Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation II
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2328 |
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I was pretty sure she said it both before and (more emphatically) after; it was the before one I was commenting on. Possible I'm misremembering, though; I'll check when I've got a minute. EDIT: Oh, AQuin already caught this. Yes, it's the 'tsundere pretext' bit beforehand I was commenting on. It felt a bit weird to me because it didn't seem to me that Rudeus picked up on it being a pretext on her part to preserve her feelings/maintain an ability to deny she was being romantically vulnerable. He just kind of accepted it at face value and dove in, as it were. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 11608 |
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When your protagonist goes from being the most horny character in the show to having erectile dysfunction who can't get it on with any cute or attractive woman.
I was really liking how things were progressing between Rudy and Sara but Rudy's emotional baggage and Sara's own insecurities just prevented them from truly coming together as a couple. Though Rudy's drunken rant kind of put things past the point of no return, both with Sara and Counter Arrow, and he realized it. At least Soldat turned out to be a real bro. |
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2-2Distracted
Posts: 148 |
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This show can't be serious right now. It's really gonna spend several episodes focusing on the Child Predator's erectile dysfunction lol. I would feel bad for Rudy and see this as something worth being invested in if not for the fact that the MC is in fact in his 40s and had previously assaulted a child.
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ScruffyKiwi
 Posts: 681 Location: New Zealand |
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Who did he assault? He didn’t as an adult (although he did record his niece naked) and he certainly thought about groping Eris but I don’t think he actually did. |
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Juno016
 Posts: 2395 |
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Honestly, I don't even think this is an unfair criticism. I still like the novels/show and find myself invested in the cast and plot, but Rudy himself has tested my patience a lot. I heard this is a redemption story, and if it's a slow one, then so be it, but after reading volume 8, I don't know if he'll ever be fully redeemed in my eyes, no matter what he does. And heck, now I'm starting to question the moral compass of spoiler[Sylphie].
In volume 2 (novels)/early season 1 (anime), he feels up her chest while she's sleeping and tries to remove her underwear, but she wakes up and he gets beaten up for it. I thiiiink he feels her chest up sometime later and comments on her chest's growth, but I don't remember when. Either way, I'd say that counts as "assault". I can handwave a lot in the show off because otherwise, the writing is really good, but this was one of those moments where I had to brain bleach to get through the story for a while there. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2328 |
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Yeah, that scene with him trying to assault Eris is one of the moments from season 1 I've been trying to forget.
 Another was his first internal monologue about Roxy being 'perfect for him'. And it wasn't even just Rudeus himself being gross; the show tended to frame these moments as funny or titillating rather than revolting.
The tail end of Season 1, and all of Season 2, has been better in that regard. I don't think anything we've seen since has returned to those lows (my complaint above being concerning and of the same type but less severe, I think). Still, they are hard to forget. |
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Emerje
 Posts: 7353 Location: Maine |
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So then none of you have noticed that Rudy's inner personality is starting to match his outer one? Ever since his depression started (or maybe even since he nearly died at the hands of Orsted) his mental and physical self have started to sync up. Before he treated his reincarnation as if he was inside someone else's body and he could do whatever he wanted in it, live out any of his lascivious fantasies because who's going to blame a kid for being curious? The old him sure wouldn't have had ED and the things he said about Sara might have even been how he truly felt. That's no longer the case. Now he's living in the world and it's taking an emotional toll on him. It's to the point where we're even hearing Rudy's voice in his thoughts, not his old self voice (which seems to be more narrative now). I don't think it's right anymore to think of him as an older man in a child's body when his personality has fully become age appropriate. His old self wouldn't have responded to rejection with attempted suicide, he would have done it by going back to his room and not wanting to leave for days.
Emerje |
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Iron Maw
Posts: 492 |
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The biggest problem with last 3 episodes isn't fact that Rudy has personal issues, but how much wild seesawing between his emotional states it does. Hard to buy he's turning a new leaf and moving on when happens every episode. So I am really happy to be done with mini-arc and actually moving to greener pastures. There is only so much of rut>epiphany>rut>epiphany cycle I can take. Maybe this was something handled better in the novels.
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YourNameIsMitsuha
Posts: 62 |
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The more time the show forces me to spend with Rudeus, the less I like him. He is now turning to alcohol to dull pain, which is a bitch move. He continues to try to calculate if he can get a girl naked, objectification, ho! Someone a while back tried to defend this series by saying Rudeus is remorseful and trying to change how he treats women, and said he becomes impotent. I believe this must be the arc they were thinking of. But I see no remorse here. Pain, yes. Confusion, yes, afterall, Eris leaving was the cumulation of a relationship he rushed over time, so it's hard for him to see where he went wrong. But I see no remorse, and certainly no improvement. His impotence is fear, not remorse. He still objectives and rushes relationships, showing not only is he not trying to improve, he doesn't even know that he is doing something wrong. His fear is of the women hurting him, not the other way around, which means he doesn't see himself as the problem. I believe this series means well, which is why I continue to watch it, but I can't help but wonder if the writers understand themselves the situation they are presenting. I'd like to see how his development plays out on the long run, but for now I just to get away from his obnoxious women issues and back to the more interesting plot lines.
