Speaking as an American who has studied the civil war all throughout my school years, this trope infuriates me to no end. There is no such thing as a kind slave master because slavery itself is cruel and inhumane. PEOPLE ARE NOT PROPERTY!
Naofumi (Shield Hero): Prime example of this trope. He enslaves multiple (underage) girls and an whole village and the fans still say he's a hero.
Rudeus (Jobless Reincarnation): As if being a pedo wasn't bad enough he had to buy a slave in season 2. Worse is that people still defend his actions.
Song of The South (Disney): Possibly the OG example of this trope. And the reason why Disney will never release it again.
Yup! The first villain was a Japanese incel named Watanabe Generico or something. The stereotypical fat net dweller who blames women for rejecting him (overlooking his poor manners and hygiene) who gets transported to another world, becomes an OP "hero" and buys a slave to satiated his incel fantasy. He doesn't get far because John Brown shanks him and frees the slave.
Other villains include a far right pro slavery, pro conservative, racist, internet troll who ran a maid cafe with slaves, a korean corporate slave who's online gamer and xenophobic ultra nationalistic and a chinese cultivator. All of them are basically belong to frine and extreme groups in modern times.
A man so hardcore that even a great man like Frederick Douglass gave him props for being such a strong beacon for the cause. That's high fucking praise.
Ketil, form Vinland Saga, is a fun subversion of this trope. He is presented exactly that way, he buys slaves but is overall a good man and lets his slaves buy back their freedom through their work, which is a lot more than everyone else does, but the events turn and we find out what the mangaka wanted to tell us. There isn't such a thing as a good person that hurts others.
Yeah it’s a great subversion of the whole idea of a “good” master. Because no matter how nice he is about it, his slaves aren’t his friends, they’re his property. And when push comes to shove that’s how he ultimately treats them
That's what he wants you to think. Yeah sverkel has a lot of pride as a farmer and he gives that as a reason to dislike slavery, and its definitely a big part of it, but it's clear that there's a lot sverkel is hiding emotionally, which he as a supposed brutal hyper-masculine Norseman in the 1000's doesn't want to admit, which is basically the entire theme of the series. He's clearly very caring when it comes down to it.
Tldr; he's too stubborn to say he cares about the well-being of slaves but he surely does.
His dad has some authority but the owner of the Farm now is Ketil; the dad really only owns his personal room and adjacent farm. Think of it like having a King and a retired King. The later no longer has official power over the state but has historic prestige and personal connections.
Yea Ketil and Vinland saga perfectly shows the entire problem of the trope. Slavery is an abusive power dynamic enforce by the threat of violence. Ketil might seem like a kind master but he was sleeping with one of his slaves and would never allow her to leave and when she tried, well we know how that went.
Yeah. People are making an mistake of taking an issue with him being a "kind slave owner" when the story is focusing more on the institution being fundamentally abusive, no matter who wields it.
Wait… I can be wrong on this one, but didn’t Vikings generally had a tradition that their Thralls could buy back their freedom? I never watched Vinland Saga, but it sounds more like he follows his culture traditions, than being a nice person himself
They could but like with the end of the civil war in the states, not everyone agreed to that ruling and kept doing what they did. Thorfin and Einer could buy their freedom back in the show after X amount of labor. They're both two strong young men, so the investment was worth it since thyd be on their way in a couple years and done. Their master being overall relatively kind compared to other Nords they've dealt with. But not the female slaves are stuck and keep living their lives as slaves they could rape whenever. Ketil being the one that repeatedly harms them to incredibly tragic ends.
Almost every culture with slavery has some rule like that, but it isn't usually followed a lot. I'm brazilian, when there was slavery in Brazil people in fact could buy back their freedom, but, well, not a lot of them really could.
Done well in vinland saga where despite the slaveowner being technically kind, the anime goes into how he's still treating them inhumanely by nature of them being slaves. Also, we get a moment where he's strong armed by the king even though he's morally right, and the poorer people in the village are like "yeah, you're right here but there have been many instances when dealing with us where you were morally in the wrong but you used your wealth to get your way"
What I like about this portrayal in Vinland saga is also how it reveals that his supposed kindness is a mask. Everything he does is for selfish reasons and the moment things start not going his way, he completely lets his cruelty take over
Yep, exactly. And of course there's the woman he basically uses as his bang maid and thinks she genuinely loves him like he loves her not realizing the power dynamics make it so she can't really say no if she wanted to, making her consent not real either
Thomas Jefferson. Yeah he said he thought slavery was bad but that didn't stop him from owning slaves. And don't give me that whole "he inherited them" crap. If that was the case why didn't he just let them go?
