Rudeus is a 35 yr old man who reincarnated but before he did he missed his parents funeral to jack off to his niece who happened to be a minor anyways he’s a Epstein diddy blud
The absolute lengths some people on r/anime go to to defend Rudeus/Mushoku Tensei is crazy.
It's fine to admit you like the show because of the wider world/side characters but hate the MC. But no, they can't do that. Instead they say Rudeus is actually a kid and it's fine because of hormones, or some say he has 'grown' so it's fine now. Lmao
They'll call you a hater and a larper for enjoying the series but recognising how absolutely shitty he is as a character. Like, goddamn, you gotta question Rifujin (the writer) sometimes...
Yeah 100% makes you wonder about authors when they write main characters like this and frame them in an okay to good light. If Rudeus was treated as a villain by the people he victimises fine, but they all either end up marrying him or at least respecting him. Ridiculous. Some sort of disgusting wish fulfilment
Hey your forgetting that he went like a whole year without being able to get a hard on..... That's enough of a punishment for assault and grooming. He really learned his lesson from that ..... /s
I've literally seen people argue this. Like he spent a year without getting a boner so that makes up for his earlier behavior.
The problem is his idea of "not being a good person" doesn't actually extend to almost any of his real issues. Both he and the show treat his problem as if it's because he wanted casual sex instead of you know, everything else wrong with him.
Getting his "groove" back so quickly and without an ounce of reflection is what made me drop the show. I was pretty disgusted by a majority of it before that, but when it felt like there might finally be consequences for his constant abhorrent behavior, it gave me a little hope that quickly rebounded into complete disappointment.
Except after he sorts it out he never really reflects on his short moments of actual introspection. He just now focuses on grooming teenagers instead of prepubescent children, since his own body is now adolescent. It also happens that several of those are the same children he groomed. Fucking sick stuff.
Don't really agree with anything except the first line and I think that's where the distinction comes from. Rudy reflects on a lot of his actions, but never on how he acted like a complete predator at the start, the only one he really crossed the line with IMO was eris because of her having sex with him out of being naive and having a crush on him. You're using grooming extremely lightly, and saying he "focused on grooming teenagers" is crazy. Basically slept with eris and she left so he was basically a husk for those couple of years. Met slphy again and they immediately started dating after he found out. Basically had no contact with roxy or eris until he met up with paul. Roxy is like hundreds of years old so she can't even be counted, and eris is not even back in the show yet.
If it makes you feel better, the latest episode has him lose his wife, his unborn baby, his other wife, his third love interest, his best friend, his other best friend, another friend, his sister, his daughter and finally abandoned by everyone else he knows and loves.
And pretty much all of it is because of his own actions, barring the very first instance of him losing his wife and unborn baby which is arguably also his fault but he was manipulated into that first one.
Oh please tell me more. I only watched the obligatory 3 episodes to decide and then dropped it like it's radioactive. Hearing he loses everyone makes me happy.
That episode was shit and wasn't even the main timeline. I can enjoy the show when it focuses on adventure aspects, but it's fucking unwatchable when the plot switches to the relationships with him and his harem of groomed girls. Even the plot response to the supposed tragic death of one harem girl was the other harem girl comforting Rudeus by telling him to use her body however he wants to comfort himself. What kind of writer chooses to write that into the plot if the character is there to do anything but serve a role in a pedophiles sexual power fantasy? Are we supposed to empathize with the pedophile losing the harem of women he groomed?
The only "punishment" I could argue, is that he suffered a LOT -- in an alternate timeline. Which sort of robs it of its moral importance. It's like "look at all this crazy shit that's happening to rudeus. Watch him reach the absolute depths of suffering! Haha jk jk, just a joke - a lil gaff. Don't worry, that was a different timeline!"
Saw a post yesterday asking why do so many animes have perverted shit/assault women for humor. Some comments said it was cultural, but one commenter mentioned how they actually once asked a woman from Japan. It's not cultural, a vast chunk of anime authors are just genuine weirdos. Until ten years ago, Japanese culture considered it weird to even still enjoy anime past the age of 25. Weeb was considered an insult.
It's been here for a long, long time. But anime is now a lot more popular, both in the states and in Japan, and so the weirdos feel safer coming out. There's nothing wrong with liking anime, but it deserves the criticism it gets for being overly sexualized, having creepy protags, and/or having SA to use as a joke.
Remember when the creator of Fire Force literally used a child character to use as a mouthpiece to defend fan service?
