Even so, I love this series. It's the rawest series in the whole anime industry. The characters are just so well done in this show, Ruijerd felt like a person I know in real life, the quiet and extreme type but deep within, a very kind person who cares for others. For Paul, a typical asshole for prioritizing lust in a relationship. Rudy, an extremely ugly introvert that's similar to Paul, but he at least knows to not take full advantage of women. Rudy always looking to do the right thing to amend his past mistakes for his family and friends, even if he did sometimes failed to be creepy most of the time.
The human flaws in this show are the reason why this is a great series, but not a perfect one.
I do understand that most of you probably go into this expecting to fully see a perfect story writing, with all the praises that the show was getting for being the grandfather of all isekai, or how immersive the show is, which it was.
Now, looking past all the sexual assaults and the act that objectifies women, the story is a big 10/10 if we look at it objectively.
Your disgust of how they treated women in this show should not reflect on how the story writing is. Taking sexual harassment and pedophilic acts out of the equation, this is one of the most immersive stories I have ever encountered in all my years of watching anime.
A disclaimer, I hate the recurring theme of NTR and most of the men looking to only sexualize and rape all the women in this show. And it's even more terrible once the elf girl is introduced into the story.., *cough* *cough*
Even the Seiyuu for Rudy, Eris, and Sylphy called Rudy and Paul a disgusting human being. I love that Rudy VA promises her viewers that she will make him sound as creepy as possible as a joke lol.
For some who have personally experienced some form of sexual harassment in the past, I'm sure you can relate to this in some way, and the series portrays a realist view on such a topic. That men are still beasts, at least when you look at human history.
What I meant by this is, in the medieval period, the concept of sexual harassment doesn't exist. Rape is considered to be the same crime as theft, and the show portrays that normalized belief in their society with Paul raping Lilia (her backstory got even more messed up after she got raped by him), Ghislaine getting raped by Paul when she was bathing at night, Paul talking about how he slept with a ton of noble ladies - comparing it with other adventurers - in the past, etc. And yes, the series had shown us that they weren't bothered by the non-consensual sex at all. Even Roxy was able to bear all the sexual harassment from both Rudy and the prince, even in her spinoff manga series, her adventures from after she left her village contain a bit of it.
Does this frustrate me?
Yes.
Does this make the show a bad show?
This is the one point that will bring up a lot of arguments, but I have to say no.
He's a guy that jacks off to loli eroge during his father's funeral.
Yeah, he's disgusting.
He's the guy that tries to take advantage of both Roxy and Eris and likes to steal their panties.
Yeah, that's very creepy.
But when I watch this show, everyone feels like they all have a real personality. It wouldn't be an understatement to say this series is being carried by the character writing, setting, art, voice acting, and smooth plot progression (from birth to adulthood without skipping most of the moments in his life).
Most people that rated this a 3/10 or a 1/10 clearly rated with their emotions. So for those that don't have the intention to watch this series because of some reviews, I highly recommend for you guys to watch until the reunion with Paul and Rudy, which should be in the next season.
This will be the reason, the biggest reason, why this is the rawest show out there. It will not be a happy reunion. You will cry. You will cringe. You will start hating some characters with all your heart. You will sympathize while hating them. You will regret hating them but felt relieved that something has happened to them. You will cry for Rudy. Eris will too. Everybody will.
There's so much despair coming that I have to warn you guys to not quit until that moment comes. I don't want to see some people missing out on those moments just because they judged a show by its ugly cover, Rudy and Paul, and thought that it was good to be childish and hate the show for it.