I enjoyed Epic Rap Battles of History's depiction of Jefferson, where Frederick Douglass tears him a new asshole over his slavery and hypocrisy, and Jefferson's entire second verse is an apology that Douglass rejects because he never freed his slaves
Marx absolutely eviscerated Ford ngl. I don’t know how you can really respond to “You controlled what your workers could think, drink, and eat, and when they marched for better wages, shot them dead in the street”
I agree. Most of Ford’s lines were car puns and calling Marx dirty and lazy, with his strongest bar talking about Mao and Stalin liking Marx. Pointing out that Ford was literally given a shout out by Hitler in his manifesto took away his only major ammo. The rest of his verses just twisted the knife even further.
When he was dying of throat cancer and worried about leaving his family destitute after his business partner defrauded him, he started writing an autobiography, but was worried about finishing it in time before his body finished deteriorating.
The solution? Use cocaine to push through the pain and crank out 10,000+ words a day until it was finished. It worked, becoming one of the best selling books of the 19th century, securing the equivalent of millions in royalties for his family, and Grant died a week after completing it.
The fact a former commander of the entire army, the man who won the civil war, and 2 term president was in deep severe poverty towards the end of his life is so crazy to me.
For someone more contemporary to Jefferson, there’s Franklin, who did a complete 180° with his views on slavery becoming a diehard abolitionists in his 70’s after visiting a school for black children.
Grant was a good man. He did what he could to advance civil rights during his presidency, and was one of the few US presidents who tried to "peacefully" assimilate the Natives instead of exterminating them outright like Jackson.
Meanwhile "good Confederate" Robert E Lee constantly used his own poor financial status (because he was a shit businessman) to excuse his inherited slaveholding in violation of the will of his wife's father (which required emancipation). It was a delightful bit of irony that the US Government annexed his plantation for the purpose of establishing Arlington Cemetery.
Also despite the attempts to paint him as a “kind” slave owner the due managed to make it into the newspaper for how badly he beat a slave that tried to escape.
Thomas Jefferson had more than SIX HUNDRED slaves over the years. He freed, in total, 7 people, five of them only coming after his dead. Sally Hemmings, the woman he raped and impregnated multiple times, was not one of them. The slaves he had when he died? They got sold off piecemeal, splitting up relationships and families with around 200 being sold.
It actually annoys me whenever people try and go "oh but slavery was so common back then!" because it's very much ignorant of the reality. Three of the founding fathers didn't own slaves, those being John Adams, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Paine. Benjamin Franklin owned slaves when he was younger, but eventually realized how bad the whole system was and proceeded to free his slaves and become president of an abolitionist society. Some of his own contemporaries disagreed on the matter and were staunchly anti-slavery. They put their money where their mouths were, but he simply sat back and reaped the benefits while saying "oh it's actually super bad tho."
Bro built a house with hidden compartments that allowed slaves to do literally everything without being seen. He wrote extensively about how they were inferior, and could not stop raping slave girls, all on the basis of “I oppose slavery in principle but I’m not giving up my money lol”
And something that adds to the horror is that Sally Hemings was Martha Jefferson’s (Thomas’ wife’s) half-sister, herself the product of Jefferson’s father-in-law raping a woman he enslaved. So it is very feasible that Jefferson predated on her because he wanted a substitute for his dead wife.
Sally Hemings was likely the product of two previous generations of rape.
According to the oral history of the Hemings family, her black grandmother had been raped by a white sailor, leading to Betty Hemings, who was herself raped by John Wayles (the father of Thomas Jefferson’s wife), leading to Sally.
Jefferson was pretty irresponsible with his money, honestly. He got loans and people thought he was good for them, but he, uh. He spent a lot of money messing around with experiments on his property, and died with a lot of debt.
Also, General Lafeyette (a la the French Revolution) was very disappointed in Jefferson for having slaves, according to a witness of the conversation (the carriage driver)
Tbh the saying slavery was bad actually kinda worsens my view of him. Like it’s one thing to passively, unthinkingly participate in a system that is thoroughly engrained in society and you were probably indoctrinated to believe was right. It doesn’t necessarily make you not a bad person, but it’s a mitigating factor.