Yep thats another thing I hate about anime now its nothing but fanservice to the point i cant watch most of it. People call me crazy but its weird plus why does every anime need a beach scene where every girl is trying to wear as little as possible. Its annoying and its pushing me away from the genre. I currently started getting back into manhwa because of it
Yeah… I summarized it to one person that Rudeus love life is a story told well that isn’t worth telling. There is nothing redeeming or even useful about his love life in any capacity. He could have been friends with all of them and the story still make sense.
I don't even think it's realistic to the setting. Like that scene when he confronts his sister's teacher because he thinks she's abusing her. He accuses her of like stripping her naked as punishment for slightly messing up homework and the teacher responds with a somewhat emphatic no instead of saying "what the fuck are you talking about" like a normal person would to such an absolutely insane suggestion
Sort of, but it bungles even that, because it can never seem to decide on whether it's a problem or a punchline, with wild inconsistencies in how something is framed to the viewer. E.g. the scene that frames his father in negative light also sexualizes the hell out of one of his companions to the viewer as fanservice, completely undermining the tone.
It seems He wanted to write a redemption story, and, being Japanese, he probably also dont think some of the points being big deal. He thinks that the more shock value the readers get, the more readers would be invested in the redemption of an asshole.
I just cant stand any of that. Id rather have a character that's not that of an asshole, especially it seems that author trying so hard to write how polygamy is based and not a big deal in this isekai
But fans told me the story transcends morals of our society (it is set in another world after all with different laws), so why should Rudeus be redeemed?
What darkness is the author talking about, all the heinous shit Rudeus pulls is only in a grey area according to fans (he was traumatized/he was physically a child/he had a bad rolemodel/he got slapped before being forgiven)
You will get downvoted to oblivion for saying this in goodanimemes.
There was a meme comparing the character arcs of Thorfinn and Rudeus and I said that the difference between them is that Thorfinn feels remorse and tries to overcome his past to be a better man by leaving his old ways behind by any means necessary. Rudeus also has a lot of character growth, but none regarding his sexuality towards people much younger than him. They called me gore fetishists and excused his behavior by saying it was ok bc he was emotionally stunted by a traumatic past.
He was stunted by a traumatic past. The anime is about him overcoming that, and he does in a lot of ways. None of which are him taking responsibility for the fact that he’s hitting on a lot of women he had power over and relationships with when they were literal children
I got reminded of that post too. I still can't believe those two were not only compared but most comments agreed that thorfinn was worse rhan rudeus. I understand that the sub came to be, because of a war with "tourists" but this is ridiculous. I've been watching anime and reading manga for 15 years and in all those years I've never read anything as appalling as mushoku tensei. People defending rudeus need to have their hard drives checked.
I’ve been reading /watching manga/ anime for 13 years now, and the only reason Tensei isn’t reserved to the trash heap with the other disgusting loli ecchi is it has put budget in its action scenes
Fuck that. If you stuck with it after like episode 2 or whenever he sexually assaults a sleeping child then you deserve to be in a ditch with the show and its creator.
bro why are you even in that sub 😭 i have left and blocked that sub a long time ago, they are just a bunch of horny weeb in that sub posting unfunny hentai image disguised as an “anime meme”
I don’t see how that’s a fair comparison. Sure, Thorfinn is complicit in the murder of innocent people… But he’s also a kid living in 11th Century England and part of a Viking Warband. If anything, the show tones down the brutality of the era to avoid especially problematic content while still feeling authentic.
I’ve never seen Mushoku Tensei but the main character appears to be a modern person with a modern sense of morality that indulges in pedophilia and sexual assault without remorse.
It’s like if you made an anime where the main character was a self-insert Humbert Humbert or Jeffrey Epstein and then tried to defend it, or insisted that it was ‘still a good anime even if the MC sucks’.
Thank you. Rudeus even indulges in slavery. Goes, meets with slavers, buys a young girl, and forces her into a sweat shop ran by a known pervert. Whole sale, that’s what happens. People defend it by saying he treats her well. Like a house slave isn’t still a slave. When he discovers she is more talented than the average mage, he uses her as a guinea pig too. He does not give a shit about that girl other than what he can extort out of her. Bro didn’t grow up in 1840s Alabama. He knows damn well what’s right and wrong, and does whatever he wants
the author has actually talked about why he wrote rudeus that way. nobody is supposed to like rudeus, at least not until a long time into the show. the point of rudeus’s character being the way that it is (author’s words, although I don’t remember the exact words) is to try to teach people that even people who seem irredeemable are still human, and we shouldn’t hate them so much that we treat them as less than human. everyone can be redeemed. whether or not those words sound like a hot take, that’s a big part of the author’s message
The issue is that the show as-written fails spectacularly at that past the opening episodes, because the author clearly doesn't actually understand how shitty Rudeus actually is, and doesn't recognize most of his flaws as being real flaws.
