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First and foremost before i start this review i wanna touch on the specific thing that makes Mushoku so infamous to say the least, it's very agressive continuous and over the top risque material and themes which if problematic of course i feel at this point are a completely dead horse.

At this point in time i'm sure anyone who's actively looking at reviews of this thing deciding if they want to watch it or not would know about them enough that it doesn't particularly turn them off of this story, so i feel like bringing it up in my review would be utterly pointless and ... as such i will not do so for the entirety of my review instead focusing just on the story itself for what it is and what it presents, nothing less and nothing more.

Kicking things off in terms of setting Mushoku is a fairly classical isekai being both an early adopter and one of the originators of a lot of themes on the genre if it does take a fair amount of time touching on some of the rules of the world and some of it's story at times with varying degrees of success and care, it mostly is just focused in building it's story on the life and adventures of the characters mainly so the main one of the story in Rudeus Greyrat and the world he sees trough his eye.

And here is where the troubles begin in pretty much all aspects of the story, before i touch on the character aspect i want to start with saying that the story completely revolves on Rudy's adventures and outside a couple of short and spread apart backstories the story has both a very short and very disproportionate focus, making it so instead of it being the story of a world or a group of people it's the story of Rudy and only Rudy.

It's a very short scoped story not only looking at the bigger picture but also in the arcs in it, with pretty much every single story told by it being resolved in the same episode or even minutes after being introduced which makes some story arcs feel either entirely pointless, completely takes away all power of meant to be emotional moments or even worse makes them completely self serving. After all Mushoku struggles with the same burden a lot of isekai do run up to. And that is being a power fantasy a story that serves for a person to project into a character and his situation with Rudy's being driven by the fact that he's portrayed as a very deeply hurt man that decided to enclose himself from the real world, a personal struggle that is given all of 10 minutes before it's completely sorted out and never given proper attention afterwards. Passing note for the conclusion since the anime ends in the middle of an arc and on a cliffhanger/our adventure continues, it is a split cour after all.

Taking a break from the story i want to talk about the visual aspect since it's one of the most lauded aspects of this anime and if it does start strong peaking at an absolutely stunningly animated battle dead in the middle of the series if it feels as if the entire budget of the anime was spent on that moment, since aftewards the animation quality plummets so hard it feels like they were running on fumes after that point. From abuse of CGI in every corner and very crude or blurry animation to an absolute truckload of stillshot montages just covering every single episode past the midway point.

And if i do enjoy the decision to leave behind a traditional opening instead opting for including it into the episode itself which is something Whitefox as a studio has been using really well, the rest of the soundtrack feels either terribly repetitive or utterly forgettable and sometimes hilariously cliche if the humour of using didgeridoo music for desert trekking and the straight outta naruto music for a couple of battles isn't lost on me. However the voice acting lineup both reads and feels like an absolute all-star lineup and that does come a long way on giving every character individualism, moreso than the story does at times since...

Well now i want to talk about the part of the story that to me takes the cake, the thing that makes Mushoku more unique and special than any aspect that's given it both it's fame and infamy the characters because as i mentioned Mushoku Tensei is the story of one person and only one person, that being the main character that means that every single other character can only have two roles, either foils that victimize poor rudy and must be deal with or his devotees, which i'm not even joking is an actual word actually used at some point in the novel.

As a devotee you enter what's both the most interesting and most hilarious aspect of mushoku since these characters exist with the porpouse of being tools to make Rudy be the absolute coolest person imaginable, even as the story keeps bringing out extra gross to the point of it being a gag aspects of him they can never help but adore the little guy and his charms, the characters themselves other than very simplistic tropey traits have very little to offer and very rarely show any hints of growth other than their devotion to Rudy increasing and that's when not they're not just being straight up clones of other characters Ex: Paul and Phil which just hop on the same role the previous character occupied before them.

Then of course touching on Rudy himself he is possibly the worst main character there can be, being both a complete blank check who is able to obtain all he so desires and is beloved by all for he can do no wrong even when actively wronging the people involved, of course his acts of uuuh let's say terrorism make his reputation precede him as much as his age does but i feel like that takes away from just how bleak and boring the man would be without them in a way it's the sins that spice what otherwise would be just another Gary Stu isekai protagonist with no noteworthy trait, it is his perversion that becomes his only element that actually has any lasting effect and as the story goes and he grows as a person his personality does not, even as much as the story tries to play around with adding aspects to his character and give him things to think about none of them stick or are given a second tought some of them even being repeated or straight up contradicted with no mention of that fact in the short 11 episodes.

And that i feel is pretty much what my overall toughts on Mushoku are, i went trough this thing in a watchalong with friends and our conclusion ended up being that, as terrible as the more infamous moments of this series are all they do is hide a bleak and uninspired power fantasy. If the grossout moments were indeed gross at least they're something to discuss which can't be said about all the rest of a story that being completely focused on a character feels just rambly and aimless, it lacks a sense of direction and it doesn't particularly try to attain one and as a novel reader myself i know this aspect only ever gets worse.

So the tl;dr is if the gross and out there aspects of Mushoku aren't enough to turn you off it, realistically all you'll find behind the curtain is another power fantasy isekai, which is perfectly fine if you're into that, but in the absolute ocean of options the setting provides all mushoku has to set it apart is when it got there, and the things that made it famously infamous and if you're into that then power to you, if you're not then it's a wonderful thing to force friends to watch to laugh at the reactions and nothing more. Just watch the door when you do is all...