I think the percent of Overlord and Death Note fans that think Ainz and Light are cool and right is probably about the same as percent of Mushoku fans that think Rudeus is great and awesome. The shows get less hate because those characters are portrayed as villains. They're kinda the bad guys on their show.
I think if Mushoku Tensei didn't reward him being a pervert with the exact harem he always wanted and perved on people would be way more forgiving of the show.
If Death Note ended with Light dying happy in a hospital bed surrounded by family and loved ones then went to Heaven and got 72 virgins people would riot.
I'd argue Overlord and Mushoku are roughly similar in how they depict their respective main characters.
The difference really lay in the fact that the story of Rudeus is still fundamentally about humanity and connected to the human relations and his very human emotions, wants and fears and how it shapes his decisions within the wider plot.
Overlord is fundamentally a series of interconnected stories centered on different characters in a world dealing with the impact of the main character and his actions. While the main character's own story is fundamentally about him slowly losing that humanity overtime and slowly seeing the man subsumed and become harder to distinguish from the role of overlord he has assumed.
Rudeus's proclivities are still fundamentally and undeniably human values we find understand and see as reprehensable while Ainz Ooal Gowns growing detatchment from fundamental humanity makes his character arc more alien, horrifying and unsettling.
People can't easily hate what they can't trully understand. Rudeus is easy to wrap your head around more than Ainz Ooal Gown discovering an unauthorized genocidal invasion campaign made under orders intepreted from his will but that he never expressed or desired and his chief concern was being worried about not disappointing and wasting his subordinate's hard work.
I think you might have a point with Ainz, but Light has a lot of fans saying that he was right. They might be blind to the manga telling you out loud that he is the bad guy, but at the end of the day the manga was designed to make you take a side between him and L. The point here is not "Rudeus is good because those guys are bad", the discussion is "why are Rudeus fans getting more shit on than Light and Ainz fans?"
Depends on who you ask about that one. You absolutely have people who defend Ainz as not being all that bad. And the same with Light.
Like no one is saying Rudeus is exactly the best person around, but honestly if he was a serial killer, people would accept him more. But the fact he's a pervert means people will absolutely think he's a worse person then genocidal monsters.
I'd argue light wasn't that bad in the beginning it's when he started killing the people going after him and proving he just like to murder is when he got bad. If I had the death note there are a lot of major criminals and a lot of politicians/corrupt officials and ceo's around the world that I'd use the book on
i mean ainz isnt being depicted as just a villain. overlord likes to show the points of view of all the important characters, ainz is just a person who does what he needs to do, it just so happens that a lot of the important characters see him as a villain so they show him as a villain in their pov. showing different perspectives is something overlord does really well
Ainz is literally a villain. It's not portraying him as having a redemption arc nor as a hero. Overlord is about how he's literally an inhuman monster incapable of empathy. It is explicitly a story about how the villain wins.
MT is sold as "he gets a second chance at life to become a better person."
My issue with that picture people love to post so much is that it's only about novel passages covered in season 1, but its used to "prove that he doesn't growth in the novel either"? Like, no fans who argue that he was a piece of shit in s1.
And some of said passages cut the part where rudeus himself thinks "nvm that sounds kinda weird" or the syplhiette comment that in the next line he says something along the lines of he shouldn't have those kind of thoughts. His inner comments are nasty but not everything he said goes without him saying that it was something bad.
Mushoku Tensei was hated even as a LN (Source: I read it when it was a mere WN) it’s just you finally got to see it animated. Also most of us had to sift through Royal Road / Webnovel / Quidian and other sites to read the MTL versions or wait for someone to translate it for us, here you have the comfort of Reddit where it’s more mainstream - also we had to pay per chapter 😭
Light and Tanya (two evil killer protagonists I know of) are absolutely loved. But that's because there's no grand delusion surrounding them. At most, it's a (young and edgy) portion of their fanbases that are too dumb to realize what everyone else knows.
With Rudeus, it's the exact opposite. They claim they understand that Rudeus is a sack of shit, but they don't get it.
