The themes of Mushoku Tensei: A glimpse of a full exploration of the novels

This is a copy of the thoughts I DM'd to a friend and randomly decided to put way too much effort in. I have a plan of reading through all the novels again at some point and writing a full-scale thesis on this series, as it's been one of my favorite Isekai since I was a child. The text assumes you've at least seen the first two seasons of the Mushoku Tensei anime.

Mushoku Tensei is about the struggle of becoming a better person, starting from the bottom of the barrel. "Jobless git tries harder in another world". The repeating cycle visible in the anime is that understanding what being a good person even means is full of pitfalls for a bad person. 

Rudeus, at the start, when it comes to women, only has memories of dumb dating sims and his chauvinist father to go on for advice. With the adults he can get by as a cute son, since as anyone knows socializing with your parents as a kid isn't exactly rocket science. The first waifu of the show, Sylphiette, is the first example I would note of this repeating cycle. Rudeus saves her from bullies in a morally comically black and white scenario, and then possessively makes her completely reliant on him, showing that his idea of a "good person" is completely wrong at this stage... he doesn't understand that what he's doing is bad. He gets punished for it, by Daddy Paul, who while being an incredibly flawed person himself, has at least the common sense of a normie, and the sense of responsibility of an adult, something Rudeus doesn't have. 

So! Eris is the same. What I would say is the most important early sequence with her is the fake real kidnapping that Rudeus concocts. He's basically still going off dating sim cliches. It's very apparent he didn't learn much from Paul's scolding since being sent to the town barely counts as a punishment. Traumatizing a kid with a staged kidnapping is somewhat psychotic, even if it hadn't gone very wrong! Rudeus got lucky both times he fucked up with Sylphiette and with Eris initially, so him getting complacent during the magic continent arc is natural. If you don't get punished, you won't know if you're doing something wrong. It's important to note both Ruijerd and Eris are very much not normally adjusted people, they're both meatheads and Ruijerd particularly is very soft on a kid like Rudy. 

At this point I was supposed to tell what scene they screwed up or skipped in the anime, but I can't remember which scene it was from the magic continent arc... I thought it was the basement scene with the crooks and Ruijerd killing one of them, but it must have been another one. I'm feeling motivated for a reread+watch so we'll see... I do remember what the bit was communicating in the original, though. Eris goes off on Ruijerd at one point in the town saying something like "just leave it to Rudeus and he'll solve it", and that's basically an indicator for their subtly toxic relationship where despite Eris being at least physically capable for protecting herself, she's let Rudeus make her pretty much reliant on him... just like with Sylphiette earlier. This culminates in the confrontation with Orstedt where Rudeus is proven to not be able to solve every issue. Eris' image of him as this perfect and reliable entity crumbles, with her also feeling regret that she's been simply relying on him and not improving herself. And so she leaves! The impulsive Eris, similarly to Paul, has much better emotional intelligence in this moment than Rudeus ever could in his current state. 

Probably the most problematic interpersonal system Rudeus sets up is letting Eris stay non-fluent in the language of the magic continent. Whether you want to condemn him for being too busy trying to survive to help Eris be more independent or not, it definitely leads to a toxic overdependent relationship, and this dynamic has been enforced since Rudeus "saved" her from the kidnapping. He eventually gets punished by not righting the wrongs he did that formed their relationship, whether anyone hates him for it or not. He wasn't capable of empathizing with or understanding Eris as an individual due to this, and so her departure leaves him feeling completely betrayed. Essentially, he punishes himself with his own ugly thoughts. Finally, he believes everything he has done up until now to become better as a person, has been walking in circles. ED arc ensues.

You could say Roxy is the polar opposite to Sylphiette and Eris, since Rudy performs the role for her that the other two perform for Rudy. He is an overall positive catalyst for her, though it's also a circular process. "You didn't fail, you just gained experience" is what he says to her, and this applies to both of their character arcs. Her time with him leads to her making her own improvements as a person... or does it? 

What I think is the beauty of the series is that it's not like the people around him don't see his efforts, it's not like people hate Rudeus. As many wacky and deranged things he does and as much punishment he gets for them, the people close to him are capable of appreciating his efforts. Paul and Lilia, Ruijerd and Eris, at the end of the day, all like him, despite his flaws. Rudeus' starting point is particularly low, so it's easy to dismiss his efforts and simply condemn him from the perspective of a normal and well adjusted person, which is why I think his affinity with normal people in the story is so low. This also applies to the series' reception in reality in a metatextual way. It's only with other screwed up people trying to improve that he can find companionship... If you look into it, not a single character in Rudeus' sphere can be considered simply a good person, and they all go through the struggle of licking wounds and trying to do better, even with their scars. The act of struggling to improve itself is what's important, and this gets contrasted with the bigger antagonists later on, who are closer to what Rudeus used to be like, closed off and given up on self-improvement. It's the act of "trying" to become better that is important, because in reality, that's what being a good and likable person boils down to. You aren't a good person by default, it's the act of going out of your way to make an effort to do good that makes people appreciate you. The people who simply assume themselves to be good people rarely are. Those are the types that fail to self-improve due to a lack of self-consciousness and honesty.