Mastermind in the Shadows #01 — Rape Bait

October 5th, 2022

 

Sexually assaulting the girl the camera's been ogling for 15 straight minutes is wrong.

Impressions:

Nothing about this episode indicates it is supposed to be a parody or a satire in any way, shape, or form. Hell, nothing about this episode indicates that it has an ounce of self-awareness or even levity in its body. What it does have is almost all of the usual godawful tropes that come with this crap. Constant objectification of some girl and then attempted raping of her, the protagonist being completely overpowered and yet engaging in gory massacre anyway, nonstop internal monologue introducing everybody and everything. And this is before he's transported to magic-land where he gets his cheat powers and a harem the size of a large sorority. The only real twist is that all of the narration comes from the rape victim du jour instead of from him. And no status screens. Yet. I have absolute faith they will be coming when they rewind from the flashforward that ended this episode to do the harem backstory.

This is all stuff that almost all of the edgy versions of these things do, from that godawful Skeleton Knight one to the godawful Harem in a Dungeon one. Maybe the action was a little better animated than them… maybe. Maybe they're playing the supposed satire really really really close to the vest. But this episode was Just Another Obnoxious Power Fantasy About Saving Objectified Girls From Being Raped Through Extreme Violence, and it is depressing that has become such a prominent subgenre of what is already an annoying subgenre. Stay tuned for thirty minutes from now when we do this again with another supposed comedy about monsters sexually assaulting women.

Posted in Mastermind | 5 Comments »

5 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Markus says:
    October 5, 2022 at 11:25 am

    It’s supposed to be “edgy” and yes, it’s a satire. (Think of One Punch Man)

    The only I didn’t like was the flashback, it’s too goddamn long. This felt like an episode 0 to me.

    Hope you’ll enjoy the next ep where it fully goes gag mode.

  • NeclordX says:
    October 5, 2022 at 1:59 pm

    Oh, man, this one was chuunitastic. IT was so much over the top that I couldn’t help but enjoy it for how unapologetically chuuni it was.

  • The Phantom says:
    October 7, 2022 at 5:18 pm

    Is this some kind of decoy protagonist? I was expecting the girl to kill him but it did not happen that would have been fun instead.

  • Anonymous says:
    October 10, 2022 at 12:26 pm

    Its a strange choice indeed. I don’t recall any of this being in the manga. It is indeed a comedy where a guy tries to paly into tropes that make him look cool as the shadow while faking ordinary in main life and accidently it all works. its supposed to be like overlord but with more action and comedy.

    Its a strange choice because like with Skeleton Knight the rest of the show won’t keep the tone shown here so its a bait and switch but an uncertain one because people are as likely to drop the show because of this ep as they are to keep going

    • Aroduc says:
      October 10, 2022 at 8:09 pm

      I feel like it very severely undermines any idea that the guy’s just a goofball screwing around when it starts out by showing that not only did he fantasize about violently beating people up but was doing that. This is quite adjacent to every sovereign citizen’s disgusting vigilante fantasy, just minus the guns. You can’t start out with Kick-Ass and then unring the bell and say he’s just playing around.