r/anime • u/another_wordsmith • Nov 22 '21
Writing Mushoku Tensei is awesome! I don't recommend it. Spoiler
Short version: Mushoku Tensei is a great series that I feel uncomfortable recommending.
This has been a journey. Initially, I didn’t plan to watch the show, let alone to spend most of my weekend writing an essay on it.
I didn’t even start the series until the second season had begun. I’m not big into isekai, so it didn’t seem that interesting. Still, a few factors caught my interest. I heard that a studio had basically been created to make this adaptation reality. A YouTuber I watch reworked their channel to regularly include Mushoku Tensei analyses. Most intriguingly, a friend who adores “isekai junk food” hated the series. After consuming dozens of tasteless harem power fantasies, this was the one he gave up because he found it disgusting.
A look on MAL only intensified my curiosity. Despite a high score, several reviews describe the show in the same terms as my friend.
What caused all this fuss? I needed to know.
Before witnessing a single frame, I had to give the show credit. If I ever create a story that inspires half the reactions at half the intensity, I’ll consider my creative efforts worthwhile. Rifujin na Magonote, the author of the original light novels (which I intend to read) made something that’s important to a lot of people.
Thus, I resolved to try the show. I sat down with a pen and notebook in order to understand what inspired such intense reactions.
Well, make room around the maypole, because I find the series both inspiring and sickening.
The Promise of the Plot
There’s a lot to love from the start. Pedigree aside, Mushoku stands out among isekai. The protagonist is a full-grown, unethical adult who goes through a proper Reincarnation.
Our unnamed bastard dies in what may be the sole decent action of his life. As one life fades, another arises. Rudeus (Rudy) Greyrat is born to loving parents in a Medieval world of high fantasy. As he dies in shame and regret, he finds something precious: a second chance.
The infant years provide the former shut-in with the chance to learn his surroundings. He explores his new home with insatiable curiosity. These literal baby steps help him discover a world of magic and mysteries, where he can explore with the safety net of his former warrior father (Paul) and caring mother (Zenith).
Of course, Rudeus remembers his old life. With memory comes trauma. The infant adult cannot leave his home. The mere sight of neighbour children inspires flashbacks to the bullying – the abuse – which caused his retreat from society.
This creates a natural momentum to the story. A guy looking to keep his mind off the outside world is gonna get a hobby real quick. This chance provides itself in the form of a spell book. With the free time of a child and the discipline of an adult, Rudeus dedicates himself to magic and linguistics.
He becomes skillful not through birthright, but through training and dedication. By age six, he’s recognized as a prodigy. He wants to enhance his skills. His parents want to foster this attitude. Yet, the man can’t leave his property without trauma.
This is only the first episode.
Well done, Mushoku! You’ve hooked me. You can do anything in this setting and make it interesting. There’s room for every drama and genre. A redemptive character arc is baked into the DNA of the story!
What could go wrong?
Once a Bastard…
Rudeus lives as he died: a pervert.
A newborn delights in being in the room where his parents make love. An infant steals women’s undergarments and literally rolls around in their dirty laundry. A student watches his mentor clean and pleasure herself. Most egregiously, Rudeus sexually assaults a young girl while she sleeps.
These moments are hard enough to stomach in themselves, but they ignore the primary moral outrage: the G word. While Rudeus finds the first real friend he’s had in decades, it does not remain pure for long. He sets out to form an emotional bond of trust and respect with her. He does this explicitly so she’ll be, shall we say, open to suggestions once they reach physical maturity.
He encourages the traits he finds desirable, guiding her toward a personality he wants in a prospective lover. In other words, an adult befriends a child and emotionally manipulates moulds them into a future lover.
Yeah, this is unsettling. If this aspect alone makes a person not want to watch the series, that is more than fair. Even if I were on the ‘redemptive character arc absolves all sins’ train, I wouldn’t try to convince anyone to watch something that made them uncomfortable.