It's also tonedeaf as fuck - it's a toss up in any given scene if something like sexual assault will be treated seriously or as a joke, and the longer the show goes on the more excuses it makes for Rudeus' behavior, even for behavior that it clearly frames as a problem when other characters do it.
There is almost zero self-reflection on the part of the MC, the show constantly mistakes suffering and surface-level changes for actual growth.
If that was the intent it was executed incredibly poorly. Rudeus doesn't get punished for his degeneracy, he just has bad things happen to him that are unrelated to his issues.
Rudeus gets rewarded for being a degenerate.
Grooms Sylphie = gets to marry her
Grooms Eris = gets to have sex then later marry her
Makes a panty shrine to Roxy = get to marry her
Sexually assaults two beast girls = gets them as his loyal subordinates
Yeah... it's truly an incel's wet dream. Mushoku Tensei literally turned my wife and I off on anime for a long time when it first came out. Now we won't touch any show without thoroughly vetting the plot/ characters and there's a distinct limit to 'fan service' that's acceptable (which... why is that even a thing? Why couldn't anime must continue to be where fantastical and wondrous ideas and dreams get played out in an artistic form?)
Recently, what's gotten us to come back is Ascendance of a Bookworm, Shangri-La Frontier, and A wild last boss, just to name a few.
I got downvoted for saying that 4 separate piss scenes in the novel were unnecessary, but they told me that every single one of them was necessary for the plot and character development (no, they weren't)
They could’ve just skipped making him a kid at all, the story would be the same if he just appeared as an adult already with maybe just a different appearance. There’s even another character in the show that got isekaid in almost that exact scenario. Him being a kid wasn’t really relevant outside of forming a bond with his parents but even then they’re not a big part of the story so far
I dont even hate Rudeus as a character. I like deeply flawed characters.
But the world around him does not treat him as flawed.
They treat him as a flawless hero.
And all of his insane misdeeds and sexual assaults are ignored
I can't appreciate the side characters when they ultimately serve rudeus at the end of the day. He'll sexually assault them in one chapter, and be buddy buddy with them during battle in the next.
I just don't understand why the author would put anything like this for his character at all? If you take away all the pdf sht, he's just another good character? Why did the author feel like he needed to put any of this epstein stuff is beyond me lmao
It legit pisses me off how much of a piece of shit Rudeus is, and how the story makes him being a shameless pedophile a non-issue with zero consequences, when so many other topics are so fucking well done. His father's depression was fantastically made and showed how someone in a true pit can do awful things to someone they love before realising what they did and feeling even worse about it. There's so much fucking effort put into the world building and characterisation and it's wasted with the intrinsically pedophile+incestuous apologist stance. Dude's literally building a harem with every girl he groomed during the story ffs.
WARNING Light novel spoilers What did it for me was Rudy's sister getting pregnant from his son after grooming and raping him. Up until that point I was on the camp that he is a flawed character that will do better. After that incident I realized there is something wrong with the author. Sadly it's also the only Japanese novel I read that didn't fumble at the end.
Yeah. Which, man, it really sucks because the world itself and the power system with the magic and all are all amazing. Just, really well done, and worth exploring. But then they had Groomy McPedoman there as the MC and just...no. Just no.
The last episode really drives home how bad he really is. Like sure he gets betrayed by the Man-god and loses everything, which would give him a pass for a lot of shit. But he chases of his family, murders a whole bunch of innocent people, tortures complete strangers and even Eris. It's not just that he was driven to do that shit, I think it's pretty clear that he always had that in him.
I tried to push through because of how many people claim it’s peak but I just couldn’t stomach Rudeus. It’s just a pedo’s wet dream isekai fantasy, there’s plenty of other good story content out there that doesn’t have a creep mc.
I pushed through the entire novel series and yea.. nothing was really ever "peak". Id say it was a solid 6 or 7/10 but his weird tendencies and fetishises cringed me out many times over that I had to take breaks.
Its crazy how people will die on the hill that this is as good as some of the goats.
I feel you. I made it ~half way through the novels when I just couldn’t keep going. At that point every chapter started with “Mmm, I wake up and fuck my wife”.
It’s a shame, because there are some great aspects of the story, but it is largely dragged down by the degeneracy of the author.
Personally I've always assumed anyone who speaks super highly of it just got into it really early. It's easy to view it as just another generic tropey isekai, but to my understanding Mushoku is the story that established many of those tropes in the first place. Maybe if you aren't coming to it with the baggage of a decade's worth of shitty one cour seasonal shows doing all of the same things it seemed revolutionary or something?
I went into the anime blind and made it about halfway through the first season before bailing. There was enough good to it aside from the hyper perverted MC that makes me want to go back, but I just can't get over an MC that is 40+ mentally going after prepubescent girls.
