Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation II
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Velorien
Posts: 107 |
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I can accept that parallel. Twilight is a better man than he thinks, but upending a child's life purely for the sake of your personal goals with no apparent plan for what to do with her afterwards is a fairly evil thing to do. That said, his reason for doing so was to prevent a war in the near future. Rudeus's was to sell figurines (which in theory has the end goal of redeeming the Sperd's reputation, but in practice is such a silly way of doing so that Rudeus's motivation is questionable at best). I disagree about slavery, though. The core of the criticism is that slavery is evil, and Rudeus's casual acceptance of it is at odds with the story's presentation of him as labouring to become a better person. Rudeus freeing Julie and then helping her find a place in life would be the best thing he could do under the circumstances that doesn’t involve directly taking on slavery as an institution, and it would barely cost him anything considering the money was coming from Zanoba's royal wealth. |
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Snowcat
Posts: 190 |
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I can understand your point. It didn't bother me because I didn't expect Rudeus to develop any strong moral principles. In my opinion, getting better in his viewpoint was him developing skills (magic, fight, languages), then taking more responsibility for his actions, having sex and maybe he will start to understand his and others feelings at some point.
I didn't understand how he reached that conclusion. That's one of the criticism I have with this season. We still don't get what magic can and cannot do (it's the first time illusion is depicted ?). I was expecting that going to the Magic Academy will at least give us some information about how the magic operate in this world, what it can do... Since Rudeus is there, we have seen the same 3 magic spells. We still don't have any idea about the difference in magic level between Rudeus and others students. I didn't expect some massive info dump but at least some explanations about the various magics available and what the levels "Advanced, Saint, King" actually meant. Last edited by Snowcat on Mon Sep 11, 2023 1:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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b-dragon
Posts: 486 |
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By memory- and it's been a while- Twilight also knew adopting Anya as a tool to be an immoral action. He just identified it in his mind as a "necessary evil" to prevent bloodshed. The core difference being that he actually confronted his actions. He's also a newly introduced character, not one with a lot of story behind him.
Rudeus has a lot of characterization behind him- he's been characterized as someone who is wanting to be better, whose main narrative thrust is developing his character as part of a redemption arc so he can live right this time. He's spent a lot of time with Rujierd, who has strong opinions the treatment of children. I'm not saying Rudeus should have dismantled the operation- I don't know that to be feasible. But for him to help Zanoba buy a slave without any sort of internal conflict or debate doesn't jive well at all. |
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jmckenna15
Posts: 137 |
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Just going off the most recent episode, it's good that the show can keep mining humor from Rudeus' sexual frustrations and confusions and it still hitting. Especially with the way Rudeus realized Fitz isn't actually a boy -- yeah it's a common trope but done just different enough to make it feel fresh.
And yet despite that, they still made it a pretty good character moment in that he's going to wait for Sylphy to reveal that herself on her own terms rather than drag it out of her because he realizes she must have a reason for this (he still doesn't know it's Sylphy though). Another great, well-written, balanced episode -- but only 2 episodes left? That's going to make a long wait for the second cour. |
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ranran-001
Posts: 541 |
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I've got mixed feelings when it comes to the latest episode of Mushoku. While I do like seeing where the plot is going and seeing more of characters like Sylphy, Baghdadi and Nanahoshi.
I'm not crazy about the small tinge of gay panic and homophobia in this episode. Rudy, is so concerned about falling in love for a guy, he goes to the head of the school to request the gender of Fitz. To me, that's gay panic masquarading as humor. Wouldn't it have been better if Rudy just said "okay, so I'm in love with a guy," and then made that discovery about Fitz later on? No instead, we have him worried over the fact that Fitz is a guy and he's getting his knob hard over it. Like bruh, you worried about that? Then getting all relieved from the discovery means Rudy is a bigot pure and simple. Not just a bigot, but a closeted bigot. |
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Velorien
Posts: 107 |
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Mushoku Tensei really plays fast and loose with magic where Ariel and Fitz are concerned. Luke and Fitz wear half a dozen magic items with really powerful effects each, and Ariel apparently has a magic item that creates really good illusions (seeing as she isn't a mage herself, not that we're ever told that illusions are castable in the first place). However, those only pop up when convenient for the plot, such as when Fitz needs an excuse to constantly wear sunglasses that stop Rudeus recognising her (they "alert her when Ariel is in danger"). The rest of the time, it's incredibly rare to see people using magic items at all, even other rich and powerful individuals or veteran adventurers. The lack of explanation overall, though, is an adaptation failure. In the LN, the author does make the effort to explain the classification system, if in an ad hoc way (often by pointing at a character and saying "they are X rank in Y" while they are doing Y so you can gauge how impressive X is from what they do; this works as you accumulate more and more examples). Accordung to Rudeus, Saint rank (where he is after training with Roxy) is a soft upper limit on learning actual new and interesting spells. King and above instead typically involve combining the spells you know to achieve ever larger-scale effects, making them less exciting to him as ranks. Rudeus considers himself to have plateaued due to lack of advanced study, but notably, in the LN, Badigadi tells him that the spell Rudeus used to take him out is easily Emperor-rank in power. Rudeus asks Jenius if that means he can go around calling himself an Emperor-rank mage, and gets a grumpy response that he can call himself what he likes. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2456 |
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I found myself mostly a little bored. Usually MT either disgusts me or impresses me (with more of the former than the latter, lately), but this episode seemed really homed in on the Sylphie-Rudy romance and Rudy's ED. And... I just don't care at all about either of those things? The show's burned basically any deep interest I might have developed in these two loving one another; the conclusion is too obvious, and the framing of the characters too inconsistently out of step with their behavior, for me to really be invested in wanting them to get together. And the ED.. lol. I mean, it just feels like a grade-school joke that's been dragged on way too long; maybe a more mature show would have approached it in a way that made me empathize with Rudy's struggle and emotional baggage, but the 10,000th iteration of "Oh no! My little man did not stand up! Except for Fitz, who I am terrified is a guy, and so now maybe I am gay or bi!" isn't any funnier than the first. His ED being a direct consequence of his emotional baggage/fallout from his and Eris's messy separation actually could actually summon some emotion from me, but the show seems much more interested in it as toilet-level humor than emotional narrative.
