There is a particular situation I keep encountering when reading fantasy manga involving reincarnation, transmigration, or possession.
Someone dies in their original world and wakes up somewhere else.
Sometimes they are reincarnated.
Sometimes they enter someone else’s body.
Sometimes they wake up inside a novel they have read.
And almost immediately, they understand one thing:
“This isn’t my world.”
What I find interesting, though, is what happens after that realization.
Because sometimes they don’t actually accept it.
They know technically that they are somewhere else, but emotionally, they are still living in the world they lost.
The people around them don’t feel like real people.
They feel like characters.
The family doesn’t feel like their family.
They feel like the family of the person whose body they are occupying.
The servants aren’t friends.
They’re characters from a story.
The siblings aren’t siblings.
They’re people who were already written into the plot.
And I understand why.
If you think about it from their perspective, they have experienced something enormous.
Their entire life disappeared.
Their family is gone.
Their friends are gone.
Their home is gone.
Their world is gone.
And then they wake up somewhere that looks completely fictional because they already know the story.
So I don’t think it’s fair to say, “Why don’t they just accept it?“
It isn’t that simple.
If anything, I’ve started thinking about it almost like the stages of grief.
First comes denial.
“This isn’t real.”
Then anger.
“Why did this happen to me?“
Then compromise.
“Maybe I can find a way back.“
Then depression.
“There’s nothing left for me here.“
And eventually, hopefully, acceptance.
“Maybe this is my life now.“
Of course, everyone processes grief differently, and the stages aren’t a strict formula. But the comparison makes sense to me when I read these stories.
Because the character isn’t just adjusting to a new environment.
They’re grieving an entire existence.
And that’s why I can understand the emotional disconnect they sometimes have with the people around them.
Imagine being someone’s new daughter while knowing that you are not actually the daughter they remember.
Imagine your new mother hugging you and crying because she’s relieved you’re okay, while part of you is thinking, “You’re not my mother.”
Imagine having a sibling who genuinely loves you while you are still mentally trying to understand where your own family went.
That would be incredibly complicated.
But then the story reaches the part that always makes me uncomfortable.
Something happens.
Someone gets hurt.
Sometimes it’s physical.
Sometimes it’s emotional.
Sometimes the person in the new body tries to hurt themselves because they simply cannot accept the life they’ve been forced into.
And suddenly, the people around them are traumatized too.
The parent doesn’t understand why their child is trying to die.
The sibling doesn’t understand why someone they love is suddenly behaving like a stranger.
The friend doesn’t understand why the person they care about keeps pushing them away.
And the person at the center of it all doesn’t know how to explain:
“I’m not really who you think I am.“
That’s what makes this trope so complicated for me.
I understand the person who has been reincarnated.
But I also understand the people who are trying to love them.
Neither side has the information necessary to fully understand the other.
The reincarnated person knows something nobody else knows.
They know their previous life existed.
They know their old family existed.
They know that this world wasn’t supposed to be real to them.
But the people around them don’t know any of that.
As far as they’re concerned, their child, sibling, friend, or loved one has suddenly changed.
And they are expected to keep loving them while having absolutely no idea why.
That is heartbreaking.
What I find particularly frustrating is that, in many stories, it takes something terrible happening before the protagonist finally begins to understand.
Someone gets hurt.
Someone cries.
Someone nearly dies.
Someone finally confronts them.
And then the protagonist has that moment of realization:
“These people are real.“
And I’m always left wondering:
Did it really have to get this far?
But then I stop myself.
Because I don’t know if I would be able to accept it immediately either.
I don’t know what it would feel like to wake up tomorrow and discover that everyone I’ve ever known is gone, and I’m now living inside a life that technically belongs to someone else.
I don’t know how long it would take me to stop comparing everything to the life I lost.
I don’t know whether I would be capable of loving people who, at first, felt like fictional characters.
So I can’t confidently condemn the protagonist.
But I can’t completely excuse them either.
That’s the uncomfortable part.
Understanding someone’s pain doesn’t erase the pain they cause.
And recognizing the damage someone’s behavior creates doesn’t mean their grief isn’t valid.
Both things can exist at the same time.
Maybe that’s what makes this trope more interesting to me than I originally thought.
The real conflict isn’t always about surviving the new world.
Sometimes it’s about accepting that the new world is real.
And perhaps the hardest part isn’t realizing that you have been given another life.
It’s realizing that you have to let yourself live it.
Not because the old life didn’t matter.
Not because you have forgotten the people you lost.
But because the people standing in front of you have become real too.
And eventually, you have to decide whether you are going to spend your second life mourning your first…
or slowly build something worth staying for.
