List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes on the Use of Japanese Language

Part One: Isekai in Historic Perspective
1. The First Anime Isekai: Aura Battler Dunbine's Origins and Cold War Fears - Shintaro Mizushima and William B. Ashbaugh
2. Isekai Enactment in Millennial Japan: Mediating Violence in Now and Then, Here and There - Brett Hack
3.Worlds Beyond, Selves Within: Mythopoeic Metamorphosis in Select Isekai Anime - Ananya Saha

Part Two: Understanding Isekai
4. Exploring Isekai: The Window into Another World - Michael Cserkits
5. Alice in Borderland and Beyond: Examining Existential Crises through an Isekai Manga - Alayna L. Vander Veer
6. Open for Otherworldly Business: Work, Life, and Fantasy in Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement - Zach Long
7. Intersecting Media: Game Systems as Narrative Tools in Kumo desu ga, nani ka? - Giovanni Tagliamonte
8. The Social Significance of Isekai: A New Narrative Type in the Age of Fiction? - Jessy Escande

Part Three: How Fiction Influences Reality
9. Sokushinbutsu and Isekai in Takahashi Rumiko's Inuyasha - Jon Morris
10. Creation of a New Transcendent: Religious Affordance in Overlord and My Next Life as a Villainess - Barbara Greene
11. “Now Go, and Don't Look Back”: Spirited Away, Anime on the Global Stage, and Extratextual Isekai - Zoe Crombie

Part Four: Gender Perspectives on Isekai
12. Queering Isekai: The Executioner and Her Way of Life - Travis Nishii
13. Power, Transhumanism, and Gender Differences in Preference for Isekai Anime - Stephen Reysen, Thomas R. Brooks, Courtney N. Plante, Sharon E. Roberts, Kathleen C. Gerbasi, Rhea Joshi, and Cole Rehbein
14. Control, Autonomy, and Slavery in Isekai - Yaochong Yang and Matthew Valenzuela

Contributor Biographies
General Index
Index of Non-Japanese Novels and Fiction Authors
Index of Anime/Manga/Light Novels