Forum - View topicINTEREST: Mushoku Tensei Author Addresses Criticism about Perverted Protagonist
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18179 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I would challenge anyone to watch episode 2 of Redo and then repeat the above statement and actually mean it. |
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Ashen Phoenix
 Posts: 2907 |
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This. I saw gifs of this anime and fell in love with the lavish animation and classic fantasy setting but the MC being a pedophile, the series never calling out how bad that is, and never having him change for the better? The. Hardest. Pass. The fact anyone in the comments is trying to contort a defense of his behavior pre- and post-reincarnation by paralleing REAL WORLD children and sexual relationships between actual adults and teenagers is alarming on every level. |
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Ashabel
 Posts: 350 |
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I am actually up to date with the manga of Redo, so don't worry, I am fully aware of just how abhorrent and repulsive it gets at the best of times. That's kind of, you know, the entire point I'm trying to make there, |
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Joa
Posts: 98 |
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Most of your post is accurate, but this part just isn't true. spoiler[He gets ED due to insecurity because Eris leaves him right after they have sex. It has nothing to do with age or him being a victim.] |
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casenumber00
Posts: 154 |
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A big problem is we got people who know the whole complete story from the light novels and the characters growth redeeming himself over a life time then we have the narrow view of the the story of a vocal minority. Any reasonable person would give more credence to someone who knows the story. Furthermore, reasonable people with the concerns would ask questions about the character and how he gets better from the readers and whatnot. I am a writer myself, albeit for stringent academic research, and I am disappointed how much the article writers are not doing that and seem to be covering this from a bias view.
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ATastySub
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 647 |
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There are multiple people who know the complete story literally saying that the part that is concerning does not get better. In this very thread. A reasonable person would be able to read that and not jump straight to the idea of a vocal minority who don't know what they're saying. I hope you do far better research for your stringent academic research than you displayed here. Last edited by ATastySub on Wed Jan 20, 2021 10:47 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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As a moderator let me remind everyone of what Tempest, the CEO, said previously in regards to Redo of Healer.
This also surely applies to those trying to justify pedophilia and/or sexual conduct towards children. You want to like this show then go ahead, but if you promote either of the these sorts of conduct it won't be tolerated. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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Initially I viewed this as something akin to the missteps done with Bakugo’s introduction in MHA, where the author wanted to really emphasize just how “Bad with a capital B” Bakugo was by having him threaten Deku with murder/suicide. The pedophilia still actively drove me away from this series, but given that this is some sort of landmark title, I could have erred a little on assuming the pedophilic element was a thoughtless addition made by a newbie writer who didn’t really understand the full implications of what he was writing nor how hard it would be to eventually have to undo that first impression, much like how MHA really had to work at rebuilding Bakugo into a more sympathetic character. But given what lives under the spoiler cuts, it seems more and more like the pedophilia aspect of this series is more a feature than a bug, and isn’t actually a supremely misguided attempt to link the MC’s trauma with him developing some kind of sexual depravity that he works to overcome (which is dumb, but I could see why an uninformed first-time writer might pull the same nonsensical trick 50 Shades did in trying to paint BDSM as the result of deeply rooted psychological trauma.) I was toying with the idea of maybe circling back to this series years later so I didn’t have to slog through the glacial pace of character development spanning a lifetime, but if the most problematic element of the series is actually part of its main appeal, I think I can rest easy giving this a hard pass. |
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Rentwo
 Posts: 184 |
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It's not exactly unlike a lot of anime, if we're being honest. We see the exact same kind of gag in mainstream manga and anime like Detective Conan and One Piece, which both feature young kid characters who use their age to their advantage to grope and touch women without getting in trouble for it. They even go one step further by rubbing it in the other male characters faces for being jealous of them. And we'd be here all day if we listed the shows where characters invade girl's piracy by peeping on them taking a bath or changing, let alone the series that have fanservice and sexualize minor characters in general. I personally believe everyone is entitled to their opinion, but this kind of stuff is so ingrained in the medium and fandom as a whole. |
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RegisterJustForComment
Posts: 62 |
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He is a generalized pervert. Not only the more questioned genre but also the more normal genre with how we see his reaction to a mature woman. And this story is about a journey to be a better person even if it's not perfect. So, if he fully change or at least think about change and succed just like that the moment he reincarnated, then the story could just end there.
