The creator of Mushoku Tensei has responded to Kadokawa’s recent financial results, where the publisher blamed the isekai genre on reduced profitability.

Known by his pen name Rifujin na Magonote, the popular isekai creator responded to Kadokawa saying overreliance on the genre and “narou” style writing on reduced profitability for the publishing giant.

“As for the talk about ‘narou-style’ works in Kadokawa’s financial results, even if this suggests that such works will decline in the future, the approach that authors currently labeled as ‘narou’ excel at, namely, ‘analyzing the market, identifying key points, and quickly churning out works that are likely to sell’, remains a powerful strategy,” the author said. “So this pattern will probably continue.”

While the isekai genre has been wildly popular over the years, narou style writing comes from the also popular user-driven Japanese web novel platform Shousetsuka ni Narou (Let’s Become a Novelist), where projects with self-insert, power fantasy tropes tend to be the most popular.

Kadokawa is a media conglomerate known for numerous anime, most especially popular isekai anime like Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World, The Eminence in Shadow, KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World!, and yes, they also publish Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation, too.

In Kadokawa’s new financial results and forecasting, they noted a 51.3% contraction in operating profit for the fiscal year ended March 2026 and blamed that at least partly on their overreliance on the isekai genre and narou style writing.

Regardless of what proves to be popular for web novels, manga, and eventually anime adaptations in the future – it’s impossible to deny isekai and narou style projects are not only popular the way they’re produced make it easier to adapt into anime.

In related news, the long-awaited Mushoku Tensei season 3 is set to premiere on Crunchyroll later this summer, on July 5th. Read more about that here!