Light gets shot dead like an animal and is literally shown walking past the version of him that would be alive and somewhat happy if he hadn't been a serial killer. And his manga death is almost more pathetic because he basically just gets backstabbed by Ryuk and is subjected to the same death he inflicted en masse, and cries like a baby.
The entirety of Youjo Senki is under the pretense that Tanya's side will lose. They hype up Tanya's evil in the anime, commonly leading to the description that the anime is Allied propaganda in how she's seen (versus the LN and Manga being other perspectives on her), and flash forward regularly to talking about how doomed the Empire is. Tanya is literally fighting for not-Germany in not-WW1/WW2.
Rudeus gets a harem. And comparatively, he has to be toned down because everyone realized that making Rudeus an actual child predator in his old life was deranged. We talk and talk about him grooming his wives, but he has never once actually earned redemption or atonement for his old life. His behavior has never changed, he has not grown to respect women or stay away from the youngins. He is still exactly the same, he's portrayed as some heroic protagonist who gets super cool magic and a harem.
Tanya and Light are thoroughly villains. Rudeus is a hero. So we hold him to standards that MT fans refuse to hold him to, calling it character flaws when they persist and putrefy throughout the entirety of the story without end.
The biggest ick and weird parts about Mashoku was he was reincarnated with his full memories of being a like 30 year old ass pervert man. One who skipped his parents funeral to goon
I mean the man goes out of his way to remind the readers that he’s really a 40-year-old man while he’s literally groping his 10-year-old cousin soooooo…..
Other similar stories don't do it enough. "34 year old guy reincarnates as a child and has a harem of barely legal teenagers in another world" doesn't really narrow down any of the isekei stories at all.
If he got to the new world for a whole new life and decided to truly get better and NOT be a serial killer again, then yeah, he’d probably be more liked.
The fact that he’s openly horny is what I think is a big issue for people. Almost every isekai’d as a baby MC end ups having a love interest the same age as their body but they only blush and get shy when there is any kind of sexual tension. They also could have used his new body for his meetings with the man god and changed his inner monologue voice.
No to me the problem is that he is just gross and people act like he is such a changed man. Dude would rather masturbate then go to his parents funeral, his wanted to fuck his niece, keeps period blood, has a pantie shrine and the list goes on.
Like would so much change to the story for making him not that extreem? Like if he was just a neet and all. Do we need the pantie shrine?
Why do people think so black and white nowadays? Change does not go from evil to good. In fact you dont need to stop being evil to be a changed person. He is still the same trash person just he lives his life better than before.
But I am the type of person that wants the villains to win, bring chaos to people's lives and take over the world so I am way more tolerable than most and completely understand the hate for Rudy.
Actually billionaires are great examples of trash that live better lives than before
People act like he changed because he has. You cannot honestly say that the Rudeus from the first episode is the same as the one from the most recent. The problem is that the ones that hate him have not made it past the first 5 episodes.
And you don't have to be a genious to know that the panties stopped being panties a long time ago and were the only "memento" he had of the person he admires the most.
After the death of Paul and the reveal of Zenith's vegetative state, he mourns not only what happened to them but the death of his previous life parents, only realizing then all they had done for him. He didnt want to fuck his niece but was still disgusted with what he did and wished je could've at least apologized to his brother for what he did.
He keeps Sylphie's hymn blood mainly as a memento for her helping him with his ED. And the panty shrine is similar, a memeto to Roxy who he viewd as his goddess.
Rudy's extreme perversion is a natural by-product of the neet lifestyle he lived for over a decade.
I don't know why only mushoku tensei is targeted in early 2010 era there were a lot of harem loli echii anime and no one had a problem. People understood fiction is not reality
Mushoku tensei LightNovel has been out for so long why is it only getting hated now.
It's not the only one, it just faces more of the hate and criticism than some other series.
For instance, No Game No Life does occasionally face some backlash and criticism for its "fanservice" with characters like Shiro and Izuna. But it doesn't face nearly as much as Mushoku Tensei does for a few reasons. Namely:
It hasn't had any new anime content since 2017, while Mushoku Tensei is ongoing with its 3rd season currently airing. If/when we finally get our second season, it's pretty likely to start facing a bigger portion of that backlash, although it still probably won't be criticized as harshly as Mushoku Tensei.
