Rudeus is not a bad Person, and the kind of people who think he is are who I actually consider bad people. Rudeus is flawed, chiefly he is way more perverted then Americans are used to tolerating from a Protagonist.
But he is absolutely at his Core a Good Person and very likable. In one episode specifically we see how incredibly disturbed he is anytime someone dies, even a non-human he just met who was being an @$$hole to him. He has a strict opposition to killing people, even bad people, exactly what everyone on the post 2016 Internet has been wanting Batman and Superman to be written like again. This is a way of thinking this show only the American Audience could have.
I call these American Values Puritan not because I intend a direct comparison to the morality of 17th Century English Dissenters but because of the basic etymology of what Puritan means. Because it's a very Idealist Understanding of Morality to think someone is a Bad Person simply because they've committed some specific moral offenses (whether or not it's right to view as immoral) that they haven't specifically atoned for.
Oh I guess there is some Japanese precedent for thinking of Morality that way, the Kagere concept. But Otaku Media has a long history of being critical of that Purity fixation. And I believe that includes this very show.
Rudeus is a net positive influence on the world he is currently living in, that's what a good Materialist Understanding of Morality should care about.
Some people even throw their being disgusted by Cousincest into their condemnations of Rudeus, the fact is disgust at Incest is a social construct and the alleged genetic risks caused by it are nothing when it's merely first cousins. So I cannot take seriously anyone who treats that as an objective moral standard. Cousins relationships being Taboo is also completely alien to Japan, it's legal to this day and was historically often downright encouraged. So this more then anything else is absolute a modern western value being imposed onto this show by western viewers that no one in Japan would care about.
Rudeus has no interest in Brother-Sister incest having explicitly rejected his half sister's mother's intentions to make her daughter his lover in the future.
I also notice all this moral judgment or condemning of Rudeus has a lot to do with refusing to acknowledge that he is a child because of their simplistic understanding of how this kind of Reincarnation works. There is more to maturity than how many memories you have in your brain. Rudeus all through season 1 is still under even this world's age of consent which is itself younger than ours being 15. He still does not truly have Adult Maturity which his behavior shows constantly. It is a scientific fact that the Brain isn't fully developed till 25, no amount excess memories change that.
If the show wanted us to look at Rudeus as an adult it would be different since it is all supposed to be done by Magic,, but contrary to casual assumptions it does not.
The only counter arguments one could make is how often his internal Monologue says he thinks of himself as 40ish. But children often want to think of themselves as more mature than they actually are, Rudeus simply has an excuse to do so. And that isn't even the only way his internal Monologue is an Unreliable Narrator. Often it's more what Rudeus is trying to convince himself of, not his actual true feelings. I don't know whether a Freudian would call that his Ego or Superego or Id but it's something along those lines.
And on the subject of his emotional age, the tells that show us he is fundamentally still a child despite all his desire to pretend is not are abundant.
I didn't even develop this position on Physical Age vs "Accumulated Life Experience" for defending this Anime, it started with my takes on Vampire Fiction.
And all that is leaving aside how this 30ish Adult Japanese Man was an emotionally stunted NEET who'd basically stopped Maturing in High School. The whole point of his Reincarnation is to be a do over of growing up, that's the sense in which it is a Second Chance not a Moral One. Yet all these Westerners who love any excuse to call an Otaku protagonist a Pedophile ignore that and treat him as an Adult even though the Text clearly does not want us to.
And no I'm not making this point just to defend his Sexual Attraction to girls older than his physical age. When the narrative gets to his confrontation with Paul in the second cour I've seen people argue they are equally at fault when that is absurd. The show entirely frames this as Paul being a shitty Dad for expecting his 10 year old son to intuitively know what he thinks he should have done. The only character in the story who ever concludes Rudeus is also at fault is Rudeus himself in the end which just shows how forgiving and responsibility minded he is.
In terms of number of year Roxy is older then Rudeus no matter which of his potential birthdates you start with. Because Roxy is a species that ages different the audience has no trouble seeing her as still a Teenager. If amount of time doesn't trump biology for her then it can't for Rudeus either.
ExplanationPoint's main attempt to refute this whole line of reasoning is to say "you know who can't take advantage of children, a child", but that's a self defeating augment here because Rudeus never does succeed in making any progress with Eris when he tried to be aggressive. If Rudeus actually had an adult sexual predator's ablity to manipulate children, and was willing to use it, he would have handled those situations very differently.
Compare those first half of season 1 scenes to how season 1 ends. When Eris sleeps with Rudeus while she is an Adult by this world's legal definition but he still is not, she withholds from him the fact that she's planning to leave right after and that is the source of his season 2 trauma. The only character in the show actually harmed by sexual contact with an older person is Rudeus.
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