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What on earth did I just watch?
How was this ever green-lit as an anime?
(Spoilers are in a seperate section at the end.)

First off, the art is good, characters cute, music alright. But the plot...
It could've been a mediocre show, maybe even good. But the protagonist, Kanna, is a minor who doesn't really want to be a voice actress, let alone voice any hentai roles. Her older sister tries to force her into it and initially Kanna refuses, but because of arbitrary reasoning on her part ("my older sister works hard and puts money aside for my college tuition") she feels obligated to help her. ... They even openly talk about how having a 16-year-old work there is probably illegal, but her sister is sure she'll be able to lie her way out of eventual law enforcement.

Kanna is clearly uncomfortable as she has to practice saying dirty words and licking "Onii-chan's" finger while being told to imagine sucking his peener. We see literal sex scenes that are as censored as hentai while Kanna imagines herself to be in them, the character morphs into Kanna who then proceeds to voice act as she gets screwed. It doesn't help that she sounds waaay younger than sixteen.

That's the first episode. The second one kinda turns down the heat, but at this point terms like ecchi and anime are long overcooked. This is now literally hentai with more plot and less sex scenes. Which would be fine, I guess, but the whole thing about downplaying grooming minors - that's not okay.

Really a shame, because I might have liked some characters with a different plot or a similar plot with different (not underage) characters. If this were a hentai, whatever, those are made for a different kind of entertainment. But I didn't find it funny, or cute, or interesting, just cringeworthy. And morally questionable at best.

1 / 10
Go watch something else.



Now the spoiler section, listing further things I didn't think were okay.



- Kanna climaxing as she voice acts/ licks "Onii-chan's" finger.
- Kanna practicing voicing sex scenes in front of a (male) classmate.
- Adult male saying he gets hard because of Kanna being in high school/ her voice acting. "It's not sexual harrassment telling her my dick is hard, it's praise." The same guy goes on about wanting a blowjob from her.
- Kanna apparently not even knowing blowjobs feel good and asking whether semen is actually delicious. (How young/ innocent is she supposed to be?) The adults then convince her that it's sweet so that she can reach climax more easily while voice-acting.
- A contest to make the male classmate hard with voice acting.
- They made Kanna suck her classmates finger in the recording booth as the entire cast watched. Then tried to persuade her to lick/ touch/ look at/ smell his peener. Or just have sex with him.
- Kanna climaxing in front of her classmate (as well as the entire cast watching).

Loved the anime and decided to give this a shot. I have very little experience with light novels, but those I tried suffered from mind-numbingly bad writing. Unfortunately, this one was no exception.

I barely made it through the first few pages. The premise seemed interesting, and I wanted to know how the story unfolds, so I tried ignoring the horrendous writing style. After a few chapters I realized it wasn't worth it, whatever was to come. The author was building an amazing world (at least he did in the adaptation), but I no longer wanted to see it.

I'm still disappointed that I'll never see more ... of this world. But if you can overlook the awful writing, you'll probably enjoy this light novel, so give it a go.

Mushoku Tensei started off in a superb manner. Just take a glance to realize that it's really well made. Story, pacing, characters, development, art, music – definitely a lot above average, even if it began to feel a little generic towards the end. But ultimately, all efforts are wasted.

[SPOILER WARNING!]

I won't go into the anime's good points, those are numerous and pointed out by many, and I simply can't be bothered since all of that doesn't matter to me any more. There are some general flaws that many isekai suffer from, i.e. being a power fantasy in which the protagonist basically gets everything they ... want with little effort. This show did this better than most and I am generally okay with such rather minor issues.

Let's get into why I disliked it.
The protagonist is, or rather was, a shut-in living with his parents. Apparently because of a psychological issue, he didn't go to his parent's funeral. Some relatives stormed his room to confront him about it and saw that he was masturbating to pedo stuff. No excuses – the protagonist is a pedophile. He got kicked out, but his supposedly crippling trauma didn't stop him to walk around outside and even try to stand up for an assaulted girl, but okay, let's let that slide. He dies, gets reborn.
Because of his past life, the audience is supposed to feel sorry for him and to sympathize with a pedo, which is not easy to do, but he says he wants to start anew and "do it right". He keeps his memories and literally since his first moments in this new life he is lusting after basically any female. No change can occur instantly, so let's let it slide.