This - Rudy deciding he cares more about the person than their sex/gender, when it comes to love, and struggling with how that challenges his sense of self and identity - would have been a genuinely interesting emotional beat for the show to explore, but I think it's just not generally thoughtful enough for that. |
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jmckenna15
Posts: 137 |
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The show approaches sex in a mostly comedic way, and this seemed to hit here. I did get a laugh out of him realizing his ED is partially now cured but still not enough for a quick wank in the school library. It wasn't all jokes though, the fact that it took him feeling a genuine romantic attraction (not even sexual, at least as far as the anime is concerned) to break out of the funk is poignant enough to land as a good character moment. I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that this is inevitable and a bit tiring given that we all know who Fitz really is and why Sylphy is masquerading as Fitz. We've known for 10 episodes and are just waiting for Rudeus to catch on. |
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jmckenna15
Posts: 137 |
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I don't see it as gay panic as much as it is Rudeus understandably grappling with his sexuality. It would naturally come as a shock to anybody if they were pretty sure they were straight for so long and now a man has elicited the same kinds of feelings he would have ordinarily held for a woman. Wouldn't anybody be as concerned in this instance? As far as questioning Fitz's gender, it could be tied into him grappling with his sexuality, or it was finally hitting home that Fitz wasn't necessarily acting like a typical boy and it raised a red flag. Either way, I disagree calling Rudeus bigoted for having an understandale feeling of confusion over his sexuality, or whether Fitz really is a boy. It all blended together. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2456 |
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But he doesn't, in fact, grapple with his sexuality, beyond surface-level panic. MT doesn't do anything interesting with the Sylphie/Fitz reveal; we don't explore the identity crisis it prompts for Rudy in any way that's not just a bunch of repetitive crude jokes.
I don't know if I would go quite as far as calling it 'gay panic', but it comes close. There's like a little penumbra of gay panic on the edges of the way that joke is used. re: landing -- no, none of that landed for me, but I already explained the reasons why. The only further thing I could add is that MT"s sense of humor is generally uninterestingly crude, and consists of little more than age-old gay/sex/slapstick tropes. As I wrote an episode ago, the first time MT's made me genuinely laugh -- perhaps in its entire run, actually -- was when Rudy got punched by the demon king unexpectedly. That wasn't a particularly clever joke but it subverted my expectations in a way that the rest of the show's humor completely fails to do. And, I suppose, Rudy's a character I feel very unsympathetically towards, which added a bit of extra entertainment value to it. In any case, I get that you feel otherwise and every joke is hilarious to you (and everything MT does seems to be some excuse to gush about how its writing isn't actually terrible but secretly amazing), but I think this is a case of 'preaching to the choir', not of the jokes being on some fundamental level clever or well-written. |
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jmckenna15
Posts: 137 |
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The writing isn't "secretly amazing" anymore given just how often the writing is itself praised, but there is a lot to be said about jokes that aren't necessarily the most clever or the most-ground breaking but just executed very well and knows how to integrate these kinds of themes in a way that's not only funny but can dovetail into genuinely good character moments. And a good wank or gender joke is always appreciated. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2456 |
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Yes, this is what I mean. You are their target audience, but neither of these things are generally funny to me, unless exceedingly well done or pulled off in some way that is unconventionally surprising/clever/etc. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23995 |
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I agree with neverConvex - MT has gotten boring. Jesus, I hope this Magic Academy snoozefest ends soon.
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2-2Distracted
Posts: 148 |
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This overall anime season has already been lackluster enough it is, so it really doesn't help that MT is adding to that. The very fact that this is becoming the common sentiment says a lot about what this shit hole shit storm of a season has done to this shows popularity, especially when MT die hard fans keep making things worse by clinging so hard to terrible Watsonian explanations and "Shonen Jump Weekly" name-calling.
And to think, all that had to be done was for the Studio Bind to be more liberal with this adaptation and change things that ought to be changed, which Mushoku Tensei as a story is no stranger to given what has been changed so far in the anime and what had to be changed in the LN from the "Raw" WN. But nah, they decided to do the same thing the author keeps doing, in order to appease his real target audience, and shoot themselves in their collective feet by being mostly faithful to the source material because reasons. A lot of us shouldn't be saying "move on already" with this show, but because of how it chooses to be so facetious and flippant with its handling of sex and sexuality, we are. Everything not related to that is great but at the same time everything not related to that is presented to us through a terribly written main character. It's like being given a super interesting and incredible tour... but the tour guide is a registered sex offender who somehow still has a job despite all the creeping things they keep doing. 
And in case any source material reader was thinking this, No, adding in Rudeus' constant internal monologues wouldn't fix any of the issues this show faces, it would just make things worse by adding to how facetious & flippant everything already is, especially when you have the author make responses like how Rudeus views slavery. With any luck, the popular criticisms said here and elsewhere will get more popular so that those not in the know can & will temper their expectations accordingly. |
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Mami-kouga
Posts: 208 |
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Yeah it being so dull is probably my biggest gripe. If it's not taking the most off putting route possible it's taking the most juvenile and boring. The humour is the equivalent of saying "penis" and then demanding the viewer laugh and I don't really like any of the characters this arc. Hopefully the next one will have more bite to it. |
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