My own score for this series is 5.5. The best I can rate it’s 6 if I am forgiving.
Mushoku Tensei has far too many problems that I even don’t know where to begin with.
The story goes fairly ok until volume 15, than Rifujin na Magonote starts to screw up so much, and infuriates me to the point that I wanted to rewrite entire volumes by myself.
Spoilers ahead, obviously.
LN #16: Luke is scum, he only have his looks for his favor, what he uses to fool around with as many girls as he pleases. He never seems to have a head on his shoulders, only between his legs. He screws up the library search, and as an apostle, threatens Ariel’s life. Totally unforgivable! But Ariel and Sylphy both forgives him, he is an old friend after all. Later he makes a move on Eris. Rudeus should have crushed him right there but instead not only he carries Luke into his house and even makes Eris to say she is sorry since she had punched Luke!
LN#19: I would rewrite this volume entirely. Pax was scum and never redeems himself. Even worse: he kills his father and brothers and becomes an usurper of the throne. When Zanoba decides to went back to his country, what he would expect from Pax was to be used by him to repel the invasion, and after that, Pax would plot his death or, at least, his imprisonment, since Zanoba has precedence to the throne, as the third prince. By his time, Zanoba should help to defeat the invaders and then went back to the capital to punish the usurper and claim the throne. Instead Zanoba forgives Pax on the premises that his little brother was never understood by nobody. WTF! Mushoku Tensei is a medieval like isekai, however Rifujin na Magonote seems to understand nothing about European and even Japanese culture. A parricide and usurper like Pax would never been forgiven anywhere!
Still in vol. 19, when Rudeus, Roxy and Zanoba fight Death God, Randolph, Rudeus acts completely out of character. So far every time Roxy is offended or hurt, Rudeus gets mad. Randolph gives Roxy a certain death sword cut. She didn’t die because of a magic ring that she was carrying, a ring that gives her an extra life. Even so, Roxy was hurt, Randolph had shed her blood. What I expected from Rudeus was he getting so mad that he would blow up half of that tower by releasing all of his power to kill Randolph. Even if the Death God could escape, Rudeus would have saved his face. Yet, no, Rudeus was overwhelmed by his own cowardice. So Randolph seems unbeatable, but then he suddenly sheathes his sword, and gives up the fight because he was just preventing them to enter the real chambers while Pax was fung his queen… What the hell! After that Pax takes his own life and Zanoba, Rudeus and even Roxy deeply regret Pax’s death. Man, if I were Magonote’s editor, I wold ask him what the crp was all of that and tell him to rewrite everything!
LN#21: Another WTF moment: Rudeus’ grandmother, Claire, thinks, after extensive research, that what will heals Zenith’s catatonic state is having her raped by a bunch of men day and night long!! At first she only tells Rudeus that she wants Zenith to marry again, despite her condition. Rudeus becomes furious, obviously, and leaves her state making a ruckus while scattering the guards. Later, at Claire judgment, Zenith forgives Claire and slaps Rudeus! Perhaps 10 years of imprisonment would be too much of a sentence, since the intention of committing a crime isn’t a crime by itself. However, as the bare minimum, Claire should be stripped of her condition as noble, her family name, and be banished.
Mushoku Tensei: Redundancy. Aisha and Ars; The problem here isn’t the incest (aunt and nephew) or the age gap, the actual problem is that Aisha is an adult and Ars is a 10 yo child. Ars is below the minimal consensual age (13 in Japan), and Aisha herself declares that Ars would do whatever she says. Ars is not able to make his own choices, thus what Aisha did to Ars was rape, nothing less, nothing more. This “shota” side story was bad taste.
Paul’s death was just to make Rudeus the head of the family, a poor plot device. Unlike Norn, Aisha refuses to go to the Magic Academy albeit “being a genius”. Another poor plot device just to perpetuate Aisha’s condition as a maid.
Very often, Rudeus’ internal monologue is too long, boring, and meaningless. Many times I just skipped it.
And what’s all the fuss about the Man-God? He doesn’t seem capable of doing that much damage besides bothering people in their dreams. The maximum he could muster was sending off a sick mouse after Roxy. A really bad move since it made Rudeus an allied of Orsted. After that, when the Divine Beast and Orsted himself start protecting Rudeus’ family, the Man-God becomes much less threatening than a cockroach. C’mon, the guy seems to be unable to leave his pocket dimension, white room or whatever. He’s all alone for the eternity. Right, at least he has TV, what means in his case is that he can watch the lives of each and every people on that planet. All the porn one could ever want! The Man-God is nothing more than a NEET. For some time I thought that he could be Rudeus from the future.