It’s a whole different ball game if you recognize that a system is evil and choose to continue to participate at the highest level. Jefferson wasn’t poor man. He could have lived perfectly comfortably without owning people because it
John Adams isn’t a perfect person and was definitely not a good president but he was an absolute real one when it came to slavery and fighting against it. If he had his way it would’ve been outlawed in the constitution. His son was an abolitionist champion as well.
https://giphy.com/gifs/Fkg6fI0hsngIM
Harry Potter inherits Kreacher the house elf from Sirius and treats him "nicely" (and one of the last thoughts he has in Deathly Hallows is that he wants Kreacher to make him a sandwich)
Poor worldbuilding all around, it would have been better if either "only proper bastards like the Malfoys own them" or "eventually everyone realizes how fucked up wizard slavery is and realizes Hermione is right"
Except the books spend a depressingly large amount of text establishing that most elves want to be enslaved and find the thought of being freed unbearable, with Dobby just being an odd exception. After Winky is freed she gets hired just like Dobby but instead of working she spends all her time lazing about, getting drunk, and wallowing in self pity.
After Winky is freed she gets hired just like Dobby but instead of working she spends all her time lazing about, getting drunk, and wallowing in self pity.
The exact same argument that slaveowners made for why they shouldn't be forced to give up slaves.
As a kid I kinda took it as dark social commentary. "Getting rid of the occasional would-be genocidal dictator is one thing. Dismantling the ancient institution of slavery is another."
There are several points in the books where it's noted that non-humans (elves, centaurs, giants, etc.) are generally treated as lesser lifeforms by most of wizarding society and that maybe someone should do something about that... oh, but not Harry, he has no stake in that struggle, why should he care?
are generally treated as lesser lifeforms by most of wizarding society
More specifically, they are confirmed to be criminalized and FORCED into a lessor status by things like criminal punishments if they pick up a wand.
The statue at the center of the Ministry of Magic has a male wizard standing proudly up as a women clutches to him for protection, as they stand atop a pile of 'lesser races' below their feet.
This is the same Ministry that Rowling later decides is fine existing as is. It only got corrupted through mind control and not because they fundamentally agree with Voldemort, and once Harry and Hermione get jobs there nothing major needs to change.
To be fair to Harry, for the vast majority of the events of the novels he is under the age of 18 and being personally targeted by a terrorist and said terrorist's organization, including being attacked regularly since he was 11. I'm not sure to what extent I would blame someone in the same situation in real life for having a similar monofocus when it comes to societal issues.
I mean, the wizards already got mindrape magic in multiple different flavors, if there was one line in the epilogue talking about ‘breaking the happy elf slave curse’ there literally wouldn’t be a problem.
House Elves are pretty clearly based on Brownies (including the clothes thing) but if you tried to mistreat Brownies they would wreak your house, then leave.
Everything in the Harry Potter books is either folklore, mythology or British stuff (particularly boarding school culture).
And if she had just kept the folklore as it was, it would actually make the story with Dobby better.
Because then you have the Malfoys trapping and enslaving a magical creature via some curse, which is highlighting that the slavery itself, regardless of any other abuse, is still evil and unnatural.
So the change that Rowling explicitly made to the elves compared to their inspiration weakened her story right from the beginning.
I mean, there were a couple of cases like this (granted, very very sparse) like Kreacher betraying Sirius because of the constant mistreatment, or the Hogwarts elves refusing to clean the Gryffindor dorms because Hermione kept trying to ambush them with unwanted freedom by leaving socks all around the dorms (which sounds weird out of context)
But I get what you’re saying. It would’ve been better if the elves were more inspired by the folklore elves.
This is a big one because of how popular the franchise is and how good of a person people see Harry.
They also bully Kreature so much because he's a grumpy guy. I'd be pretty grumpy too if I was enslaved!
This whole trope is just people fantasizing about how nice it would be to have a slave. Then they justify it through magic or biology or something.
It literally parallels real life. Of course having a slave was nice for the slave owners, people wouldn't have done it if it didn't benefit them! And sometimes these real people tried to justify it by making excuses using religion or biology
Most of Kreature's personality is just from being in a Racist Family that hated people based on Blood Purity.
There's nothing keeping Harry from tossing Kreature a shirt and letting him do whatever. There's no reason to keep the bastard around after the end of the series.
Ok so, devil's avocate here ( also giga hate the trope) .
