Date Published: May 19th, 2025

How To Create An Isekai Manga

The isekai genre is all about characters being transported to another world. Whether the world is fantasy, sci-fi, or even within a video game, the highlight of this genre is showing characters exploring this new world along with the readers.

Know Your Subgenre

Isekai can cover a wide variety of subgenres. Before you begin to create your isekai series, first decide on the subgenres you want to include.
Isekai is most commonly combined with these subgenres:

Fantasy (High fantasy, supernatural, etc.)
Video Game (Otome, RPG, etc.)
Science Fiction

These genres may also be written differently depending on the demographic (shoujo, shounen, josei, or seinen.)

Create A World Your Readers Would Want To Explore

Isekai is all about characters being transported to another world. Therefore, you want to ensure that the world they are travelling to is interesting to read about.

Believable Character Types: Develop unique characters within your world. While you may include humans, try also including other beings that are unique to your world.

Interesting Cities & Locations: Create a map and mark the areas where you will include interesting cities and locations. There should be new adventures waiting just around the corner.

Unique Plants & Animals: Craft unique plants and animals that make up your world. Consider the environment of your isekai world, and how plants and animals may have adapted to survive there.

Create Believable Characters/Concepts

Despite being in another world, the characters within it still need to feel believable.
No matter how different the isekai world may be from our world, include concepts that feel realistic and believable.
Here are some examples:

An elf character who is self-conscious about their ears.
A character who got lost in an RPG dungeon after they misread their map.
A fairy who wants to be friends with the main character, but is too shy to talk to them.

Know The Teleportation Process

Typically, there are three main ways a character can be transported from the real world into the isekai world. These are just general concepts, and may be presented in various ways in the story.

Reincarnation: The main teleportation method is ‘reincarnation,’ where the protagonist dies in the real world and is somehow reborn in the isekai world.

Portal: Another teleportation method is that the character finds something which acts as a portal that teleports them into the isekai world. (For example, a video game.)

Parallels: You may also avoid any teleportation, and instead have the real world and isekai world exist alongside each other with some method of travelling between them.

How To Plan Your Isekai

To plan your isekai story, we'll be using the writing structure most commonly used in Japanese literature: Kishotenketsu.

Ki - Introduction

The character is in the ‘real world.’ Suddenly, an event occurs which transports them into the isekai world.
Once they find themselves in the isekai world, usually an event will occur that forces them into action really quickly. For example, they will appear in the isekai in the midst of some kind of challenging time; And now that they are here, they may be the only one who can fix it. Typically, their knowledge of the ‘real world’ helps them in some way here, but this doesn’t always need to be the case.

Sho - Development

Now with this new goal that they have likely been forced into, they will likely need to rely on the help of characters within the world to achieve it. Usually development will be broken into arcs, which include:

A Problem
Training
An Unexpected Challenge
The Result

Ten - Twist

The twist occurs later in the story. This is a major event that all the other events have been leading towards.
This will usually come in the form of an unexpected event which surprises both the characters and the audience. New information is revealed which twists the events of the story.

Ketsu - Resolution

In the resolution, all points of the story reach a conclusion, and the story comes to an end.

Creating Your Characters

When creating the characters in your isekai story, try to include unique character types/classes that exist in your isekai world. Integrating the lore of your world into your characters will help each character feel more believable within your story.
Try to develop character types unique to your world. Instead of creating an already known character type (like an elf, orc, or goblin), try to combine the attributes you like in already existing fantasy character types and creating new characters within your world. Give them a unique name and unique lore in your story.

Building Friendship

Despite your characters’ differences, a major element to creating a good isekai is showing the friendships that grow between these characters. No matter where these characters came from, or who they were at the start, it is important to show how their friendship develops throughout the story.

Developing A Power System

Even though not all isekai series need a power system, these tips can help if you want to include it in your story.

Power Origin: Show how the powers originated in your isekai world.

Power Abilities: Write the major abilities that exist in your power system.

Power Categories: Divide your power system into categories. This could be based on specific types of powers or levels/ranks of powers. 

Power Progression: If applicable, show how characters ‘level up’ in their abilities, and how certain abilities may change throughout the story.

Setting The Stakes High

Being in an isekai world comes with high stakes. Usually, the fate of this new world will be in your character’s hands, and that is a lot of responsibility.

The isekai world will likely have much of its own conflicts and problems, and with the knowledge your protagonist has from the ‘real world,’ they will typically be the one responsible for fixing it.

Or, perhaps they are a villain, and are determined to shape the isekai world for their own gain.

As the author, the choice is for you to decide.