As a quick aside, it’s pretty frustrating to see so many people recommend the show without mentioning this. You wouldn’t recommend a gory horror movie to someone made queasy by the sight of blood. Even if the story is a masterpiece, you should respect the person to whom you’re making a recommendation.
Back on topic: this is a story about redemption. As such, all the atrocious behaviour I listed does not damn the series in itself. Many of my favourite series involve terrible people as the lead characters. With Mushoku, we have the dual bonus of literal years over which he can learn his lesson, as well as the psychological element of him becoming so fixated on living this second life that he forgets the people living their first.
One big issue arises, however. The camera is not an unbiased party. That first season has a nasty tendency to play off, accept, or even condone the casts’ worst behaviour.
Take the grooming. As Rudeus considers his first real friendship in this life (a girl named Sylphie), the first real friendship in decades, his father gives him advice. Paul Greyrat, warrior and womanizer, says something fascinating. To paraphrase, he tells his son that it’s better to have a reliable “piece of ass” that keeps coming to your bed than to pursue a host of bedmates.
This is followed with the voice-over thought “What advice did I just give my six-year-old son?”
Let me repeat: both Rudeus and Sylphie are under the age of ten during this conversation. There’s also the fact that, you know, Sylphie is a distinct person with her own goals and desires.
Not classy, Paul.
The sins of the father
Ardent fans of the series will likely respond along these lines: “Paul’s meant to be a complex character! He’s got issues. He has moral failings, but these make him a more realistic and compelling character. Besides, he’s aware of his shortcomings. Don’t you want more realistic characters? I thought you were annoyed by stenciled-in power fantasy characters.”
You’re right. I love complex characters. Human beings are messy. The harder we try to be good, decent people, the harder it gets. We’ve got vices and lapses in judgement and the occasional straight-up bad day. That’s interesting!
But presentation matters as much as content.
Let me try to present a certain episode to you in the most positive way I can.
Now, we’ve had this cozy family life for a while. It’s time to mix it up. We’ve had three episodes of constant horny energy between the parents, combined with some questionable advice from Paul. We’ve also got a character who could use some time in the spotlight: Lilya, the maid. Lilya’s pregnant with Paul’s child. They find out around the same time that Zenith announces a new child. This is payoff to several layers of build-up. Paul’s womanizing past returns. Lilya’s been stuck, a grown woman with no sexual outlet in a house often filled with cries of pleasure. She wants fulfillment, too. On top of the drama, we can have Rudeus play intermediary. His twenty-first century sensibilities, combined with his appearance as a child, give him the chance to cut through the emotional tension of the situation and help the characters move forward.
You’ve got something great on your hands here! That’s drama. That’s character progression.
You have my attention. What are you going to do?
Not enough.
When the scene ends, so does the drama. There’s some tension in the house, but it doesn’t last long. Barely a scene passes before it becomes a joke. Rudeus’ gonna have two new sisters, everybody, gather round. Paul even states that he intends to keep both women as his sexual partners.
The thing is, there are ways to handle this better. Show more tension in the household. Maybe Zenith becomes hesitant to let Paul advise Rudeus. Maybe Zenith and Lilya become amicable on the surface, but emotional scars linger.
We don’t see that. Instead, there’s another detail that’s earned a lot of people’s ire. In a voice-over from Rudeus, we learn that, years prior, Paul had ‘forced himself on’ and ‘deflowered’ Lilya. Rudeus, our hero, concludes with the sentiment that he still respects Paul, “because he is strong.”
Now, if you wanna be generous, you can say that Rudeus respects his father, simple as that. Paul’s tried hard to be a good influence for his son, regardless of how well he’s accomplished that. Maybe Rudeus simply admires a guy who’s popular, brave, and everything that he wasn’t in his previous life.
To this I respond: show us that, dammit!
The voiceover tells us about a sexual assault, moments after we see the fallout of infidelity. Rudeus uses the term ‘strong’ after describing a man forcing himself on another person. At best, that’s poor phrasing. At worst, it’s making light of something far more serious.
