\"But why not do both?\"
This is a follow-up to my last post defending the anime's decision to cut content for the sake of pacing but let me give you the TL;DR so you don't feel the need to have read that one before this as this post covers the same bases (and then some): The anime is first-and foremost the story of Rudeus Greyrat and must therefore prioritize his perspective, even at the cost of other characters' moments, regardless of how beloved those individual scenes are to fans of the Light Novels (myself included).
So let me start by addressing the strongest counter argument made in response to that post: "But the first season, and even Cour 1 of season 2 was able to maintain excellent pacing while having relatively few cuts! Why does the pacing in cour 2 still *FEEL* so rushed in comparison despite cutting so much?" That is an astute observation! And, quite frankly, you are asking the right questions. And for anyone planning to skip straight to the end of this admittedly \daunting* essay, here's a TL;DR for you: Episodes 19 & 20's reduced quality and heightened pace were done deliberately to provide the last 4 episodes of the season the space they need to breathe.* Continue reading if you want to find out how and why this had to be done.
It would be a fool's errand to argue that Cour 2 is NOT cutting less content than prior cours (because it absolutely is, and by quite a lot too), nor will I be arguing that the cour does NOT suffer some level of pacing issues because it absolutely is (see first post), rather I will be arguing in defense of the purpose of limiting the scope of what gets adapted, and why such decisions are necessary in the first place. However, before I delve any further into the specifics of Cour 2's production struggles, first I should elaborate how its production schedule differs from S1.

PART 1: Production Scheduling (aka setting the pace)

In case you were unaware, Season 1 was originally slated to be released in 2020 but was delayed to January of 2021 so it could actually receive all of the extra care and polish it truly deserved. For S2, Studio Bind's production staff, by contrast, had to make due with the time they were initially given. More time (and consequently more budget) usually fixes most production issues, but very few (extraordinarily rare) series ever receive that benefit and doing so twice was likely never even considered a possibility.
Sadly we are not in the alternate timeline where S2 benefitted from the same advantages that gave us gorgeous custom world-building OPs for every episode that freed up even more additional screen time for dialogue and character development (in some cases literally depicting entire chapters such as Paul's POV being shown during Ep 17's STUNNINGLY well executed OP montage). Thanks in part to that decision, S1 had significantly more wiggle room to work with, especially pertaining to the secondary cast, allowing it to more evenly adapt the world building, character development, and main narrative plotline of Mushoku Tensei as a whole utilizing that extra runtime (90 seconds per episode adds up to a LOT over the course of an entire season, plus the 5 EDs, that were integrated as needed on a per-episode basis, for an additional 7 1/2 minutes which adds up to a WHOPPING 43 1/2 MINUTES over the course of that 24 episode run and I should point out that S2 Cour 1 ALSO benefitted from this for the first 5 episodes including the OVA, giving that cour an added 9 minutes to utilize with Cour 2 receiving a paltry 3 minutes as only the 1st episode integrates the OP/ED runtime).
It's simply the reality that polish and quality was prioritized for S1 while scheduling and budget were prioritized for S2. If you want to be especially harsh, one could say S1 was treated as art, while S2 was treated as a commercial product, which is why I've set my expectations accordingly and hope this post helps others do the same. This becomes more apparent when you take into consideration that Studio Bind were also working on Onimai at the same time as S2 given their air dates were only 6 months apart. So not only was S2 not being given the same scheduling priority, it was COMPETING for resources. Given the BD sales numbers for every project they've released, at a minimum we can be assured that Studio Bind has been financially successful at least but the double edged nature of that success also means that certain priorities may have shifted away from MT and towards the new cash-cow. There's a reason I phrased my previous post so specifically: These episodes are a fine adaptation of Rudy's story.... and not much else because it simply doesn't have the screen time or resources to focus on anything besides Rudy's share of the narrative and character development.
Which ties directly into the second reason as to why cour 2 FEELS so rushed, even in comparison to cour 1. The contents of Volumes 10, 11, and 12 are significantly more *LINEAR\* with more individual events being depicted compared to Volumes 1-9. This translates to more content vying for screen time. But how much content are we talking about here? Well, I don't want to go too deeply into raw numbers as that's not really the point but let's set a baseline with some quick-n-dirty math to illustrate:
S1c1 covers 1326 pg / 3 = 442 pg/vol (11 episodes) = 40.2 pg / ep S1c2 covers 1280 pg / 3 = 427 pg/vol (12 episodes + OVA) = 32.8 pg / ep S2c1 covers 1268 pg / 3 = 423 pg/vol (12 episodes + OVA) = 32.5 pg / ep S2c2 covers 1381 pg / 3 = 460 pg/vol (12 episodes) = 38.3 pg / ep
Obviously these are EXTREMELY rough numbers that don't take into account any of the cut content, non-chapter related pages, nor the difference in available runtime afforded to S1 that I previously mentioned, but just by raw page count, that's technically LESS content than what the first 11 episodes of Season 1 had to adapt! Surely they could just tweak a few things to make everything fit! Unfortunately, it's not that simple. You see, there's a distinct lack of a certain type of content that made the lives of the production staff significantly easier by providing plenty of opportunities to pick and choose what made it into the final cut of an episode's runtime to keep the mainline story of Rudeus chugging along at the leisurely clip we're accustomed to.

PART 2: Narrative Fluff (aka work smarter, not longer)

Spoiler: It's the sheer density of secondary character POVs. The very ones we often grieved being cut as the episodes were coming out during S1. They add depth and complexity to the characters (and are, imho, singularly the most *profoundly insightful* pieces of writing Rifujin-sensei has ever produced) but 90% of the time are simply repeating the same events from a new perspective. HOWEVER, when adapted to an audio-visual medium, you can SHOW both perspectives simultaneously and let the audience infer what's going on in a secondary character's mind through the use of voice acting, animation, staging, lighting, OST, and sound design thereby allowing the anime-only audience to receive 90% of the same information that was conveyed during those same events in the novels.
The "missing" Eris POV is the primary example of this disconnect between how little LN readers think Anime-onlys are inferring and how much is being successfully communicated to them even if they themselves can't properly articulate what it was they took away from any particular scene. I highly recommend paying close attention to Eris' face in the 3 following episodes after the events of Turning Point 2 RATHER THAN READING THE SUBTITLES (dub watchers have an advantage here but BOTH performances do an incredible job) and you'll see (and hear) what I'm talking about. Sure we don't get every beat of her thought process spelled out for us in quite the same level of detail as in her POV chapter, but you can sense her inner conflict while watching Rudeus practice Disturb Magic as they ride into the outskirts of Fittoa and her heartache at seeing him standing forlornly in the ruins of his destroyed childhood home. The idea that she doesn't feel "worthy" of him is already being communicated by her facial expressions and her body language. Her letter stating how they aren't "well-balanced" in combination with that visual information is already providing context clues to the viewer as to what's going on in her head. In her final scene you can hear the sheer depth of her love give way to a deeply instilled sense of self-loathing, just by the tone of her voice, as she hoists Rudeus up onto that pedestal. Yet as she nears the end of her melancholic monologue more of that brash, passionate nature of hers seeps back into her delivery as pours her heart out.
To quote Harry Plinkett: "It's so subtle, you might not have even noticed... but your brain did."
The only emotion you could argue was nerfed by the adaptation is the depths of her self-loathing for having "taken advantage of him" after their night together but they still get a line in about their age and size difference, which when heard in her self-flagellating tone describing how "awful" she's been to him, you can easily make that inference. But you might also say "AHA even in those 3 episodes they left out how devastated she was when Rudy beat her using the demon eye after she finally gained some confidence in her strength" to which I say: Watch Ep 13: Missed Connections and, again, pay attention to Eris. Every part off the Buffalo was used.
They also never deliberately spell out her ardent belief that Rudeus is so strong and smart and amazing and brave and perfect that regardless of whatever she wrote as she struggled to find the words to leave in her letter, he would just clairvoyantly understand her intentions.... but you don't really NEED that spelled out for you when her final appearance is her shouting to the high heavens about how in love she is directly juxtaposed with Rudeus reverting to his former self-image shut away in his bedroom after very specifically misunderstanding the meaning of her words and actions! "I LOVE THIS MAN she screams as the man she loves thinks to himself "I can't believe she doesn't love me anymore." Seeing that, anyone could conclude "Were you expecting him to just KNOW what you meant??" Yes. Yes she was.
The Eris' POV wasn't "skipped content"... it was integrated. It's broken up and repurposed in bits and pieces over the course of 4, count 'em, FOUR separate episodes but 99% of it is there if you know what to look for (which for anime onlys is considered rewatch value).
By going through this in such agonizing detail I hope I'm properly communicating one of the greatest hang ups LN readers seem to have (or adaptational purists in general) relative to their expectations: You are putting entirely too much value into dialogue, monologue, and the text of a script relative to every other element the medium has to offer. The absence of TEXT does not diminish the SUBTEXT. An individual viewer might not know WHY they believe a character motivation exists as it does, but by and large most will pick up on those details whether it be deliberate (in the case of a certain psychologist youtuber who keeps nailing plot predictions over and over BECAUSE ALL OF THE INFORMATION YOU NEED IS RIGHT, THE F**K, THERE) or subconsciously (in the case of most passive audience members).

PART 1 (COUR 2): THE RESCHEDULENING (aka MATH)

Now, having detailed how a POV chapter can actually be efficiently absorbed into the runtime of the show without disrupting or sidetracking the main narrative, let's re-examine the topic of how (as well as why) this affects the production schedule. As I previously stated, overall Volume 1-9 have quite a number of POV chapters to work around as buffers to the rest of the content. Don't believe me? Let me break it down a bit more then:
Vol 1 contains ~ 2 1/2 POV chapters out of 10 = 25% Vol 2 contains ~ 2 3/4 POV chapters out of 11 = 25% Vol 3 contains ~ 1 POV chapters out of 15 = 6.5% (one of the longer action heavy volumes, yet only 3 eps) On average ~19% of content is POV. Vol 4 contains ~ 2 1/4 POV chapters out of 12 = 19% Vol 5 contains ~ 4 POV chapters out of 11 = 36% Vol 6 contains ~ 2 1/4 POV chapters out of 15 = 15% On average ~23% of content is POV. Vol 7 contains ~ 1 1/4 POV chapters out of 8 (technically 9, short prologue + epilogue combined) = 15.5% Vol 8 contains ~ 2 POV chapters out of 12 = 17% Vol 9 contains ~ 3.75 POV chapters out of 12.5 (several very short POVs, adjusted for fairness) = 30% On average ~21% of content is POV. Vol 10 contains ~ 2 POV chapters out of 14 = 14% Vol 11 contains ~ 2 POV chapters out of 16 = 12.5% Vol 12 contains ~ 1 1/2 POV chapters out of 16 = 9% On average ~12% of content is POV. ^\Note* Several chapters are not purely dedicated to secondary character POVs but rather "cut aways" between Rudy's own perspective and are occasionally EXTREMELY short (I assigned 1/4 amounts for especially short POVs to give them weight, but to prevent over-representing them. Additionally while chapters vary in length they generally represent individual events which I feel is a more apt form of measurement to relate to the anime adaptation in place of page counts (you're not gonna find the table of contents, copyrights, or the author's afterward being adapted after all). These are VERY rough estimations and should not be taken as "objective" measurements.))
Look at that proportional difference for Volume 10-12 relative to the other cours. While production had the advantage of consistently folding a little more than 1/5 of the content into the current runtime the current cour has almost 10% more content competing for the same amount of screen time as the cour before it. In fact, it's significantly LESS screen time as only the 1st episode bypassed the OP/ED compared to Cour 1's 4 episodes (and if you include the OVA, cour 1 already had a 24 minute head start in addition to the extra 3 per ep for a whopping total of 36 extra minutes of runtime over cour 2), Even if we're exceedingly generous and assume the next 4 episodes skip the OP/ED each, that would still leave it at a 24 minute disadvantage just in comparison to cour 1, not to mention the additional screen time afforded to S1 as I've already covered.