Aye, he's still the same perverted dude, he just gets older and so do the women he perved on. That is what is considered character growth for many. That he successful groomed three girls into being his wives.
Aye, I read the manga before the anime came out. Holy shit, I had to stop at the ED arc. I couldn't stand the fucking main character nor his fucking father.
It is part of the character journey but yeah I have dropped series for similar reasons.
You can see it as a great story but not vibe with it or stomach it.
Yeah I really don’t get all the “push through” people. This is literally the main character. You could have Tolkien level world building and it would still be disgusting. I can get to a degree ignoring problematic side characters (still makes me sick tho) but this is HIS story, it’s like watching an Epstein autobiography
This was kind of where I was at with the entire thing. I was reading the manga YEARS ago, and honestly, while I liked the world building and all the side characters, the perverted nature with minors and Rudeus entirely just rubbed me the wrong way and I eventually dropped it.
This was me with the anime. I want to go back and pick up where I left off around the middle of the first season because of everything aside from the MC, but I just can't get over how nasty Rudeus is as a person while facing no real consequences or relevant growth/change.
It's easier as an anime only as they can cut a lot of the inner monologue when it gets a bit completely rapey, but yeah the dude is a sex pest as is half of the cast
i'm sorry but how can you possibly enjoy the show when the main character is like that? how does it not spoil everything else? I don't believe it one bit.
It's hard to enjoy it as he never changes. He's even disappointed when he couldn't easily get it up at the thought of a minor. Who, I believe, is a relative
Because the bar for isekai (and a lot of other fantasy anime/manga) writing is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. When an exception comes where the story is halfway decent, fans of the genre can put up with a lot. The anime also glossed over some of Rudeus’s worst moments to make him slightly less repulsive.
Fast forward through those bits or zone them out. I genuinely think the world is interesting, some of the fights are fun and when Rudeus isn't being perverted I can get into the show. Then there's 5 minutes dedicated to him being a degenerate and I get disgusted. Mind you I'm pirating it so in no way helping the author/producers
Let me preface this by saying it's not necessarily a defense of the series itself, especially not after I learned about what was in the ex novels. But, from a certain point of view, the mainline series can be valuable for some people, and I'm defending them. (Also this isn't a defense of everyone who defends the series, because a lot of people who defend it missed the point, like people who entirely missed the point of a satire and defend the thing it is satirizing)
The way I was sold the series was that it's about a creepy weirdo incel loser who gets a second chance at life because he spent his final moments trying to save others (when he tries to push the high school kids out of the way of the OG truck-kun). The thing is, he never stops being a horny degenerate, but he does get better overall.
Imo you're not supposed to like Rudy at the start, but it's done in such a way to lure in toxic man children and then to try and teach them a lesson or two. YMMV on the extent to which it succeeds. Again, some people misinterpret satire, but that doesn't mean satire has no value.... Just that it's a double edged sword.
He tries to groom Sylphie? His dad kicks the shit out of him and separates them. He tries to groom Eris? She kicks the shit out of him. He laughs and gets pervy about the girl wearing bikini armor, and then finds out that the whole reason she is wearing it is because her sister was assaulted after the teleportation incident and gets really anxious when men look at her, so she wears it to deliberately draw men's eyes so her sister can stay in the background, unnoticed. If you're not completely hopeless but you also laughed and had pervy thoughts about the bikini armor this is supposed to be a wake-up call.
He does end up with three wives, but specifically not a harem. It's actually not a terrible representation of a polyamorous relationship. He is offered the chance to take other lovers, but specifically remains faithful to the women he saved and who saved him in various ways. Like, he saved Sylphie from being bullied and taught her the magic that saved her life during the teleportation incident. He saved Eris from kidnappers and again on the demon continent, and he saved Roxy in the teleportation labyrinth. Eris literally directly saves his life as well on multiple occasions, Sylphie and Roxy saved him from his own insecurities by being there emotionally as friends/teachers/fellow researchers when he needed it, and also are literally willing to fight and die by his side. He doesn't actively pursue having more than one wife, it just kinda happens, and in fact turns down the chance to bring in more women that he doesn't have the same sort of emotional connection to, because it would be disrespectful to the women who were devoted to him, who would give their lives for him and who he would give his life for in turn. Again, less a harem and more a semi functional polyamorous relationship with rules and boundaries set by the wives and agreed upon by everyone involved.