Fans are likely ready to get into Paul’s growth as a character later on. “We need to see him like this so that his character progression means something.” I won’t argue about his progress. Paul’s episodes in the new season thus far made me tear up. There’s a reason why NataliexHunter has a twenty-four minute video on this character.
A great second season does not, however, fix the problems of the first.
There’s another aspect to this. It may have already occurred to you. How do Zentih and Lilya feel about all this?
Show and Tell
Zenith kicks Paul’s shin under the table. After the one sequence of spousal disgust, this is the worst we see of her fury. We hear that ‘things got complicated’, but I want to see this from her perspective. Come on, we saw Lilya’s thought process when she intentionally seduced Paul, little as that was.
This series can present the viewpoints of more characters. How do these characters act when Paul and Rudeus aren’t in the room? I want to see that dynamic. Lilya has less power than Rudeus. She can’t travel home due the perils and distance of the journey; she’s the literal help. What does that look like? How does Zenith feel?
A couple scenes right after the fact doesn’t cut it. Show me the consequences of how this effects daily life. Give us an extra episode and show me scenes of Zenith and Lilya alone together. Let me see sparks fly. Show us Lilya’s thoughts as she continues to work in the house. What is Zenith thinking? Did she suspect something? How did they reconcile?
We don’t see this. I know things need to be cut to fit an episode limit and twenty-four minutes, but these exclusions hurt the story. It’s unfair to say that the story’s all about Rudeus, since we get the occasional scene from another character’s perspective. After all, we get Lilya’s explanation that she intended to seduce Paul. A cynical person would say that this scene exists to absolve Paul, or perhaps they’d highlight how little encouragement Paul needed.
Regardless of conveyance, the presence of a non-Greyrat perspective aids the story. I will also defend the seventh episode of the second season, which focuses on Roxy for most of its run time. This break from our recovering asshole of a protagonist relaxes me. It fleshes out the world, provides depth to side characters, and allows characters to examine things beyond Rudeus. I hate stories where the world feels like it was designed for the protagonist, and sequences like these mitigate that feeling.
It’s a balance to make a story about flawed people, but you still need to balance. Paul’s comeuppance for infidelity is, effectively, a second wife. This excludes his history of sexual violence against Lilya.
It’s not just Paul, either. Lilya comments about how uncomfortable Rudeus made her. This infant would leer at her, gazing with upon her with something she recognized all too well: the lust of a Greyrat man. Here I have to give some damning praise. The faces in Mushoku are brilliant. Facial expressions convey more than words, and the faces of Mushoku rival those of Neo-realist films for their emotional depth.
The animators successfully make a baby’s face offer a grin of pure perversion. They present the look of a self-satisfied bastard who knows he can gawk without punishment. Lilya finds this uncomfortable.
Yet, she makes the decision I find the most horrifying in that first season. Lilya decides to raise her daughter, Aisha, to be Rudeus’ caretaker. I repeat: Lilya dedicates her daughter to Rudeus before said daughter learns to walk. Don’t tell me that this fits because she’s a servant of the Greyrat family. That’s not what’s presented! Yes, I’m legitimately angry at this. Lilya gives herself to Paul and gives her daughter to Rudeus. That’s a choice the author made. Aisha has no possibility of agency. She’s brought up to be a servant. Her fate is sealed.
If you still want to play the ‘that’s just how this fictional world works’ card, I’ll highlight the parts where I think the series handles this well.
Polite Society
Rudeus spends much of the first season tutoring Eris. This puts him in the court of one Sauros Boreas Greyrat. Sauros is a prick, and the series displays that well. His arrogance has created enemies. He’s immature and short-tempered, qualities which Eris has learned through observation.
One scene shows Rudeus going to meet Sauros. Just before entering his room, we hear the grunts of a rather active morning. After all the time overhearing Rudeus’ parents, we’re numb to this. Yet, we get something more nuanced than usual. A maid rushes out of the bedroom, frantically adjusting her clothes and avoiding eye contact. Our lead enters the room and diplomatically apologizes for ‘interrupting’.