Part 3: Screen Time as a Resource (aka Content / Time = Stress)

In a novel characters can engage in chapter length diatribes or strategic planning in their own heads, engage in "talking is a free action" whilst in a fight to the death, and all sorts of ridiculous temporal bending contrivances that simply do not translate to the screen where time is the single most precious commodity (unless you're a shonen protagonist charging up your kamehameha). So let's view this from the scriptwriters' perspective to understand why they are forced to make some very difficult choices. As you are starting work on your assigned episode(s), the show's production committee makes the call that while previously you were afforded as much as ~300 minutes (5 hours) to convey ~1K pages of material, this time you only get ~255 minutes (4 1/4 hours) to convey ~1200 pages of the same density of material. Much more information to convey in much less time and you only JUST BARELY scrapped by to include as much as you could the last 3 times. That's means that at a MINIMUM, 200 of those pages are destined for the cutting room floor.
Though speaking of shounen protagonists, action set pieces are extraordinarily useful for either expanding OR condensing a scene's runtime by exactly as much as you need to fit within an episode's runtime. Need to add time? Go balls-to-the-wall, high-octane, budget-melting sakuga insanity that outshines even the source material (Turning Point 2/Eris vs Assassins) or you can condense high page counts into surprisingly short runtimes while still conveying the impact and information stored in those several pages worth of text. High impact, malleable screen time, same information conveyed. More time to dedicate to world building and secondary character development. As such, S1 (cour 2 especially) had a TREMENDOUS amount of leeway in how much they wished to expand OR condense action scenes at their discretion compared to the (comparatively) action-lite S2 (for Cour 1 at least).
So then you might ask with Cour 2 revving up the action again, why is it instead CUTTING tons of those action scenes rather than merely truncating them to make space for dialogue scenes like the prior cours? The short answer is there's already no time to spare. The longer, more complex answer is action scenes can't exist in a vacuum. In the same way you have to accelerate and decelerate in your car evenly to get from point A to point B safely, you can't simply hit 0-60 mph in under 2 seconds and you certainly can't go from 60 to 0 in a fraction of a second unless you want an episodes' pacing to liquify like your internal organs. Before, during, and sometimes after a fight scene is initiated, several questions need to be answered for the audience like "Who/what is fighting?" "Where are they positioned?" "What is the level of threat?" "What are the stakes?" "What are the win conditions?" with greater or fewer questions depending on the complexity of the scene or it's meaning to the character(s). Failing to provide the audience adequate answers to these questions can easily result in a nonsensical farce.... unless that's literally your intention. Thankfully, the requirement for winding down action is much simpler. After a beat of heightened tension, your protagonist simply lowers their guard/weapon and the message communicated to the audience is "the threat is over" and within seconds you can move to the next scene.
Most major encounters follow this rhythm throughout the series, with individual chapters dedicated solely to these fights, spanning page counts that are generally (but not always) on the higher end. In general, there are only 1-2 major battles per volume. Vol 11 and 12, by contrast, have several chapters that contain a half dozen individual skirmishes apiece that make adapting the material a total NIGHTMARE to pick and choose what makes the cut. So as an example, a weirdly high amount of time is seemingly spent establishing the succubus encounter in ep 19. Why you may ask? So they could ride those same rules of engagement straight into the following montage to inform the audience "these fights possess the same rules of engagement we just established" without having to spend the additional time winding up each one individually (another, more humorous example, is Ruijerd "dueling" the 3 North God students in a row). The montage also pulls double duty by conveying both the passage of time and distance. You'd think truncating roughly 1/5 of the entire volume into a scant 60 seconds would give them plenty of extra time to work with, but sadly, the ability to condense content is still only enough to break even with the established pace.
Another major element that placed Season 2 at a massive disadvantage is that Season 2 had to use it's precious 25th episode OVA to *catch up* on content that was deferred from Season 1 as Sylphy's POV chapters starting all the way back in Vol 4 did not make the cut. So rather than getting a jump start, the OVA was actually just catching up on deferred content that could not be included DESPITE all of the tremendous advantages I've previously discussed. And even then, it still needed to skip all but a few scant details from the intervening chapters that bridge the gap between Sylphy becoming Silent Fitz and Ariel's entire entourage fleeing to Ranoa's University of Magic resulting in all but 5 of them being slaughtered by assassins in hideously gruesome fashion. In a nutshell, Season 2 actually only has 24 episodes to dedicate to itself, and most of the benefits of scheduling seems to have heavily favored Cour 1 over Cour 2.
At this point, assuming like everyone else who joined up with Studio Bind, you are yourself a massive fan of the series and absolutely love these novels, you are effectively being asked to CHOOSE your favorite children chapters to sacrifice in the name of ending the season at a satisfying arc conclusion. Sure you could just adapt at the same rate of chapters-to-screen time as before and conclude the final 12th episode with THAT THING THAT HAPPENS but somehow I feel like doing so would result in death threats being strapped to a brick and hurled through your office windows. You've certainly maintained the integrity of the show's original pacing, but telling fans to sit tight until the next production cycle is ready in another 2-3 years feels like a recipe for disaster.
And frankly, Vol 12 has some INTENSELY heavy dialogue/monologue scenes filing out the back half of the volume that are going to need significantly more screen time to convey the necessary information relative to the first half as it is ENTIRELY Rudy-centric. So the only way to get there with enough time to allow the season to reach a natural and satisfying conclusion and still hit all of the vitally necessary plot threads is to put those proverbial chapter babies containing some of your favorite character interactions and world building on the alter as a ritual sacrifice for more time on the clock. And what did those sacrifices get you? 5 episodes. A range of 105-117 minutes (depending on OP/ED usage) of screen time to cover the single densest volume since vol 3 (see above). Barely one episode ahead of pace (but in terms of available screen time still barely ahead) of prior cours. And if you think it's unfortunate that ACTION was being cut, oh lordy I have some *bad news for you.\*

Part 4: Screenwriting as an Artform (aka how write story gud)

"But why are they STILL so stretched for time if they have access to and are utilizing all of these time-saving techniques?" Well I'm hoping the previous 3 parts of this gargantuan multi-tiered super essay have helped establish the constraints Studio Bind are working under compared to the prior cours. Cour 2 is working with significantly LESS screen time, with MORE events to manage and they're already so stretched for time that even multi-chapter spanning story events like the Merchant caravan are being cut entirely, rather than merely abridged, to make up that difference.
The requirement for "essential viewing" grows ever higher as mundane scenes like coming in and out of the teleporter still HAVE to be given priority over fan-beloved moments of character development because as uninteresting as those kinds of expository, utilitarian scenes are, they serve a far more vital purpose in a screenplay for communicating to the audience the "BUT, THEREFORE, BECAUSE" flow of script writing (watch the video it's extremely short and a great explainer, but essentially "But = Complication", "Therefore = Next logical action", "Because = Character motivation for performing said action"). You literally cannot skip these unremarkable, bog standard scenes because doing so would commit one of the deadliest sins of storytelling that I was alluding to when discussing how to establish action scenes: The Discontinuity of the dreaded "AND THEN" statement. If you're watching a movie and it's a series of "and then this happened and then that happened and then this person showed up" it ceases to be less a story so much as watching someone's attention span annihilating slideshow of vacation photographs.
As an example, scenes like the ones that establish how, where, and why Rudy and Elinalise use the teleporter to get from Ranoa to Begaritt are slow, mundane, and heavily time consuming and yet are so absolutely necessary as a scriptwriter to take the time to make sure the audience can follow along the logical thru-line for how these scenes connect to one another. If you skip such seemingly trifling, yet necessary information, the audience is not going to react by saying "oh THAT SCENE I LOVE is coming up" but rather "wait, why are we in a desert?"
As an example I'll use the last 2 episodes to demonstrate. The logical flow of episode 19 into 20 proceeds as follows (some parts are truncated for *relative* brevity):
"Rudy needs to leave for Rapan. THEREFORE he tells everyone goodbye, BUT Nanahoshi knows how to teleport there. THEREFORE he changes his route with Elinalise. THEREFORE they get prepared BECAUSE they want to save Zenith, BUT Cliff proposes to Elinalise BECAUSE he feels his lack of commitment was making her nervous. THEREFORE Elinalise is caught off guard BECAUSE she originally intended to leave without telling him to break off their relationship. THEREFORE she accepts his proposal. THEREFORE they travel to the teleporter, BUT teleporters are considered a source of danger to adventurers. THEREFORE they study it first as a safety precaution. THEREFORE they verify it's safe operation and use it. THEREFORE they arrive in Begaritt, BUT they are attacked by a Succubus. THEREFORE Rudy needs to detox himself BECAUSE they want to keep their promise to Cliff and Sylphy. THEREFORE they continue their sexless journey, BUT they are attacked several more times. THEREFORE they kill the monsters and proceed with caution. THEREFORE they arrive in Rapan in ~6 weeks. THEREFORE Geese is surprised to see them when they arrive, BECAUSE he only sent the letter so recently. THEREFORE he takes them to see Paul. THEREFORE they reunite with Paul, BUT Paul has fallen back into depression BECAUSE they lost Roxy while failing to find Zenith. THEREFORE Rudy tells Paul about his marriage and pregnancy with Sylphy. THEREFORE Paul recovers BECAUSE of the joy and pride he feels for his son BUT still feels worthless BECAUSE of his failures. THEREFORE Paul finally notices Elinalise. THEREFORE he apologizes BECAUSE ....uh y'know that thing that happened. THEREFORE Paul and Elinalise reconcile BUT Paul is confused that she didn't sleep with Rudy BECAUSE of her curse. THEREFORE she explains her husband Cliff's magic tool BUT Paul can't believe she has a husband. THEREFORE they get into another spat BUT the rest of the party returns during their argument THEREFORE Rudy learns that Roxy is lost in the labyrinth. THEREFORE Rudy starts to panic as the party begins to squabble. THEREFORE Elinalise takes Rudy's shoulder to draw his attention BECAUSE she realized he was panicking. THEREFORE Rudy asks to be caught up on the situation. THEREFORE Paul describes the difficulty of the Teleportation Labyrinth. THEREFORE Rudy gives Geese the book detailing it's depths which he borrowed BECAUSE he would be using a teleporter to get to Begaritt, BUT it will take Geese time to read it. THEREFORE Paul calls the meeting to a close to allow Geese to adjust their strategy using the book. THEREFORE Rudy, Paul, and Lilia start talking, BUT Paul is still a crude dude. THEREFORE the topic turns to sex BUT Lilia is in denial about being a total sex freak. THEREFORE Paul teases her BECAUSE he knowns how much she likes it rough. THEREFORE they retire for the night after some locker room talk. THEREFORE they depart for the labyrinth the following day. THEREFORE they reach the labyrinth and begin their descent, BUT Paul is breaking formation to show off in front of Rudeus. THEREFORE Elinalise scolds him, BECAUSE she wants to keep her family safe. THEREFORE Paul flippantly dismisses her claims of thinking of him like a son, BUT he is unaware of their connection through Sylphy. THEREFORE they continue further into the Labyrinth maintaining their formation, BUT they encounter new monsters. THEREFORE Rudy starts to cast a spell, BUT Talhand advises him not to use fire BECAUSE it fills a room with poison BECAUSE the concept of carbon monoxide poisoning exists but isn't fully understood in this universe BUT he also advices not attacking the ceiling BECAUSE it could cause a cave-in. THEREFORE Rudy uses ice magic to kill the remaining monsters. THEREFORE they advance to the second stratum in proper formation. THEREFORE they breeze through the second formation and take a break before entering the third. THEREFORE Geese uses the opportunity to inform Rudy that the next section is where Roxy went missing and may still be near that area BECAUSE teleporter traps only warp victims within the same stratum. THEREFORE as they approach where they lost Roxy, Geese asks Rudy where he'd look for Roxy based on his intuition. AND THEN Using his intuition, Rudy notices condensation on a wall and uses his Roxy Odor Snoof Sense to detect Roxy's location through a damn wall despite being a contrivance BUT it's the same contrivance used in the source material THEREFORE shut up. THEREFORE we cut to Roxy BUT she's being surrounded by monsters. THEREFORE she casts numerous spells to hold them at bay, BUT she runs out of mana. THEREFORE she believes she's about to die BUT Rudy saves her just in the nick of time. THEREFORE Roxy is shaken to her core at the sight of the man who saved her despite not recognizing Rudy, BUT then her POV didn't play out the way it did in the novels THEREFORE LN purists got upset BECAUSE they assumed her POV had been cut BUT they forgot that Roxy's POV has always been shown tremendous favoritism by Studio Bind THEREFORE they jumped to conclusions unaware it would happen the following episode.