In harry defence if i remember well he want to free kreature ( if only because he dislike him) but is forbidden from doing so because they all live in the resistance super secret magical base . kreature at this point of the story is on the racist family side and it's argued that he would just go to the other side and sell them off if he could so they "cannot" free him.
/ Devil's avocate out / still a dumb take and the whole house elf situation in the book is bad
He also decorates the shrunken heads of rebellious slaves that line the stairs with Christmas decorations.
There's a reason the movies and probably the show won't do barf since it justifies slavery including Hagrid who says the only reason Dobby doesn't like being a slave is because he's a weird house elf. And that's not meant to be the book saying how entrenched slavery is and how bad the system is, just unironic slave apologia.
The last line in the books is Harry thinking about asking his slave to make him a sandwich later. Bro becomes a slave owning cop because the author hates the idea of changing society, even the fucked up one's she makes which in any other story would have been a system the protagonist would tear down.
What I 'love' about the ending is the nonsense of Harry becoming an Auror....despite committing himself to ending the ownership lineage of the Elder Wand.
Yes, Harry, get into a profession where you're regularly dueling dark wizards when you already know it defines 'defeat' in very broad terms, to the point that conceivably getting into a scuffle with a random crook who disarms you and gets away may transfer ownership.
Great plan there, pal. And great writing there, Rowling, you really dodged that bullet. Could have followed through on the final book's themes about self-sacrifice without needing to outright kill Harry and end on a real downer note.....can't have that.
Ugh even at the time I really was disappointed by the ending, and that has only grown with time. Especially after reading the Earthsea series and seeing how Le Guin properly handled similar themes with Ged.
The writing around the house elves was bizarre in general. The concept was treated like a bad thing when it was first introduced with Dobby, but then later on the story goes “Actually, house elves really like being enslaved. Dobby was just an outlier” and the only character that had an issue with a literal slave race existing was treated like she was in the wrong for it
When you look back critically at the books EVERY human rights and justice issue is treated this way.
Poverty, police, government corruption, free speech, racism, non-human rights, etc, etc. In every case a character will sadly note that bad things are happening,. But Rowlings message is always that the system shouldn't change, instead good people should be in charge. Its why the books end with Harry and Hermione in charge of these systems or part of them, and people who propose or engage in attacks on these unjust systems are mocked or shown to be unrealistic radicals.
And then in the Cursed Child Harry is just as corrupt and abusive of his powers as a cop as anyone else was before him.
He threatens McGonagall with a ministry investigation of the school (which should totally happen just because Hogwarts is horrifically unsafe, but he isn't doing it for this reason) if she doesn't use the marauders map to illegally surveil Harry's son for him.
As someone who watches a lot of Isekai shows this is definitely an issue with quite a few Isekais. I’m just glad shows like Skeleton Knight from Another World exist as that show goes the opposite route and has the protagonist freeing slaves.
Theres a online web story someone wrote where John Brown gets isakai into generic fantasy land with demihuman slaves so he immediately starts killing slavery to free the cat girls
John Brown was a complex man, he was a religious hardliner in pretty much ever sense of the term, but his moral compass was unshakable, and he knew he had to fight to do the right thing
Otome isekai does this as well unfortunately, it’s the girl equivalent where goddamn modern day women isekai into being a noble women and still think it’s acceptable to have a “slave auction” arc where they buy their love interests as a slave smh. It’s so grossssssss
Doubly weird, since having the MC be reborn as a slave would be the perfect excuse for them becoming ruthless sociopaths like so many isekai like to do for some reason.
Tanya the Evil is a fun subversion of that because he's already a complete psychopath (he's a high ranking corporate executive who gets murdered by one of his employees he abused) before he gets isekai'd
I've been catching up on Ascendence of Bookworm, it's a fun and charming slice of life isekai. But it's absolutely crazy how hyper focused it is on child labor camps.
Like her goal in life is adopting as many orphans as possible and getting them to work on her inventions. "No one will take care of them otherwise" like idk, you became a princess in like two years, one of the most powerful magic users, and rich as hell from selling tech ideas from our world..... maybe setup social services or something? But she picks up the abused 6 year old off the ground, tells them "those who do not work shall not eat", and gives them a job in a dingy workshop.
Isekai and slavery apologia go hand in hand at this point and I’m fucking tired of it, especially when it’s always a goddamned European medieval setting as if Korea didn’t have the longest unbroken chain of slavery on the planet.
