Sometimes the name of a game tells you exactly what it's about. Truck-kun is Supporting Me From Another World, the latest from El Paso: Elsewhere and I Am Your Beast studio Strange Scaffold, does half the work for you. It's an open riff on the isekai boom that's consumed anime and manga for years, but it's also a straight-faced interrogation of the trend rather than pure parody, and it's all wrapped up inside a Final Fantasy 4 approach to Crazy Taxi. It's coming to PC and Xbox later this year.
First, a crash course on isekai and the titular trope. Japan's entertainment industries have seen an explosion of stories about people dying of overwork, accidents, or sometimes natural causes, and then reincarnating (in some way or other) in another world, often a fantasy world with litRPG trappings. Getting hit by a truck became such a common way of killing off isekai protagonists that the truck itself – often a boxy moving or delivery truck – became its own meme and character. And now Truck-kun has his very own game (on Steam).