THEREFORE Calm down and let Studio Bind cook

Effectively the point I hope I have demonstrated is that there IS a logical and consistent thru-line from scene to scene to scene that an audience can follow (and if you want to improve as a screenwriter, this is a GREAT exercise to figure out what makes your favorite shows tick. It's basically the screenwriter's equivalent to tracing someone else' art as practice). Even these unfairly maligned episodes have a viewing experience that provides a consistent sense of pacing. But if you want to know WHAT precisely feels different about them? Well if I had chosen to break down episodes from any of the prior 3 cours (or the best episodes of this cour), you'd be seeing the word BECAUSE significantly more to fill out every action, reaction, and complication along the way. If "THEREFORE" and "BUT" are the easel and canvas, which are necessary to even begin the process of creating art, then "BECAUSE" is the screenwriter's paintbrush that allows them to breathe life and detail into the characters on screen. The prior 3 cours were awash with "BECAUSE" statements detailing why characters are behaving the way they are in every individual scene so if there's one crime that can legitimately be pinned against several episodes in the latest cour, it's "JUST 'CUZ."

PART FINAL: The TL;DR (aka the... tl;dr)

So having laid all this out in such verbose, granular detail, what exactly does all of this mean?
To put it bluntly, Season 1 being such a near-perfect masterwork of adaptation spoiled the ever loving hell out of us. Having gorged ourselves on that expectation, we've ruined our appetites because now such perks are simply anticipated as standard with a vocal minority now irked by the use of a standard OP simply because it follows the conventions of the medium or (stay with me here) committing the sin of appealing to shonen fans. I know, truly a crime worthy of sudoku because of 14 seconds depicting one of the single most important events in the series. I truly don't understand (seriously, explain it to me please).
The current cour is merely receiving the same treatment most adaptations are given while still outperforming its peers if weekly rankings are anything to go by. Episodes range from pretty good to excellent (Norn and Nanahoshi's spotlight eps being the highlights thus far despite some grumbling) with even the extremely barebones Ep 19 squeezing in what sparse worldbuilding nuggets it can despite the plot literally necessitating that Rudy book it from one side of the planet to the other within a 21 minute period (a production level pacing decision you are still free to criticize). As I said earlier (but it bears repeating) these episodes are a good adaptation of Rudy's story rather than the whole that makes up MT because it simply doesn't have the screen time to focus on anything that falls outside the scope of his perspective given the sheer breadth of competing narrative essential content. As a show, these episodes are still delivering a cohesive and engaging thru-line by being glued to Rudy's perspective. So as long as Rudy remains interesting to watch the audience will be more than satisfied.
Expecting the same anomalous level of dedication AND leniency from the production committee to happen for every season was unfortunately nothing but a pipe dream. Cour 2 is now being forced to make due with what it has and while they are doing a commendable job given the heavy restrictions, it is completely unreasonable to expect them to fit so much into such tight confines. It is the adaptation equivalent of being asked to fit everything into one grocery bag, but not wanting the bag to be heavy.
Could this cour have been scheduled better? Absolutely. Was it possible certain changes to the script or episode direction could have provided more opportunities to explore the cut content? Of course. Is it still a total bummer that the realities of production that have compromised the artistic integrity of our beloved peak fiction? Without a doubt.
We are simply going to have to get used to the fact that S1 may never be topped with our only hope being the return of the waifu-wars for S3 rekindles the beefs between animators vying for shot assignments (which may hopefully still be in the cards god willing).
Of course, I'm not a future seer, so maybe, just maybe, Studio Bind bursts into flames and all of the footage is lost resulting in the quality of the last 3 episodes to be the worst drop off of a television show since the final season of Game of Thrones. If that is the case then I'll be eating more crow than I ever have in my life. But if Studio Bind sticks the landing and delivers on the emotional climax to one of the most beloved arcs among the fanbase that we've anticipated for years, then please calm it down with these exaggerated "cutting content is ruining the show" claims.
Thank you from coming to my Ted Talk and enjoy the rest of the season everyone.

\"But why not do both?\"
This is a follow-up to my last post defending the anime's decision to cut content for the sake of pacing but let me give you the TL;DR so you don't feel the need to have read that one before this as this post covers the same bases (and then some): The anime is first-and foremost the story of Rudeus Greyrat and must therefore prioritize his perspective, even at the cost of other characters' moments, regardless of how beloved those individual scenes are to fans of the Light Novels (myself included).
So let me start by addressing the strongest counter argument made in response to that post: "But the first season, and even Cour 1 of season 2 was able to maintain excellent pacing while having relatively few cuts! Why does the pacing in cour 2 still *FEEL* so rushed in comparison despite cutting so much?" That is an astute observation! And, quite frankly, you are asking the right questions. And for anyone planning to skip straight to the end of this admittedly \daunting* essay, here's a TL;DR for you: Episodes 19 & 20's reduced quality and heightened pace were done deliberately to provide the last 4 episodes of the season the space they need to breathe.* Continue reading if you want to find out how and why this had to be done.
It would be a fool's errand to argue that Cour 2 is NOT cutting less content than prior cours (because it absolutely is, and by quite a lot too), nor will I be arguing that the cour does NOT suffer some level of pacing issues because it absolutely is (see first post), rather I will be arguing in defense of the purpose of limiting the scope of what gets adapted, and why such decisions are necessary in the first place. However, before I delve any further into the specifics of Cour 2's production struggles, first I should elaborate how its production schedule differs from S1.

PART 1: Production Scheduling (aka setting the pace)

In case you were unaware, Season 1 was originally slated to be released in 2020 but was delayed to January of 2021 so it could actually receive all of the extra care and polish it truly deserved. For S2, Studio Bind's production staff, by contrast, had to make due with the time they were initially given. More time (and consequently more budget) usually fixes most production issues, but very few (extraordinarily rare) series ever receive that benefit and doing so twice was likely never even considered a possibility.
Sadly we are not in the alternate timeline where S2 benefitted from the same advantages that gave us gorgeous custom world-building OPs for every episode that freed up even more additional screen time for dialogue and character development (in some cases literally depicting entire chapters such as Paul's POV being shown during Ep 17's STUNNINGLY well executed OP montage). Thanks in part to that decision, S1 had significantly more wiggle room to work with, especially pertaining to the secondary cast, allowing it to more evenly adapt the world building, character development, and main narrative plotline of Mushoku Tensei as a whole utilizing that extra runtime (90 seconds per episode adds up to a LOT over the course of an entire season, plus the 5 EDs, that were integrated as needed on a per-episode basis, for an additional 7 1/2 minutes which adds up to a WHOPPING 43 1/2 MINUTES over the course of that 24 episode run and I should point out that S2 Cour 1 ALSO benefitted from this for the first 5 episodes including the OVA, giving that cour an added 9 minutes to utilize with Cour 2 receiving a paltry 3 minutes as only the 1st episode integrates the OP/ED runtime).
It's simply the reality that polish and quality was prioritized for S1 while scheduling and budget were prioritized for S2. If you want to be especially harsh, one could say S1 was treated as art, while S2 was treated as a commercial product, which is why I've set my expectations accordingly and hope this post helps others do the same. This becomes more apparent when you take into consideration that Studio Bind were also working on Onimai at the same time as S2 given their air dates were only 6 months apart. So not only was S2 not being given the same scheduling priority, it was COMPETING for resources. Given the BD sales numbers for every project they've released, at a minimum we can be assured that Studio Bind has been financially successful at least but the double edged nature of that success also means that certain priorities may have shifted away from MT and towards the new cash-cow. There's a reason I phrased my previous post so specifically: These episodes are a fine adaptation of Rudy's story.... and not much else because it simply doesn't have the screen time or resources to focus on anything besides Rudy's share of the narrative and character development.
Which ties directly into the second reason as to why cour 2 FEELS so rushed, even in comparison to cour 1. The contents of Volumes 10, 11, and 12 are significantly more *LINEAR\* with more individual events being depicted compared to Volumes 1-9. This translates to more content vying for screen time. But how much content are we talking about here? Well, I don't want to go too deeply into raw numbers as that's not really the point but let's set a baseline with some quick-n-dirty math to illustrate:
S1c1 covers 1326 pg / 3 = 442 pg/vol (11 episodes) = 40.2 pg / ep S1c2 covers 1280 pg / 3 = 427 pg/vol (12 episodes + OVA) = 32.8 pg / ep S2c1 covers 1268 pg / 3 = 423 pg/vol (12 episodes + OVA) = 32.5 pg / ep S2c2 covers 1381 pg / 3 = 460 pg/vol (12 episodes) = 38.3 pg / ep
Obviously these are EXTREMELY rough numbers that don't take into account any of the cut content, non-chapter related pages, nor the difference in available runtime afforded to S1 that I previously mentioned, but just by raw page count, that's technically LESS content than what the first 11 episodes of Season 1 had to adapt! Surely they could just tweak a few things to make everything fit! Unfortunately, it's not that simple. You see, there's a distinct lack of a certain type of content that made the lives of the production staff significantly easier by providing plenty of opportunities to pick and choose what made it into the final cut of an episode's runtime to keep the mainline story of Rudeus chugging along at the leisurely clip we're accustomed to.

