Mushoku Tensei ~Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu~ - Vol. 10 Ch. 50 - Aftershock

[Cleesus]

Getting off this ship, i cant do it anymore. Especially after looking ahead and seeing that a lot of the plot and characters get worse. A few characters in particular get extremely retarded. This story was cool up until about the time the entered the first demon city.

 

[ninjadork]

I really don't understand some of you people.

*Rudeus is a socially incompetent person with decades of maladjustment, being used as a pawn by a powerful entity in a game he has no chance of surviving without either blind luck or the mercy of his enemies, who has had approximately 8(ish?) years of a half-decent life and family before being forced to fight for his life day in day out for multiple years (IIRC), then coming home to a broken family where none of the adults were overly admirable in the first place, and finally being forced into political bullshit concerning his student/friend without warning. All while suffering through puberty with no real guidance.
*Eris is suffering everything that Rudeus is, except that she replaces the old memories with: watching her teacher/friend get murdered right in front of her eyes, finding out that all members of her family are either dead by murder or effectively enslaved, coming back to find someone she trusted advocating that she get married to someone she knows is a backstabbing jackass, and having exactly one ally to rely on-the aforementioned teacher/friend that she watched die.

I understand that you find elements of the story distasteful, but this undying hatred for characters who have suffered more in their childhood (or second childhood as the case may be) than the vast majority of people can even comprehend in their lives is just completely fucking silly. Seriously, you're over-reacting like Orsted here.

 

[ninjadork]

There's also the fact that in a European medieval setting like this, there is a huge emphasis on the purity of a woman. One who has had sex with a man out of wedlock is considered extremely undesirable, especially if she carries or has born children because of it.

Eris is old enough that she would have been taught this before the magical transportation. Did it occur to any of you that she might be going to Rudeus for sex deliberately as a protection against the political games people are trying to play with her?

 

[Solipsist]

@ninjadork
The beauty of modern Japanese writing, is that you can analyze a story and give it such a serious, and emotionally genuine forefront --
But in reality, when most of the story plays out like a silly power-fantasy in a fantastical world, it's incredibly difficult to make the attempt to dig that deep into it.

 

[ninjadork]

@Solipsist See, I'd say that characterizing this series as a "power fantasy" is ludicrously false.

Yeah, the MC has powers and some opportunities that very few people do. If he lives long enough, he'll likely stand near the top of the food chain. But a "power fantasy" is a story in which there is nothing that presents a serious threat to whatever character is your self insert. This entire series is the exact opposite of that. Serious or terminal threats to the self-insert (I'm using the MC here) or to people he cares about are found around every other corner. There is no safety to be found, and no security beyond what the characters can enforce with bloody violence, cunning, and teamwork. If it's not super-powered monsters and antagonists threatening to tear you to pieces, it's political power plays that kill innocents and ruin families, from the lowest mortal noble to the highest so-called "deity".

If the setting is so cranked up that a guy with every power and advantage Rudeus has struggles to survive, often fails in his efforts, and risks death or worse every single time...that's not a power fantasy, and calling it such is being willfully blind to what's being shown on the page in front of you.

 

[Solipsist]

@ninjadork
I'll be honest, I do not read every single chapter of this manga. I read the WN, and sometimes when I see an update I check which part of the story the manga has covered.
As such, I find it hard to say how exactly the manga conveys itself -- because in the WN, I felt like from start to finish, it was a practical walk in the park. Even after Rudeus was confronted by his father, for "having a merry adventure in the demon world while we all ate shit", it still all felt like something that is genuinely easy to consume.

Your emphasis on danger, insecurity, drama and such -- tbh, from my point of view, the story almost always focused on humor and the MC's harem. The drama of it all made the story more pleasant to read, but I never go the impression that it was anything to take seriously.
Especially how it ended. The epilogue itself was great, but the several conflicts on the road towards it were all incredibly underwhelming.

 

[ninjadork]

@Solipsist Well I've never read the WN so all my analysis is based on this manga. But it would not surprise me if the WN and the manga tell what are effectively completely different stories. I've seen several series where that happens, like Legend of Shield Hero. Even if they technically tell the same story, I've read several series where the manga is measurably more complete and a straight better story simply because the novel and/or the translation has such shit writing. Hell, I've done work myself to re-write entire sections of translation that were incomprehensible; Re:Monster was a particular slog in some cases.

 

[LygarX]

@ninjadork i dont own the light novels, but I do hear that some things do deviate from the web novel. but some things do stay the same. the core will probably be the same, but some extra things have definitely been added.

 

[radoken]

NOOOOOOOOO HUGE TITS IS DEAD?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

 

[xrp]

They just had to kill hilda

 

[RossiniChii]

Nooooooo! I thought.. at least Hilda and Phillip would be alive..

 

[Izaya_Onisai]

What is there even to consider? Would the mc just let her become some trash's plaything? He even broke into the royal palace but now he is like this? Nobility should mean shit to him but now he is like this? And how come he is always losing? I never even once saw him win properly, and his whole can't train because of roxy was such a nonesense he was a modern japanese man and a otaku, there should be plenty of deadly ideas for magic...

 

[Konrad2]

Thanks for the translation.