If you are even casually familiar with anime broadly then you know about isekai, which is a genre where a typically contemporary person gets transported to a alternate, typically magical world. The actual getting transported part doesn’t matter as the bulk of the story is about coming to terms with being in a fantasy setting and all that entails technically and emotionally. The recurring, noncommittal hand-wave explanation for why a person ends up in a new world, for some inexplicable reason, is usually related to getting hit by a delivery truck. There are probably research papers about why this is a recurring story trope that can explain the exact moment its repetition became a parody, but I am not familiar with why and similar to the plot reason for why someone gets isekai-ed (to use it as a verb) it really doesn’t matter.
What does matter is the well-titled video game, Truck-kun is Supporting me From Another World?!, is out this week and in it you play as the rarely, if ever, characterized truck driver who isekais a young woman into another world right before she is set to get a big raise. She can still communicate with you, though (and is mad) and tasks you with isekai-ing as many people as possible with your truck to help her in the alternate world and eventually get her home.
It’s a great premise ripe for jokes and the gameplay’s closest comparison is Crazy Taxi. You have a short period of time to drive around a small city, deliver packages, and hit as many people with your truck as possible. It’s arcade-y, bombastic, and funny. I wish it ran a little better (I am playing it on Steam Machine, so maybe it just needs a few performance updates to sync with Valve’s new platform), but I am finding the whole experience pretty dang charming.
The game is also available on Xbox.
