Roxy was 40 years old when she met Rudeus, so she is same age. That case I think no one has any doubt?
And when he first met het, he considered her as an adult, so yea.
Wow... are you unironically using the "she's actually a 900 year old vampire" defense? While it is true that women IRL comes in all shapes and sizes, Ruby's first reaction to seeing her is, and I quote:
"Lolikko Magician kita-" with the TL: If you don't know JP netslang, the kita is something "it's here", lolikko is "loli" + "kko" where kko means child.
Chapter one, page 37 of the manga.
Ruby himself, sees her as a
child and primarily through a sexual lens, hence the loli part. Like holy shit dude, take the L and admit that Ruby is (or at the very least was) a pedophile. While you're at it, you might also wanna say that pedophiles, fictional or otherwise, are sorry sacks of human beings.
Sylphy.. well, while he was "grooming her" to be his perfect wife, it did not say enywhere he was planning to do anything to her until she was "of age". And, well, marriages of 18yo and 50yo are perfectly legal here, in our world, so yea, I don't see a reason why with her being 15 (legal age of isekai world) (if, of course, he would never veture to teach Eris, and stayed home, and no incident on the way) and him being mentally around 50 should cause any problems.
Dude, my man, bruh... grooming is bad. Just full stop, okay? It doesn't have to involve anything physical for it to be bad. Like, let's hop over to dictionary.com and see what it means:
grooming
noun
- the care of a body and its physical appearance, such as the personal hygiene routine of brushing one’s teeth or combing one’s hair, or the washing, brushing, etc., of a dog or horse: Grooming your dogs at home is less expensive than taking them to the groomer, if you can stand the wet dog smell and the hair that ends up everywhere.
- the act or result of preparing a trail for a specific use, such as skiing, biking, or hiking: Donation boxes have been posted at each trail to cover their grooming and other maintenance costs.
- the act or process of preparing someone to fill a position or role or to undertake an activity: The grooming of new personnel to handle additional responsibilities requires team leaders who will act as mentors and share constructive feedback.
- an act or instance of engaging in behaviors or practices intended to gradually condition or emotionally manipulate a victim over time, as through friendship, gifts, flattery, etc., in order to entrap the person in a sexually abusive or predatory relationship: The ongoing targeting and grooming of minors online shows that our safety protocols for children on the internet are insufficient.
Are you sure you still want die on the "grooming is okay as long as there's no touchy" hill?
Ah, and why he even want to steal girls panties? Well... it is Japan thing. There is vending machine with used woman panties somewhere in Japan, and it is quite common thing in many stories, so.. kinda whatever I think.
I don't handwave things I don't agree with just because it's a thing in a different country (or even fictional fantasy lands). It is still wrong to me and the values I hold to be true and important.
Also to Eris - that was, at least to me, game they both were playing.
First, Rudeus trying to steal, getting beaten up, and... not giving up. Because that would show weakness to Eris, and show her that her beating would make effect.
While in normal condition it should be like that... imagine that with Eris. That she is proven that she can beat anyone and it would make "might make right". Yea, not a good idea.
But... Eris does learn that her way of doing things doesn't work. The whole kidnapping scheme made it abundantly clear to Eris that there's always a bigger fish and she cannot treat every issue/situation with a hammer & nail mindset.
Eris.. accepted it. She treated is as one of his flaws, that cannot be helped, but otherwise?
Doesn't this go against the whole thesis of the story? If something cannot be helped, then it cannot be changed. Ruby cannot help but be a shut-in loser who can't even go outside. This will not change.
She could ended up much worse. Instead, she got very strong, inteligent friend, who was looking after her, and one thing he wanted? To steal her pants? And it was, like, never put whole hearth in it (because if he would get serious, he would do it, and that would end very badly of everyone)? Yea, she can live with it.
I suppose she could live with a partner that doesn't respect personal boundaries, but I'd argue that she shouldn't have to. There's no reason why she'd put up with Ruby's bullshit. Especially since she has all it takes to grow above and beyond needing to rely on Ruby's strength and intelligence to get by.
Later, much later in LN, Rudeus... how to say it... mellowed out. While he was still some kind of pervert towards his wives (which is perfectly fine), he also knew some lines that he should never cross.
Ruby has repeatedly crossed lines that shouldn't have been crossed. And story-wise, he doesn't get his due for it. It's why we're even having this conversation in the first place.
Because even if he is one of Great Powers, wrath on any of his wives is much stronger.
Played off for comedic effect, at least as far as the manga is concerned up until chapter 91. I'm pretty sure you know that if the story wanted to hold Ruby truly accountable for his reprehensible actions, it'd use something other than slapstick-humor to do so.
Also, last thing - don't forget, that Rudeus skipped like.. 20 years of human socialization? All that anwkard teenage phase? And learned from what, from shitty visual novels? Yea... that wasn't healty.
Yeah, and? When will Ruby outgrow this awkward teenage phase? This is all about a second shot at life, turning over a new leaf and refusing to be the sad, pathetic fuck that Ruby was prior to his reincarnation. Nearly 100 chapters in and Ruby is still worshiping Sylphy's panties. Complete with shrine and all.