PART 2: Narrative Fluff (aka work smarter, not longer)

Spoiler: It's the sheer density of secondary character POVs. The very ones we often grieved being cut as the episodes were coming out during S1. They add depth and complexity to the characters (and are, imho, singularly the most *profoundly insightful* pieces of writing Rifujin-sensei has ever produced) but 90% of the time are simply repeating the same events from a new perspective. HOWEVER, when adapted to an audio-visual medium, you can SHOW both perspectives simultaneously and let the audience infer what's going on in a secondary character's mind through the use of voice acting, animation, staging, lighting, OST, and sound design thereby allowing the anime-only audience to receive 90% of the same information that was conveyed during those same events in the novels.
The "missing" Eris POV is the primary example of this disconnect between how little LN readers think Anime-onlys are inferring and how much is being successfully communicated to them even if they themselves can't properly articulate what it was they took away from any particular scene. I highly recommend paying close attention to Eris' face in the 3 following episodes after the events of Turning Point 2 RATHER THAN READING THE SUBTITLES (dub watchers have an advantage here but BOTH performances do an incredible job) and you'll see (and hear) what I'm talking about. Sure we don't get every beat of her thought process spelled out for us in quite the same level of detail as in her POV chapter, but you can sense her inner conflict while watching Rudeus practice Disturb Magic as they ride into the outskirts of Fittoa and her heartache at seeing him standing forlornly in the ruins of his destroyed childhood home. The idea that she doesn't feel "worthy" of him is already being communicated by her facial expressions and her body language. Her letter stating how they aren't "well-balanced" in combination with that visual information is already providing context clues to the viewer as to what's going on in her head. In her final scene you can hear the sheer depth of her love give way to a deeply instilled sense of self-loathing, just by the tone of her voice, as she hoists Rudeus up onto that pedestal. Yet as she nears the end of her melancholic monologue more of that brash, passionate nature of hers seeps back into her delivery as pours her heart out.
To quote Harry Plinkett: "It's so subtle, you might not have even noticed... but your brain did."
The only emotion you could argue was nerfed by the adaptation is the depths of her self-loathing for having "taken advantage of him" after their night together but they still get a line in about their age and size difference, which when heard in her self-flagellating tone describing how "awful" she's been to him, you can easily make that inference. But you might also say "AHA even in those 3 episodes they left out how devastated she was when Rudy beat her using the demon eye after she finally gained some confidence in her strength" to which I say: Watch Ep 13: Missed Connections and, again, pay attention to Eris. Every part off the Buffalo was used.
They also never deliberately spell out her ardent belief that Rudeus is so strong and smart and amazing and brave and perfect that regardless of whatever she wrote as she struggled to find the words to leave in her letter, he would just clairvoyantly understand her intentions.... but you don't really NEED that spelled out for you when her final appearance is her shouting to the high heavens about how in love she is directly juxtaposed with Rudeus reverting to his former self-image shut away in his bedroom after very specifically misunderstanding the meaning of her words and actions! "I LOVE THIS MAN she screams as the man she loves thinks to himself "I can't believe she doesn't love me anymore." Seeing that, anyone could conclude "Were you expecting him to just KNOW what you meant??" Yes. Yes she was.
The Eris' POV wasn't "skipped content"... it was integrated. It's broken up and repurposed in bits and pieces over the course of 4, count 'em, FOUR separate episodes but 99% of it is there if you know what to look for (which for anime onlys is considered rewatch value).
By going through this in such agonizing detail I hope I'm properly communicating one of the greatest hang ups LN readers seem to have (or adaptational purists in general) relative to their expectations: You are putting entirely too much value into dialogue, monologue, and the text of a script relative to every other element the medium has to offer. The absence of TEXT does not diminish the SUBTEXT. An individual viewer might not know WHY they believe a character motivation exists as it does, but by and large most will pick up on those details whether it be deliberate (in the case of a certain psychologist youtuber who keeps nailing plot predictions over and over BECAUSE ALL OF THE INFORMATION YOU NEED IS RIGHT, THE F**K, THERE) or subconsciously (in the case of most passive audience members).

PART 1 (COUR 2): THE RESCHEDULENING (aka MATH)

Now, having detailed how a POV chapter can actually be efficiently absorbed into the runtime of the show without disrupting or sidetracking the main narrative, let's re-examine the topic of how (as well as why) this affects the production schedule. As I previously stated, overall Volume 1-9 have quite a number of POV chapters to work around as buffers to the rest of the content. Don't believe me? Let me break it down a bit more then:
Vol 1 contains ~ 2 1/2 POV chapters out of 10 = 25% Vol 2 contains ~ 2 3/4 POV chapters out of 11 = 25% Vol 3 contains ~ 1 POV chapters out of 15 = 6.5% (one of the longer action heavy volumes, yet only 3 eps) On average ~19% of content is POV. Vol 4 contains ~ 2 1/4 POV chapters out of 12 = 19% Vol 5 contains ~ 4 POV chapters out of 11 = 36% Vol 6 contains ~ 2 1/4 POV chapters out of 15 = 15% On average ~23% of content is POV. Vol 7 contains ~ 1 1/4 POV chapters out of 8 (technically 9, short prologue + epilogue combined) = 15.5% Vol 8 contains ~ 2 POV chapters out of 12 = 17% Vol 9 contains ~ 3.75 POV chapters out of 12.5 (several very short POVs, adjusted for fairness) = 30% On average ~21% of content is POV. Vol 10 contains ~ 2 POV chapters out of 14 = 14% Vol 11 contains ~ 2 POV chapters out of 16 = 12.5% Vol 12 contains ~ 1 1/2 POV chapters out of 16 = 9% On average ~12% of content is POV. ^\Note* Several chapters are not purely dedicated to secondary character POVs but rather "cut aways" between Rudy's own perspective and are occasionally EXTREMELY short (I assigned 1/4 amounts for especially short POVs to give them weight, but to prevent over-representing them. Additionally while chapters vary in length they generally represent individual events which I feel is a more apt form of measurement to relate to the anime adaptation in place of page counts (you're not gonna find the table of contents, copyrights, or the author's afterward being adapted after all). These are VERY rough estimations and should not be taken as "objective" measurements.))
Look at that proportional difference for Volume 10-12 relative to the other cours. While production had the advantage of consistently folding a little more than 1/5 of the content into the current runtime the current cour has almost 10% more content competing for the same amount of screen time as the cour before it. In fact, it's significantly LESS screen time as only the 1st episode bypassed the OP/ED compared to Cour 1's 4 episodes (and if you include the OVA, cour 1 already had a 24 minute head start in addition to the extra 3 per ep for a whopping total of 36 extra minutes of runtime over cour 2), Even if we're exceedingly generous and assume the next 4 episodes skip the OP/ED each, that would still leave it at a 24 minute disadvantage just in comparison to cour 1, not to mention the additional screen time afforded to S1 as I've already covered.

Part 3: Screen Time as a Resource (aka Content / Time = Stress)

In a novel characters can engage in chapter length diatribes or strategic planning in their own heads, engage in "talking is a free action" whilst in a fight to the death, and all sorts of ridiculous temporal bending contrivances that simply do not translate to the screen where time is the single most precious commodity (unless you're a shonen protagonist charging up your kamehameha). So let's view this from the scriptwriters' perspective to understand why they are forced to make some very difficult choices. As you are starting work on your assigned episode(s), the show's production committee makes the call that while previously you were afforded as much as ~300 minutes (5 hours) to convey ~1K pages of material, this time you only get ~255 minutes (4 1/4 hours) to convey ~1200 pages of the same density of material. Much more information to convey in much less time and you only JUST BARELY scrapped by to include as much as you could the last 3 times. That's means that at a MINIMUM, 200 of those pages are destined for the cutting room floor.
Though speaking of shounen protagonists, action set pieces are extraordinarily useful for either expanding OR condensing a scene's runtime by exactly as much as you need to fit within an episode's runtime. Need to add time? Go balls-to-the-wall, high-octane, budget-melting sakuga insanity that outshines even the source material (Turning Point 2/Eris vs Assassins) or you can condense high page counts into surprisingly short runtimes while still conveying the impact and information stored in those several pages worth of text. High impact, malleable screen time, same information conveyed. More time to dedicate to world building and secondary character development. As such, S1 (cour 2 especially) had a TREMENDOUS amount of leeway in how much they wished to expand OR condense action scenes at their discretion compared to the (comparatively) action-lite S2 (for Cour 1 at least).
So then you might ask with Cour 2 revving up the action again, why is it instead CUTTING tons of those action scenes rather than merely truncating them to make space for dialogue scenes like the prior cours? The short answer is there's already no time to spare. The longer, more complex answer is action scenes can't exist in a vacuum. In the same way you have to accelerate and decelerate in your car evenly to get from point A to point B safely, you can't simply hit 0-60 mph in under 2 seconds and you certainly can't go from 60 to 0 in a fraction of a second unless you want an episodes' pacing to liquify like your internal organs. Before, during, and sometimes after a fight scene is initiated, several questions need to be answered for the audience like "Who/what is fighting?" "Where are they positioned?" "What is the level of threat?" "What are the stakes?" "What are the win conditions?" with greater or fewer questions depending on the complexity of the scene or it's meaning to the character(s). Failing to provide the audience adequate answers to these questions can easily result in a nonsensical farce.... unless that's literally your intention. Thankfully, the requirement for winding down action is much simpler. After a beat of heightened tension, your protagonist simply lowers their guard/weapon and the message communicated to the audience is "the threat is over" and within seconds you can move to the next scene.
Most major encounters follow this rhythm throughout the series, with individual chapters dedicated solely to these fights, spanning page counts that are generally (but not always) on the higher end. In general, there are only 1-2 major battles per volume. Vol 11 and 12, by contrast, have several chapters that contain a half dozen individual skirmishes apiece that make adapting the material a total NIGHTMARE to pick and choose what makes the cut. So as an example, a weirdly high amount of time is seemingly spent establishing the succubus encounter in ep 19. Why you may ask? So they could ride those same rules of engagement straight into the following montage to inform the audience "these fights possess the same rules of engagement we just established" without having to spend the additional time winding up each one individually (another, more humorous example, is Ruijerd "dueling" the 3 North God students in a row). The montage also pulls double duty by conveying both the passage of time and distance. You'd think truncating roughly 1/5 of the entire volume into a scant 60 seconds would give them plenty of extra time to work with, but sadly, the ability to condense content is still only enough to break even with the established pace.
Another major element that placed Season 2 at a massive disadvantage is that Season 2 had to use it's precious 25th episode OVA to *catch up* on content that was deferred from Season 1 as Sylphy's POV chapters starting all the way back in Vol 4 did not make the cut. So rather than getting a jump start, the OVA was actually just catching up on deferred content that could not be included DESPITE all of the tremendous advantages I've previously discussed. And even then, it still needed to skip all but a few scant details from the intervening chapters that bridge the gap between Sylphy becoming Silent Fitz and Ariel's entire entourage fleeing to Ranoa's University of Magic resulting in all but 5 of them being slaughtered by assassins in hideously gruesome fashion. In a nutshell, Season 2 actually only has 24 episodes to dedicate to itself, and most of the benefits of scheduling seems to have heavily favored Cour 1 over Cour 2.
At this point, assuming like everyone else who joined up with Studio Bind, you are yourself a massive fan of the series and absolutely love these novels, you are effectively being asked to CHOOSE your favorite children chapters to sacrifice in the name of ending the season at a satisfying arc conclusion. Sure you could just adapt at the same rate of chapters-to-screen time as before and conclude the final 12th episode with THAT THING THAT HAPPENS but somehow I feel like doing so would result in death threats being strapped to a brick and hurled through your office windows. You've certainly maintained the integrity of the show's original pacing, but telling fans to sit tight until the next production cycle is ready in another 2-3 years feels like a recipe for disaster.
And frankly, Vol 12 has some INTENSELY heavy dialogue/monologue scenes filing out the back half of the volume that are going to need significantly more screen time to convey the necessary information relative to the first half as it is ENTIRELY Rudy-centric. So the only way to get there with enough time to allow the season to reach a natural and satisfying conclusion and still hit all of the vitally necessary plot threads is to put those proverbial chapter babies containing some of your favorite character interactions and world building on the alter as a ritual sacrifice for more time on the clock. And what did those sacrifices get you? 5 episodes. A range of 105-117 minutes (depending on OP/ED usage) of screen time to cover the single densest volume since vol 3 (see above). Barely one episode ahead of pace (but in terms of available screen time still barely ahead) of prior cours. And if you think it's unfortunate that ACTION was being cut, oh lordy I have some *bad news for you.\*