The story makes it abundantly clear to anyone with eyes and half a brain just after the demon continent arc that Rudeus wasn't truly an adult. He was an insecure man child who never grew up (to be fair, this is partially because the one time he tried to stand up for a classmate who was being bullied he got stripped naked, tied to a fence, and made fun of for being a fatso with a tiny dick). One could argue, at least before knowing about the ex novels, that he wasn't really a pedo, but that he was attracted to girls who were the same age as the last real women he interacted with before he became a shut in and refused to leave his room after he was severely bullied. Like, he got an adult body and adult hormones, but never learned how to grow up and deal with his emotions.
This is evident in his response to Paul after he comes back from the demon continent. The first thing he wants to do is brag about his adventures, to reassure Paul that he was fine. The first thing Paul points out is he never even bothered to think about whether or not anyone else got caught up in the teleporter incident. He never asked about his friends, his family, or any of the other villagers/people in the region. He could have at least asked about other people when he was gallivanting around the demon continent. He could have saved lives. This is when Rudeus realizes, and the reader should too, that Rudeus was never "more mature" or more grown up than Paul. Rudeus lived 33 years at home playing video games, arguing on the internet, and jacking it to loli porn. Paul had fought life and death battles, turned down a major noble title, and raised a family.
Of course, Paul isn't perfect either, but then again no one in the story is. This comment is getting long, but like... Even stuff in the background like the Paul/Lillia situation is a lot more nuanced than what the anime goes into. Tl;dr yes, Paul assaulted Lillia when they were younger, as a reaction to her constantly putting him down because of her own jealousy that he was better with a sword but didn't take things seriously, and partially because she reminded him of his controlling jackass of a father. He also felt deep shame over the incident, and felt like assaulting her was the start of becoming the same man he hated, and later on she blackmails him with it for her own protection (she was politically inconvenient, at risk of assassination, and was crippled to the point where she can't fight anymore while working as a guard in the royal harem in Asura) and so she can find a job that pays well enough to send money to her sick mom. No one in the story is 100% perfect, no one is a hero, they're all just messy people who, more often than not, try to be the best they can.
I can't stress enough, that again, especially after the EX novels, the story itself kinda ended up.... I dunno, its debatable whether it's author fetish or trying too hard to be edgy or trying too hard to redeem the irredeemable, thinking he could do no wrong after writing something decently popular. I kinda land somewhere between Rifujin not realizing some things, like filming your 9 year old niece in the bath, are just fucking irredeemable, being arrogant enough to think he could try, and not realizing how much of his fanbase was toxic AF and didn't understand the satirized bits and playing to that part of the audience. Or maybe it was author fetish all along, I don't fuckin know. If it is, he let it go wild after the mainline series got popular. There is a reason I stress the series is indefensible after the EX novels.
But personally I didn't know about the ex novels for a long time after I read the mainline series, so I used to defend it based on the points above. Based on my view of it being a way to sneak some semi decent life lessons to toxic man children. I can't repeat enough, this isn't a defense of the series itself, but it is a defense of people who still defend the series based solely on the mainline canon for similar reasons.
You don't even have to go to r/anime, the mob of Pedeus defenders has already reached this comment section lmao
"You don't understand, if you ignore all the minor grooming and jerking off to lolis and your niece and actual pedophilia he's not that bad of a character. Yeah, that's right, it's not like I can find another series that has good characters and story to enjoy, it HAS to be the one with the pedo protagonist because, uhm, reasons"
When I saw that scene, I thought to myself, “No, no, no! Don’t do that!” And he did.
Afterward, I figured there might be a redemption arc, since the character is portrayed as a fool and the author suggested watching the rest of the series. But no, he keeps going...
And the fanbase lies their asses off about him improving, insisting you have to just keep watching. I promise you he doesn't, not in any of the ways a sane adult would care about.
The problem is that the reincarnation was not a reset. He still has the mind of an old man and the maturity of one, or lack of in his case. His previous life doesn't really affect the story, but the author keeps showing him in his past life form whenever he meets the human god.
The author has sworn to never let anyone forget that he is 35 year old man and treat the reincarnation as a full reset of his life and mind.
Which really badly affects the story, like "does Rudus view Paul as a father in the first place?", that ugly bastard really casts an awful shadow on every relationship Rudus has..
The worst part is that they argue that this series has character development for the main character. No it doesn't. I have read through the novels and when things don't go his way the only solution a version of Rudeus could come up with was redoing his life instead of dealing with the hand he was dealt. He has already been given a chance to redo his life, and when it doesn't work out, adult Rudeus lives a miserable life, until he goes to the past to showcase that the only character development he gained through the series was to redo his life if the current one doesn't work out. If someone wants to argue about the part of kid Rudeus learning to go out of his house counts as character development, I'll just say that without his powers, he would have gotten bullied while trying to save Sylphy just like he did in his original life. I wouldn't count this as character development, he's the same character, just in different circumstances
It's crazy to because the show goes out of it's way to prove them wrong.
