Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation co-creator Rifujin na Magonote has officially responded after Western critics accused him of endorsing slavery for giving series protagonist Rudeus ‘Rudy’ Greyrat a less-than-black-and-white-view of his fantasy surroundings’ slave trade.
This round of discourse arose following the August 14th premiere of the sixth episode of the Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation anime adaptation’s second season, I Don’t Want To Die.
Therein, with the group in need of a third-party to assist Rudy in teaching his magic-fueled doll-making techniques to Prinze Zanoba, Fit moves to solve the group’s problem by enlisting the serivces of the Rium Company Slave Market.
After meeting with a number of potential candidates, Zanoba eventually settles on a six-year-old Dwarf girl – as not only do dwarfs have the skills and magical talent required for doll-making, but certain magics are easier for children to learn – who was sold into slavery by her parents.
Originally nameless due to the Dwarven tradition of waiting until a child is seven-years-old to officially name them, the young slave is eventually given the title of ‘Julie’ by the team.
As per usual, during its Japanese broadcast premiere, Magonote took to his personal Twitter to provide live-commentary on the episode’s events.
Amidst Rudy and co.’s exploration of the slave market, the author moved to inform anime-only viewers of Rudy’s personal feelings towards the forced labor industry’s existence within the world (as was originally explored in both the original light novel’s eighth volume and the manga’s 58th chapter).
“Rudeus doesn’t have much aversion towards slaves,” the Mushoku Tensei author acknowledged, per a translation of his tweets provided by Reddit user /u/FoxRealistic9972. “He thinks that it’s not necessarily the case that all slaves are unhappier than they were before becoming slaves, so while kidnapping is wrong, it seems that he can’t outright call the entire slave system bad.”
“He has more of a stance like, ‘I won’t impose my own justice on a culture I’m not familiar with,'” he added.
However, despite how the author’s tweet clearly referring to Rudy’s feelings on the topic, Western critics responded to Anime News Network‘s August 16th coverage of his post by misinterpreting it as his own personal endorsement of slavery.
“You heard it here folks, the author of Mushoku Tensei thinks slavery isn’t all that bad,” @RebelPanda_ proclaimed. “Is he still your author?”
“I appreciate the clarification in that it makes me 100% certain that the author is a cretin,” said @NoS_Anime. “Not that I needed much confirmation from that author.”
“Centrist take of slavery is siding with the slavers, there I said it,” @EmaSgiro declared. “This author is for slavery.”
Refusing to let the West’s false accusations run rampant, Magonote would return to Twitter on August 17th to not only emphasize that he does not support slavery, but also explicitly clarify that his original post was talking about Rudy, not himself.
“I don’t personally endorse slavery, so while I would like to provide my vindication, it’s also true that I portrayed Rudeus as someone who doesn’t have a strong aversion to slavery,” the author wrote. “Even in the original work, I’ve made the setting and narrative mild to convey that ‘This is normal in this world, so it’s unavoidable.’ As a result, even if I want it to be clarified it can’t really be helped.”
A few days later, Magonote would reveal (translated viaDeepL) that “I’m prepared for a lot of things, so much so that I told the scriptwriting team on the first day, ‘There are a lot of inflammatory stories in the second season, so let’s be prepared. Slavery and confinement are ‘inflammatory stories.'”
“…..I’m seeing some blah blah blah in places I didn’t expect today,”he concluded. “Is this a spreading fire?”