By no mean he was perfect good guy.
His younger years, up to depressed magican arc, he was almost like his father, Paul - shitty man. Even he admitted that.
Then, reunion with Sylphy, learning to live together. Later his sisters, and Roxy, and Eris.
Acknowledgement of ones flaws is the first step to address them. It's something I guess. Now if Ruby would actually do something about it, like burn the panties that he worships like a holy relic from the Gods we would actually be getting somewhere.
He still learned from it, and become better.
Also note, that his little sister, because of Lilia, whole life wanted to have sex with him and have his kids, which he strongly opposed. Very strongly, and never yielded.
(Altough I do agree that if he was still in his pre-teen mind setting, around that time when he was teaching, and later traveling, with Eris, he propably would yield, if not jumped to this option.)
We're almost 100 chapters into the manga and our protagonist checks to see if sleeping next to his little sister gives him an erection (chapter 91, page 3). Because he
KNOWS he has a thing for loli's. Don't believe me?
Chapter 1, page 37. It is such a prominent characteristic/preference of his, that some of his peers go out of their way to steal underwear from a very specific demographic of female students as a gift to Ruby.
To add insult to injury, ruby clearly knows this is wrong by the standards of the fantasy world he's been reincarnated into, so he goes out of his way to quickly defuse/resolve the situation. So despite him being well aware that his preferences are not socially, culturally or legally acceptable, he continues to cling to that one set of panties. The lack of selfawreness is almost as mindnumbing as the lack of character growth.
True, she later have success with his son, but that is fucked-up story for another time, one that I think will write of as part of "medieval setting and cousins marrying each other" thing.
Oh God... is this the cencorship they're talking about with season 2? That can't be it, unless they compress the storielines and/or skip story arcs.
Ah, and last one thing - remember what Eris father had said to Rudeus? That he would throw restrained Eris to Rudeus bed if Rudues would join him in his revenge path?
Now let me ask - who was more wrong here:
Philip, who offered his own 10yo daugher to 8yo boy
Rudeus, who refused it, even if he was later, by many times, caught trying to steal her panties?
THEY'RE BOTH WRONG! Whoring your daugther for political gain is wrong. Slipping underwear off sleeping 12-year-olds as a 40-something mentally old man stuck in a 10-year-old boy's body is wrong.
Like stars and stone, why is this so hard to grasp?
He was not a perfect example of the man.
But what Mushoku Tensei tells us.. he growed up. He did gain a second chance, and while at first years he was behaving like hormone-bomb teen even if he had mind of 40yo guy (who, don't forget, never actually grow up, and knew sex from pictures and videos at best, and that isn't healthy!), he still grow up from that. Enough to have big, loving family.
I'm gonna call bullshit, because earlier you said that something cannot be helped. Remember that? Here, let me remind you. This is you:
Eris.. accepted it. She treated is as one of his flaws, that cannot be helped, but otherwise?
So which one is it? Is Ruby perverted in a way that cannot be helped or can he outgrow it?
Turn back, look at everything you did when you were in school. Or earlier. Was everything you did really good? Are you proud of everything you did back then? Like, every-single-thing?
I know I'm not.
I made mistakes and I'm proud to say that I've learned from them, grown and become a decent adult. Not once did I try to slip panties off from a sleeping 12 year old girl. I've never stolen a pair of underwear in my life. And I've never, ever worhsipped the stolen panties. Let alone build a shrine to their honor. To top it all off, as much as I like big boobs, I've learned that there's a hell of a lot more to a woman than her mammary glands and it is a disservice/wrong to judge women's merits primarly by their cup size.
It really isn't too much to ask for that Ruby undergows a similar growth and improves as a person. But 91 chapters in, we're still revisiting panties worship and lolis.
What everyone needs to understand, that Rudeus spent.. 20years in limbo. Not-living, existing, not growing up. Partially of his own choices, partially of his parents, who weren't able to help them. Why, we will never knew. I honestly can't blame him that he become shut-in. I really can't. But that may be becuase I was near becoming shut-in, and I'm after some suicide attempts, which, I think, are step further.
There are a lot of systematic issues in Japan and that are unquie to Japan that can drive people to become shut-ins. These are factors that by and large are outside of the control of a single individual. They're socital issues, political, economic, cultural and therefore systematic. All that is fair.
However.
Ruby is no longer in Japan. He's been given a second shot at life through reincarnation into a fantasy world and very early on he seems to be determined to turn over a new leaf, to actually live and become a better person. This isn't something that is done over night (although the isakai genre more than anyt other speedruns this part of the story/character development). But he's, what? 15-20 years into his second life and he still have perverted tendencies? Chapter 91 has 3 whole pages dedicated to Ruby worshipping that panties he stole all the way back in chapter 3, page 23. Also in chapter 91, he checks for an erection after sleeping next to his baby sister.
Okay, now serious question - what happened to chapters 89 and 90? And why chapter 87 was today posted as "new" one?
This is a pirate site where volunteres scan, translate, and upload manga for free. Hic-ups in releases isn't uncommon and a small annoyance to pay considering what we get in return.