Part 4: Screenwriting as an Artform (aka how write story gud)

"But why are they STILL so stretched for time if they have access to and are utilizing all of these time-saving techniques?" Well I'm hoping the previous 3 parts of this gargantuan multi-tiered super essay have helped establish the constraints Studio Bind are working under compared to the prior cours. Cour 2 is working with significantly LESS screen time, with MORE events to manage and they're already so stretched for time that even multi-chapter spanning story events like the Merchant caravan are being cut entirely, rather than merely abridged, to make up that difference.
The requirement for "essential viewing" grows ever higher as mundane scenes like coming in and out of the teleporter still HAVE to be given priority over fan-beloved moments of character development because as uninteresting as those kinds of expository, utilitarian scenes are, they serve a far more vital purpose in a screenplay for communicating to the audience the "BUT, THEREFORE, BECAUSE" flow of script writing (watch the video it's extremely short and a great explainer, but essentially "But = Complication", "Therefore = Next logical action", "Because = Character motivation for performing said action"). You literally cannot skip these unremarkable, bog standard scenes because doing so would commit one of the deadliest sins of storytelling that I was alluding to when discussing how to establish action scenes: The Discontinuity of the dreaded "AND THEN" statement. If you're watching a movie and it's a series of "and then this happened and then that happened and then this person showed up" it ceases to be less a story so much as watching someone's attention span annihilating slideshow of vacation photographs.
As an example, scenes like the ones that establish how, where, and why Rudy and Elinalise use the teleporter to get from Ranoa to Begaritt are slow, mundane, and heavily time consuming and yet are so absolutely necessary as a scriptwriter to take the time to make sure the audience can follow along the logical thru-line for how these scenes connect to one another. If you skip such seemingly trifling, yet necessary information, the audience is not going to react by saying "oh THAT SCENE I LOVE is coming up" but rather "wait, why are we in a desert?"
As an example I'll use the last 2 episodes to demonstrate. The logical flow of episode 19 into 20 proceeds as follows (some parts are truncated for *relative* brevity):
"Rudy needs to leave for Rapan. THEREFORE he tells everyone goodbye, BUT Nanahoshi knows how to teleport there. THEREFORE he changes his route with Elinalise. THEREFORE they get prepared BECAUSE they want to save Zenith, BUT Cliff proposes to Elinalise BECAUSE he feels his lack of commitment was making her nervous. THEREFORE Elinalise is caught off guard BECAUSE she originally intended to leave without telling him to break off their relationship. THEREFORE she accepts his proposal. THEREFORE they travel to the teleporter, BUT teleporters are considered a source of danger to adventurers. THEREFORE they study it first as a safety precaution. THEREFORE they verify it's safe operation and use it. THEREFORE they arrive in Begaritt, BUT they are attacked by a Succubus. THEREFORE Rudy needs to detox himself BECAUSE they want to keep their promise to Cliff and Sylphy. THEREFORE they continue their sexless journey, BUT they are attacked several more times. THEREFORE they kill the monsters and proceed with caution. THEREFORE they arrive in Rapan in ~6 weeks. THEREFORE Geese is surprised to see them when they arrive, BECAUSE he only sent the letter so recently. THEREFORE he takes them to see Paul. THEREFORE they reunite with Paul, BUT Paul has fallen back into depression BECAUSE they lost Roxy while failing to find Zenith. THEREFORE Rudy tells Paul about his marriage and pregnancy with Sylphy. THEREFORE Paul recovers BECAUSE of the joy and pride he feels for his son BUT still feels worthless BECAUSE of his failures. THEREFORE Paul finally notices Elinalise. THEREFORE he apologizes BECAUSE ....uh y'know that thing that happened. THEREFORE Paul and Elinalise reconcile BUT Paul is confused that she didn't sleep with Rudy BECAUSE of her curse. THEREFORE she explains her husband Cliff's magic tool BUT Paul can't believe she has a husband. THEREFORE they get into another spat BUT the rest of the party returns during their argument THEREFORE Rudy learns that Roxy is lost in the labyrinth. THEREFORE Rudy starts to panic as the party begins to squabble. THEREFORE Elinalise takes Rudy's shoulder to draw his attention BECAUSE she realized he was panicking. THEREFORE Rudy asks to be caught up on the situation. THEREFORE Paul describes the difficulty of the Teleportation Labyrinth. THEREFORE Rudy gives Geese the book detailing it's depths which he borrowed BECAUSE he would be using a teleporter to get to Begaritt, BUT it will take Geese time to read it. THEREFORE Paul calls the meeting to a close to allow Geese to adjust their strategy using the book. THEREFORE Rudy, Paul, and Lilia start talking, BUT Paul is still a crude dude. THEREFORE the topic turns to sex BUT Lilia is in denial about being a total sex freak. THEREFORE Paul teases her BECAUSE he knowns how much she likes it rough. THEREFORE they retire for the night after some locker room talk. THEREFORE they depart for the labyrinth the following day. THEREFORE they reach the labyrinth and begin their descent, BUT Paul is breaking formation to show off in front of Rudeus. THEREFORE Elinalise scolds him, BECAUSE she wants to keep her family safe. THEREFORE Paul flippantly dismisses her claims of thinking of him like a son, BUT he is unaware of their connection through Sylphy. THEREFORE they continue further into the Labyrinth maintaining their formation, BUT they encounter new monsters. THEREFORE Rudy starts to cast a spell, BUT Talhand advises him not to use fire BECAUSE it fills a room with poison BECAUSE the concept of carbon monoxide poisoning exists but isn't fully understood in this universe BUT he also advices not attacking the ceiling BECAUSE it could cause a cave-in. THEREFORE Rudy uses ice magic to kill the remaining monsters. THEREFORE they advance to the second stratum in proper formation. THEREFORE they breeze through the second formation and take a break before entering the third. THEREFORE Geese uses the opportunity to inform Rudy that the next section is where Roxy went missing and may still be near that area BECAUSE teleporter traps only warp victims within the same stratum. THEREFORE as they approach where they lost Roxy, Geese asks Rudy where he'd look for Roxy based on his intuition. AND THEN Using his intuition, Rudy notices condensation on a wall and uses his Roxy Odor Snoof Sense to detect Roxy's location through a damn wall despite being a contrivance BUT it's the same contrivance used in the source material THEREFORE shut up. THEREFORE we cut to Roxy BUT she's being surrounded by monsters. THEREFORE she casts numerous spells to hold them at bay, BUT she runs out of mana. THEREFORE she believes she's about to die BUT Rudy saves her just in the nick of time. THEREFORE Roxy is shaken to her core at the sight of the man who saved her despite not recognizing Rudy, BUT then her POV didn't play out the way it did in the novels THEREFORE LN purists got upset BECAUSE they assumed her POV had been cut BUT they forgot that Roxy's POV has always been shown tremendous favoritism by Studio Bind THEREFORE they jumped to conclusions unaware it would happen the following episode.

THEREFORE Calm down and let Studio Bind cook

Effectively the point I hope I have demonstrated is that there IS a logical and consistent thru-line from scene to scene to scene that an audience can follow (and if you want to improve as a screenwriter, this is a GREAT exercise to figure out what makes your favorite shows tick. It's basically the screenwriter's equivalent to tracing someone else' art as practice). Even these unfairly maligned episodes have a viewing experience that provides a consistent sense of pacing. But if you want to know WHAT precisely feels different about them? Well if I had chosen to break down episodes from any of the prior 3 cours (or the best episodes of this cour), you'd be seeing the word BECAUSE significantly more to fill out every action, reaction, and complication along the way. If "THEREFORE" and "BUT" are the easel and canvas, which are necessary to even begin the process of creating art, then "BECAUSE" is the screenwriter's paintbrush that allows them to breathe life and detail into the characters on screen. The prior 3 cours were awash with "BECAUSE" statements detailing why characters are behaving the way they are in every individual scene so if there's one crime that can legitimately be pinned against several episodes in the latest cour, it's "JUST 'CUZ."

PART FINAL: The TL;DR (aka the... tl;dr)

So having laid all this out in such verbose, granular detail, what exactly does all of this mean?
To put it bluntly, Season 1 being such a near-perfect masterwork of adaptation spoiled the ever loving hell out of us. Having gorged ourselves on that expectation, we've ruined our appetites because now such perks are simply anticipated as standard with a vocal minority now irked by the use of a standard OP simply because it follows the conventions of the medium or (stay with me here) committing the sin of appealing to shonen fans. I know, truly a crime worthy of sudoku because of 14 seconds depicting one of the single most important events in the series. I truly don't understand (seriously, explain it to me please).
The current cour is merely receiving the same treatment most adaptations are given while still outperforming its peers if weekly rankings are anything to go by. Episodes range from pretty good to excellent (Norn and Nanahoshi's spotlight eps being the highlights thus far despite some grumbling) with even the extremely barebones Ep 19 squeezing in what sparse worldbuilding nuggets it can despite the plot literally necessitating that Rudy book it from one side of the planet to the other within a 21 minute period (a production level pacing decision you are still free to criticize). As I said earlier (but it bears repeating) these episodes are a good adaptation of Rudy's story rather than the whole that makes up MT because it simply doesn't have the screen time to focus on anything that falls outside the scope of his perspective given the sheer breadth of competing narrative essential content. As a show, these episodes are still delivering a cohesive and engaging thru-line by being glued to Rudy's perspective. So as long as Rudy remains interesting to watch the audience will be more than satisfied.
Expecting the same anomalous level of dedication AND leniency from the production committee to happen for every season was unfortunately nothing but a pipe dream. Cour 2 is now being forced to make due with what it has and while they are doing a commendable job given the heavy restrictions, it is completely unreasonable to expect them to fit so much into such tight confines. It is the adaptation equivalent of being asked to fit everything into one grocery bag, but not wanting the bag to be heavy.
Could this cour have been scheduled better? Absolutely. Was it possible certain changes to the script or episode direction could have provided more opportunities to explore the cut content? Of course. Is it still a total bummer that the realities of production that have compromised the artistic integrity of our beloved peak fiction? Without a doubt.
We are simply going to have to get used to the fact that S1 may never be topped with our only hope being the return of the waifu-wars for S3 rekindles the beefs between animators vying for shot assignments (which may hopefully still be in the cards god willing).
Of course, I'm not a future seer, so maybe, just maybe, Studio Bind bursts into flames and all of the footage is lost resulting in the quality of the last 3 episodes to be the worst drop off of a television show since the final season of Game of Thrones. If that is the case then I'll be eating more crow than I ever have in my life. But if Studio Bind sticks the landing and delivers on the emotional climax to one of the most beloved arcs among the fanbase that we've anticipated for years, then please calm it down with these exaggerated "cutting content is ruining the show" claims.
Thank you from coming to my Ted Talk and enjoy the rest of the season everyone.

