Creating a redemption story about a pedophile of all things is some of the worst writing I have ever seen. No matter where you go, everyone, including the big Anime YouTubers, refuse to address the elephant in the room when it comes to this series: pedophilia. In fact, many viewers embrace it. I do respect the passion that went into the production quality, but this sickly degenerate and disgusting series has too many flaws and not much going for it if you can see past the fan service and animation. Not only that, the fan service brings out the worst in the viewers as the discussions I try to have become too disgusting to take seriously.
Often, people say this has great world building. How? Texhnolyze is an example of amazing world building. The viewers know what to expect, what kind of people they'd meet, and how to survive in the worlds of that series. They become knowledgeable of the inner workings and politics. If the viewer was there, they'd know what to do, what not to do, and where to go, where not to go. The amazing and memorable art gives the viewers a sort of mental map of the city. I can give endless examples of world building in Texhnolyze. What about Mushoku Tensei? Besides the constant boring and aimless walking through pretty backgrounds, maybe I can run into a demon girl who will rip my eye out and give me a demon one. Or, I might walk into a monster orgy. There was so much potential in world building here, but hardly any at all is explored. Likewise, the magic system is barely touched upon. The writing of this series is blinded by how perverted it is.
This all ties into one of it's major flaws: It focuses too much on the fan service and abandons more important parts of the series that should have been developed instead.
Some say Rudeus is one of the best protagonists in all of anime. How? He hasn't grown at all and there isn't much to him besides being a former useless and deplorable neet. He is a strong mage because he just is? Just when you think he is turning over a new leaf it turns out to no one's surprise he is still the same. He is still sexually assaulting little girls, and the staff disgustingly felt the need to add in even more anime only content to show more of his degeneracy. In part 1, Rudeus was seen to be yet another cowardly written protagonist that doesn't know how to get his hands dirty when needed, and he is so naïve about fighting back it gets characters killed. Ruijerd was right about taking out the animal abusers. There's no place for pacifism when it comes to reality. A sadistic villain with no conscious, whether it's a person or a government, wouldn't even know what it is, anyways. In season 2 he hasn't grown much at all from this. It doesn't help that his father is a worthless alcoholic and womanizer.
To partly salvage this series, the production value is incredible. The opening songs change and pour out more scenes rather than having a constant opening. The animation can be beautiful and the music decent. You can see the passion the staff put into that, but animation doesn't write a good story. This is something that seems very difficult to understand. Mushoku Tensei goes down the similar path of Vivy Flourite Eye's song: A series that had everything it needed to be a classic but failed in the writing department. This happens all too much.
Character wise, Eris became that obnoxious obligatory tsundere that decreased season 1's quality until they finally fixed her character and made her much more likeable. In season 2, she essentially becomes Rudeus' personal guard dog that constantly barks for him. Sylphiette had potential to be an amazing character but got the Milize from 86 treatment and got shafted into the void 99% of the time. Most of the characters didn't have much going for them, were there only to be useless and hollow pieces of fan service, and overall not that memorable. Roxy is one of the few characters I've enjoyed since her story is among the better ones, but she rarely appears.
The only character that I grew to love and appreciate is Ruijerd. He is the voice of reason among the foolishness of Rudeus and the others. He is the strong protector and wise teacher of his comrades. He is highly respectable and a great man. Sadly, the source material readers felt many of the time that too much of him was cut out for the adaptation. I get not everything can be adapted, but at least he still came off as a great character with what the series showed.
The CGI God is always amusing with his odd personality, but there really isn't much to say about him besides that he is Rudeus' plot cheat machine.
Then there's the constant 10/10 best Isekai ever talk; an assumption that is an insult to anime. Saying this is the best isekai ever is nonsensical because the ones saying that have not watched every isekai, let alone any anime before the year 2000, and considering it's a genre littered with terrible media, it's honestly not saying much anyways.
Sadly, part 2 is awful for all the same reasons part 1 is. Nothing changed or got better besides prettier animation to gloss over this corpse of a series.
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