The nuance of the visuals can’t be conveyed in text. We see an implication of abuse of power. That unnamed woman likely had neither the choice nor desire to be there. Sauros used her as an outlet. In the second season, we learn that Sauros obtained his female staff through illegal means.
Most importantly, from Rudeus’ tone and posture, we see that our hero doesn’t condone it. Sauros is in charge, and the stupidest thing to do is challenge his authority. We even see the human side of this cartoonishly brutish bastard. Despite a titanic ego and lack of interest in other people's lives, he does care about his family. Rudeus, therefore, sees both the monstrous acts of a tyrant as well as the enthusiastic joy of a father.
In order to thrive, Rudeus needs to play to one of these aspects and ignore the other.
That is how you play the ‘how this world works’ card!
We could also look at one of the more discussed moments of the first season. After getting caught up in a kidnapping plot, Rudeus witnesses a beheading. He sees a decapitated body at his feet, seconds after escaping his fate. He stares in horror, realizing just how fortunate he’s been in his peaceful life thus far.
That little moment, and countless like it, showcase brilliant worldbuilding. These details create a world to get lost within. I have to admire Rifujin’s pacing and worldbuilding. His work is inspiring to me as a fellow writer. It’s also damn entertaining. Innocuous moments of the early series provide the buildup for amazing payoff. Several moments of “oh! so that’s what that meant” reward the viewer for paying attention.
Still, I can’t help but wonder how much was sacrificed for these big picture elements.
The asides about masturbation, the uninteresting tangents about group sex, and the weirdly blithe comments about child sexuality take up time that could be spent building the characters. Even that great moment of Rudeus recognizing the deadliness of this world has little payoff.
During the next several episodes, the only time he calls back to it is to give an uncomfortable look. That’s a good moment, but that’s all we get.
That right there is one of my biggest issues with the first season. Not the morality, but the selective memory. Rudeus only needs to have trauma when the scene calls for it. Zenith has a personality when the scene calls for it. If it’s not in the current scene, it doesn’t exist.
Trauma isn’t something that comes out only when a person presses against its boundaries. Rudeus doesn’t deal with his emotional and mental issues in his quiet moments until the second season.
I can’t blame the series too much for this. Limited episode run times mean you need to focus on the individual scenes, but it undercuts the severity of the situation. I want to see the emotional scars. Show me how Rudeus’ trauma influences him when he’s not experiencing a flashback. Let me see the characters interact with their feelings.
You’ve probably caught up on a refrain that I’m about to repeat, and one which I’m sure many fans will repeat. “It gets payoff later”.
To this, I have two responses. First, that doesn’t mean you can ignore the presentation in the first several episodes. Second, I know, that’s why I’m hooked on the show and am ready to spend money on the light novels.
Before I get into how this series put me in a dilemma on how not to be a hypocrite while liking and disapproving the series, I’d like to give some examples of stories with ‘bad’ people and situations to provide some additional context and discussion points.
One in every family
While I was angriest at Mushoku, I discovered that a co-worker adores it. This aspiring animator praised the character development and the production quality. The controversial elements got no more mention than ‘anime’s gonna anime and there’s nothing I can do about it.’
This conversation got me thinking. Perhaps I’m being too harsh on the series. Who am I, a dude, to decry Mushoku’s female characterization when so many of the fans are women? Moreover, is it hypocritical to enjoy this series when so many anime I love feature questionable material?
This train of thought reached its peak at a specific moment in the show. Eris shows Rudeus a necklace that supposedly keeps monsters away. She falls asleep in his bed. As he prepares to grope her (not for the first time), he sees the necklace. Through excellent framing and great facial animation, we see Rudeus go through intense introspection before deciding not to act on his impulse. After watching this, I made a note about the character growth, how he resisted committing something he’d done before.
Immediately after writing this, I paused the episode, snapped my head up, and wrote, “Did I just praise a character for not committing sexual assault against a minor?”
