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This is a way for shitty writers to justify infodumping in their story. If your main character doesn't know shit about the world he just got put into, you can justify every other character dumping a huge load of setting and world building down his ear canal. Instead of, like, trying to mix that info naturally into the story, which also avoids the "as you know, John..." trope (where character A explains something to character B that they already should know), but requires effort and skill on the part of the author.

To be fair, the main appeal of isekai is a person from our world having to adjust to suddenly living in a fantasy world, and applying their knowledge from our world to the fantasy world in some way, which is completely lost if you just make it a straight fantasy. I do agree that there are way too many isekais, most of them copy/pastes of each other, and there are other ways of setting up a similar scenario that don't just use the default isekai setting. Kekkai Sensen for example is a good example of the 2 worlds merging trope which often allows for a lot of the same sort of story beats as isekai but going both ways and with a lot more flexibility.

My favorite isekai is a live action, American sci-fi show called Farscape.

Honestly isekai really only covers the first chapter or so. After that it's just another {progression} fantasy. It's a way to shortcut the Campbellian structure of these types of stories. You skip past the call to adventure, the initial rejection of the call and the hero leaving their old life and go straight to the new, unfamiliar and dangerous world.

There's one I like called Tanya the Evil, where a guy gets pushed onto railroad tracks by someone he fired and gets isekaied to a fantasy WWI era world. He then becomes the worst person he possibly can just to spite God XD

Damn, bro got exiled to the Shadow Realm.

someone needs to make an isekai where mc is alone and constantly under threat, oh wait that's real life lol

I used to hate isekai until I learned about slice of life Isekai which is peak fiction such as: "Uncle from another world" "Isekai Izakaya (Japanse pub)" "reincarnated as a vending machine" "Restaurant to Another World" "Ascendance of a bookworm" etc, etc, and on into infinity. If you have something you like as a slice of life series, there is probably a pretty okay isekai version of it.

I'd watch an isekai about someone getting tossed into Shaper's Realm

The funniest was when bullies gave MC swirlies and he got sucked in

It's almost like modern anime exists to pander to teenage fantasies or something...

Yo, anyone else excited for DC isekai?

I despise anime in general