I've heard that this work was surprisingly groundbreaking in the Tensei Isekai genre, even if peopl seem to have forgotten that. I'll concede that it has a novel premise, but there are too many distasteful elements for me to give it a passing grade.
The story is about an unemployed 34-year-old Japanese man who, after leeching off his parents for two decades, stays home to masturbate to child porn rather than attend their funeral, resulting in his siblings kicking him out. He dies saving some teenagers from a truck, resulting in him reincarnating in a fantasy world as Rudeus Greyrat. As a boy with the mind of a middle-aged man, Rudeus intends to make up for his failure of a previous life.
Rudeus is the main reason why I dislike the show. While he does make some progress in overcoming his vices from his previous life, from getting out of the house to working a job to actually caring for his family, he makes no attempt to address his most disgusting quality, his perversion. Being a pervert is no longer considered an acceptable character quirk, at least not in the West after the rise of #Me Too!, so it's much harder to find Rudeus stealing people's panties (aka "holy relics") funny. If his past life's behavior hadn't been bad enough to make him on par with cartoonishly over-the-top Hate Sink characters, the idea of him achieving redemption in his new life would have been easier to swallow.
The other characters aren't all that likeable. Rudeus' father Paul is a sexual deviant with an unpunished sexual assault under his belt. Rudeus' relative Eris is a textbook Tsundere who embodies most of the worst aspects of the trope. On the other hand, I actually liked Rudeus' mother Zenith for her realistic and measured reaction to her husband cheating on her with the family maid, and find Ghyslaine to be a decent deconstruction of the consequences of being Book Dumb.
The setting is a bog-standard high fantasy world without much unique going for it. That said, I liked how the setting ha some realistic touches, such as how expensive books are before the advent of the printing press. Partly because of that, I would have liked it better if Rudeus had been forced to turn his original life around; a lot of people who end up in worse situations through no fault of their own would kill for the second chance he got.
The series isn't entirely bad. The art in the anime is excellent, and I often enjoyed Rudeus' past self's internal monologues(e.g. "You better take the L, Paul..."), even as loathsome of a person as he is. Nevertheless, Mushoku Tensei stands out from the rest of the isekai genre, both those that came before and those that came after it, in all the wrong ways, so I cant' recommend it to anyone in good conscience.
Unremarkable isekai dragged down by awful protagonist
This review covers up to the end of Episode 8
I've heard that this work was surprisingly groundbreaking in the Tensei Isekai genre, even if peopl seem to have forgotten that. I'll concede that it has a novel premise, but there are too many distasteful elements for me to give it a passing grade.
The story is about an unemployed 34-year-old Japanese man who, after leeching off his parents for two decades, stays home to masturbate to child porn rather than attend their funeral, resulting in his siblings kicking him out. He dies saving some teenagers from a truck, resulting in him reincarnating in a fantasy world as Rudeus Greyrat. As a boy with the mind of a middle-aged man, Rudeus intends to make up for his failure of a previous life.
Rudeus is the main reason why I dislike the show. While he does make some progress in overcoming his vices from his previous life, from getting out of the house to working a job to actually caring for his family, he makes no attempt to address his most disgusting quality, his perversion. Being a pervert is no longer considered an acceptable character quirk, at least not in the West after the rise of #Me Too!, so it's much harder to find Rudeus stealing people's panties (aka "holy relics") funny. If his past life's behavior hadn't been bad enough to make him on par with cartoonishly over-the-top Hate Sink characters, the idea of him achieving redemption in his new life would have been easier to swallow.
The other characters aren't all that likeable. Rudeus' father Paul is a sexual deviant with an unpunished sexual assault under his belt. Rudeus' relative Eris is a textbook Tsundere who embodies most of the worst aspects of the trope. On the other hand, I actually liked Rudeus' mother Zenith for her realistic and measured reaction to her husband cheating on her with the family maid, and find Ghyslaine to be a decent deconstruction of the consequences of being Book Dumb.
The setting is a bog-standard high fantasy world without much unique going for it. That said, I liked how the setting ha some realistic touches, such as how expensive books are before the advent of the printing press. Partly because of that, I would have liked it better if Rudeus had been forced to turn his original life around; a lot of people who end up in worse situations through no fault of their own would kill for the second chance he got.
The series isn't entirely bad. The art in the anime is excellent, and I often enjoyed Rudeus' past self's internal monologues(e.g. "You better take the L, Paul..."), even as loathsome of a person as he is. Nevertheless, Mushoku Tensei stands out from the rest of the isekai genre, both those that came before and those that came after it, in all the wrong ways, so I cant' recommend it to anyone in good conscience.