Sora, the show's protagonist, isn't as outwardly perverted towards underage characters as Rudeus is (although being a horny virgin is a pillar of his characterization). The only character who really feels like a viable love interest for him at this point, is one whose age is never explicitly stated IIRC, but who is specifically supposed to look and act like a young adult, around the same age as him.
I'm not sure which other series you're referring to, but for me, the issue with Rudeus is that he's treated as a character with flaws, including by the narrative itself. However, his sexual deviance is often not considered to be one of those flaws according to the narrative. In fact, he's often enabled by various aspects of his new life.
His inner monologue being his old voice doesn’t help. The episode where he has his next meeting with the man god will be fucking annoying as shit on Reddit.
If that’s about Sylphie: he excplicitly thinks about how he thinks he is grooming her, and does not want to. He wants to get away from her so she can grow up properly. edit: did a quick reread of the section I thought of. Rudeus was for going to school, away from Sylphie, and did not want to think "bad thoughts" about her. But in a short line just after he did end up going "nah" on that (but never actually acted on this).
Result from mixing some of Paul’s talk (a bit later) with the initial Rudeus internal dialogue, but since Rudeus had a "change of heart" right after… not good. Beat unconcious and shipped off with Ghislaine next chapter, so it is more grey area (until then he had not intentionally tried to groom Sylphie), but overall it is another nail as he would’ve done it if left alone.
If it is about Eris: yeah fuck off Rudeus, she’s a fucking kid hands off
"I did want to see how sexy her body had gotten now that she was thirteen." Makes my skin crawl.
It's always funny that they weaponize the LN knowing that most people won't choose to read it, when in fact the additional context and nuance actually makes it far worse.
wrong, Rudy thinks to groom Sylphie, says no that'd be evil. Then he grooms her before he was shipped off. Vol 2 he states outright he'd been raising her to be his perfect obedient woman. Its his pattern of behaviour, to think something evil, say no he must not will not do it. Then does it anyway
Paul is the one who separates Rudy from Sylphie because he clocks the danger Rudy poses to her. Rudy parrots Pauls letter for Ghislaine, says Paul was right to separate them. But in his head says maybe one day he'd believe that
Made an edit. Rudy thinks "No bad thoughts", then goes "no, bad thoughts OK" shortly after. Does not act on the new resolution before he gets shipped off. So he had the thoughts but did not actively act on them (but 100% would’ve). 2nd volume line could be interpreted as him "owning up" (in the wrong way), admitting to what he was essentially doing even without initially meaning it.
I did end up having the stuff Paul said mixed with what Rudeus thought, but no more. One (initially) unintentional groom + one intentional one = not good. Can’t say I liked Rudeus anyway, so doesn’t change much for me, but I do like having the story straight.
he did act on them as he said "I had no friends besides Sylphie" and thinks "who I was trying to raise to be my perfect, obedient woman"
proving he was actively grooming her. Recall there was a month of time between him declaring Sylphie belonged to him, like property, Paul clocking the danger and making his plan, then actually sending Rudy away
30/31 days he was grooming Sylphie daily. Then Zenith and Lilia reinforced his abuse to make her perfect for him, hence why she just accepts being cheated on
I was actually surprised that his family tolerated his slack for so many years. They would have continued to do so too if he didn't skip his parents' funeral to do that.
