Interesting bits of an interview with the series author. So, instead of Russian, it was meant to be that the female main character was isekai’ed. From the article:
In this version, the reincarnated heroine would speak Japanese to the protagonist, feeling confident that he couldn’t understand her.
The twist would be that the protagonist was also a reincarnated person who could understand Japanese perfectly. This humorous misunderstanding was meant to form the core of a short story.
This pretty much sums up how I feel about world building when I work on my D&D campaigns…
However, the isekai genre’s need for extensive world-building and background explanation led SUN to simplify the story, setting it in the real world instead.
When improvising in a session, it was often just way easier to say something is the fantasy version of [real thing] rather than come up with something whole cloth.
That’s weird but cool.
I feel like the change was sensible. Worldbuilding is great as long as it does some purpose in the story; in this case however I feel like it wouldn’t, it would simply get in the way. And without the worldbuilding it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to make it isekai.
Some people think a whole genre is just the paper you write any story on.
That would’ve been cool. I’m glad it wasn’t because alya how it is, is amazing. But I’d definitely love to see someone do just that