Mushoku Tensei II – 20 – A New Hope

Rudy and Lize run into a bit of luck when Geese is right there in the guild hall. From there, the episode wastes no time reuniting Rudy with his dad, Paul, and it’s everything I was hoping for. While things didn’t go so swell the last time they met, the current situation with Zenith and a mutual desire to make up results in a simple, poignant hug between the father and son. It’s in this hug that Rudy realizes just how much Paul loves him, and how simply being there makes all the difference in the world.

Rudy astonishes Paul not just with his stature, but the maturity, confidence, and reliability inherent in his words. Paul also does a weary Lize a solid by taking a knee and offering a simple but much appreciated apology for what went down. When Rudy learns Roxy fell into a teleport trap in the Labyrinth a month ago and is still missing, the world threatens to fade away to white, but Lize brings him back with a hand on his shoulder. They’ll proceed under the assumption that Roxy, like Zenith, is alive and in need of rescue.

That night, Rudy shares the same room with Paul and Lilia, and it gives Paul no shortage of joy simply watching his son converse with Lilia. Rudy tells them that not only did Sylphie from Buena make it, but they’re married with a kid on the way, Paul wants the details, much to Lilia’s exasperation (especially when he insinuates that she’s actually a tiger in the sack).

The next day, Rudy and Lize join Paul, Geese and the dwarven warrior Talhand to form a party to enter the Labyrinth, now armed with the tome Rudy brought from the university that serves as an extremely useful and time-saving map.

Paul is very aware that this is the first time he’s adventuring with his son in a party, and at least on the first stratum tries to show off how cool he is (something Rudy is already aware of.) There’s also some excellent banter between Lize and Paul that shows how due to their long history they’re essentially family.

The party makes its way through the first and second strata and prepare to teleport to the third, but Rudy hears a drop of water fall from a stalactite and senses … something behind a nearby rock wall. Sure enough, Roxy is somewhere beyond that wall, fighting off massive hordes of monsters but about to run completely out of mana.

When her last earth barrier is breached and she loses her staff, all she can do is back against the wall and recoil in her imminent and terrible demise. It goes without saying that the tremendous talent of Kohara Konomi is on full display here, both when she’s confidently zapping off spells to when her voice starts to break and panic sets in.

While I truly wish we didn’t have to see her wetting herself (which flashed me back to the Linia and Pursena incident Rudy shouldn’t be proud of) the bottom line is that when she’s at her absolute limit and calls out to be saved, Rudy saves her, with an ocean of ice at the last possible moment. It’s such an elegant and beautiful scene, devoid of music, with only Roxy’s breath, the wind, the frigid crinkling of ice, and Rudy’s footsteps forming the soundtrack.

When he appears before her and smiles and we see her face blush with relief and surprise, it’s a perfect cap to the episode, and also exactly how she described to Lize back in the first season how she wanted to meet her future husband. Zenith is still in grave danger, but Roxy is now safe. Rudy, with Lize by his side, has come in and given hope to the hopeless.