So I have been watching Mushoku Tensei in Japanese alongside Yurizono Eru's watchalongs, and also jumping into the novels for a bit, and I think I have reflected enough to share some in-depth thoughts somewhere. I thought this subreddit might be a good place to start a discussion post.
I had some preconceived thoughts before jumping into this series, because of learning stuff such as:
- Rudy being an irredeemable pervert, because he was fapping to loli lewds in his past life on the day of his parents' funeral (it seemed that he fapped to voyeuristic material of his niece in some deleted chapter of the web novel? Which uh, does make his deviant perversion seem even worse than simple loli lewds). And this deviant perversion remained a deeply rooted part of his personality when he reincarnated to his second life.
- Rudy being a more-than-standard emotionally weak protagonist, which led to him making very anger-inducing decisions (how he is easily swayed to make the worst decisions possible? Before watching the series, I saw a lot of stuff about him cheating whenever he falls into severe despair for example).
- Rudy's past life appearance being consistently depicted and shoved in the viewers' faces whenever his inner self converses with that man god. Normally other Isekai series does not do this, other Isekai would simply treat their protagonists' past life as as an interesting piece of background info before simply moving on, so this part of Mushoku Tensei consistently reminding viewers of Rudy's past life appearance seemed to turn some viewers off.
If there was one thing I would say about my thoughts that changed, it's that I feel pity? or it should be closer to empathy for Rudy now.
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Rudy's past life was a trainwreck, he tried to save a fellow classmate from bullying, but in return, he became the target instead. One of the worse parts of his school pulling was him being hung at the front of the school gate naked, and because of that, photos of him circulated around social media that made fun of his small dick, and this made it on TV news. Along with other comments in the watchalong, I agreed that it was no surprise that he turned hikikomori and shut himself, and this was just him starting starting his first year of high school. I always wondered how his deviant perversion became so twisted that the author would write that deleted chapter, and I figured it was because of this event. When everyone was reflecting on the earlier episodes together, the conclusion we reached is that "ejaculation from fapping feels good, it temporarily makes you forget all bad things currently happening in your life." People often forget that sexual stuff in itself is like drugs, doing it can help you forget the bad things that is happening in your life, and this is a universal thing both in fiction and reality.
But to his second life with his memories intact, how Rudy was emitting all this perversion as a toddler was, in simplest terms, creepy lmfao (how he looked at his mother's breasts when being breastfed, and looking at all the women in the household with lewd eyes). After reading the novels of what the anime covered and realizing how much the anime condensed it, at first it was easy for me to forget/overlook a lot of things and connect the dots. What really reminded me how severe Rudy's trauma as a shut-in hikikomori was when Rudy was brought outside with Roxy holding his hand. And after the first season, the consensus of everyone from Yurizono Eri's livestreams was that Rudy relies on perversion to express himself. It seems from interviews with readers, the author has once said that Rudy's perversion stem from his Greyrat bloodline, but it can be said that you can't deny a big part of it is also due to his past life trauma, and from it how he learned to express himself with perversion (the perversion that carried his psychological state when figuring how to cope with his dark situation in his past life).
Ah, but his perverted actions in his childhood were still deviant, like wanting to look under Eris's clothes while she was asleep was very improper on his part and he deserved the Eris punch. But I also realized that all of his perverted actions were also always out of pure sexual curiosity. Since people often forget, he became emotionally stunted from a high school freshman, so at least I find it understanding even if it was very improper to do to any maiden.
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After fully realizing many of these points of Rudy's past life and personality, a lot of the stuff regarding Rudy that happens in season 2 and season 3 make a whole lot more sense.
- Like how when Rudy wholeheartedly accepted Eris and they slept together. The act of sex has always been a universal way to express romantic affection between couples, but it is doubly so for Rudy that expresses himself through his perversion. When Eris left, Rudy developed ED. That is not a normal reaction to being stood up by his first girlfriend he made from both his past and current life. Him crying in tears was one thing, but the discussion on this topic also veered to how Rudy wanted to express how much he loves Eris through his ability to sexually satisfy Eris, but he misunderstood that he wasn't good enough, hence losing complete confidence in his ability in sex and developed ED.
This is also a reason why Rudy attempted suicide after Sara broke off her relationship with Rudy. It is Sara breaking off her relationship with him that triggered it, but the cause was the helplessness of being unable to express his feelings through sex to Sara that left him depressed and wanting to drink until he's dead drunk.
