Quote Originally Posted by Ibrinar View Post
What you describe is entirely normal for the current crop of isekai. They have no real plot, the MC gets OP abilities handed to him and struggles with nothing and has no real goal. So likely no, not a bad adaption that is just how most Isekai are.
I just had to google that word to check it meant what I thought it meant.

Weren't we getting some interesting takes on the genre a few years ago? Works that focused on the realities of people being transported into other worlds, used them as lenses to explore actual issues, threw actual challenges at their heroes, or intentionally made them unchallenging in order to focus on something else. I mean, my first manga was MAR, which wasn't the greatest take on this genre and introduced a plot point that meant we knew that the main character essentially couldn't lose, but at least managed to keep the stakes high enough before the tournament arc and for other characters during it.

Also, as has been said the genre itself is actually fairly old. As in the earliest examples I can think of are Narnia and John Carter of Mars, and I'm sure there's older stories. It's not like Western Portal Fantasy stories are dead and forgotten, I've heard good things about the Thomas Covenant books and I'm writing my own take during the days when I'm not too tired from work.