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Charou
 Posts: 123 Location: Sydney, Australia |
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Grimly amusing that the very first response nails the issue -- almost like it's, I dunno, obvious? I've been dwelling on responding, since I've bowed out of the other MT discussion (a lot of what I said defending MT has been undermined by stuff I've learned since, but I retain complex feelings on the whole thing, so won't recant quite yet), but this seems to me a larger issue. So I'll add this: as I said elsewhere, this is the thorny facet of anime we all probably have to reckon with eventually: even the official tweets use the word 'pervert' and 'pervy' (hentai? I'm guessing) rather than other, and in this case, likely much more accurate terms. There is distinct overlap between them, too. Think back to the recent kerfuffle with Katrina Leonoudakis' decision to translate 'lolicon' as 'paedophile' in O Maidens. Out of context, it seems extreme and inappropriately forceful on her behalf as a mere translator: did HG translate the three Zentradi spies from Macross as 'We', 'Are' and 'Pedos' (their names were Warera, Rori and Konda -- warera lolicon da, in reference to their infatuation with Minmay)? Of course not. BUT in the O Maidens context, it absolutely made sense for 'lolicon' to be translated as 'paedophile' because it was a non-nerd teenager talking to another teenager, referring to an adult in a position of authority grooming his pubescent students. That IS the word we'd use in English in that situation. In that moment, I was reminded that 'lolicon' isn't also haha, funny, cute, ew, silly, oh Japan. It is, and understandably so, in the eyes of so-called normies, a perversion. Lolicon -- Lolita Complex. Yeah, we know what that means. Really. 'Attraction to young girls'. Implicit and sometimes explicit: sexually. And with that clarification, we've already started to batter down any sort of division between 'lolicon', 'loli porn addict' and the lay usage of the word 'paedophile'. So what is the line between loli porn and outright paedophilia? Naturally this is one of those questions we'd all rather not ask because merely asking it indicates you're thinking about it, which is more than alarm enough for non-otaku/weebs to back off real slowly. And, as I said above, rightfully so. BUT there's something else not in play here yet: paedophilia is not a legal term, nor is it in and of itself a crime (I know, I'm shocked too, but I just looked it up). Acts related to it are, obviously, but what we call 'paedophilia' in laity is often 'hebephilia' (adult attraction to 11-14 year olds [!? how is that not paedophilia!?]) or even 'ephebophilia' (adult attraction to post-pubescent and older teenagers [still kinda...ugh, not right]). But for whatever reason, it is perfectly valid in everyday speech to refer to any adult sexually attracted to someone younger than the sexual age of consent a 'paedophile'. Equally likely designation: pervert, but rarely without the former clarifying genuine acts of paedo/hebe/ephebophilia. So getting back to MT, it's not that the author is 'wrong' in referring to his protagonist as 'perverted' -- it's just deceptively sidestepping. Well, okay. It's your work, say what you want. But here's the kicker: the industry accepts that sidestepping and by default, so do we. As an individual a person can choose not to watch MT, but I think if they do that but still watch stuff like Prisma Illya without serious discomfort every time one of the 'young girls' forces herself upon another with full-on saliva-laden kisses, they might be falling somewhat short of the moral goalpost, even though Illya and anything else depicting young girls as sexual objects isn't paedophilia but the aforementioned 'hebephilia'. I still consider it porn, because 'porn' isn't just overt 'sex' -- it's the creation of anything with the intent to sexually arouse...and while two girls kissing is far shy of illegal, when it's so blatantly framed as lascivious as we see in stuff like Illya, it's really hard to call it anything BUT loli porn. That it's glued into an another enjoyable Fate outing just makes it all the more difficult to negotiate. So if we can accurately call former-life Rudy 'a hentai junkie into loli con' and NOT immediately go 'well, that's a paedo' because of the terminology or because he'd never 'act' on those urges or because they're just drawings (I know they were something else in the original, but I'm a filthy anime-only here) or because there's no overt 'sexual' acts and he's just a typical 'anime-is-trash-and-so-am-i not-my-proudest-fap lol' type, then we remain on safe, familiar ground. But if we can't, then we need to go back and look at all the other 'lolicon' works, not to mention fetishisation of incest (okaasan, I'd do anything for my daughter, etc) and reassess what is acceptable and what isn't... ...but ONLY from a personal perspective. Good luck changing the industry from where any of us stand. And as I said, that industry seems perfectly copacetic to call a dude getting off to lolicon merely 'a pervert'. Hard to get righteous and rouse a crusade when that's the official stance. I don't expect this will be the much-delayed reckoning with one of anime/manga's darker side, but at the least MT has reminded me (us?) that it's not all magical girls and shounen battles and existential crises in giant mecha that may or may not be an allegory for the womb. And yet 'perversion' hasn't always meant 'lolicon' in anime either: aside from the infamously over the top stuff like ur-hentai Legend of the Overfiend, more family-friendly perverts like Ryo Saeba of City Hunter went out of his way to repeatedly reject girls and underage potentials. For all the outdatedness of the show, that was a big plus -- as was the hammer of retribution, of course. Whatever happened to THAT wholesome 80s sort of perversion, eh? Heh. Anyway, enough from me. Short version: until the industry itself recognises that 'lolicon/pervert' is uncomfortably close to the Western lay definition of 'paedophile', I wouldn't expect much to change. And I'm certainly not holding my breath for that to happen, because the idea of 'youth and purity being attractive' is hardly unique to anime. Heck, it's hardly unique to Japan. Lolita was, after all, an American beauty. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2112 |
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Additionally, it is entirely reasonable to critically analyze what the story's doing right now, even if you qualify your observations and analysis by recognizing that you don't have the full picture. |
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TheRahi00
 Posts: 154 |
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Those are two strange examples and context matters. A lot. Conan is not a perv, and hardly portrayed as one. Yes, he still finds Ran attractive (which is normal) and Ran did take a bath together with him, thinking Conan is just a kid. But: 1. Conan is the same age as Ran, so the whole comparison is weird in the first place. 2. Conan is not groping or even touching Ran to take advantage of the situation. And in fact even was shown being uncomfortable at times, when for an example Ran was offering to take a bath together. With One Piece, I assume you are talking about Kozuki Momonosuke, who is shown to take advantage of his age to touch woman, which is true. But once again, the biggest difference and the most important aspect here is that Momonosuke is actually a kid. No offense, but I think some people are really missing the point on why this case is very different from other examples that people keep bringing up to show "look anime is always like that". The complaints and issue goes far beyond the character being a "perv". |
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Anneyuno1
 Posts: 68 |
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The people just expressing his/her discontempt on a fictional work. Him has done nothing to consider himself untouchable.
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helln00
Posts: 106 |
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being a manga reader and didn't read the LN or WN I can only say that anime Rudy is #notmyrudy.
he is infinitely more likeable in the manga (also scrubbed the pedo stuff) which I only realised when the anime came up. like heck the first few chapters felt warm and nice and you want him to have a second chance. |
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