Be or not to be, isekai of today...or was it yesterday?

Korppi

Something's been nagging at the back of my mind for a while. Browsing here, elsewhere, on novelupdates...most of the listed isekai titles appear to be tagged 'ongoing', vs 'completed'. Which is a little strange as normally you'd expect that ratio to be the opposite for any one media genre. And seeing as new ones are popping up like mushrooms after a rainy season...

So, with that in mind I can only see two scenarios: One, there really are not many that have completed and we're heading towards a biiig rocky wall with ever increasing speed and the vehicle has no breaks because it didn't have room for both them and the rocket motor...or two: situation normal, we're just seeing a sphere of interest centered around current ongoing releases and less attention paid to the backloHOLY HECK HOW MUCH ARE WE MISSING!?(I yest （＾ｖ＾）)

Just for curiosity's sake, could someone knowledgeable enough elaborate on the statistics?

Hosikuzu

There are probably hundreds of isekai web novels that petered out or LN series that got cancelled after one or two low-performing books, and they're simply not on anybody's radar here for the same reason that they never made any headwaves in Japan either.

The popular series, though, well, they're popular: why end them when they can keep making money? The isekai LN boom isn't that old, relatively speaking, and precisely because the market is (arguably) oversaturated and very hit or miss, you don't want to drop a cash cow (or even just a modest, steady paycheck) when you don't know whether or not your new series is going to make the same splash.

Terrence

There's at least one light novel publishing company who has, like, 3 completed series total regardless of genre. The company I'm thinking of has been around for almost 6 years.

Edit: I think it's Overlap actually.

shrike_al

Of all isekai series, the only ones I'm aware of have been completed are only Mushoku Tensei and Shield Hero, and that's only referring to their WN versions. Even the Death March WN is still continuing.

Terrence

Bluesteel Blasphemer was completed (cancelled with a rushed ending).

This is completed:

The Simple Job of Only Perishing to the Hero/Yuusha ni Horobosareru Dake no Kantan na Oshigoto Desu https://forums.j-novel.club/post/21169

Most of the other completed series aren't that well known and shorter series. Some Shoujo type stuff.

Here's a list of completed fantasy light novel series available digitally on Bookwalker. There's 243, but that includes general fantasy, not just Isekai (no way to pair it down on the site that I can see).

https://bookwalker.jp/tag/146/?acode=WpfPW3yk

38 of them are in the 11-20 volume range.
12 in the 21-30 range
2 in the 30-51 range.
Again, those include general fantasy works

If you take off the completed tag, there are 1,412 fantasy light novel series. So, a 17% completion rate?

paulnamida

@shrike_al Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken is also finished as well. Arifureta is technically complete as well, what's getting updated now is the after story, and since it has as many chapters as the main story it should be considered a separate series IMO. Bakarina WAS complete with 2 volumes in it's WN era, when it got picked up for publishing, the author went beyond that