The Confirmed Hoax Fallacy An Old Argument Raises Its Ignorant Head Yet Again TEMPORAL RECON JUN 8
I was recently invited to write an essay by someone who I respect greatly in their own personal search for truth. He asked that, while an update to Conviction of a Time Traveler is not necessarily in the offing, he did wonder if I might be amenable to a friendly reminder of the evidence provided in COATT nearly a decade ago now.
What spurred his request was that he had noticed recently that several people online had been echoing the ‘confirmed hoax’ trope when discussions would might around to the John Titor series of posts which occurred online back in 2000/2001.
His noticing of this false argument was nothing new; I had also noticed it crop up from time to time over the last 20 years. I hold the ‘confirmed hoax’ argument in special and particular disdain. Why?
Primarily because evidence exists and was provided in Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2009 that Titor was legitimate and, ironically enough, was read by many of the so-called experts espousing the ‘confirmed hoax’ lie. So when these fake experts tell you that the Titor story was a ‘confirmed hoax,’ they are lying to you.
Conviction of a Time Traveler provided new and original evidence that has never, to date, been debunked since its publication; a full 14 years. The evidence provided (which many of these lazy forum participants are aware of) pointed to one, inexorable and inescapable conclusion: Titor was legit. But this evidence, while never disproven, is always ignored. Why is that? We’ll put a pin in that…
Pledge your support
Ironically, not only has the evidence documented in Conviction of a Time Traveler never been debunked, but it has also even been plagiarized by lazy authors who can’t be bothered to do original research or, lacking the intellectual horsepower necessary to do even that, fail to provide appropriate attribution to their source material.
So what of this, ‘Confirmed Hoax’ claim? Is it true? HAS the John Titor episode actually been ‘confirmed’ as a hoax?
When someone in a position of pretend authority declares from their cardboard pedestal that the John Titor story is a ‘Confirmed Hoax,’ have you ever noticed they never provide the person who did the confirming?
“Confirmed hoax?” ‘Confirmed’ by whom, pray tell?
When the term ‘Confirmed Hoax’ is used, what imagery comes to mind? I dare say it implies that some sort of shadowy group of learned scholars sat around a big wooden table, carefully assessed and addressed the claims. All the evidence and counter-arguments were carefully measured while hidden away in some stone castle somewhere until a white puff of smoke curls over its stone-tiled rooftops, declaring to the world once and for all,
“Our confirmation is complete. John Titor was a hoax!”
Bullshit.
Here’s the dirty little secret of the ‘Confirmed Hoax’ statements: they are actually shorthand for,
“I don’t have the intellectual capacity to argue in favor or against, so in order to come off like some sort of authority and maintain my fake position of authority, I’ll just take the safest position and simply declare that the Titor story is a hoax, that it was ‘confirmed’ and let’s please just move on to some other topic.”
‘Confirmed Hoax,’ is a coward’s gambit, a bet, that there won’t be anyone to come along to rock the boat and topple these posers off their flimsy stage of pretend authority.
This was the environment I walked into when I first published Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2010, and apparently, it hasn’t changed in 15 years.
When I first posted on Paranormalis (IIRC) announcing that I had written a book that documented the evidence in favor of Titor’s veracity, the then-reigning Titor authority (‘Darby’) haughtily pronounced, “Present your evidence and we’ll discuss it.”
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It was in that moment that I chose a path that nobody before me had ever embarked upon. I said, “No.”
Nobody had ever said ‘no’ before. There are pages and pages of forum posts by people before me who discovered some of the same bits and pieces that I discovered that pointed to Titor’s truth. And they were excited to show what they had discovered! And, owing to their excitement, and unfortunately, their naivete, they excitedly shared their evidence, wrongfully believing that the forums’ leadership was interested in getting to the bottom of the Titor episode.
Little did they suspect that ‘Darby’ and others were acting as gatekeepers of truth, whose sole purpose was to establish and maintain a lid on the narrative that was the John Titor episode. He, and his ilk gaslighted and bullied these poor naifs into silence by using their fake authority to debunk and explain away the very real evidence they had discovered.
That is, until COATT was published.
Unfortunately for these enemies of Truth, the internet is forever. In my research leading up to the publication of Conviction of a Time Traveler, I had the benefit of not only studying Titor’s posts, but also all the follow-on discussions after their departure.
I reviewed literally years of online forum content and, as I did so, I made a very curious observation: in all the years of discussion after Titor departed, not one piece of evidence ever (ever) caused ‘Darby’ or any of the other fake authorities to question their ‘it’s a hoax!’ position. They NEVER saw a piece of evidence that they didn’t dismiss, mock, ignore or explain away with contortions of logic that would make Wetzel’s Pretzels blush. This is in stark contrast to how someone who was truly in search of truth would act.
If ‘Darby’ and the others truly were curious, isn’t this a little odd? Really? Not ONE piece of evidence ever caused ‘Darby’ to pause and say, “hmm, that’s interesting…”
Not once, ever.
And there are years of forum posts to confirm this.
So, when Darby commanded from his perch of fake authority that I ‘present my evidence so that we might discuss it’ I laughed in his face [paraphrasing],
“No. A real discussion of the evidence hasn’t occurred here for years, and I do not recognize your so-called position as some sort of ‘expert’ on the Titor story. LITERALLY EVERYTHING there is to learn, or study, is published in the Titor posts for all to read. You hold no special knowledge, no special position, no special nothing. I do not submit to your fake authority. You want to learn about Titor, read the book.”
Or words to that effect, anyway…
In the end, the evidence provided in COATT was so unassailable and the argument so solid that ‘Darby’ and his ilk suddenly became more and more quiet as they slowly realized I wasn’t going to wilt under their “authoritay.” Eventually, they slinked away with their rhetorical tails tucked.
But this was not the end of the story! Because ‘time travel’ had become quite the pet interest of mine (owing to the further evidence I discovered after publication), that I continued to post online in various discussion forums. I even wrote numerous essays on a variety of topics, all spurred on by the ‘time travel’ question and all its implications.
Fast Forward Fast forwarding to today, we’re back at the ‘confirmed hoax’ argument again. What was once offered up (“HOAX!”) by Darby and others, is now cold soup served by the latest crop of fake authorities. And what happens when fake authority utters the ‘Confirmed Hoax’ discussion-brake? The same thing that happened a decade ago: the earnest neophyte shrugs their shoulders secure in the false belief that others smarter than they have studied the topic and arrived at some irrefutable conclusion; no further discussion necessary (or allowed). They have no idea just how close they came to uncovering something truly fantastic, had they only relied on their own judgment instead of the know-nothing proclamations of others.
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Which brings me to why I wrote COATT in the first place. Instead of simply doing my research and arriving at my own (private) conclusion, I realized that too many people were believing fake authority and ignoring Titor’s warnings about our future. Once I realized that Titor was legitimate (caveated, of course), how could I NOT share my findings? The stakes were simply too high.
IF what Titor said were true 24 years ago, that the world was heading for an upending change in the status quo, and that many people would die as a result of it, how could I remain silent and not inform others that his warnings were something to be listened to? Perhaps people with ears to hear might take heed and make the appropriate preparations. I know I did.
But, as my friend has informed me, it appears that the fake experts have reared their ugly and useless heads once again telling us that there is ‘nothing to the Titor story’ and that it is a “confirmed hoax.”
THIS was the reason that I was recently asked to provide my evidence once again. And THIS is the reason this essay is dragging on. These pretenders to authority are like roaches; as soon as the exterminator leaves, they come out of the woodwork intent on dismantling the Truth once again. God’s work never ends, it seems, even with a 99% success rate…
So, now that we’ve got all THAT out of the way, and as a sort of transition, I’d like to bring you up to speed on what I’ve been up to since I published Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2010.
To be perfectly frank, after COATT’s publication, I thought I was done with the Titor story; I had said my piece and was perfectly willing to move on with my life and prepare for the event that causes the change in the status quo. But the annoying fact was that the Titor story itself didn’t end with the cessation of Titor’s posts in 2001.
As new evidence appeared in the months and years following publication, like dog shit on my shoe that I can’t scrape off, I could never cleanly cleave myself from the Titor story. Not that I wanted to, mind you, it is a fascinating topic, regardless of your opinion.
But what surprised me the most was that new evidence continued to appear, year after year. And, as more evidence appeared, my curiosity was consistently kept piqued and on alert. Trust me, it is exhausting.
To give you a sense of what I discovered, I can tell you that your experts are wrong and that ‘time travel’ is neither novel nor unusual; we are very literally awash in ‘time travelers.’ My research suggests that ‘time machines’ have been present in our past going as far back as 850AD. But I digress.
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Suffice it to say that the Titor rabbit hole is but one example of a massively large group of programs from an unknown number of organizations from across time. The ‘time travel’ question runs much deeper (and much farther back in time) and crosses over into more (so-called) esoteric topics than anyone gives it credit for. As I said, it’s exhausting.
My whole point here is that, even after I published in 2009, my curiosity in the topic (and its implications of yet larger vistas) did not wane. And, because of this continued and unabating curiosity, I discovered yet more evidence, crafted more theories and came to more conclusions.
A philosopher once described the acquisition of new information as an ever-expanding circle surrounding the man; a horizon where known and unknown meet where new answers only beget new questions which push the circle farther and farther out. This has been my experience over the last 15 years re the Titor narrative and the larger ‘time travel’ question. How could it be otherwise?
Unfortunately for you, you are being convinced by fools that the Titor episode is a ‘Confirmed Hoax.’ You haven’t even made the leap to the possibility that ‘time travel’ is even possible. How can you explore the implications of ‘time travel’ when you can’t even consider its reality, a fundamental starting point? I have a very strong (ehem) conviction that our collective naïveté on the subject will be violently revoked in the very near ‘future.’
The Two Camps, The Two Mistakes During my research, I observed that within the Titor commentariat there are two basic camps: the Debunkers and the True Believers.
The Debunking camp will provide any contortion of logic to maintain the ‘Titor was a hoax’ narrative.
The True Believers, on the other hand, will believe any contortion of logic that maintains their belief in The Gospel of John.
What if I told you both camps were wrong?
Now, the debunking camp will tell you that Titor must be a hoax because his predictions didn’t come true. Oh, well…his predictions didn’t come true? I guess we’re done then? Obviously, his whole purpose for posting was to make predictions like some Magic Eight Ball, right? And if those don’t pan out, well, ‘CONFIRMED HOAX!’
Get the Book
On the other side of that coin, the True Believers out there, who never saw a confirmation bias they didn’t love, will tell you that Titor’s predictions didn’t come true because he changed the future. This of course is a recipe for explaining away literally any detracting evidence thus making Titor true no matter any evidence to the contrary.
Let’s take the True Believers first:
The concept of Divergence, while a handy explanation, does not/cannot explain all differences in histories away. In fact, were what Titor said was true (remember, we are True Believers for the moment and are taking Titor’s words as gospel) he absolutely must take measures to minimize divergence as much as possible and NOT allow it to span wildly. Otherwise, the entire power of the ‘time machine’ is rendered moot. I accept that Divergence is likely a real measurement necessary for the efficient execution of ‘time travel’ missions, but it should, by no means, be the magic skeleton key to explain away every question.
In fact, while divergence is very likely a real ‘thing’ or artifact or measurement of difference between world lines, the Truth is that divergence must absolutely be kept to a minimum to make any practical use of the gravity engine sitting in the back seat of your old blue Geo Metro.
So, no. Divergence cannot be the handy tool we need to contort ourselves into believing, as much as we might like to.
Now for the debunkers:
The debunkers have a variety of options available to them to argue that Titor was a ‘confirmed hoax.’ Regardless, these arguments typically boil down to two primary classes:
He has special training or knowledge, and/or
He’s just a lucky guesser.
Unfortunately for the debunkers (and those who listen to them), these explanations make a very serious error: that predictions are a relevant metric to judge Titor’s truth at all. They are not.
Serious question: Why should a ‘time traveler’ be subject to the same metrics that a psychic is to determine if his claims of ‘time travel’ are true?
The point here is that you can’t compare a horse to a whale and complain that the horse can’t swim. They are two completely different animals, and the same goes for ‘time travelers’ and psychics or tarot readers or any other domain whose reputation is dependent on the true-ness of the information they provide. Comparing Titor’s predictions to actual, experienced history is also an imperfect and inappropriate metric if one is to objectively assess Titor from a blank slate starting point. This points to a much deeper insight into the true purpose of the Titor posts, but that’s for a different day.
So, because of both these problems, any real researcher worth their salt would have to find some other way to determine the truth/falsity of the Titor narrative.
Remember, when first approaching the Titor question as an objective investigator, Titor is both equally a hoax and legitimate. Imagine Schrodinger’s cat meets Columbo…
I’ll give you this observation for free, just to get your juices flowing:
Did you notice that absolutely none of John’s predictions (event + date) came true, but all his statements concerning conditions about our future did?
Don’t you find this interesting? Or hadn’t you noticed, too blinded by the bright and shiny, attention-grabbing predictions of nuclear war?
But I am getting ahead of myself; we still haven’t provided the evidence that it’s simply more likely that Titor was an actual time traveler than some ‘hoaxer genius.’ And so we finally get to the whole point of this essay in the first place, a reminder and summary of the evidence first provided in Conviction of a Time Traveler all the way back in those halcyon days of 2010:

