Anime Spotlight #43: Mushoku Tensei - Jobless Reincarnation
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. NEET for a week
a.k.a. NEET for a week
(and perpetual Animeister)
I'm on vacation this week, Ticketholders!
But I'm not really going anywhere important; it's kind of a case of "room and bored," outside of some yard work, household chores, and self-cleansing. Otherwise, I intend to be here, at my computer, writing up content, watching movies and anime, re-reading comic books, and looking for supplemental employment.
So, I guess I'm not really a NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) for a week; I'm not even a shut-in, either.
Please remember to expose Just the Ticket to the outside world by Becoming A Ticketholder because you haven't already, leave your education, employment, and training suggestions in the comments at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so the Man-God doesn't cause another mana disaster, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest renaissant news on my content.
Back in the Spotlightning Round (Part II) FROM May 29, 2023, I described Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation as follows:
"Reclusive fat guy gets reincarnated into a fantasy world and goes on adventures with his step-sister. This is one of those series where you unfortunately have to ignore a lot of Japravity to find it enjoyable. We're talking 'man in baby's body pervs out on his mother while wearing her underwear as a ninja mask,' 'man in child's body hits on his step-sister,' 'every woman above a certain age has Honeybaked hams for breasts and they all wear bikini armor' levels of perversion here. But when the main character and his extended family of sadists, racists, man-whores, thieves, and murderers aren't being bipedal shitpiles, there is actually a good story in here, flashes of wholesome comedy, spectacular fight animation and magic effects, and genuine heart to the relationships that matter. Don't watch if you can't compartmentalize."
Getting into details, the aforementioned "fat guy" is a shut-in NEET (unnamed, presumably to strengthen our association of him with his reincarnated identity, but voiced in the dub by Ranking Of Kings narrator and "additional voices" in damned near everything, Ben Phillips) who gets evicted by his family after his parents die, and decides to save some random children from Truck-kun so that his "pointless" life can end with some meaning. Upon waking up in another world in a baby's body with all of his old memories intact, Rudeus Greyrat (voiced in the dub by Madeline Morris, who has voiced characters in almost every anime I've reviewed -- mostly the bad ones from my BAWklog series, but also Frieren where she voices one of Frieren's teammates in the first round of the Mages' Exam) proceeds to perv out on his mother and nursemaid (both of whom were impregnated by Rudeus' father, Paul, and we find out through the course of the series that two women wasn't enough for him), his literal red-headed step-sister (actually, she's his cousin because redneck jokes and step-ginger jokes are equally funny, and things between them start out as your typical, "hero has to teach an unruly student" plot like what Slime, Arte, and Bookworm were doing at the time), his older-than-she-looks-but-not-old-enough-to-make-it-not-creepy magic teacher (whom he uses magic to sculpt lewd statues of when his skills with Earth magic get better, and he keeps a stolen pair of her underwear in a box for...release-based uses), and an androgynous half (third? quarter?)-elf whose green hair makes people think she's a demon.
Between all of these "romantic" "shenanigans," Rudy improves his magic and combat expertise, masters many tongues (but not like that...), and navigates the black market politics of the world at large because apparently there are worse things than reincarnating as a magically overpowered pedophile. I'm not sure what those things are or where the metrics line up, but infidelity, murder, kidnapping, and slavery are supposedly worse.
With that established, and things seeming like they will go relatively normally for a fantasy world rife with magic and sex crimes, the famous MCU Phase One trope strikes: a skybeam of magical energy turns Rudeus' home into a smoking crater and scatters him and his family and friends across the world (assuming they all survived), dropping him and cousin Eris on the Demon Continent, where he has his first prophetic encounter with an effeminate humanoid shape called the Man-God, teams up with a Superd (rumored bloodthirsty demon warriors with green hair, hence the bullying of Sylphie, the fractional elf mentioned above), and gets a cursed eye from a demon girl that lets him see the future movements of those he fights. The plot goes all over the place for the rest of the first season, with Rudeus and his magic teacher, Roxy, having missed connections, an arc where he and Eris travel with the Superd to try clearing his name and redeeming his people, an encounter with Paul, who now has two daughters to take care of (the result of the earlier infidelity, so one is blonde like Paul and Rudy, while the other has red hair like the maid...and Eris) by--what else?--running a kidnapping and smuggling operation. But the truly interesting part comes near the end of the season, when Rudeus' travels bring him into conflict with Orsted, a man cursed with fear magic who has a grudge against the Man-God, and a masked girl named Nanahoshi, who proves that Rudy isn't the only, or even the first, case of isekai in this world.
The season ends with a reveal that Sylphie (now with white hair and using her tomboyish frame to pass as male because hair tropes must hair trope) survived the Mana Disaster and is still alive. This is detailed in the first episode of the second season (giving viewers like myself memory whiplash because of the release gap and complete change of location with no mention of Rudeus, Eris, or anyone else we've been following so far). Now working for Princess Ariel, sporting some cool shades, and using the alias of "Fitz," Sylphie serves as the introduction to "our hero goes to school with new characters, plus his two sisters who don't know who he is." Fortunately for character development, but unfortunately for the Japravity-averse, we learn that Rudy gets dumped by Eris (his cousin, and also Rudy is a thirty-plus-year-old man in a child's body) and is now suffering from impotence, so the Man-God tells him that going to the academy where "Fitz," Princess Ariel, his sisters, and...Nanahoshi‽ are studying magic, is how he will get his mojo back. Again, if you can compartmentalize, the buildup of Rudy learning Fitz's identity, helping his kid sister get past her own bout of NEET behavior, and working with Nanahoshi to create teleportation circles that might potentially provide them with a way back to Japan in a future season, are engaging, well-written plots with deep characterization and satisfying resolutions, and seeing Rudy and Sylphie reunite and grow as a family over the course of the second half of the season was heartwarming.
But then we get to the action, wherein Rudy and a busty elf with a lust curse and a thing for underage nerds (also, she's Sylphie's grandmother) travel across the continent to rescue Paul and his party from a dangerous dungeon...where Roxy is. You know? The woman who looks like a girl and Rudy made sculptures of her and jerked off to her underwear offscreen? So, he rescues her, and suddenly he wants to move to Utah, if you know what I mean. The second season ends with Rudy bearing the weight of Paul's death, his own polygamous desires, and the fact that his mother is a walking vegetable from being frozen by the dungeon boss offscreen. Is that how magical cryogenics work?
Whatever the case, after a timeskip, Rudy and Sylphie have a daughter named Lucy, he and Roxy get married, and he vows at Paul's grave to continue living a life with no regrets. He'd better not let anyone know he's a reincarnated adult, otherwise his final words will end up being, "Nice Boat."
I have no idea where I pulled that School Days reference from, but please remember to expose Just the Ticket to the outside world by Becoming A Ticketholder because you haven't already, leave your education, employment, and training suggestions in the comments at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read so the Man-God doesn't cause another mana disaster, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest renaissant news on my content.
I honestly have no idea what anime I'm going to review next week, but Stay Tuned for the finale of the GFT Retrospective on Tales From Neverland, and a surprise movie review that wasn't in Saturday's Time Drops.
Animeister,
Neat!
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