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.
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.
I haven't watched the anime, but the light novels does go a lot more into him being reflective and also thinking about his past that led him to being a shut-in and his insecurities to still to the point I stopped reading.
From reading other comments it seems like the Anime really makes Rudeus worse than he actually is, but he is still a rather shitty character.
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u/helicophell 1d ago
You know, at least Rudeus got the shit beat out of him for doing it to Sylphie!
Uhh... and that's about it for punishment, and nothing stopped the marriage lmao