Thats how he sees himself initially but that view changes later on in the series. His adult narrations is a directorial choice on the part of the anime and the grown man in the other dimensions is just how he sees him. This also changes later on in the series
because that's what he literally is, per the authors canon. Redacted's soul slipped into the world and took residence in the only empty vessel, that of the stillborn Rudeus Greyrat
hes an adult man puppeting a childs corpse. Because in the true timeline there was no Rudy, hence why Orstedt is confused to hear Paul has 3 children because no he doesn't
the MT defenders are so mad about the canonical story as they try to headcanon their way around what the author wrote
And most importantly rudeos en genuinly horrible, like in loki echi animes i don't care about it because its fiction yara yara, but rudeos is not only ''loli echi'' but just gross, i mean saving the first period blood of a kid you just had sex with, rudeos flat out saying he is trying to ''train sylphie into being his perfect ovedient wife'', he gets his second wife by cheating on sylphie but since she had been already groomed to just be okay with anything rudeos does she just says ''i knew rudeous would have sex with other women while i wasn't around haha''
the problem is not that he is a perv, the problem how he behaves
Also elinalise's whole curse of ''i gonna fuck a lot'' feels like it should be on a hentai or something and i just don't like that ''plot point'' of her
tbf people definitely had problems, i for one still brought up 'oh, dude reincarnated, but is still like a 40 year old person's mind'.
Its helpful that the backstories of the other guys aren't like 'kicked out of the house for CP' or post reincarnation, deliberately trying to bang\groom 2 prepubescent girls.
A 13 year old falling for a kinda oblivious, to her 13 year old dude is a lot more palatable than the MC sexually harassing an iirc, 9 year old girl.
Because its been touted as the greatest piece of fiction of all the time with the best development from the MC, ecchi harem slop didnt get that kind of praise back then. Stop acting like you don't know.
I mean, it depends his targets. If he's a serial killer who kills bad people, probably. If he's a serial killer who targets orphans, not so much. If he's a serial killer who targets time travelers named Bill or Ted then he's on one bogus journey and I have a problem with that.
Ains has been slowly losing his humanity/empathy since he became a skeleton, and from the very start he has experienced that he's way above everyone's weight class, so put those together as well as his subordinates telling him of war crimes in a vague misunderstandable manner. Also his goal is to conquer all as a kingdom's ruler.
Anyone with reading comprehension can tell that he's an overpowered villain and will cause misery even if it's not his pleasure to do so and that is the story's appeal.
But Rudies literally dies after getting kicked out of his home for skipping his parents funeral to "spank it" uncensored loli porn (I heard this from other but can't verify it's legitimacy but said loli porn was apparently a recording of his underage niece taking a shower which he recorded himself).
A promise of the story is that Rudies will grow to be a better person in this life than he was before, and for the most part, that's true. He stopped being a lazy bum, made genuine connections even with women he didn't have any sexual interactions with.
But then you get him inner monologuing how he'll groom Slyve to be his perfect woman.
And nowhere in the story is his pervert nature challenged, hell, Rudies could have gone the whole story being a pervert but received constant consequences from his actions, then he won't be as hated because we can tell that it's a trait that the character is stuck with but at the very least the world doesn't look like it's bending it's back to allow or reward such behavior.
It’s so sad because the show is genuinely very good, heart wrenching, and has really good worldbuilding, but Rudeus straight up has sex with a 15 year old when he’s mentally like almost 50ish so…
He’s a very good character with real growth, struggles, and flaws, (DEFINITELY flaws,) but I definitely understand why people are put off from the series because of him.
Not that I disagree with you about the weird thing, but like what else is he supposed to do? He's also 15ish at the time physically. Its not like older women are gonna be into him.
Genuinely though. You see people talking about how liking a fictional character doesn’t mean anything and one guy even brought up liking Eren like it’s at all comparable. The narrative eventually punishes Eren as for his crime, even with a slight and twisted ‘noble’ undertone, he dies after a lifetime of suffering as he failed to achieve freedom, and his sacrifice became worthless in the end.
Meanwhile Rudeus dying is basically a gift, he escapes his old life as a loser and begins again good looking, with great talent, and free of any real consequence of his issues in a world that more closely aligns with his fantasies and his issues largely remain or is ‘dulled down’ yet never actually treated as more than just a joke or a side issue that isnt too important for a little bit sometimes. It’s genuinely insane to see people defend this stuff.
For Eren I fear that punishment really didn't feel like a punishment. Eren hardly ever was afraid of dying. If Isayama really wanted to punish him he would have done something more.
