Isn't that fanfic?
No, it's not fanfic. It's not set in another continuity, it's just their own fantasy worlds are even less unique than ours. They have fanfic too of course.
> it's just their own fantasy worlds are even less unique than ours
They do have many more fantasy worlds though, not being as unique means they have room for many many more and better ones. I do feel western authors focuses too much on being different so often they make things bad just to not be like the others.
Do copyright rules exist differently in Japan than the US? Can you imagine if I created a movie that occurs within the accepted Star Wars universe so that my protagonist was from a planet called Tatooine who had a sister that was a princess? I would be sued into oblivion.
Re:The Moral Economy of the Shire
by BlarfMcFlarf on Tuesday June 04, 2024 @12:21PM
(#40576138)
Of course you do the copyright scrubbing. Tatooine/Force/Jedi becomes Batoone/Energy/Cyberist(or something similarly inexplicable).
Japanese fantasy works on a system where you look at whatever novel is currently popular, copy every surface/world detail from it, then add exactly one thing you wanted it to be all along and just talk about all the time. It's basically done for SEO reasons, but it means you can save all the setup time if every story is in the same medieval isekai that vaguely feels like Dragon Quest.
So yes, there are stories that are just about forex speculation with elves or whatever. Spice and Wolf is one.
I feel like Western writers also used to do this, but the difference is they'd copy D&D and instead make the story about the super complex magic system they made up, and frankly I don't want to hear about your magic system.