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 an 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.