I'm tired of medieval fantasy Isekai, there is so many ways to make a setting more interesting than just copy pasting every RPG ever, like at least make the sky green and the grass red for the sake of variety.
Even within fantasy there's so much room for ACTUAL VARIETY. Like the
PRINCE OF ALTDORF, ELECTOR COUNT OF REIKLAND, WIELDER OF GHAL MORAZ, ELECTED EMPEROR OF THE EMPIRE OF MAN, KARL FRANZ, SIGMAR AND ULRIC'S WILL MANIFEST!!
Ever since I saw it as a kid, I didn’t understand why they didn’t just agree on: “Hey, I’ll free you, and then when you’re free could you fulfill what my last wish would have been?” Genie still had his powers after he was freed.
The sequel film (if you want to acknowledge it) does indeed confirm that Genie's power, although still very impressive, is far less powerful after he's been freed.
Well, he technically doesn't. Any slaves that might have been part of the procession were created by Genies magic and were most certainly not real. But, yes, that part did not age well, but in context it was to show how affluent he was.
To be completely fair, Uncle Remus in Song of the South isn't a slave, the film is set after the Civil War. Part of the plot is that he's nearly forced to leave to seek employment elsewhere. If he were a slave, he wouldn't even be allowed to leave.
His actor was even in favour of empathising more in the script that he was a free man to ensure there was no confusion, but the director wasn't interested.
The film isn't released anymore cause it simply hasn't aged well in other areas.
IMO the fact that Disney hasn’t released it is largely to blame for the film’s reputation. It definitely has problems but it’s not as bad as people imagine. Disney’s trademark levity just isn’t appropriate for characters who were formerly enslaved. If the film were edited down to just the animated parts I feel it would be a bit more palatable.
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah is catchy tho. The only reason I know it exists (and that movie) is it was in some Disney sing-along VHS I sometimes watched when I was very young.
It's interesting to hear the actor wanted more emphasis on that fact, because I remember watching it and thinking they did a poor job of making it clear that it was set after the civil war. Memory is fuzzy, but I think a title card at the beginning says the year its set, but you would have to know when the civil war ended for that to help. (Being english, I have little knowledge of civil war dates)
Uncle Remus was not enslaved. There was no kindly slaveowner in the movie. He was a sharecropper in the the post-civil war South. The movie still glossed over the racist violence he would have faced, and it was generally filled with racist stereotypes, which is why Disney will never re-release it, but it doesn't fit this trope.
The thing with Shield Hero is it works early on because it’s not treated as necessarily a good thing. He’d been morally wronged and the only “companion” he can trust is a slave. It is quite dark, but there is a pragmatic truth to it.
… then the manga/anime basically tells you that “smactually, the slave contract is a good a thing and it’s actually the objectively moral thing and that the slaves actually want it.”
Yeah, like buying the slave in the first place was fucked up and treated as such. But it was more or less necessary for the survival of a lot of people. It's when the slave girl WANTED THE SLAVE CREST BACK that things went from fucked in the story to fucked out of the story. If they had just ditched the slave contract stuff after the first time she lost the crest then I think it would've been ok.
Is there some kind of magic involved that forces the slave to be blindly loyal or something?
If not, that logic just completely falls apart. You really can't trust somebody that you're forcing to do things against their will and them killing you would be the easiest way for them to get freedom.
There is magic that prevents slaves from harming their masters, not necessarily being 'blindly loyal'. This is why Naofumi only trusts his slaves to not betray him--he truly and genuinely believes that no one can be trusted not to betray him without magical compulsions. It's framed as a fucked-up mindset that he gained after being deeply betrayed by his first partner and the people who summoned him to that world in the first place. As has been commented elsewhere, there is a scene where the slave crest is removed from his first slave, and it's used specifically to show other characters that she is NOT simply serving him due to duress, but that she remains loyal without the slave crest and has come to care for him personally.
Which COULD have been a really great way to put him on the path to healing as a person, with her remaining free and loyally at his side, and him slowly finding more and more people who would stand by him because he's actually got good points that they like and respect. But no, the author decided that having anyone who works for him become his slave was better and found excuses to keep doing that, meaning that not ONLY is he perpetuating the institution of slavery, but he can't possibly heal mentally or emotionally from his severe trust issues.