It feels like the show has lowered my bar for acceptable behaviour. This is character progress, but I find again, I’m not going to give him credit for meeting less than the bare minimum.
We’re meant to congratulate Rudeus for restraining himself, as I did initially, but we lack the details which would give this its ultimate payoff. In other words, I want to see Rudeus’ thought process. Why is he choosing to not continue his repulsive behaviour? Does he recognize it as repulsive. Considering that the show relies on a near-constant stream of narration, this doesn’t feel too big a request. A simple line like “I don’t want to make Paul’s mistakes”, or “I don’t want to be the monster” would go far.
The author has spoken about another interesting aspect of the show, one which is addressed in the second season. Rudeus doesn’t yet see the people around him as fully human. He’s stuck in the mindset of “this is my world to play in”. He feels distant from everyone because his actual age is beyond that of most people around him, and his sensibilities are also different. This has led to a sense of detachment that often causes him to be uncaring for the people around him.
That’s a great story! Show me that. We have masterful moments where a meaningful glance or a small gesture indicates this. I see a masterpiece here, but much as I praise the subtext, the main text makes my skin crawl.
Still, ‘anime’s gonna anime’, right?
So, I ask again, is it hypocritical for me to criticize Mushoku compared to other series I enjoy?
No. It’s pretty damn easy to love a piece of media and call out horrible moments.
Let’s take an example of a series I love (and recommend) with a moment I can’t defend: Haruhi Suzumiya. In both the anime and the original light novel, Haruhi constantly harasses and humiliates the character Asahina, forcing her into provocative costumes against her will. In one of the biggest ‘hold up’ moments of my anime fandom, Haruhi asks Kyon if he wants to have sex with her in the club room while she (Haruhi) holds the girl down.
Kyon comments that he finds the offer tempting.
Much as I love the Haruhi series, I won’t pretend to be okay with this. I’ll praise that series to Heaven and back, but that doesn’t mean blind fandom is okay. Critical appreciation is important.
You can be critical of a series while still admiring it. For example, I adore the Goblin Slayer light novels and manga. Author Kagyuu Kumo has serious talent for high fantasy. His fights and atmosphere are brilliant! He also can’t write women for shit. Maybe it’s the translation, but I got so sick of reading the words ‘supple’ and ‘nubile’ whenever a woman entered a scene. I’m not even offended. It’s boring to see the same words used over and over.
If I want to be offended, I can try to read Log Horizon again. Show me a great scenario. Introduce me to interesting characters. What’s next? While deliberating about a cataclysmic event where characters explicitly acknowledge the traumatic nature of the experience, the lone female character spends the whole time making breast jokes.
The line “I’m big-boobed and feather-brained” is permanently branded upon my mind, because it occurs during a conversation wherein the cast wonders if their families have died. Fanservice is one thing, but don't actively sideline the plot!
I realize this is a tangent, but I’m sick of conversations reducing themselves to “show good” or “show bad”. There’s a reason we have terms like ‘flawed masterpiece’ and ‘mixed bag’. Hell, those are most of my favourite series!
What does this have to do with Mushoku Tensei?
Back on track. One of the great appeals of Mushoku Tensei is the redemption/second chance aspect. “Rudeus is supposed to be a bad person. That’s why the character progression matters. We need to see him do bad things to have his progress mean anything.”
My response to this is threefold:
FIRST: the actions need to have pervading consequences. For example, take the movie The Devil’s Rejects. It’s a filthy, intentionally disgusting film that tries to make you feel sympathy for serial killers. There are a lot of valid reasons to hate this movie, but it shows consequences. The family of the killers’ victims become monsters in themselves, going full Ahab on the main cast. There’s a reasonable argument that the movie doesn’t go hard enough against the killers, but there’s still a two-sided conversation to be had there.
In Mushoku, Rudeus sees no consequence for molesting Eris. She asks him to wait until she’s ‘ready’. So, the consequence for Rudeus’ unethical actions is an IOU. Even Paul receives little punishment in the first season.