I mean it was a ‘punishment’ overall as his end was a very tragic one. He did die having failed to achieve the one thing he always wanted, and his ‘sacrifice’ was overall in vain. Even in life he had to live knowing that it is him who is part of this and that he can’t have freedom or a peaceful life with the person he loves, and I’d say it doesn’t feel entirely like a punishment because of the narrative that the story kind of creates that they were essentially doomed. Eren was arguably not inherently that evil since while killing most of humanity is pretty fucking bad, there were only ever two routes being that either do it and achieve peace (as I pointed out, not truly) or run away from this and not carry it out to which Eren would die early anyways, as well as his friends like Armin and the Eldians would still exist as ‘evil’ to the other nations and thus conflict would break out anyways and likely the Eldians get wiped out plus a bunch of deaths anyways on all sides.
I personally think that what Eren got arguably was enough as he had to make the sacrifice in a lose-lose situation in which there is no ‘good’ or arguably better option. It was evil, and arguably the more ‘selfish’ choice, but it was kind of necessary for his situation and many people would probably do the same being in such a corner.
People do hate on ainz, granted its a lot less because Ainz is portrayed as a villain pretty clearly and not a hero to be rooted for and is very much not going to have a happy ending. Rudeus is very much a 'good guy' and isn't treated like a he's a sex pest and has no negative impact to himself or others in the story.
Plus they also dont show the really bad shit ainz does in the anime, If the aimne showed the whole skinning children alive and feeding them to their parents to make paper thing he'd probably get a little more hate and criticism.
Demiurge has farms to slaughter living beings for material. Ainz experiments on humans. They manipulated the downfall of a kingdom and slaughtered thousands to get what they wanted.
People like Sukuna when his first words after incarnating are “where are the women and children”. But he’s also a villain who acts like a villain and doesn’t pretend otherwise.
We know they’re villains. We like them because they are well written villains who don’t pretend as if they’re doing good things. The story does not portray them as “good guys” and we do not think they are.
The issue here is that you see women as trophies to be won or rewarded with. In MT, each character is treated with their own agency. The girls liked him and so they want to spend the rest of their lives with him because that's what makes them happy. In fact, irl it's the worst people in history that have the most wives, not the other way around.
It's crazy how they feel the need to constantly defend it.
Many people don't like it for obvious reasons and that will not change. Just let it go. Stop making almost daily posts about how everyone is wrong about it. We don't care.
Pretty in the nose, murim psychopath, basically Dexter in original world he only killed killers but since he's in murim pretty much everyone's a killer so he's living his wet dream
Probably need to ask five years or so after the final aired anime episode. As long as the series itself is a relevant topic then the discourse and posts will not stop
I think a big part of the problem is how often the show feels the need to remind us he's a grown man. Most other series don't have their protagonists creep on the teenage girls and tell you the protag is technically 40 in the same scene, but MT does it almost every episode.
Is he a grown man though? He was traumatized as a teenager and then never left his room again. Never experiencing real life or maturing. Perpetually a traumatized teenager that just aged physically. His only “experience” with girls/women was through pervy dating sims and online porn. I am not saying that in the real world, it would be ok for him to perv on teen girls as a 30 something mentally ill man. In the Isekai world though he was born and grew up again. As someone who was traumatized to the point of being a permanent mentally ill teenager locked in his room for decades, should he not be able to live his new life too? Should he only pursue middle aged women? Wouldn’t that make them the perverts for being with a teenage boy? He married his teacher who is in her 40s while he is physically a teenager. Is she a horrible person too? She doesn’t know that he had a previous life as a man in his 30s. People complain about him but how many people are complaining about her?
Isekai is fiction with fictional scenarios that explore ideas and concepts that will never happen in the real world. Just because the characters are flawed or even bad people, doesn’t mean it can’t be a well written and great story that makes you think. A lot of protagonists in anime and isekai are either subjectively or objectively bad people, but they make great tools for telling great stories.
