more likely to also consider unsatisfying than ones from East Asia. But it also makes them less predictable to western audiences and I’m wondering if that’s why we’re seeing them more often - it feels fresh
