Disapproving Sylphy is the best Sylphy.
©RifuJinnamagonote/MFBOOKS/Mushoku Tensei II Production Committee
This Mushoku Tensei episode is a palate cleanser after our last two episodes. Rather than focusing on Rudeus and his mishaps, this episode is more about adding an expanded cast—specifically Cliff and Badigadi.
Although we know Cliff from the first season OVA episode about him and his chance encounter with Eris, this season he is just a background character. He carries a bit of anxiety when it comes to Eris. After all, it was said that he was a great magician all his life, only he was inferior in her eyes when compared to Rudeus. Simply put, he has a huge inferiority complex when it comes to Rudeus. But you know what can overcome that? Teenage male hormones.
Cliff is suffering from a serious case of love at first sight. The problem is, the object of his love is Elinalise. Knowing nothing of her, he creates an image of her in his mind (of a pure maiden), which gets him into trouble when he tries to “defend her honor”. But of course, he wanted to get to know her true self so he reached out to her known longtime companion, Rudeus.
What we get from this is a good development of Rudeus’s personality. He believes that Cliff and Elinalise would make a terrible couple—especially considering his innocence and her curse-based promiscuity. However, Sylphy could say something to him. How their relationship develops is none of his business—it’s up to them. And despite his doubts, the pair succeeded.
On the other hand, our introduction to Badigadi is the focus of the second half of the episode. Big, proud and boisterous, he is the perfect match for his fiance Kishirika Kishirisu. What we got from him was a good way of visual storytelling. He came to fight Rudeus only because Kishirika was very fond of him. He hadn’t taken the situation seriously until the moment Orsted’s name was mentioned. At that moment, his whole attitude changed. He wanted to see Rudeus’ strongest attack with the sole purpose of seeing how strong someone needed to fight Orsted and survive. In other words, he wanted to see how he could fight Orsted. Of course, why he decided to stay after seeing the results remains a mystery.
All in all, it’s a good episode and does a great job of getting to know the people around Rudeus in his school life. And now that the entire advanced layer has been introduced, I’m curious to see where the story goes. Looks like we’re a bit stuck on the main story while we wait for Rudeus to realize that Fitz is Sylphy. But hopefully the people around him will keep the story interesting until then.
Rating:
Random thoughts:
Look, there are only two cases of sexual assault in this episode.
Other I like the fact that the beastkin girls get some revenge on Rudeus by letting him fight all the suitors while they hide.
Oh my gosh, Pursena must have thrown Linia in the sights of the bus every now and then, right?
There is a blue haired girl watching Rudeus in this episode. I bet she will be very important later.
Mushoku Tensei: Unemployment Reincarnation II is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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