Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation II

Episode 8

This episode of Mushoku Tensei is a bit of a palate cleanser after our last two episodes. Rather than focusing on Rudeus and his misadventures, this episode is more about fleshing out the expanded cast—namely Cliff and Badigadi.

While we know about Cliff from the first season's OVA episode about him and his chance meeting with Eris, he's been little more than a background character this season. He carries a bit of a chip on his shoulder when it comes to Eris. After all, he was told he was an amazing mage all his life, only for him to come up short in her eyes when compared to Rudeus. Simply put, he has a massive inferiority complex when it comes to Rudeus. But you know what can overcome that? Teenage boy hormones.

Cliff is suffering from a serious case of love at first sight. The problem is, that the object of his affection is Elinalise. Knowing nothing about her, he creates an image of her in his head (of a pure maiden) which gets him into trouble when he tries to “protect her honor.” But of course, he wants to get to know the real her so he goes to the one person known to be her longtime companion, Rudeus.

What we get from this is a good bit of character growth for Rudeus. He believes that Cliff and Elinalise would make a poor pair—especially considering his innocence and her curse-based promiscuity. However, Sylphy can talk some sense into him. It's not his business how their relationship develops—that's up to them. And despite his misgivings, the pair hit it off.

Our introduction to Badigadi, on the other hand, is the focus of the back half of the episode. Loud, proud, and boisterous, he is a perfect match for his fiance Kishirika Kishirisu. What we get with him is a good bit of visual storytelling. He has come to fight Rudeus solely because Kishirika favored him so highly. He isn't treating the situation seriously at all until the moment that Orsted's name is brought up. At that moment, his entire demeanor changes. He wants to see Rudeus' strongest attack for the sole purpose of seeing how strong someone would need to be to fight Orsted and live. In other words, he wants to see how he'd stack up against Orsted. Of course, why he decides to stick around after seeing the outcome is still a mystery.

All in all, this is a decent episode that does a fine job of fleshing out the people surrounding Rudeus in his school life. And now that the whole advanced class has been introduced, I'm interested to see where the story goes. It feels like we're in a bit of a holding pattern regarding the main story while we wait for Rudeus to figure out that Fitz is Sylphy. But, hopefully, those around him will keep the story interesting until then.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• Oh look, only two instances of sexual assault in this episode.

• I do like that the beast girls do get back at Rudeus somewhat by having him fight all their suitors while they hide away.

• Man, Pursena sure does throw Linia under the bus at every opportunity, doesn't she?

• There's a blue-haired girl stalking Rudeus in this episode. I'm betting she'll be important later on.

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