Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation II
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2509 |
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I genuinely have no idea what to say to this. What a ghastly worldview. |
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jmckenna15
Posts: 146 |
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It's Rudeus' worldview. It's why he did what he did. How "ghastly" it really is is open to interpretation but we can't say it's not without a degree of lived experience. Also yeah the beast girls are contemptible individuals for how they treated other students, especially Rudeus and Zanoba. Pursena was even trying to sacrifice her sister to save her own skin. It's where a lot of the comedy comes from -- its bad things happening to bad people. Even if it was objectively over the top on its own. |
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T3rmidor
Posts: 66 |
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[quote="Juno016"]
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Snowcat
Posts: 190 |
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It's in fact a quality considering the original target audience. The show isn't an educative program targeted at children or a high fantasy story about Good vs Evil. It's a late anime adaptation of a light novel which core target audience was probably men looking for escapism with a power fantasy with waifus and ecchi. They don't want to be preached in their entertainment. They already had been taught that since kindergarten by the society they want to escape from for a while. In my opinion, it's kind of weird to want every entertainment to hammer the same morals/ethics as if the audience need to be constantly educated. |
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Gamen
Posts: 254 |
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And I took so long writing that it's already been explained by multiple times! I'd like to go on a rant about "faithful" adaptations that just pick and choose which scenes to animate without regard to plotholes left by what's cut, versus loose ones that make a hash of the original story but at least have an incentive to get it right since it's "their" version of it, but that's not even the problem here is it? With what they had.... cut the sexual assault, retain a bit of the flashback, and voila, they've better justified the treatment they showed the two delinquents receiving and there's less of it to justify. Change the timeline, so they're only confined for an hour or so while Rudeus goes to meet with Fitz at the library, and they head back immediately after Fitz hears the story. Even better. Cut the chanting of Roxy's name; more time for flashbacks. These aren't just decisions the author made, in writing these events, but the studio too, in adapting them this way. They judged the justifications for Rudeus' actions less important than making sure every gratuitous detail was animated. Which raises the question... is that because they thought none of it was justifiable, so why bother? Or because they didn't think they needed to justify a little sexual assault? |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2509 |
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snowcat -- I mean, I'm not surprised that it has a huge harem, significant power fantasy elements, etc. It isn't some great mystery where those elements come from culturally. I just don't think it deserves praise for them; they weaken its narrative, and directly undermine claims that it can be read as a serious redemption story (or character study, for that matter; another common excuse). It does deserve some praise for the more surprising places in which it steps away from those things, and there are actually a decent number of those.
I also am losing the internet version of my voice from repeating it at this point, but asking for tone to be consistent with what's portrayed in a scene is not the same thing as asking for morality to be 'hammered'. I'm saying 'Don't portray slavery as a hilarious joke' and somehow you seem to be hearing 'He wants this to be Sesame Street'. Or, I don't know, maybe you think even the mildest constraints on the degeneracy that spawned this is "moral hammering". If so, then I guess that's just an impassable void. Like my recent exchange with jmckenna, I will just never get to a point where I can read someone argue that kidnapping, molesting, and torturing people is "deserved" humiliation because they felt mildly disrespected. That's not a gap of grossed-out that gets bridged. |
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jmckenna15
Posts: 146 |
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Point was that it was not "mildly" disrespectful to Rudeus. It was a grave insult and he responded with what he thought was an appropriate punishment based on what he's learned up to this point. One doesn't have to condone and endorse what he did but we can sympathize with him because of this -- which Rich pointed out in his review.
As far as tone this was a drift towards a more comedic kind of episode to begin with and it largely worked. Morally it's amoral at best and was meant as a one-shot kind of deal, but it's still in line with Rudeus as a character to think along the lines he was thinking. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1440 |
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Come to think of it, sure is weird how Rudy being bullied and sexually abused in his past life is treated as a sympathetic explanation for all his own sexual hangups and problems. Yet when he bullies and sexually abuses the cat and dog girl it's something they "deserve" and it "taught them a lesson". Funny, that.
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Snowcat
Posts: 190 |
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I understand your point. Generally speaking, it's the same problem with fanservice: it can weakens the story from a narrative stand point but it entertains the audience. We are speaking of entertainment here, so fanservice is sometimes as important as the quality of the story. For the tone consistency, I didn't think that was bad, it serves as transition between the "date" and the chock when they encounter Julie. And I didn't think the author was depicting slavery as a joke. There are multiple way to tell a story. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18423 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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The problem is that none of that was even much hinted at in the anime version, so I, as an anime-only viewer, was left scratching my head on how they were such problem cases. That is a legitimate adaptation flaw, as no adaptation should have to rely on an expectation of reading the source material just to make sense.
As someone who normally defends the series, I can't agree with the bolded part. I could see what the series was trying to but the humor didn't land on that part. (Julie, OTOH, was a joy to watch. I, too, wasn't aware that the series needed a character like her.) |
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The Anime Binge-Watcher
 Posts: 96 |
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But don't you see, they're haughty anime girls and not lovable sex perverts, so it's totally different. Obviously. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 13581 |
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I don't hate Rudy but can't really relate to him here. I feel like his Roxy obsession is starting to look kinda unhealthy and freaky and his attempts to cure his ED were a little in bad taste (I think you can get away with a certain level of perversion, but Rudy's kind of straining it). |
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jmckenna15
Posts: 146 |
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Oh his obsession with Roxy is definitely unhealthy. Just look at how elaborate the shrine for the Holy Relic has gotten throughout the show's run. If they didn't add the comedic flourishes around it, it would be uncomfortably cultish. There's a difference between "relate" and "sympathize" for me. I don't relate too much to him either but I can understand his actions and why he feels the way he does. He does go overboard-- often -- but recently it's been so out there that it wings around to being funny rather than uncomfortable. |
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ICO44
 Posts: 105 |
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I cant relate or sympathize to Rudy but his fun and interesting character to watch and to me sometimes more interesting than relatable characters.
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Ermat_46
Posts: 740 Location: Philippines |
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I think that Richard's assessment of Rudy is on point here. He's a fundamentally selfish person, and this show does an exceptional job of depicting that and letting us understand why he was that. I don't even think that this is a redemption story, and I don't even think that he will outgrow that personality at any point. However, I don't think the show is bad because of that. I'm invested in how his life story goes in this world, while recognizing that he's the kind of person that I wouldn't want to associate or interact with should he exist IRL. With that in mind, while I understand any moral critique for Rudeus might be valid, me and many other fans don't think that those are in any way to the show's demerit.
Somehow, people who demonize Mushoku Tensei fans can't get it. |
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