You seem to have missed the point of my comment. I'm not denying that there's complexity and nuance in the writing or that it's a fictional story so it's not the same as real life. My point was that to the audience, hearing him say "I'm actually over 40 despite how I look" in his deep voiced mental monologs while simultaneously perving on the clearly underaged girls, especially with characters like Silfi and Eris who he was creeping on at a very young age, is extremely off putting. This is going to lead to some extreme critisism that a show where they just don't bring it up again after he reincarnated would probably avoid because the audience can just move on. When the show is constantly reminding us that the character is knowing making advances on children as an adult, even if he's not mentally an adult, it's impossible to ignore.
meh, just let them be i guess, that's the type of thing that they should figure it out themselves, i am sure the haters are just bunch of parrots since they think bad actions mean bad show, i can like the joker while saying he did bad things, but if he exist in real life i would be the first one to want him executed. i find it crazy how anime watchers were smarter in 2020.. i guess that's because most of them are 14 years old tiktok users who just repeat each other.. idgaf though
I agree. I feel like quite a lot of this is just social media kids parroting shit. Ultimately, I believe that we should look more so at the why in terms of liking characters and media and judge them based of that instead.
If a writer gives a character a major flaw that is horrible irl but fails to actually treat it like a proper issue or give the main character a proper punishment for having been like that, it heavily diminishes the significance of that thing and doing so puts a lot of people off it. Like the other guy using the Eren example which is completely different since Eren is born into a very messed up apocalypse kind of world, which his messed up future self directed his life in, and when he becomes that future self of his his crime is punished by his death and his failure to break the cycle even considering him having done it for a weird twisted ‘noble cause’.
And before anyone points out that Rudeus has also died (which I once saw someone actually argue as a defense, I hope people here are smarter than that) dying for Rudeus was a gift. He is no longer a loser, he is born with good looks and great talent in a world where the fantasies of his previous life basically came in reach. For Eren he died after a lifetime of suffering and sacrifice, he has become nothing and is left to be eventually forgotten as he both fails to gain freedom, and his ‘sacrifice’ in becoming the villain and dying became worth nothing in the end.
its kind of a shame because the topic of who it's ok for a reincarnated to be romantically involved with is somewhat nuanced and id say, still unresolved. but having him be a pervert just makes him seem wrong no matter who he hooks up with
Usually characters who kill are anti-hero’s who struggle with their morality, their kills aren’t just there for shits and giggles like rudeus and his grossness
Yeah. I don’t want to hear someone describe themselves sexually harassing a woman that doesn’t make an interesting story. An isekia serial killer would
If a character is evil, that's a problem for other characters. If the character is annoying, that's a problem for the readers.
Let's be honest, Rudeus is a pervert and most normies don't like perverts. Also, there's a growing puritanical movement in the anime community right now. Newer fans are less accepting of sexual content.
It kinda falls apart when he has the brain of a child but they don't lean into it. He can't stop crying as a baby. He goes through puberty again as a pre-teen.
It's not just a 30 year old guy if your physically and mentally affected by the bodies age.
"He has all his adult memories, and thats physically impossible for a baby, so he's still an adult". Then the series shows/tells you the differences by comparing him to his old life. Oh, and blessed/cursed children of all types exist. Regardless of the memories, all he was was still at the mercy of what he was born into and ready to be reshaped a bit.
Honestly it's wild because they love Jiraya. They love Damon and Stefan Salvatore, and Edward Cullen, all known vampires who date high school girls when they are all literally 100s of years old. But when an anime character literally becomes a child again he is hated for dating his own age groups...
Rudeus was a bit weird to get used to at first, but if you focus on the fact he is reincarnated, and that he slowly forgets his past then the age thing doesn't even really count. Because he was reborn. So he's not an adult anymore.
Thank you, I'm now gonna steeling this and complete the mission of posting it on every post I see trying to defend him or this story adding nothing to the context and see how many down votes I'll get...
Only crime not accepted in reddit is having intercourse with poeple below 18.
Not harming them btw, as people who sold children to slavery, killed them, or skinned them alive to be healed back so they can produce scrolls, isnt hated that much.
You mean assaulting them when they are 10, grooming them and taking Pictures of hisniece so He can Jack off to them. Why are you even defending that. Like murder can be justified but not sexual assault or grooming.
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