And Laplace? — Not Pierre-Simon Laplace, famous French mathematician — That guy will reincarnate as a defenseless baby 80 fu**ing years in the future! He’s not a problem for Rudeus to worry that much about, not even for his children, only his grandchildren will meet Laplace and the guy will be a baby then! Orsted, among many other things, is a criminal that kills babies. Laplace is Orsted’s problem, since for him 80 years pass in a blink of an eye!
Those two doesn’t convince as fearsome foes, despite Magonote’s constant effort.
About the life expectancy of that world’s people. True, that they are medieval like people. They don’t know the benefits of proper disposal of human waste nor piped clean water (Medieval ages were filthy and stinky, not the clean and smell less picturesque times depicted by fiction. You definitely wouldn’t like to live back then). But they had the wonders of healing magic in that world, magic that could bring one of the verge of death even. You can argue that not everybody there had access to a healing magic doctor, but Rudeus was a magic himself and dirty rich to the top, so his life expectancy, and Eris’, would be at least above 100 years. Humanity’s life expectancy improved a lot in the last 200 years due to proper disposal of waste, clean water and medicine advancements. Rudeus and Eris’ average (for today standards) life expectancy was just to make Lara’s departure more sentimental? Rudeus, with the help of his magic, could have tried cloning himself, or tried to find a way to transfer his mind to one of his automatons or whatever. At least I would do it, I’d be more worried about stretching my life expectancy than defeating enemies that aren’t even born — and Eris’ life too. She is too hot a tsundere to let her just die of old age.
Speaking of Eris, she could at least raise herself to Sword Emperor. Did she lost her greed after marring to Rudeus?
Rudeus’ armors are made of some stone material akin to ceramics, I suppose. C’mon, doesn’t he remembers about steel and other alloys? Even if ceramics are used in the production of tanks’ armor, it is sandwiched with metals and other stuff. Even Tallhand was able to produce a better material using Rudeus’ rocks.
Killing and slavery. Rudeus had a strong hesitation to kill people —intelligent humanoid life forms, better saying — to the point of being stubborn and annoying. All of his wives had killed long before him, even Sylphy, and none of them exhibited any regrets regarding the matter. We could say that Rudeus had the strong moral standards of a modern day Japanese ('cause up till the end of WWII, killing and genocide was kind of a sport to them), however he had no problems when dealing with slavery. It was a common practice in that world, so it couldn’t be helped. Of course, he himself wasn’t a slave trader, but he had no moral problems when accompanying Zanonoba to the slave market in order to buy Julie. Later he buys Linia to free her. As a prior good citizen of Earth (that actually he wasn’t), he should fight slavery whenever he finds it. In many stances, killing is sanctioned in our world; in war mainly, when fighting against crime sometimes, in self defense and so on, however slavery —albeit it still exists in the underworld— isn’t accepted by any civilized country member of the UN.
It is said that Rudeus has quite strong sexual desire, however if it wasn’t for his three wives, he would be such a faithful husband that he would made Cliff proud of him. Rudeus could, or better, should have bedded Ariel, Elinalise, Linia, Pursena, Aisha and Nanahoshi too! No forgiveness! Magonote goes the usual harem manga/anime route; it rains but the soil didn’t get wet (An approximate translation of the Brazilian expression — “Chove mas não molha.”). Such tiresome BS.
Ariel wishes to recruit strong and influential people to support her when she goes back to Asura and tries to seize the throne. Since she doesn’t have much money on her, her main resource would be sex. Ariel is a horny b*ch, so that’s ok for her, however Luke would be happy to do the job when the target was a woman. Ariel could even force Sylphy in some occasions. Speaking of her, Ariel could have taken Sylphy first time, even having a threesome with Luke. After that, to cope Rudeus to her side, she could bed Rudeus and let him have Sylphy. Rudeus wouldn’t refuse Sylphy just because she wasn’t a virgin anymore, after all he himself wasn’t virgin too. You’ll say that Rudeus had erectile dysfunction back then, however what heals him was more the aphrodisiac than Sylphy’s body. Ariel could do the deed much better due her being more beautiful, and experienced. An addendum here; Rifujin na Magonote doesn’t know the fact that alcohol makes more difficult for people to get aroused. Poor virgin writing about what ignores, at least he could have researched.
To not say that I have nothing but critics, let me say something about Tallhand. For most of the story, I thought that he was there only because there had to be a dwarf in those kind of isekai stories, much like elves. So Tallhand was there only to complete the picture. That was until Rifujin na Magonote decides to tell his past, Tallhand’s background story. And it ended being the most human and well conceived of any other character in the novel. Thumbs up here.
I wanted to write about that final battle, but I’m tired of exerting my brain over such weak story, perhaps in the future I’ll come back and write an addendum.
(-104)
(+41)
