[claudiawerner]

'Pedophilic undertones' doesn't relate to 'trashy' or 'harem', even if you read the anime that way. In fact, it can be extremely interesting to see something which is so rarely portrayed or discussed in fiction, even fiction for adults.

The reality of child abuse is neither solved nor rebuked by depictions or explorations of psychology in adult fiction.

[mrsilencedogood]

I don't even know what this show is, but I can guarantee you any pedo-related stuff in there is highly unlikely to be for the purpose of "depictions or explorations of psychology".

Come on, don't try to kid me. It's there for the same reason all the other seinen anime have a ton of borderline softcore porn tropes in them.

[claudiawerner]

I don't really know how to respond to the idea that the fact anime includes fanservice means it can't deal with sensitive topics at the same time.

[some_random]

Why is the fanservice sexualized children?

[claudiawerner]

In this case, it's not; but even if it were, does that limit the ability of a text to explore interesting themes? Why?

I'd recommend reading deeper into the scholarly literature of sexual themes in anime and manga before assuming that fans necessarily interpret 'children' into the text. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639806

[notanotheracc]

> In this case, it's not; but even if it were, does that limit the ability of a text to explore interesting themes? Why?

In this case, it does. You can't have a show about a pedophile's redemption while simultaneously appealing to that demographic.

Let's not act like there's any consensus in the "scholarly literature" — if you could even call the writing of some guy with no credentials that.

[claudiawerner]

>if you could even call the writing of some guy with no credentials that

The researcher I'm quoting (who's by far not alone on writing this topic in his field) is Patrick Galbraith, a researcher and associate professor of cultural anthropology at Senshu University in Tokyo.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FLmsh_8AAAAJ

[dragontamer]

I think anyone deeply familiar with anime knows the harem tropes and sexual-comedy setups that Jobless Reincarnation uses as the basis of their story.

The difference is that Jobless Reincarnation plays out these sexual situations out to the full extend of their drama (ex: Paul Grayrat is caught making a child with the hot maid, there's multiple episodes of fallout because of this as Paul and Zenith, his first wife, have arguments over this).

I'm not sure if this is a teaching moment for Rudy (the main character) though, as it becomes clear that the entirety of the Grayrat line is full of sexual deviants and even some inbreeding.

--------

Doing the sexy time with the hot maid is... I mean.... its a trope. Its normally a comedy routine. But its played straight here.

Stealing the panties the main character's 40+ year old hot teacher (who is from the demon continent so she looks like only a teenager) is... a comedy trope in anime. (Ie: Panty stealing is all over Konosuba, a comedy anime). But its completely different when its played out straight and in a dramatic anime.

Being open with what fetishes you're cool with, and which ones make you squeemish is part of growing up. I can comfortably say that the stuff Jobless Reincarnation takes as core plot points are uncomfortable to me / "squicky" and unsatisfying sources of drama for me. And due to their long history as a comedy trope in older anime, its difficult for me to take it seriously.

Perhaps your argument is that the "point" is to take these adultery scenes more seriously and think deeply about them and the characters they affect. Except I already know that adultery is wrong, that panty stealing is wrong and I don't have any plans to do either.

So as a source of Drama, my overall confusion with this show is "Why are you dramatizing porn/harem/eroge plots?".

Uh no. Its a stupid plot for stupid porn-level writing setup. I don't consider it a source of drama at all. Personally anyway. I see that a lot of other people seem to like it so I don't want to hate on it too much or cause undo harm to your opinions or whatever. But... its really hard for me to take the eroge/hentai level plots seriously in Jobless Reincarnation. That's all.

Even if I 100% recognize that the author works very hard to set up these situations and think out the fallout and drama in a reasonably "realistic" way (or at least, all the characters acting like they should while still qualifying for the trope). And I think that's the part a lot of people like: the deep thought the author put into this work. Thinking deeply about how all these characters would act in the face of these sexually deviant actions.

[mrsilencedogood]

I don't know why I even bothered to try to push back, beyond the fact that these kind of "philosophers" plague the anime community. The pattern is very predictable. Tons and tons of ink spilled to try to explain why they're not a pedophile while not doing anything more than distracting from the original point and dithering endlessly. And nobody wants to push back because of it, so they take silence as complicit assent.