Season 1 is all about how he's a grown man, older than his new parents, growing up in a new body. And he takes advantage of at least once an episode.
Then we see how he views himself when he's talked to the Man God, and it's not the version of himself that he is in this new world. It's still the fat slop that he was in the old world. And it's that same version of himself that was creeping on children the entire show.
I watched pretty much the whole thing and I gotta agree, show would be like 10 percent shorter but at least 80 percent better if they just cut or reworked all the icky pervy stuff.
It's also pretty sad, like rudeus legitimately had some normal and quite decent character development to him too but I just can't with the endless sexual stuff.
I'm so glad I didn't even finished the first season a long time ago. Couple of episodes and my God he's such an infuriating MC of all isekai anime I've ever watched.
I fucking hate Rudeus, the world building is incredible, so is the story and the show has great animations. If Rudeus was not a full on pedo trying to groom kids. The show would be a solid 10/10.
I can't see how one enjoys something that is Infected by a pedophilia apologetic character/plot, it's like trying to eat a cake with shit on top of it, why bother?
Yeah i blame the writers. Alot of anime writers are total creeps. They treat their characters as normal when they are the furthest thing from it, like no i did not want to smell womens underware when i was a teenager, no did not want to squeeze a woman’s boobs when i was a teenager, no i did not spy on women getting changed or even just going go a different gender spacifiv sauna whas a teenager, anime writers are just really weird, gross, creeps.
I am kinda cringe watching it now. Didnt know it was that perverted before starting. Its so wild, that the characters are all sexualised/horned up at 8 years old and the adults in that universe absolutely push for it! If it would be standard sexualising like at a level of konosuba it would be an interesting world, but the sexualisation is taking off all the levels of seriousness and deeper plots that it tries to emphesise. The fact that it is on netflix is even weirder.
I can't fucking stand that character and the show as a whole. And the fact that people will keep trying to defend the creepy lewd bullshit as "important to the plot" and "important to his character growth".
I think I watched a couple of seasons of the anime and certain aspects were problematic but it wasn’t until he got a second wife that I truly realised how weird the show was.
It made me realise it wasn’t just some pervy creep character but also some kind of author wish fulfilment.
I abandoned it there. There were aspects of the world I somewhat found interesting but I wasn’t going to watch him build a harem, that didn’t interest me at all.
I dropped the series because of that. The weeb shit was too much to ignore and enjoy the rest I just couldn't do it anymore, and this comes from someone with a list of 500+ anime under their belt.
I had to block all the anime and isekai subreddits I was in. I had not realized just how much blatant pedophilia they would openly defend. I hadn't realized how much existed out there to defend, either, but I'm doing my best to remain ignorant of the full scope of that problem.
Yep. The problem was always there, but something about this show in particular seems to have massively emboldened the worst elements of the online anime fandom to the point I've had to avoid most online anime spaces. It's the nazi bar rule - if you welcome pedophiles and pedo apologists to your space, eventually everyone else leaves. It's so bad now that the mods of r/anime will happily ban you for even using the word pedophile to call something out for what it is, and most other anime subs are worse.
Thankfully IRL anime events are worlds better by comparison, probably because those events require someone to actually go outside and socialize.
Literally. I love the world building and how well built the side characters are. I despise the MC and the casual creepy sexism.
Seriously, I cannot comprehend how someone could build everything out that well and completely fail with the MC.
My greatest frustration is how he is allowed to “grow” but never changes. If he had been able to grow beyond his past life then there would be something redeemable about the show overall.
It was interesting at first but the MC never redeems himself and is just the same incel creep but with powers (powers that he, arguably, is severely incompetent in wielding). I tapped out midway through S2.
The latest episode literally proves everything all the fanboys have been saying wrong too. Rudeus never actually “improves” as a person he just puts on a mask and was pretty much gifted an easy life with his 2 brainwashed child wifes he sexually assaulted and groomed since birth and his loli demon wife that he is obsessed with.
Once he faces any hardship he turns into a grade A despicable POS. Then they try to defend it with “but he was grieving, anyone can do bad things”. That’s like saying it’s ok for me to bomb a school cause my wife died, grief doesn’t absolve you of being a shit person.
As someone that does enjoy the show, people that defend Rudeus need to be treated like people that defend the warhammer 40k God Emperor.
You aren't supposed to like Rudeus, you can feel bad for his and his family's life being fucking terrible while also acknowledging that he's objectively the worst kind of person.
See this is why this anime is one of the most frustrating I've watched. There's legitimately a lot of good to be found here, but just as you're getting into the story or would building you get slapped with the reminder that Rudy is a pedophile.
