I've been subjecting myself to this show for the last few days now because apparently I can't escape dealing with it in anime communities and I do actually need to know what I'm talking about in order to shut down moderator opposition.
It's sus af in premise but Shield Hero is actually 100x worse. In practice the mc in Mushoku Tensei doesn't really do much beyond the usual bad anime sexual harrassment jokes and when he does finally lose his virginity he's practically jumped on while repeatedly saying no. His relationships with others are generallllllly healthy and promote being a very good person other than it being through the eyes of a neet shut-in and the incel stuff that comes with that. The character arc is one of a person genuinely overcoming their issues and being a (mostly) good person. This is just my impression of season 1 though, no idea about the other.
Shield Hero on the other hand justifies actual slavery and actual grooming. The mc is an asshole, does not change or improve, and their assholeness is simply justified by everyone else in this world being a big asshole to him too. He has literal slaves, and he genuinely grooms those slaves for sexual desires. Everything is bad about this. It has zero redeeming features.
When I contrast the two, I actually can't put them in the same categories.
In short, what I'm saying here is that the Shield Hero fans are irredeemable but the Mushoku Tensei crowd seem to me like they can be redeemed.
I was an outsider looking into the bags of dead doves, but if one of the dead doves is merely stunned and the other is decomposing, I appreciate you sharing the distinction.
Don't get me wrong though, Mushoku Tensei is still quite bad. A shut-in virgin neet with pedophile tendencies dies and goes to a fantasy land as a newborn child. He continues to display an attraction to girls that are very young. He performs the usual anime sexual harrassment jokes, although the worst of these are reserved for adults at least. The redeeming part is that the dude does actually become a hero, he does actually try to be a person worth emulating besides this stuff. There are redeeming qualities here. He wants to be a good person. He actively seeks out ways to be a good person, to self improve, and to do his life right in ways that he failed originally.
Shield Hero on the other hand is a fucking asshole who quickly decides owning slaves sounds great and then also sexually grooms his slaves and this is fine because he doesn't just beat them like the other slave owners do. His slaves LIKE him! Yay! But then he's also an irredeemable asshole in every other interaction too, he never grows, he never tries to be better, he's never depicted being remotely heroic, he is an asshole. The only "hero" shit he does is because he is thrust into it without real choice.
Of the two stories one is trying to justify every belief that reactionary shutins have while the other is trying to empathise with the depression that creates those shutins while also promoting the kind of healthier life that they should be seeking. I think when you lay the two shows out like this they can be viewed slightly differently.
I admit neither such franchise appealed to me anyway.
Isekai "what if fantasy world exploited like in bideo bame" trash was so endemic to the genre that I ever nearly avoided Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon entirely but I decided to sit down and give it a try anyway.
The first refreshing discovery was that there was no "isekai" protagonist asshole. AT ALL. If you haven't seen it, please do.
The first refreshing discovery was that there was no "isekai" protagonist asshole. AT ALL. If you haven't seen it, please do.
You might enjoy Hai to Gensou no Grimgar, but for different reasons. It's much more about the character development and struggles of a group of people trying to learn to work together. Everyone in the group is given fairly equal screen time, and the world is extremely dangerous in similar ways. It's very slow though, sort of plays like Slice of Life but in a world where the only means of earning food involves dealing with dangerous near death experiences regularly.
Unfortunately it's not long enough and the audience didn't take to it immediately because the characters are all slightly unlikeable in various ways to begin with, so it didn't really get the popularity needed for it to get more seasons.
It's unfortunate that the industry has gone such a bad way that just an absence of its worst profitable cliches is enough to sound interesting without knowing anything else yet.
Ok ok ok I had to come back to this thread to tell you about Season 2 of Mushoku.
The entire fucking season is about the MC overcoming their erectile dysfunction. That's it. That's the season. All of it. The entire character motivation of the season is having ED and not being able to get it back because he doesn't trust women after his first time went so badly wrong (the aforementioned jumping on him while he said no dozens of times, which ended with her running away the next day when he loved her) and the entire basis of his ED is that he needs to be in a relationship with someone he actually has real intimacy with and has built up real trust with.
That's it. That's the entire season. Episode after episode about erectile dysfunction.
Oh and they still have to solve it in the end with magical viagra juice.
This show is unbelievably stupid and definitely problematic at an elevated level but it's also not Shield Hero. I do think however it is trending towards a harem, a sort of Edward Elric meets Sword Art Online harem meets sexual harrassment.
tl;dr: MC gets ED from being traumatised by girl he loved that kinda forces him into sex when he didn't want to then runs away giving him huge abandonment issues. MC pursues a multi-year journey of study at university to cure ED, with the cure being real intimacy, real trust, and drugs.
