Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation

2 comments on Hacker News

1. NeutraldragontamerSep 24, 2024

   Have you tried watching something like OddTaxi?

   It's a bit social commentary (not very heavy but you can feel it). But I don't think it's about loneliness or relations much at all (I guess the Walrus and the Nurse Llama have a bit of a romantic fling but I don't consider it a major part of the show).

   I'd say one of the major villains is someone who has fallen into the stereotypical gachapon gamer / whale / hikkomori type shut-in that sounds like you'd enjoy him as a villain.

   So rather than catering to that demographic, OddTaxi skewers it by clearly marking that character as villainous.

   It's just a solid Film Noir murder mystery, except the main character is the Taxi Driver with damn near perfect memory and facial recognition rather than a proper detective. It takes some time and discussions with various people around town to figure out the murder plot, but I was quite satisfied by it.

   It's a dry show with a lot of talking. The bulk of the show is just the Walrus / Protagonist picking up customers around town, talking with them for 5 minutes and dropping them off.

   But it's those discussions alone that leads him to the murder plot. It's really fun to see how everyone around town was so close to the murderer.

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   I agree with you that there's a genre of anime that celebrates or dramatizes the Hikkomori / shut-in type (ex: Re:Zero, Jobless Reincarnation). But at this point, the Hikkomori is a stock character, just one tool to tell a story.

   There's a lot of different uses of the "emotionally stunted Hikkomori" (ex: Anohana is the Hikkomori who through the drama of a Ghost coming back to talk with him, he gets pulled out of it and emotionally heals).

   But anime and anime culture is above all, about stock characters that are borrowed, remixed, and turned into something new in the next story. The emotionally-stunted Hikkomori can become the hero in Re:Zero, the antagonist of OddTaxi, or a source of Comedy in Devil is a Part-Timer.

   Frieren seems to cover a lot of Hikkomori Tropes (emotionally stunted character who is suddenly learning how to deal with emotions as she interacts with humans). So I think you're right in that she's seemingly related to the trope. I don't think I thought of her like that before but it seems to match up more-and-more that I think of it. She has all the markings of a Hikkomori in terms of attitude and even story progression (Himmel had to convince her to get up and try)

2. NegativedragontamerSep 24, 2024

   I think anyone deeply familiar with anime knows the harem tropes and sexual-comedy setups that Jobless Reincarnation uses as the basis of their story.

   The difference is that Jobless Reincarnation plays out these sexual situations out to the full extend of their drama (ex: Paul Grayrat is caught making a child with the hot maid, there's multiple episodes of fallout because of this as Paul and Zenith, his first wife, have arguments over this).

   I'm not sure if this is a teaching moment for Rudy (the main character) though, as it becomes clear that the entirety of the Grayrat line is full of sexual deviants and even some inbreeding.

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   Doing the sexy time with the hot maid is... I mean.... its a trope. Its normally a comedy routine. But its played straight here.

   Stealing the panties the main character's 40+ year old hot teacher (who is from the demon continent so she looks like only a teenager) is... a comedy trope in anime. (Ie: Panty stealing is all over Konosuba, a comedy anime). But its completely different when its played out straight and in a dramatic anime.

   Being open with what fetishes you're cool with, and which ones make you squeemish is part of growing up. I can comfortably say that the stuff Jobless Reincarnation takes as core plot points are uncomfortable to me / "squicky" and unsatisfying sources of drama for me. And due to their long history as a comedy trope in older anime, its difficult for me to take it seriously.

   Perhaps your argument is that the "point" is to take these adultery scenes more seriously and think deeply about them and the characters they affect. Except I already know that adultery is wrong, that panty stealing is wrong and I don't have any plans to do either.

   So as a source of Drama, my overall confusion with this show is "Why are you dramatizing porn/harem/eroge plots?".

   Uh no. Its a stupid plot for stupid porn-level writing setup. I don't consider it a source of drama at all. Personally anyway. I see that a lot of other people seem to like it so I don't want to hate on it too much or cause undo harm to your opinions or whatever. But... its really hard for me to take the eroge/hentai level plots seriously in Jobless Reincarnation. That's all.

   Even if I 100% recognize that the author works very hard to set up these situations and think out the fallout and drama in a reasonably "realistic" way (or at least, all the characters acting like they should while still qualifying for the trope). And I think that's the part a lot of people like: the deep thought the author put into this work. Thinking deeply about how all these characters would act in the face of these sexually deviant actions.