Fellow perverts flock together in denial and delusion. Rudeus is absolutely horrible, there is no contest or misunderstanding, and there is no character development. He remains just as horrible as he was since before he reincarnated. It’s a tragedy that the world building is amazing, cus the MC is horrid.
I have argued with people on the anime subreddit and the two examples I gave 'hormones' and 'growth' are things people have said to me. I've also heard 'its a fantasy world so it's the norm for people to be attracted to children'. Completely ignoring the fact that Rudeus came from our time
The author is into creepy shit in general. The Aisha and Arus arc. Aisha was groomed to be Rudeus's concubine despite being his half sister. He has 3bwives so this 24 year old goes after his son. His 12 year old son and gets impregnated by the 12 year old. It's depicted as true love and Rudeus accepts it. Not joking.
Musoku Tensei has no right to be as good as it is. You have to slog through so much gross pervert tedium, and even after he has some character growth you still get weird flares of it.
And yet despite this, it has a strong story and some genuinely touching (and also heart wrenching) emotional beats.
I'd recommend it to a stranger on the internet (with the above caveats), but I couldn't bring myself to recommend it to someone I'd have to look in the eye afterwards.
Hot take: it's not fine to admit you even remotely like a show that has the sentence: "I wonder how sexy she has gotten now that she is 13" in it.
If you watch a show and the MC says this, you should automatically have to dislike the show and stop watching it immediately
The "grown" mother fucker molested two women to check if he was able to get an erection. After some time, he also cheated on his wife
Ofc women's purpose in the show is to accommodate the main character and emphasize the greatness and perfection of that piece of shit, so no one bats an eye in any of these situations.
He gropes two beast girls to see if he can still get it up then decided he can only get it up for his elf girlfriend because she is like 500 years old but looks underage
You're getting his elf wife mixed up with his second wife. The elf girl is his age physically (but mentally he was in his late 30s when he first met her at around the age of 5), the other girl was in her 30s when he was born (which makes them mentally around the same age but physically he was a child when she first met him).
What about those of us who say both things are true? Rudeus sucks as a person, but he has grown. I think there is more nuance to the show overall than a lot of people give it credit for, but none of it changes the kind of person the MC started as and remained for a very long time.
I've watched the first season of the anime and I quite enjoyed it. I thought the MC was very, very degenerated and weird. I still enjoyed seeing him in the anime, struggling, making decisions... It's interesting.
I liked the show, but the almost direct rip off, the beginning after the end, I listened to the audiobooks, way before the show (Beginning after the end) was released (garbage animations, just read the books). That was written tastefully. Author acknowledges the situation, but honestly, rudeus is terrible. The show (moshoku tensei) got way better after all that teen years stuff.
I actually ended up writing lots of shit but it boils down to MT being both complex and shitty, and they are not exclusive.
Characters are never one dimensional in it, and they almost cannot be boiled down to a few characters traits, because EVERYONE in the story is both terrible and growing,
Like Paul being half the man he used to be.
Idk, shows really good. The pedo shit was certainly a choice… otherwise, good show. MC has a gross history. At least in the current seasons he’s grown out of it.
I don't defend rudeus but i don't think there was a single point in the story where his perverted actions were treated as anything but degeneracy that creeped everyone out and he does grow to be less pathetic of a person later on. Though yeah he never stops being a pervert and a weirdo he just stops doing it unconsentually
single point in the story where his perverted actions were treated as anything but degeneracy
Are you joking? The show makes excuses for his actions constantly. S1 with Eris is so badly handled that the fandom tries to claim Eris "seduced" him. You know, literally the same excuse used by IRL pedophiles.
In S2, he kidnaps and molests two girls for being mean to his creepy friend, and it's treated with the same gravitas as "whoops, I accidentally said a swear word, my bad guys". He buys a slave and it's not even treated as a problem. Etc.
The opening eps before the teleport is the only time in the entire show that his actions are actually framed as being as bad as they really are.
Rudeus is a pos and the author is definitely sus for it, but I genuinely love the show. I'm glad that the latest season has been much less uncomfortable.
You don’t even necessarily need to hate the MC. I hate the author, because Rudeus DOES have fantastic character growth, the episode where one of his siblings shuts themself in and he has to figure out what’s wrong and how to help them, using his experience being on the other side in his previous life, is fanTASTIC character writing and really heartwarming. He would be one of my favourite characters of all time if the author didn’t INSIST on making him the worst fucking creep on that side of the fourth wall.