Yeah. Basically the protagonists forces everyone who wants to join his party to become his slave because that’s the only way he can trust others and because the magic system rewards having slaves with stat buffs. He does this even to a child who early in the show was found in a dungeon being starved by her slave owner.
In all honesty, this could have worked if it had been done the other way around. Have him force others to become his slaves because of his trust issues, but make it so the game mechanics actually debuffs his slaves. This way, his whole party is actually weaker because he cannot trust them and is forcing them into slavery. Make this a character flaw that he has to overcome.
But no! The stupid story actually rewards him for enslaving his friends. His main girl is heavily traumatized because slavers killed her parents and abducted her to sell her into slavery, but fuck her I guess!
Harry Potter is literally the hero of the story and his final thoughts (before the epilogue) are essentially "I wonder if my slave will bring me a sandwich in bed."
Him and Ron even mock Hermione for protesting not just slavery, but race-based slavery, which gets extra awkward with all of the "I love black Hermione" stuff from JK when she was cast for the play.
Then, with her Pottermore writings, where she could kind of ease some of the issues, makes Hermione the Prime Minister of the Ministry of Magic and she uses all of her power to.... Slightly elevate the absolute bare minimum life standards for slaves. What a fucking hero.
I hate it, cause on one part, the world of shield hero (season 1) is really cool and interesting to explore. I love the political storyline and the rise of said hero. And in context, his buying a slave was an interesting subversion of your typical Isekai hero… BUT WHY KEEP THE “SLAVE CREST” WHY NOT JUST LIBERATE RAPHTALIA AND GRANT HER FREEDOM?? And the whole “this mark proves he trusts me” bs is… YIKES
It would have been SO easy to be like “He had to resort to some dark shit when he was in the gutter but now he doesn’t need that anymore” but noooooooo… The girls like their slave crest. They fucking love it!
I think at the very beginning it's a good subversion and can be interpreted as a result of Naomi's suspicion of others and especially the opposite sex.
HOWEVER, it falls apart at the moment when naofumi fights spear hero and Raphtalia is temporarily freed. I can understand why Raphtalia is fine with being a slave since she's devoted to Naofumi and never had any downsides of being a Slave but this should've been the turning point where Naofumi should've broken past some his issues and fully trust raph. Him accepting to re-enslave raph comes off as selfish and this is the point where he should've given her freedom as a sign of trust and care for raph's autonomy.
And then it's just starts sliding down the stupid hill when he starts enslaving everyone and yuck
The plot has to twist itself into a pretzel to make the spear hero the bad guy for trying to force Naofumi to free his slave (his underage female slave at that, when as far as the spear hero knows he’s been convicted of rape).
Dragon Age actually handles this very well. You meet a character (Dorian Pavus) from a country in that world which has legal slavery. If you question him on it in the game, he will tell you that his family gives them a better life than most, better than poverty, and that while he doesn't love slavery, he and his family are not really part of the problem. For an otherwise very relatable and cool character, this opinion sticks out. And other companions in the game will give him flack about it. In response, he does occasionally show the cracks forming in his attitude about it. During the epilogue DLC, he makes it clear that his opinions are starting to shift. And in the sequel, when you meet him again, he has done a complete 180. He owns up to his mistake. Admits to being foolish and naive. And is now working as a politician himself to try and make change happen directly.
Early Wonder Woman, admittedly, this is in particular is kinda different from most other examples due to instead drawing from the ideals around BDSM, something her creator, William Marston, talked about in his psychological theories while also being a strong believer in the superiority of women, yeah, this is a case of a person writing about “good slavery” who wanted it from the perspective of the slave part rather than the master, it’s honestly fascinating to read about.
A lot of real life slave owners claimed to be this. The only ones who come close to counting are those who either immediately freed their slaves or those who bought slaves specifically to smuggle them to freedom.
I didn't think much of the first time that happened until they undid Raftallia's seal and then she willingly puts it back on because "???" and then it happened again with the Bird Girl and I really had to wonder why they were doing it like this when they were happy following him as they were. Needless to say I haven't watched past the one season my friend had me watch with them.
The worst part about Shield hero's use of slavery is that they constantly give reasons for Naofumi to keep using slaves, like it has so many explanations for why they can't abolish it and why is beneficial for the MC to have every companion be a slave that it disgusts me.
“Campfire Cooking In Another World” was very quickly becoming a personal favorite of mine. It had fun world building and a pretty relaxed and easy vibe.
Then the mc learns slavery is a thing.
