Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation II

Episode 7

This week's episode gives us the perfect opportunity to discuss a simple fact: Rudeus is not a good person. His attitude towards slavery is blasé, to say the least, and his tendency towards sexually assaulting women isn't exactly new. However, what's important to note is that these are symptoms of a core problem with his personality. Rudeus is fundamentally a selfish individual. If it doesn't affect him directly, he doesn't care about it. Nowhere is this better showcased in this episode.

It's important to remember that everything that happens is due to a figure of Roxy getting broken. At first, he nearly assaults his best friend—terrifying their new child slave in the process. Once everything is explained, the focus of Rudeus' rage changes. It doesn't matter that Zanoba, given his personality, likely picked the fight with Linia and Pursena originally, nor that he was certainly the one who bet the figure in their duel, Rudeus wants immediate revenge on the two girls for the actual act of breaking it. So he goes out, provokes them with racial slurs, physically assaults them, kidnaps them, sexually assaults them, and tortures them.

Yet, what's truly crazy is that half of these crimes aren't even done in some kind of all-consuming, blind rage. The aforementioned sexual assault doesn't have anything to do with the figure. He just sees two helpless young women and sees it as his chance to see if he can get turned on by groping them. And as for the torture, this is basically by accident. Once his head cools a bit, he becomes consumed with figuring out how to get out of the situation without facing any lasting consequences—to the point that it never even occurs to him to give food and water to the girls he has bound and gagged in his room. He just lets them sit there starving while they wet themselves. This is torture, pure and simple, and he does it because he couldn't be bothered to think about anyone but himself.

And the cherry on top? This whole incident was pointless. Nothing was lost in the first place. At any time, Rudeus could have repaired the statue with minimal effort. It's just that satisfying his revenge boner mattered far more to him than fixing the actual problem. That is the kind of person he is.

The episode itself, despite the objective horror of what is going on, plays the situation as a comedy—which might be a bit of a brilliant touch. The story is told in this way because that is how Rudeus sees it. It's said that we are all the heroes of our own stories—so in Rudeus' head, this is all a silly series of unfortunate events rather than an example of how horrible of a person he is.

However, while Rudeus is objectively terrible, that is not to say he isn't sympathetic. One of the strong points of Mushoku Tensei is to show us why Rudeus is the way he is—how events both in his control and out of his control in his past life formed him into the mess of a person he is today. Seeing how bad he had it in our world, we want to see him have a better life this time around. However, a new life isn't a simple full reset. Redeus is still saddled with all that old baggage from his first life, and he has no one close enough (or mentally stable enough) to call him out when he does wrong. We're always in his head and can see why he does what he does, even if he acts poorly. We want him to be better. That is the point of the story and the reason we are invested in it. However, as this episode makes all too clear, he still has a long way to go.

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• Wait, so because Paul, Luke, and Rudeus have Notos blood it's only natural they must have many sexual partners—even if they have to cheat to get them? That's some serious BS right there.

• Saying that Julie is your apprentice not a slave means little when she is legally a slave.

• Poor Sylphy. People in love are able to overlook anything—even when they know they shouldn't.

• Yeah, after this episode, I'm inclined to believe that, if Rudeus would have killed Julie last episode, Sylphy would have let child murder pass as well.

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation II is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.