‘Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation’ Author Voices Frustration With Fans Who Only Engage With Series Via YouTube Videos: “If You Are Going To Criticize Me, I Would Like You To Go And Read It Properly”
In giving a voice to a creative frustration that is shared universally by practically any and all artists, the author behind the popular web/light novel series Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation has publicly expressed a wish for his detractors to, at the very least, actually engage with his work before attempting to criticize it.
Having co-created the popular isekai series in 2012 alongside illustrator Shirotaka, the author, as best known by his pen name Rifujin na Magonote, offered his thoughts on the rising trend of ‘media consumption via third-party recollections’ by way of a series of tweets shared to his personal Twitter account.
Taking to the social media website on December 18th, seemingly in response to an unspecified fan interaction, the author opined (as machine translated via DeepL), “[Saying something is] ‘easy to read’ is a compliment, but if you did not intend to make it easy to read, you may not be happy to receive a compliment. After all, people want to be praised for the effort they put into it. It can’t be helped.”
Turning to directly address the hypothetical fan, the series co-creator continued, “However, even if you try to find ‘the part [the author] put a lot of effort into’ to please them, you will usually not be able to find it, and the compliments themselves will not come out, so you should just be thoughtless and praise the good points.”
Soon after posting his thoughts, Magonot was inundated with replies from fans, the large majority of which consisted of them validating the author’s frustrations, offering him their support, and even pressing him as to just what other seemingly positive behaviors would elicit similar reactions.
To this last point, Magonot was eventually pressed by one Twitter user as to how they would “feel if someone got lazy and started ‘reading’ your books by watching re-recorded videos instead of reading your writings?”
Pressed for clarification by the author, said user further explained, “[How would you feel] of someone calls themselves a fan of yours. but instead of reading your book, they are watching a video of the plot of your book. Just like with movies, some people choose to watch a compilation instead of watching the movie themselves!”
Now understanding what the fan meant, Magonot asserted in turn, “You mean if someone sees only the summary video, feels like they’ve read it, and claims to be my fan? I don’t mind too much.”
But in offering a very stark caveat to their ‘media engagement method’ indifference, the author added, “However, if you are going to criticize me, I would like you to go and read it properly, and not just speak from your knowledge of a video that you don’t know who made it.”
“I think it’s like measles, because there will always be people like that,” he ultimately affirmed. “Or I myself used to criticize some works without seeing them when I was younger. I’m sure they will eventually reflect on it and get over it, so we just have to leave it as it is for now.”
While the original Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation novel series already came to a close in 2022, the series is still receiving love to this day.
Earlier this year, the series’ anime adaptation aired its second season and announced the upcoming production of a third, while the Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation – Quest of Memories RPG hit all platforms save the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S this past June.
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