Trying" to recommend Mushoku Tensei

Today, mushoku tensei a fantasy isakai produced by a studio, few have heard of before based on a light novel that's been around for years, unadapted, now brought to life to become a contender for one of the better show of the year or rather it had the potential to be. Anyways, while I'm usually one to promote the idea that you should not have to wade through episodes to get to the good stuff, mushoku tensei is this weird beast where the high points of the show exist from episode one. So it's really just a matter of if those same high points are enough to offset deals existing low points but we'll get that. Mushoku tensei quite often when i talk about shows in particular genres, specifically the genres like slices of life and in this case sekai where there has been no shortage of stories covering almost every aspect of it. In these cases I like to find and point out a show's quirk. 

The thing that this show has which others in its genre don't. but mushoku tensei brings a problem with that that didn't actually happen with this genre. Honestly but in simple terms it pulled a jojo theme. Mushaku Tensei's original novel is super popular but it's also been around for a while. This original novel for the series, not even a light novel yet came out in late 2012. As such it popularized several aspects of the genre that we take for granted now. Of course I'm not saying that it was an originator for some of these tropes, even the genre as a whole since like several other narratives came out around the same time or before it . then trapped in an MMO style of sekai narrative have been around since the early 2000s which shows like log horizon, building on them from around the start of the 2010s and hell is the guy itself has been around for decades in a variety of forms but mushoku tensei  was one of the first super popular isekai from our modern age to focus on reincarnation, is sakai specifically now. 

What does this have to do with Jojo's bizarre adventure? Well jojo as a narrative has also been around for a super long time albeit that manga started way back in the 80s. So it's probably not comparable just in sheer amount of time that has passed but the point that i'm getting at is that by the time that anime production studio david productions came around to give jojo a proper anime adaptation, 25 years have passed during which time massive,  handful of narrative tropes that jojo popularized had been copied and utilized by countless other narratives. since meaning that for some people watching the jojo adaptation could have felt like watching something that they'd already seen before. unless of course a decent amount of jojo's modern audience had only been watching anime for like five years or so before it came out, in which case that probably didn't bother them and they're seeing the tropes for the first time. along with this adaptation of jojo but in the eight to nine years since mushoku tensei was released in print many of its defining aspects have been copied and in many places just straight up done better or at least one more interestingly than what came before which puts this adaptation in an awkward position of having to present a narrative that some of us who have been watching the drudge this sekai for almost the last decade,  is somewhat stale. That said mushoku tensei does indeed have a particular trait that few other isakai have copied or rather a trait that they have copied but usually not to this extreme and also not without some kind of mitigating element. its protagonist if you've heard anything about this series so far it's probably about rudy, our newly reincarnated bundle of joa former slob like shut-in of a man rudy, comes from our world where his days were wasted away gouging on junk food, playing mmos and watching under aged animated girls with his pants down.

Eventually he finds himself on the wrong end of everyone's favorite truck-shaped blood device and ends up whisked away to another world to witness his own birth. To say that Rudy is a degenerate is kind of putting it lightly. He never misses an opportunity to be a creep lustfully ogling his new mother, his maid, he even stole the panties from his tutor which he starts to call his holy relic. very rarely does a scene goby where you are not reminded just how terrible of a human being rudy is and was despite being reborn into brand new circumstances and with a brand new lease on life, old habits die hard as it were and the little scoundrel spends far too long doing things that really he only gets away with narrative because everyone around him thinks he's too young to know what he's doing but we the audience know better rudy is the make it or break it point for people. 

Is there a reason why he acts the way he does? Yes will it eventually tie into the narrative in a positive way? Well it definitely looks like that may end up being the case. Does the author take advantage of this for unnecessary fan service at every opportunity? also yes the purpose of rudy's deviant nature i hope is to take someone like him who his old society our society would consider to be irredeemable and slowly over time make him into a better person or at least not much of a freaking creeper basically should be a redemption story but that transformation takes time. It takes countless events in the narrative to show Rudy both different ways to live and also possible consequences for his previous life. Rudy is not a perfect protagonist like you can look at other reincarnated protags like Rimuru who could arguably be considered a little too perfect. Their knowledge is a bit overplayed for the plot or their magical abilities become so overpowered as to make challenges for them almost anything but Rudy though doesn't have a counterbalance early on to make him more palpable. Before his character development starts to really kick in i'd say in many ways that his nature would make him really good friends with our boy kazuma from konosuba but for Kazuma however no matter terrible of a person he is, it's balanced by the fact that everyone he interacts with is terrible in their own way. Konosuba is nothing if not an example of how to make an interesting narrative chock full of terrible people. This for Kazuma specifically makes his life somewhat miserable or at least not ideal and it works to balance his nature, something Rudy doesn't have. In fact Rudy has been lucky in his reincarnation to be given support from a loving family, to have a natural aptitude for this world's magic but these things do not directly help him with his actual problems that being to take this new life presented before him and make the best of it. So of course this does end up conflicting a bit with one of my beliefs that it gets better later is not an excuse if you watch the first few episodes of this and are turned off by rudy's attitude. The over-sexualized focus on secondary characters at times and just all of the things that could be considered superfluous to the overall plot of the world that is being built around it. I don't blame you. I have avoided countless harem anime of varying popularity because I have limits to what I feel like handling when it comes to fanservice and how it does or does not benefit the aspects of the show. When i mentioned that this show has the potential to be a contender for anime of the year it is solely based on these production values in a season chock full of amazing shows both new and carried over from last year, the level of quality in this series usually gives it a massive edge over the competition. For the title there's just so much good here and not just from the animation but from the soundtrack and sound design and the world building especially has been thoroughly engaging. Rudy's father while probably just as much of a degenerate as he has lived the life alongside his wife that while only hinted at and not shown gives off this very interesting vibe. They used to be adventurous they are at the point in their lives that most narratives don't get to we don't see the leads of adventuring parties go off and start families that's the type of story that only exists in an epilogue and both rudy's tutor as well and his childhood friend have magical abilities at least on par with him if not better and just like the the various aspects of how magic works in this world is extremely well presented and how it's shown to us at the same time that rudy learns it's just so well done but of course some of it i'm not the greatest fan of as the story keeps taking massive leaps through rudy's childhood of only seven years just showing us the interesting moments and that makes it feel like nothing else happens during the time where the camera isn't there despite so much time passing and also the show wants us to believe that rudy never saw his healing magic wielding mother use magic at all for like his first year or so of life because you know the camera wasn't there to witness it with him hmm yeah uh-huh sure i can suspend my disbelief for that i guess all in all mushoku tensei has ended up becoming a show that i am following this season but it is one that i also can't actively recommend the bad parts that i can identify are usually deal breakers for a lot of people i know and as i said before i totally understand not wanting to watch this series on that basis alone i'm also not watching this series because i expect those aspects to go away or for it to get better later because even if it does andi hope it does for my own enjoyment of the series that's never enough of an excuse to convince people to trudge through the initial episodes of those aspects were something that they don't enjoy watching so what does that mean as faras should you watch museo qutenza well if you're like me and can somehow just roll your eyes through rudy's attitude and hope that he gets some kind of comeuppance later on that orif his attitude improves the great absolutely watch the series otherwise no there is a decent amount of good here that for me outweighs the bat but only just enough so that i can watch the series and enjoy it enough to keep watching but it absolutely stops the series from being top tier in my BOOKS