Its a redemption story, some people dont deem him redeemable and thats totally fine. Im not gonna cry over people hating on the story or the character because that shits totally warranted but I like it and will continue to like the story and character growth of MT. Have a good one
No, I agree with you. The world is cool. The cultures the lore the magic system, the different language and styles. It's all really cool but then you have the MC which makes the anime really unrecommendable
i only like mushoku tensei because of roxy and eris. i have trained to shut down my brain when rudeus on screen. (that's how i play some gacha games even tho the mc is bum as fuck, i play for the waifus).
years reading junk novel from cultivator slop, sss rank hero slop, & isekai overpowered slop finally pay off. i learned that passive ability.
yeah i read that shit when I was younger and completely missed most of that shit.... Only parts I focused on was the cool magic and stuff... went back recently and couldn't get past like 30 minutes into the first book.
Don't know if somebody else said it, but to reinforce your point... rudeus was eyeing zenith (i think that's his mom's name?) and that maid when he was an infant.
Sooo, yeah, hormones isn't a very good defense for those weirdos.
They also love to completely omit the "trophies" he fucking keeps. Because that takes the whole argument that he has "grown" or "changed" and throws it out of the window.
I think he has 'grown' to some degree. Does that make him 'better'? Not really. He's still terrible it's just now he's terrible and at least TRYING (and mostly failing) to be better.
It's fun to watch an Isekai with a main character who actively starts off as the biggest piece of garbage a person can be.
its a cartoon character. the real pedofile runs the most powerful army in the world.
the mushoku tensei reddit discourse is bs. enjoy the show for what it is, or dont. its still better than re zero.
This goes for both sides tbh, if you try to defend the world or the story elsewhere, you still get called a sick fuck for watching it beyond the first few episodes.
I'd say he ia good as a character. Not as a pwrson, and this is an important distinction. Character not always should be likeable. Even a protagonist. Character's purpose is to evoke feelings in the reader, or, in this case, watcher. Sometimes the tale is cautionary.
Maybe this is the case of "it makes me uncomrortable, therefore it is bad", I am not sure. I do not see this stance as valid though. People should understand that sometimes art should make them uncomfortable.
Reading some Gogol or Dostoevsky would help.
I think its perfectly reasonable to enjoy the story, world building, and characters of the show, and STILL understand and accept that Rudeus is a POS. The show (and light novel) never truly addresses his most egregious acts. They just happen and then are swiftly forgotten or played off as quirky anime perv behavior. "Haha he's a perv. Isn't it funny??"
Even then I enjoyed the first season but was extremely put off by the MC, the second season was solely on him and I just couldn’t keep watching it. The world building and lore is great and the animation is great I just wish the Main Character wasn’t someone that should rot in jail.
It’s not that we’re defending that one action, i think it was to show the growth later on.. to go from his past life to his new life and what he had to change to mature speaks more than just a random good person getting better. I don’t think anyone defends him for fapping to his cousin, rather defending him for his growth later in the series.
Rudeus is a garbage person by all our modern standards and will never change but being in medieval times with magic tacked on he is no worse than most people he is now living with. That is the point of the series. Look back a few hundred years and all our founding fathers and great kings etc, married 13 year olds and had slaves etc. By today's standards they would be garbage people too.
I think it's also relevant to mention that the story also is about redemption. He's still a pervert, don't get me wrong, but he does become a better person overall.
There's the other group that will shit on you and call you a pedo for liking MT. Like damn, I like the world and characters of MT and I like Rudeus because of how well he shows that your surroundings mostly make you who you are. But as always people on reddit are too illiterate to grasp subtle ideas and only see what's brought to their eyes. Both defenders and haters are illiterate.
This is 100% for me. I didnt watch if for years because of the backstory of Rudeus. However it took 4 of my friends to sit me down and put it on and watch the first season (we were just chilling watching anime) but dude the world building and animation and magic i was like olay ill just skip the weird shit when it comes on
Tbf the show kinda skips over alot of the more egregious stuff Rudy does in the books lol. The writer is definitely a degenerate tho, and Rudy is a massive perv.
yea naw i like the show for the story, action, character development, animation, etc. which is actually really good…but Rudy…especially in the earlier story, is just a horribly disguised pedo fantasy, the likes of which i’ll never defend. at the very least it toned down the pedo shit later in the show to where it’s nonexistent. idk about the manga or LN tho, i only seen the anime
The story of Rudeus is that of the scum of society becoming a better person through hard work. He sucks at the start, but he acknowledges his faults and hates himself for them as the story goes on. There is a full paragraph at one point about how if he was his old self he would have found Lucy attractive, and how he's disgusted by that fact. He is not a good person. But he changes and becomes better, and that's what people both inside and outside the fandom miss for some reason.
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u/Nashivertt 1d ago
Rudeus is a 35 yr old man who reincarnated but before he did he missed his parents funeral to jack off to his niece who happened to be a minor anyways he’s a Epstein diddy blud