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2328 |
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Yeah, 100% agree with this. MT's handling of sex/romance has been.. uhh, uneven? It had some tender moments near the end of season 1 that almost seemed serviceable in that regard, but has had many more moments where the series/writers seem to misunderstand the problems with Rudeus's behavior. The result has not been super satisfying and is often quite off-putting. The primary counterbalance to that for me is that whenever the narrative steps into the broader world-building it absolutely kills it. I want to encounter more of this world's great dangers and towering figures, not worry about whether Rudy can sleep with his latest lady-friend. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23857 |
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Here are my two preferred outcomes (neither of which will happen, but a fella can dream):
I) Rudeus is killed and we get an MC who doesn't annoy the crap out of me and who I actually care about. 2) Rudeus becomes voluntarily celibate and this show never tries to deal with sexual relationships ever again. I'm cool either way. |
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YourNameIsMitsuha
Posts: 62 |
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I could live with those outcomes! I'd settle for shifting to literally any other character and just get the 3rd person version of Rudeus's story, which would undoubtedly have almost none of this relationship mishandling. On a side note, I was at some point trying to rationalize Rudeus's former self being chain-link fence crucified. It's hard for me to imagine, with the time that would take, that no one would have intervened, even with their lets-not-get involved attitudes. Also, what do you have to do to provoke such cruelty; surely the crime of existing isn't enough. We assume he is the victim, but what if we set that aside for a moment and look for what could fill in the blank to this disproportionate situation. It occurred to me that he, as an infant, was in full command of his sexual judgement: he found his mom and maid to be hot, and was already sexually exploiting them immediately. At the same time, he found pre-10 yo. girls to be attractive. That is creeper material, no mistake. You don't just wake up a creeper one day. So what if he had molested one of the "bullies" sisters or something. Not unimaginable after watching him grope sleeping young Eris. Pure speculation of course, but it fits better than assuming he did nothing to incure the crucifixion. I am not viewing Rudeus as a victim in any of this at this point. Again, the writers may not understand the situation they created with the facts they've given us, but this guy just looks more and more like a serious creeper everything he interacts with women. |
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Juno016
Posts: 2395 |
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I haven't watched the last three episodes yet, but in the novels, he did not think of Sara as a potential partner until she offered to go back with him. He very explicitely blamed himself for the failure (in fact, he takes Sara at her word when she leaves, not realizing she actually likes him), just like he did with Eris, and spent the night afterward reacting... pretty normal, I'd say. After he says the nasty things about her at the end, he realizes he doesn't mean them and decides to never see her again because he feels getting into relationships is interfering with his search for his mother. Lastly, as you'll find out spoiler[soon], his impotency is less a matter of fear or remorse, but a matter of spoiler[he can't get it up with someone he's not attracted to.] As simple and anti-climatic as that sounds, it is precisely this that leads him to respect women more as people and less as objects. But before that sounds like a defense, I don't really feel like defending Rudy as a person. He is more a character study to me. I'm not too far ahead in the novels, but Rudy still gets on my nerves a lot. He's not a moral compass character. He's a complex character with huge flaws that come back to bite him time and time again until he is able to empathize with and value other people differently at the end of each chapter from the beginning. It's a slow burn, but I'm hoping it's worth it. Nonetheless, Rudy is the central character. If his behavior isn't something you care to see more of, I don't know if I can recommend continuing. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23857 |
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I can only speak for myself, of course, but as much as Rudeus can annoy me on occasion, there is so much else about the show that I like that I don't find it a hardship to carry on. And it's not like he annoys me all of the time, just some of it. But I honestly can't remember ever liking a show this much while at the same time not liking the MC. It's an unusual situation for me to be in .
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18223 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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This is essentially the same way I see it (though I haven't read the novels). Additionally, despite Rudy's more distasteful quirks, I still find him to be a fascinating character because it feels like the author carefully thought through what kind of effect Rudy's carryover baggage and identity would actually have on someone reincarnated with memories intact; logically speaking, this would be a messy process for anyone, even someone who was better-adjusted than Rudy's original identity. This gets glossed over in most reincarnation isekai, which would rather just concentrate on all of the cool stuff the reincarnate can do with his/her/its new powers (in fact, the only other reincarnation isekai I can think of which even partly touches on that is So I'm a Spider, So What?, and that's nowhere near to the same degree as here), so a series actually taking time to deal with that is a refreshing change for me. The other disconnect I see here is that, for all its fantasy trappings and action scenes, this is more a character study than a fantasy adventure at its core. Because that study is focused on Rudeus, he's the story's most indispensable character.
School Days or Neon Genesis Evangelion, perhaps? |
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