A Poor Introduction

If you’re into anime culture and online communities, and haven’t seen Mushoku Tensei directly, you probably don’t have a good impression of it. This is for good reason.

Scenes from the show, poorly-disguised hentai are posted as “memes” or “jokes”, with people trying to give worldbuilding reasons for the author’s attempt at a clumsy, bawdy recurring joke.

If you break past the cringe barrier of online humor and give the show a chance, it still doesn’t distinguish itself well at the start. Our protagonist Rudy Greyrat is introduced as a wretched waste of space from the beginning- someone we are meant to sympathize with, someone who hasn’t left the house since high school, or as the title suggests, ever gotten a job. He is pitiable certainly, but the kind of hapless, aimless man who’s hard to sympathize with. He is clearly a disgusting slob, someone who was a weight on the family, someone who only does good in his dying moment, when he shoves an ignorant couple out of the way of the incoming isekai delivery truck.

His beginnings in his new isekai fantasy life aren’t any better. He grows more dislikeable as the first and second episode unfolds. He has unearned potential in magic, pulling himself up from his bootstraps when it was a miracle he could pull himself to his feet in his old life. He perves on his poor, unsuspecting mother. He disquiets and discomforts their eternally-loyal, blank-faced maid Lilian with his lecherous behavior, leaving her to reconcile his adult actions with his newborn body.

And yet, the humanity begins to unfold. It climbs slowly amidst the isekai schlock, before rocketing downward in a roller coaster of drama, over and over again. Suddenly, you’re in deep. Mushoku Tensei is not an undermining, or as I would argue, even a direct subversion of typical isekai and perverted tropes. Instead, it wears them on its sleeves. It revels in the wretched nature of these walking anime cliches, and then shows the very human development that they go through and experience when interacting with other, real-feeling people.

The Unfolding

Zenith was afraid she couldn’t have a second child.

Rudy recounts the fears his mother was having for future children. For the younger people reading this, it means little. For those who are older, especially those who have experienced such problems, it sticks deeply. You begin to have the inkling that there may be something deeper here, all while joyful music plays and the sun is shown shining warmly into the house. The parents celebrate with one another. All is well.

And then the cut to black, just a second longer than it would normally be. You receive the unconscious hint that there is going to be some kind of transition here. And then the show hits you with it.

The maid reveals that she is pregnant. There is little doubt as to who the father could be. Three out of the four people at the table turn, each with their own shot, toward the guilty culprit. The father immediately ducks in apology to Zenith.

It is no longer joyful and sunny. Warmth has turned to winter. The maid’s breath frosts up as she exhales her admission. Scenes of a blizzard are interspersed with the graceful, dreamlike intro music of the series following the admission. Everyone is trapped inside with the colder turn in weather. There is nowhere to run. They must confront their emotions with one another.

The maid and the mother are faced toward each other, sitting down at a table on opposing sides. The room around them is dimly lit, a candle lighting and emphasizing the only people that matter in the scene. Clearly, neither are happy. The maid’s head is bowed in uneasy guilt. The mother’s hands are in her face, left to contemplate the actions that have torn her family apart, and shattered a friendship she shared with the maid Lilian.

Zenith, the mother quietly asks Lilian what she will do. The maid shows her loyalty- she will help Zenith with her childbirth, and then take her leave of them. It is a month’s ride, and it will be late into Lilian’s own pregnancy. Everyone knows this will be a harsh journey for anyone during the winter, but especially for a late-pregnancy mother. The protagonist narrates how his beloved maid is likely to die doing so. He worries for her. And he owes her.

And then he admits that he owes Lilian for not disclosing his “holy relic”, the panties he had kept from his childhood mentor.

It cannot be understated what a wild whiplash this is within a scene, such a real acknowledgement of a comical, perverted trope within anime. And yet, somehow it fits. Of course his perversions would not go unnoticed. Of course he would realize that other people realize his own wretched nature. For some, I would imagine, this would also be a moment of humor, a breath of fresh air from the tense, ongoing scenes.

And so Rudy idly reaches out to his mother. He leads her into appropriate conversation about how she had been betrayed by his father, and by Lilian. And then Rudy, the protagonist lies and tells his mother that he overheard Lilian being coerced, that she “had not been allowed to say no to him”. Rudy creates a convenient fiction that allows the mother to place the blame on the father. It allows the mother to have Lilian stay, as family now. Lilian and her child are no longer in danger. The mother, Zenith walks away, satisfied. Only then does the maid allow herself to cry, once Zenith has left. Loyal service to the end.

It is daylight again. It is still winter and cold, the family having to deal with this betrayal, but the light portends that there is hope now. The maid knows that she should have been punished. She knows that it was as much her fault as the fathers. She had indeed laid the foundation to help seduce Paul, the father.

She knows that Rudy lied now. And that he knew what awaited her in her situation. He had lied to help her, when she knows that she should have been punished. It contrasts with her rightful view of him. Lilian knows that Rudy is a perverted wretch, and reveals in this moment she had even suspected him of being possessed, with how mature and disgusting he was towards the women around him, despite being a child.

Rudy’s behavior hasn’t been passed over. As much as it’s clearly meant for bawdy humor, the people in this world realistically react to Rudy’s behavior- to all of his lechery, and all of his good deeds. The maid knows that for all of his lechery, he has saved her, and her child.

It sets a tone

This is the entire series in a nutshell. Rudy is a lecher in the worst sense trying to do good, however imperfectly. He’s overconfident many times over, with this overconfidence often coming back to bite him- only for him to turn things around due to his attempts at good deeds, and his allies pluck.

Family and friends fight with him, and between each other. Their lives do not revolve entirely around him, yet they are touched meaningfully and often in positive ways, because he is trying to do good. And they recognize his terrible behavior, yet forgive it because they know he is trying to do good.

It’s an anime I didn’t go into expecting much, and I doubt anyone has if they’ve only heard some of the more outrageous stories I have. It’s still not an anime I would recommend without reservation to someone, but if you’ve slow-boiled yourself on the garbage morality displayed by modern anime, it is something I would absolutely recommend. It’s a very good story built out of garbage.