Mushoku Tensei
I've been subjecting myself to this show for the last few days now because apparently I can't escape dealing with it in anime communities and I do actually need to know what I'm talking about in order to shut down moderator opposition.
It's sus af in premise but Shield Hero is actually 100x worse. In practice the mc in Mushoku Tensei doesn't really do much beyond the usual bad anime sexual harrassment jokes and when he does finally lose his virginity he's practically jumped on while repeatedly saying no. His relationships with others are generallllllly healthy and promote being a very good person other than it being through the eyes of a neet shut-in and the incel stuff that comes with that. The character arc is one of a person genuinely overcoming their issues and being a (mostly) good person. This is just my impression of season 1 though, no idea about the other.
Shield Hero on the other hand justifies actual slavery and actual grooming. The mc is an asshole, does not change or improve, and their assholeness is simply justified by everyone else in this world being a big asshole to him too. He has literal slaves, and he genuinely grooms those slaves for sexual desires. Everything is bad about this. It has zero redeeming features.
When I contrast the two, I actually can't put them in the same categories.
In short, what I'm saying here is that the Shield Hero fans are irredeemable but the Mushoku Tensei crowd seem to me like they can be redeemed.
I was an outsider looking into the bags of dead doves, but if one of the dead doves is merely stunned and the other is decomposing, I appreciate you sharing the distinction.
lmao yeah this is a good description
Don't get me wrong though, Mushoku Tensei is still quite bad. A shut-in virgin neet with pedophile tendencies dies and goes to a fantasy land as a newborn child. He continues to display an attraction to girls that are very young. He performs the usual anime sexual harrassment jokes, although the worst of these are reserved for adults at least. The redeeming part is that the dude does actually become a hero, he does actually try to be a person worth emulating besides this stuff. There are redeeming qualities here. He wants to be a good person. He actively seeks out ways to be a good person, to self improve, and to do his life right in ways that he failed originally.
Shield Hero on the other hand is a fucking asshole who quickly decides owning slaves sounds great and then also sexually grooms his slaves and this is fine because he doesn't just beat them like the other slave owners do. His slaves LIKE him! Yay! But then he's also an irredeemable asshole in every other interaction too, he never grows, he never tries to be better, he's never depicted being remotely heroic, he is an asshole. The only "hero" shit he does is because he is thrust into it without real choice.
Of the two stories one is trying to justify every belief that reactionary shutins have while the other is trying to empathise with the depression that creates those shutins while also promoting the kind of healthier life that they should be seeking. I think when you lay the two shows out like this they can be viewed slightly differently.
I admit neither such franchise appealed to me anyway.
Isekai "what if fantasy world exploited like in bideo bame" trash was so endemic to the genre that I ever nearly avoided Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon entirely but I decided to sit down and give it a try anyway.
The first refreshing discovery was that there was no "isekai" protagonist asshole. AT ALL. If you haven't seen it, please do.
You might enjoy Hai to Gensou no Grimgar, but for different reasons. It's much more about the character development and struggles of a group of people trying to learn to work together. Everyone in the group is given fairly equal screen time, and the world is extremely dangerous in similar ways. It's very slow though, sort of plays like Slice of Life but in a world where the only means of earning food involves dealing with dangerous near death experiences regularly.
Unfortunately it's not long enough and the audience didn't take to it immediately because the characters are all slightly unlikeable in various ways to begin with, so it didn't really get the popularity needed for it to get more seasons.
Faraway Paladin stays away from the video game analogue and is just pure fantasy without any real , from what I could remember, slavery/harem tropes.
It's unfortunate that the industry has gone such a bad way that just an absence of its worst profitable cliches is enough to sound interesting without knowing anything else yet.
Ok ok ok I had to come back to this thread to tell you about Season 2 of Mushoku.
The entire fucking season is about the MC overcoming their erectile dysfunction. That's it. That's the season. All of it. The entire character motivation of the season is having ED and not being able to get it back because he doesn't trust women after his first time went so badly wrong (the aforementioned jumping on him while he said no dozens of times, which ended with her running away the next day when he loved her) and the entire basis of his ED is that he needs to be in a relationship with someone he actually has real intimacy with and has built up real trust with.
That's it. That's the entire season. Episode after episode about erectile dysfunction.
Oh and they still have to solve it in the end with magical viagra juice.
This show is unbelievably stupid and definitely problematic at an elevated level but it's also not Shield Hero. I do think however it is trending towards a harem, a sort of Edward Elric meets Sword Art Online harem meets sexual harrassment.
tl;dr: MC gets ED from being traumatised by girl he loved that kinda forces him into sex when he didn't want to then runs away giving him huge abandonment issues. MC pursues a multi-year journey of study at university to cure ED, with the cure being real intimacy, real trust, and drugs.