He gets older, stuff happens, nothing outrageous. Then he gets a mentor, Roxy, who is basically a "legal loli". Now not just his mother and the maid, but also his mentor can be used for fanservice. How convenient!
He never leaves the family property because of his "trauma", he is forced to go outside once with his mentor and everything is resolved, just like that, and his "trauma" is never brought up again. Cheap.
He helps someone and makes his first friend. Everything is fine, then he finds out that his pal is a girl and suddenly he literally wants to groom her, raise her to be a good wife for him. A female childhood friend, how convenient!

His father ends up impregnating the maid, which is an okay way to drive conflict since the characters behaved according to how they were presented. We learn that the maid had been raped by the father many years before – what? Why would she want to stay anywhere near him? Did the mother know they had backstory, was she okay with it?
Well, the maid has "nowhere to go" except for her far away home village, but it's dangerous to go away now. She obviously couldn't stay at an inn that the wealthy family could pay if she herself couldn't or leave next summer, after giving birth, these are no options. Nah. The audience has to believe that there are only two options (she freezes to death or stays) and that the mother agrees to live together with her cheating husband and the woman he cheated with. Brainrot. Imagine your significant other cheats on you and you just life together in an apartment – and suddenly everything is fine again! Because the only real consequence of the cheating is that the father has now basically two wives. But that wasn't really the point of it all. The real reason was to give Rudeus two little sisters! How convenient! As I assume, for fetishizing and naturally growing his harem later on. But who knows?

He gets send away, over his fathers connections gets a job to mentor his cousin Eris. But since she is a girl, she is treated as another object to sexualize. I am not saying that the characters don't get development or are badly written. No, pretty much every female in this anime has an additional, in my opinion completely unnecessary layer of sexualizing on top. Well anyway, he lusts after his cousin, molests her, almost has his way with her, completely normal stuff, right? NO. Who in their right mind would want to watch a 10 and a 12-year-old getting it on, how was that in the show?

And best of all, the characters are okay with it. Roxy seems only slightly inconvenienced by sexual assaults, the maid is okay with him being horny for her and supports his panty worship, Eris doesn't hold a grudge for being molested in her sleep and then assaulted. Am I supposed to believe that this is acceptable behavior?
Now I see how some may argue that he's just a kid. Which is true, in the character's eyes, even if it's still hard to see how his behavior is tolerated. But the viewer knows that Rudeus is mentally not a kid and the show reminds us often enough how his mental self is a fat, over 40-year-old dude with glasses. Who lusts after and touches children. A literal pedophile. "No, he's a child.." BULLSHIT. If you were Rudeus in such a situation, would you want to finger a 12-year-old? Imagine someone saying they want to be a child again just to molest children. How is that not a pedophile?

Now someone may say that it's "important for the plot". All of this degeneracy, fetishes, sexualization, and for what? To make the anime more "mature" because it has sexual themes (including between children)? Congratulations.
Did the "pervert-trait" add anything to the story? Was it important that Roxy was lusted after? Did the maid have to be pregnant, or stay with the family? Did Rudeus had to molest Eris? Did they had to add sexual tension between 10 and 12-year-old's? I'd argue no. But it did achieve something: it made Rudeus unlikable, it sparked conflict, it made the media sell better. The toll for that was a plot that was conveniently bent to fit a framework of ecchi, harem and pedophilia. It is incredibly difficult to introduce such themes to make a show better, but this was handled in the worst way possible. Imagine watching this show with your parents, siblings, friends, whoever, and trying to explain to them how it's important for the story to sexualize children and even watch these kids touch each other. Disgusting.

It could've been so much better without those themes, maybe even somewhat acceptable if they had been handled just badly.
But I'd even say this show glorifies degenerate sexual urges and enables pedophilia. That's my core issue: he molests a girl in her sleep, she catches him, what happens? Is she hurt, disgusted, repelled by him? No. We get one instance of "funny" slapstick violence, and that's it. It is portrayed as "See, molesting isn't so bad! There are no real consequences, neither for the victim nor for the offender!" And it's the same with every other situation. "Cheating isn't bad, you can even get a second wife from it!" "Sexually harass your mentor and others, they won't care!"
And that's why I hate it.

Note: After writing watching the show I read some major spoilers (don't worry, I won't tell anything) on what happens much later on to see how the themes are dealt with alter on. I am even more disappointed now, and for that I hate it even more. It may have superb story, characters, art, whatever, all of that is ruined.