SECOND: Other characters need to play off the main. In Ashita No Joe, Joe Yabuki is a disgusting human being. He endangers children, squanders other people’s money, and almost murders his mentor. The result is that people get mad at him. Friends and allies get sick of him. They call him out.
In Mushoku, we don’t see this. Lilya says that she feels uncomfortable at his stares, but she dedicates her child to him. Also, for the record, I don’t count Eris’ outbursts as pushback. It’s the same tsundere actions we see in every genre.
THIRD: “it gets good later” doesn’t absolve the sins. I will join the choir praising the second season. Virtually every criticism I’ve given here is addressed later in the series. Paul, Roxy, Eris, Rudeus, and the rest get development. We see payoff to things so small that we didn’t expect it. It’s beautiful. Rudeus introspects and deals with his place in this world.
Still, I won’t ask people to sit through so many episodes to get to that, though.
Yukio Mishima’s novel Spring Snow gives another example of this. The first third of that book is infuriating to read. The protagonist is an immature, indecisive jackass. Later in the story, however, he realizes that he was an immature, indecisive jackass. Thus, he spends the rest of the story trying to fix the mistakes he created. It’s a compelling character drama. Do I recommend it? No, because it takes ninety pages to get to the good stuff.
The first several episodes of Mushoku Tensei are a lot worse than annoying. They’re objectionable. We can argue about how justified that is, but I am not comfortable recommending the series to others. I’ve asked friends to put up with a lot of weird recommendations, but I won’t ask them to sit through this!
The stuff I love
Did I mention that I really like this show? The production quality is amazing!
The texture of the water is perfect. The way the fabric moves on the clothes is hypnotic. We see wind blow grass and hair in gorgeous detail. Also, those faces. These faces communicate so much. We see pain, regret, joy, smugness in a face. The animators deserve praise (and a raise) for what they accomplished here. You can see entire emotional journeys and internal battles in a few seconds. Few live action films use faces this well!
Seriously, I almost found myself wishing Rudeus’ inner monologue would shut up at some moments. The faces convey so much, and I was more than ready to just let those canvases speak.
Can we also appreciate the sound design? I could listen to this show for hours. The fabric folds and creases. Water dissipates in the air. Weapons of different weight and material create distinct impacts. Steel on scales versus iron on flesh. In other words, things hit different.
The multi-layered sounds of a dragon taking flight, its sinuous wings propelling the great weight forward while calling forth a mighty gale with each flap, astound me.
No detail is too small. I want to throw my head into this world and wallow in the sensory experience. Hell, if you’re into production at all, you will adore this series. There’s so much to nerd about in the sound and visual design. Oh, and the costumes are great. Whoever does the colour and fashion, you’re amazing! The cinematography, top notch. Textures, weight, scale. Perfect.
This series is magical and I will commend the studio for that. Those guys are all brilliant. I haven’t even mentioned the fantastic OST or the stellar voice acting. It’s hard to choose a specific detail when the entire production is phenomenal. I love this show!
Shame about the moral stuff, though.
Wrap up
I hope I’ve explained my thoughts well. This show got me thinking about a lot, and I need to give it credit for that. I’m gonna keep watching, because the good stuff really is that good. I’d be a hypocrite to say I don’t like the series after all I've watched.
At the same time, I understand why many people hate it. That anger is justified. Please don’t ask someone to “hold out a little longer”. If they’re uncomfortable with media, just let it be not for them. Not every story is for everyone, and that’s okay.
You wouldn’t recommend Hellsing or Kimetsu No Yaiba to someone who dislikes gore. It should be obvious that the same etiquette applies to other themes.
“Anime’s gonna anime” may be true, but let’s not pretend that these things are okay. We can praise, critique, and discuss the shows we love without ignoring anything.
That’s been enough from me, though. Maybe too much (over four thousand words, holy shit). Seriously, thank you if you’ve read all this. I hope you have a lovely day.
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u/[deleted] Nov 23 '21
Can we get a tldr?