1. Wireless Internet: Titor correctly predicted the advent of wireless internet when we were still using dial-up modems and America Online. Cable internet connections had only just been introduced.

“My closest friend raises horses and another works for a company that maintains “wireless” Internet nodes.”
– J. Titor, Nov 7, 2000

1. YouTube becoming like ‘live theatre’: Titor correctly predicted the social evolution of YouTube and the decentralization of entertainment away from Hollywood evolving from short videos of grannies and cute kittens on Youtube to a sort of “live theatre” where actual shows would be presented by literally anyone, online, in a world that hadn’t even seen streaming services or video sharing services such as Rumble, etc.

“Yes, there is an entertainment industry. Again, it is very decentralized. The technology to express yourself with video is so readily available that many people do it all by themselves or in small groups. Much of the distribution is over the web. I would compare it theater here.”
-J. Titor

1. IBM 5100 special capabilities: The statement that kicked everything off. Titor correctly identified the secret capabilities of the very first desktop computer manufactured by IBM in the 1970’s. These capabilities were utterly unknown and unacknowledged until Titor’s appearance in 2000. Interestingly, using this information, I was able to determine the most likely candidate of Titor’s grandfather which, upon this identification, also explained why Titor had to go all the way back to 1975 to pick up a copy of the 5100 and not 1985, 1995, or ‘elsewhen.’

“I was “sent” to get an IBM computer system called the 5100. It was one the first portable computers made and it has the ability to read the older IBM programming languages in addition to APL and Basic.”
– J. Titor, Nov 15, 2000

1. VOIP: Titor correctly predicted the development of phone calls being run across the internet, again, in a time where downloading a picture over dial-up took minutes.

“Many people use the Internet for communication and entertainment. I would say that affects our speech. We type very fast.”
– J. Titor, Feb 15, 2001

1. Soldier’s Winter Poem: Titor correctly predicted the poem, by name, “A Soldier’s Winter” and its topic. There is more to this particular prediction and statement about “A Soldier’s Winter“ than meets the eye, however.

“A Soldier’s Winter.”
-J. Titor, Feb 21, 2001

1. Second gulf war: Titor correctly predicted a second incursion into Iraq by allied forces. There is also more to this statement by Titor as well. But that’s a little advanced for right now.

“Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?”
-J. Titor, Feb 25, 2001

1. WMD and ‘hype’: Titor correctly predicted that the WMD story was hype and not to be believed (also, there is more to this statement than is visible on the surface). This statement’s purpose is closely related to statements #6 and #9.

“Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?”
-J. Titor, Feb 25, 2001

1. Optical Measurement for atomic clock: A biggie. Titor correctly predicted the development of a new sort of atomic clock and the reasons why it was an improvement over the then-current ‘radio’ method of atomic measurement (more precise).

Specifically, atomic clocks determine the length of a second by measuring the frequency of a particular atom. Cesium, Rhodium, etc. Measuring this frequency is done using something called the “radio method” which makes use of a gas and hitting that gas and atom with a microwave (the ‘radio’ part of the measurement). However, Titor claimed that a new ‘time machine’ had been developed that makes use of an optical means of measuring the atom’s frequency, an improvement. The Optical Frequency Comb was developed after Titor’s departure which enabled the measurement of an atom’s frequency optically, and which also allowed for greater precision in that measurement. Titor’s statement is a 3-fer:
He predicts an optical measurement system for atomic clocks.
He predicts the new system measures oscillation and not some other aspect.
He predicts this new system increases measurement precision and not some other aspect.
“The C206 uses 6 cesium clocks but they use an optical system to check the oscillation frequency. This makes the worldline divergence confidence much higher.”
– J. Titor, Nov 7, 2000

1. Ginger: The most enigmatic piece of evidence and what originally spurred me to look closer at this ‘confirmed hoax’ in 2010. In the very opening of Titor’s posts in 2000, someone asked three questions to allow Titor to ‘prove’ he was legitimate. Those questions were:

“1. What was the final death count in the recent India earthquake?

1. What is the "Ginger" (IT) invention?
   
2. Who wins the Stanley Cup (Hockey) this year?”
   

• M. Kolesnik, Jan 29, 2001

As you see, questions 1 and 3 are of the magic eight ball variety and are wholly inappropriate to assess Titor’s truthfulness. But we’ll extend some grace to Mr. Kolesnik as it was so early on in their discourse. And Titor demurred on answering these two questions anyway. He refused to answer the first question because he claimed he simply didn’t know. And he refused to answer the third question because he felt it to be unfair for someone to earn money using his information (pointing to a larger context of rules by which they operate).
But, the middle question, ‘…what is Ginger…’ did not violate either of those two questions so he acquiesced and answered it. He answered by saying,
“It looks like a sort of motorized scooter. What do you think IT is?”
– J. Titor, Jan 29, 2001
This answer immediately got my attention because, in 2000 when the question was asked, the answer was truly unknown, thus Mr. Kolesnik’s question. However, in 2009 when I was first looking into the Titor narrative, I knew what Ginger was because I remembered it. Hindsight truly was 20/20.
As a bit of background, during 1999 (the exact timing escapes me), a ‘viral’ marketing campaign was underway by an inventor named Dean Kamen. While never revealing what this new product was, the billboards merely asked,
“What is IT?”
or
“What is Ginger?”
That was all they said. It is obvious now, and was obvious even then, that Kamen was attempting to create a buzz for his new invention. Fair enough. It also explains why it was asked of Titor in 2000. Kamen’s ad campaign was working! People were truly wondering.
Now understand, the hype (and I use that term specifically) surrounding the Ginger ad campaign was fairly strong. Kamen predicted that his invention would reinvent how people moved about cities; it would cause their utter redesign and how they were laid out and organized. Big claims, to be sure. So strong in fact that Kamen was able to land a spot on Good Morning America where he finally revealed what his invention was.
In December of 2001, and live on the air, Kamen, with Katie Couric, revealed Ginger to the world. Ginger was none other than the Segway.
And what did Titor say it was?
“A type of motorized scooter”
And Stella says there’s nothing more to learn…
Get the Book
Titor’s absolute spot-on declaration of what Kamen’s invention was nearly a year before it was unveiled hit me right between the eyes. Eight years later, I already knew that Ginger was the Segway because I remembered the event.
Here was a maniac on the internet claiming to be a ‘time traveler’ and he correctly ‘guessed’ what Ginger was a mere 2 ½ hours after it was asked and 11 months before it was officially unveiled?
It was Titor’s statement here that caused me to look deeper (much deeper, in fact) into the Titor narrative and, after exhaustive research and extensive supporting evidence, I concluded that Titor was in fact, legitimate.
Now here’s the truly interesting part of this piece of the Titor saga: you can’t find this statement about Ginger online anywhere anymore. It has been scrubbed from online sources everywhere.
Now, when I first discovered the Titor story, I saw that there appeared to be a couple different versions of the posts and I just, by chance, found a version of the posts with the Ginger reference in it. I saw that some versions had the Ginger reference, and some did not. At the time, I did not know how to understand this. But I do now.
Revisiting Old Theories As I mentioned before, hindsight is 20/20, and that is especially true when discussing ‘time travel’ and ‘time travelers.’ So, it seems oddly appropriate to provide a few examples of updated information that only revealed themselves with the fullness of time after publication.
‘leader’ In Conviction of a Time Traveler, I found the following quote especially interesting:
“The President or “leader” in 2005 I believe tried desperately to be the next Lincoln and hold the country together but many of their policies drove a larger wedge into the Bill of Rights. The President in 2009 was interested only in keeping his/her power base.”