He immediately starts fantasizing about buying a beautiful young woman and forcing her to sleep with him as a sex slave and asks his personal friend, the slave dealer, if he can do that, to which the man looks at him like he’s a freak and says “that’s not how slavery works dude..”
The slave dealer explains that it’s basically indentured servitude where they enter into slavery willingly and work along side their family as if that makes it really cool and way better somehow.
Then of course he buys like three families worth of slaves and treats them “so well” by giving them food and housing and jobs they enjoy with no whippings (ignoring the earlier statements that you aren’t allowed to mistreat slaves) and as soon as it started implying that the slave family’s young daughter was falling in love with him (a thirty year old man) I just stopped reading.
Bruh. I just started watching this for a show to chill out too. Im only a couple of episodes in. Thank for saving me getting to invested I probably was going to pick it up reading it after.
I just don’t understand why slavery always has to be involved. Or if it is involved, they should just do what has “reincarnated as a sword” handled it which is just kill all the slavers and anyone participating in the slave trade.
To be fair you can still watch the show. The part I got to was way later into the light novels, last I checked the anime doesn’t go that far.
So you can feel free to just kinda chill and watch the anime as a single run and pretend it doesn’t happen.
There’s still a lot about the anime that has merits before the author injects his fetish into it, and up until that point it genuinely seems like the author is going for a plot with no romance or anything. It’s like he just kinda changed the character out of nowhere for one volume for no reason.
Honestly all it boils down to is that Japanese people don’t seem to have it drilled into them just how bad slavery actually is, they’re like blissfully removed from it as a culture, especially since they deny anytime they did it themselves. The natural result of that is that it gets fetishized.
Also men who can’t get women think a woman who has no ability to choose to not be with him is hot.
I think what makes this trope so bad is when you have someone coming from a slaveless society and into a society that allows slavery. You wouldn't expect them to try and upheave the society, but even if they don't like it, they don't have to engage with it themselves. Like, if Naofumi wasn't an isekai protagonist and just the chosen hero OF THE TIME PERIOD who ended up going through everything he went through, I would be more forgiving. But while Spear Hero was out of line, he had a point.
Yeah, I might genuinely like(at least remember kinda fondly) the anime around until the duel with Motoyasu, but even then I thought that her loosing her crest and choosing to follow Naufumi regardless would have made a far more compelling narrative for them onwards(Rapthalia deciding to follow Naufumi out of genuine respect and loyalty for him, and Naufumi specially having to learn to genuinely trust someone without them having any leash or being above them in any way).
Ginger Camus, from How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom
He inherits a bunch of slaves, but he doesn't want to be a slaver, so he plans to sell them all. And decides they'll be both better off and more valuable if he keeps them cleaner, better fed, and teaches them skills.
I give him a small amount of leeway since he was raised in a society where slavery was normalized - he's better than the rest - but he's still not simply freeing his slaves.
Since the isekai protagonist doesn't have the power to end slavery all at once, for some reason (despite implementing plenty of other radical reforms that changed society and already putting down a rebellion to cement his power), Ginger's method winds up being a transitional model to a future slaveless society.
When the UK ended slavery it involved the government effectively purchasing the slaves from the entire empire which amounted to about 40% of the budget of the empire. The US had a civil war about ending slavery. It's not just "some reason" that he couldn't just say "no more slavery" and call it a day.
I love Star Wars so much, but the implied sentience and complete mistreatment/enslavement of droids is almost never addressed (looking at you Solo, taking a droid abolitionist and Frankenstein-ing her into the Millennium Falcon). Luke, Anakin, etc. definitely fall into this trope: they're nice to R2-D2, but at the end of the day they claim to own him
I don't see a problem with a villain buying a slave. And treating them well seems practical. Its not like the show pretents she is a good person. She brainwashed a guy into murdering a young child.
Literally the only person who calls a black person a n****r in the whole movie is a northerner on the Union side, this movie was an unapologetic pro-Confederacy wankjob.
Shoutout to Harry Turtledove the alt-history writer, who spent an entire series showing what the Confederacy might have actually looked like if it managed to make it past the Great Depression.
And then had his OC repeat Sherman's March to the Sea, but during WWII and with nuclear bombs.
on the opposite spectrum there is John Brown Isekai, a story of abolitionist John Brown being transported to the world and his first response is to bash an adventurer with a rock and free the slave
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u/Akuma2004 12d ago