- And also the situation with Roxy. Roxy was told that to pull men out of despair, one of the surefire methods is to slept with them. And coincidentally, it overlapped with Rudy's ways to cope: sex. Rudy was able to be pulled from his severe despairing state with Roxy's sacrifice (although not with fully pure intentions). I find this particular event one of my favorite moments of the series, because despite Roxy wanting to keep it as a one night fling, Rudy did two things right that earned some respect from me: Him keeping in mind that he should ask for Sylphy's permission first, and that he had the ability to take responsibility for those that are sacrificing themselves for his wellbeing.
It really felt that the aim of season two was to put Rudy through a series of coming-of-age events that he never experienced in his past life, and by the end, he was able to mature away from his vulgar perversion to a more decent young adult, and this is because of both Roxy and Sylphy supporting him by his side. His inner thoughts would still often stray to something perverted with the unreliable narration, but through his actions, the series has shown him to be much more... gentlemenly and upfront(?). It seems that because of these changes, Rudy has steadily been learning to be more open with his feelings of happiness and expressing it through sex with Roxy and Sylphy.
- The above points, however, leads to issues that pop up in season three. In what others call the dark timeline, Rudy loses Roxy, sleeps with prostitutes, and falls into a spiral of self-destruction. It's because of a long list of series of events that led to this point that Rudy now had a heavy reliance on both Roxy and Sylphy's existences, they were his source of happiness he earned himself and never attained in his past life. With the topic veering to reasons why Rudy slept with the prostitute, the consensus was that Rudy couldn't cope with the despair from losing Roxy, so he slept with prostitutes. And since he loved Sylphy deeply as well, he didn't want to "use his source of happiness" to cope with his despair, which was why Rudy resorted to prostitutes, which were essentially strangers to him and he can be as rough as he wants when having coping sex (if I were to better describe) with them. This seemed to be one of the top moments that angered viewers, but now that I have seen and read up this point, I find it difficult to completely hate Rudy even if the decisions in the dark timeline were irredeemably self-destructive.
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From reaching this point in the series, I have realized many more things about the series now. And this makes me wonder about how the criticism from English speakers (posting on X for example), that hyperfocus on Rudy because of his perverse character, now seem more... exaggerated than I initially thought? At least, after learning a lot about the series, a lot of the criticism seem somewhat ridiculous.
Like how "he is a 34 year old man in a child's body, acting on deviant perversion to other characters around him;" I could confidently argue that "this is a emotionally stunted high school freshman" so he still retains his sexual curiosity. And although it's improper deviancy, Rudy is acting on both harmless and pure sexual curiosity, and it is to all characters regardless of age (his own Mother, Eris's mother, Ghislaine, the beastkin sisters at the academy, the prostitutes, etc). Treating Rudy as a consistently big pervert is a irrevocable fact and that part can deserve its own slander and memes, but some English speakers seem to want to treat him as a PDF rapist(?) for some reason despite these points laid out. The conclusion I came to is that viewers are finding it difficult to separate past life Rudy and current Rudy as two separate entities at this point in time, and many viewers seem to take the unreliable narration in the series too seriously and literally, despite the selling point of this series is a reincarnation/second chance story with a protagonist coping with a severe past life trauma and the perversion that developed from it.
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But eh, I guess you can't make everyone happy? I did notice that there has also been a trend where some overseas fans are simply not big fans of sexual content in general, especially adult loli content, due to both religious beliefs(?) and cultural differences (Japan has a huge love for moefication and is a core concept in anime, which is why loli also exist in fiction), so... there is that. A rude thought did come to mind, making me wonder if viewers with these sort of criticism are lacking... literature comprehension? A lot of contextual comprehension and depiction of conflicting character perceptions seem very important in this series (there are a whole lot of unreliable narrations), so if viewers are unable to comprehend why certain events happen and why certain characters exist, act, and change in certain ways, that would simply be unfortunate.
This is the end, and this is all the thoughts I wanted to share in this post and let out to the internet. I'll post this same post in another place so I can read different opinions from different places. If you read to this point, then thank you for reading to this point. If there are any comments that require a reply from me, I'll drop a reply.
And one last thing to fellow Japanese fans and multilingual fans learning Japanese: please consider watching Yurizono Eru's watchalongs as the vtuber does in-depth aftertalks and discussions after every couple episodes. I highly recommend investing time in listening to her watchalong archives if you are a fan of Mushoku Tensei.
Disclaimer: I hope this post does not cause discussions to devolve into a sea of flames with everyone hurling personal insults at each other. I made sure to write this post as humble as possible, so you too please be civil in this discussion.