• J. Titor, Feb 19, 2001

And it wasn’t necessarily the full content of Titor’s statement here, it was those damn quotes around the word ‘leader.’ Why would he put quotes around a word so simple in its definition? In COATT, I surmised that Titor was referring to Obama at the time for a variety of reasons. Namely the very high coincidence factor between facts surrounding Obama and Lincoln. My own belief also was that Titor would not consider Obama as the rightful leader of the United States due to the known problems with his birth certificate, thus making him ineligible for the Presidency. Thus, Titor wrote ‘leader’ with those quotes around it indicating his misgivings.
Of course, here we are 24 years after Titor’s statement and 12 years after I wrote COATT, and I have now come to a different conclusion about the quotation marks around the word ‘leader’. I now surmise that Titor was referring to Biden and not Obama when he wrote that. Because I personally didn’t have a ‘time machine’ at the time, I never could have expected the dementia patient currently ‘in’ the White House and supposedly ‘leading’ the country. For anyone watching, it is patently obvious that Mr. Biden isn’t ‘leading’ anything. So, in the context of this and our current national situation, those quotation marks sure make a hell of a lot more sense now, don’t you think? This reassessment obviously puts a giant bullseye on the 2024-2025 time period for what Titor commented upon in 2000.
So, yes. I have reassessed this particular conclusion since publishing Conviction of a Time Traveler due to the slow passage of time and its equally slow revelation of Truth.
Gates Another interesting comment by Titor had to do with Bill Gates. Recall that in 2000/2001, Bill Gates was ‘merely’ the CEO of Microsoft. He was among the richest men in the world and many news stories of the time commented upon this fact. Almost kind of like Elon Musk’s notoriety in both scope and scale. So, as such, a forum participant named ‘Joe’ asked Titor for any information regarding Bill Gates’ future. Titor’s response?
“This I do know but I won’t discuss.”
-J. Titor, Feb 23, 2001
An interesting, if not completely unhelpful, answer. Wouldn’t you say?
Considering we now know how Gates has morphed from Tech Titan selling mediocre products to Farmland baron, GMO mosquito breeder and mRNA advocate and (alleged) mass murderer in India and elsewhere in the third world, Titor’s statement that he does know about Gates’ future rings true.
In fact, what was also a bit interesting was when someone later pressed him on any information regarding Gates’ future. To which he responded,
Just curious, why is he of such interest?
-J Titor, Mar 5, 2001
Considering what we know now about Gates and his predilections (his ‘wife’ deserted him upon revelation of his visits to Epstein Island), I’m willing to bet that John was naturally curious as to why Gates, of all people, was of such interest to the forum participants that they would ask twice about him. Coincidence? Or did Titor suspect a mole from a different program in the forum? Who knows. His curiosity about their curiosity in Gates is interesting, nothing more.
Conclusion And there you have (some of) it. A summary of some of the evidence documented in Conviction of a Time Traveler written nearly 15 years ago. The evidence contained in that small book has never been debunked or disproven. It has been plagiarized by some and ignored by others. If you were unaware of COATT and are a regular participant in the online discussions about ‘time travel,’ you should ask yourself why the ‘leadership’ on those forums never mention COATT. Curious, don’t you think?
The reason I wrote COATT in the first place was because, after I had done my own research to satiate my own personal curiosity, I realized that some people online were downplaying his posts’ importance in the hopes that they could dissuade people from believing in Titor and the possibility of ‘time travel.’
I saw this dishonesty and decided to fight back against it by merely providing the information I discovered. From my point of view, Titor was warning us about a very severe time in our future that would upend the status quo and was to be a highly dangerous one.
Taken at face value (always a good starting point), Titor’s warnings merited being taken seriously. Had the naysayer’s deceit been left unanswered, how many of you would have failed to prepare for what is just around the corner? You have prepared, haven’t you?
And yes, as is readily obvious to many, those hard times are right around the corner. Looking at Titor’s statements 24 years later and simply looking around at the state of America and the world, do his statements seem so outlandish now?
John’s ‘final’ words to the forum in March of 2001 ring eerily prescient now:
Bring a gas can with you when the car dies on the side of the road.
-J. Titor, Mar 23, 2001
It is my sincerest hope that my small book project (and the essays that followed) spurred you to think twice about the world we live in and take the necessary actions you feel you should to keep you and your family safe for the world’s awakening and rebirth.
As Ever,
Temporal Recon Share
As Ever

Hello again everybody. Today We have the results from the 4th Unofficial IF opinion Poll by Grenada Polling™. The only polling outfit fit to poll Iffers (and anyone else). This poll was taken from Sunday June 2nd to Wed June 5th. We had 36 respondents, all IF citizens. Lets take a look at the results:
Politics:
Figure 1: Political party identification
Figure 2: Chancellor election straw poll
Today we will start with the political questions. During this poll we conducted both a straw poll of citizens preferred Chancellor Candidates and asked them which political party they identified with.
As shown in figure 1, over the past 20 days the number of independents has increased becoming once again the largest grouping of citizens. The IF-ELSE party seems to have collapsed with no respondents identifying with that party. The Progressive Party seems to have shed several members with their ideological re-alignment with the center-center right of the political spectrum. The socialist/communist Working Peoples' Alliance has pulled even with the two major parties (Security Party, Progressive Party). This comes with the WPA receiving two centers, with the election of matanic1107 from Groveheart and the Senator Vulcan1776 of Withervale flipping from independent to the WBPP. The past 3 weeks have also seen the emergence of the Baller Party, a catch-all party that dominates politics in the state of Vanaheim.
For the straw poll in figure 2, newly elected Vice Chancellor former Chancellor Potato_King of the Progressive Party leads in preference for the next Chancellor Election with 18 (50%) respondents saying they would consider voting for him. He is closely followed by Former Chancellor and leader of the Communist Party ComradeSankara (yours truly) with 17 (47.2%) respondents saying they would consider him. Coming in third place is Incumbent Chancellor Gabe/Sunanic of the Progressive Party with 16 votes (44.4%).
Unlike last time this question was run, no potential candidate recieved a majority of respondents indicating they would vote for them. Several of the top choices in this poll are unlikely to run. The upcoming election could be anyone's game. Stay tuned for election betting odds next week as the field becomes clearer.
The methodology for inclusion in this straw poll is as follows: incumbent chancellor, vice chancellor, incumbent department heads, registered party leaders, active former chancellors, prominent senators, judges, and prominent former Chancellor candidates. Unfortunately this poll missed culture department head Frostwarrior, and a leader from the Baller party. This is due to the fact that the IF gov't does not keep an up to date public list of who is a department lead (or who is a senator). Private citizens (often myself and thejmqn) must collect this information.
Economy:
Figure 3: Economic outlook
Figure 4: Employment rate
Figure 5: Construction rate
In figure 3 it is shown that the economic outlook is potentially looking up for the Imperial Federation. Only 16.7% of respondents thought the economy was getting worse. With half saying it has stayed about the same and a third saying it is getting better. During the last poll 44% of respondents saw the economy as getting worse.
In figure 4, respondents were asked if they were employed. Unemployment is down from 32.4% to 11.1%. All categories of employment have grown over the past 20 days.
Lastly, we have a new question in figure 5. During this poll respondents were asked if a new building, farm, or structure was built in their state or territory over the last 20 days. Grenada Polling will be experimenting with different measures of economic productivity and this is one. Around 80% of respondents had at least 1 new structure built in their state with 20% not seeing any new construction. We will keep an eye on this measure in the future!
It seems like the economic policies of Chancellor Gidein and then Chancellor Gabe/sunanic have been relatively successful in pushing down unemployment and attracting new international business. However, it still seems that most citizens view the economy as stagnating rather than growing. There is still lots of work for the newly expanded economy department under Dept head ImmediateDescent.
Approval:
Figure 6: Chancellor Approval
Figure 7: Vice Chancellor Approval
Figure 8: Department Approval
Figure 9: Senate Approval
Next we have government approval ratings. During the past 3 weeks we have seen significant turnover in the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor position. Chancellor Gidein resigned halfway through his term while this poll was happening, Vice Chancellor Gabe/Sunanic moved into the position of acting chancellor before being confirmed as chancellor also during this poll. Finally, former Chancellor mat_Potato_king was also pulled into the role of Vice Chancellor after the poll closed.
Figures 6, 7, 8, and 9 respectively, shows Gideins net approval rating of 11.2 percentage points, Vice Chancellor Gabe/Sunanic's net approval of 16.6 percentage points, Department net approval of -5.6 percentage points, and Senate net approval of -5.6 percentage points.
Both the previous and current Chancellor have relatively high approval ratings compared to the former Chancellor from the Security Party. Though Chancellor Gidein resigned midway through his term due to fraying interpersonal relations with the Senate.
Senate and Department disapproval:
Interesting here is that both the Senate and the Department heads have negative net approval, with a majority disproving of their job. This is compared to every previous poll where both had high net approval.
I suspect their are two reasons for the unpopularity of department heads. One potential reason is an unpopular defense policy by an unpopular defense lead. The DoD has a current stated policy of pearling people who are not threats for minor infractions while allowing major threats to do as they will. Further, the DoD head Slothinasuit repeatedly involves himself in international controversy. Iffers generally seem to believe the best clicker should be head of defense, but this may change as the DoD leads antics continue to reflect poorly on the IF as a whole.
The second reason for department unpopularity is likely due to the fact that department heads have under the auspices of national security, embedded themselves in their positions. During the most recent constitutional convention held on the anniversary of CivMC, several heads went as far as to state that they were not replaceable. We will see if that is the case at the end of the term!
The Senate is likely unpopular due to secrecy and unpopular policy. The senate docket is not public, and many senate votes are not public. Some senators are appointed rather than elected. This has led to a situation making it very difficult to hold both individual senators, and the senate as a whole accountable.
To give an example, the senate recently tried to strip a longtime citizen of their citizenship over an obvious bit. The senate is also plagued by leaks, and has passed a number of laws of dubious constitutionality. The senate is allowed to pass a code of conduct, create a procedure, and appoint presiding officers. They have not done so thus far.
A variety of solutions have been proposed in the ongoing IF constitutional convention, including having an elected national assembly, making votes public by default, or mandating a code of conduct and parliamentary procedure. We will see if any of these become a part of the constitution!
Government:
Figure 10: Would Iffers consider a new flag?
Figure 11: Cultural Identification
Figure 12: Preferred voting method
Figure 13: IF Pronounciation
During this poll 3 questions were asked on behalf of the IF government. Grenada polling drafted the questions. As always, poll answers are fully anonymous, and 100% guaranteed not to be used to gauge your loyalty to the state.
Citizens were polled on their preferred election method. With most being amenable to voting via discord bot or via google form. A narrow majority of Iffers would consider a chance to the flag depending on options. Culturally around 64% of Iffers identify with their state or territory. With around 36% identifying with the IF as a whole.
Relatedly, I wanted to see how people pronounce IF. 86% of people pronounce it as Eye Eff. Notably one pervert pronounces it as Ife. This person should reveal themselves and face the music!!!
Conclusion:
The IF is in flux with new political parties emerging and old political parties collapsing. The constitution is undergoing revision and the economy is improving. Next poll I will take a closer look at the ideological composition of the IF.
If you made it this far thanks for reading! If you just looked at the pictures, thanks for looking!
until next time
-ComradeSankara