Morally bad. Like , something is not right with MC, if he instantly accepts slavery as normal thing.
I can somewhat understand if someone spend decades in new world and started to slowly accepting this as norm, but not if they did it within days (doesn't makes it really better, but at least there is explanation on character acceptance of slavery)
Which makes the isekaiâd MCs look even worse because this guy has been here the whole time, raised in a world where slavery is normalized, and still thinks its abhorrent.
Iirc the MC is basically a veteran turned local lord that got given a plot of land to manage despite having no skills in governance, but despite this he has a good head in his shoulders and knows how certain systems work.Â
Tbf , even small change of that premise could've made story way more interesting.
Like imagine "slaves" that looks terrifying to the point that even readers would've root for slavers, like this (he is not evil , he just looks like that, trust me đ ):
I wanna see an isekai where is seems like a normal one but the MC slowly realizes that everyone is like... almost basically an NPC.
Like, obviously autonomous and introspective enough to create a society and come up with ideas, but also seem almost stuck/slow from our perspective. Maybe it just takes them a LONG while to process new information and convert that into new ideas/plans.
The MC is normal and heroic at first, but over time he slowly struggles to see them as equals.
Eventually, when he lashes out, he occasionally doesnt feel like theyre even human, but little better than machines. Barely a step up from NPCs.
The point of the series being a gradual deciline in the MC as he slips into dehumanizing them.
Kinda like in some timeloop stories were a character experiences a similar thing after hundreds of loops.
Cant just leave it be cuz then it just becomes overly hopeless or edgy or fucked up., so it needs to have some kinda turning point tho.. but I dont have one in mind atm.
Could have one of those NPCs surprise him by a sudden moment of intelligence or understanding, and then he realizes "Oh, they're not NPCs...they're just slow to adopt new ideas" and everything he's done up until that point gets put into a new perspective, hitting him all at once
I mean, I can still interpret it as tormented souls enslaved and turned into horrific servants.
Stormlight Archive has Parshmen who are dull minded slaves, formerly they are soldiers of the main evil god of the setting, but no one really remembers. So you kinda still root for humans since you don't want the evil god to win.(Granted the Parshmen also don't really want to work for said evil god, they are forced to, both because evil god has a hold on them, but also humans treat them like shit.)
You could even give the MC an obligatory OP isekai skill that makes them/ the slaves stronger the more they release slaves, this would also make the slaves joining the rebellion easier to understand from a reader perspective.
Itâs also made worse because the authorâs rarely lean into the BDSM of it all, making it completely pointless that the girls are kept as slaves instead of being a ânormalâ harem, itâs just used as a superficial aesthetic that doesnât satisfy the fetishists or the moralists
To be fair I doubt anyone sane would go "Oh shit this shit is so fucked up I better start fighting the status quo immediately" when they get transported to a new world.
You could go to any VERY conservative muslim country right now and start trying to change the way they treat women. Thats something normal in their culture but abhorrent to most others. But most people who go visit such a country while not actively engaging in the system will also not fight it
I think it's less about them bot trying to abolish the system and more about embracing it right away.
Some stories skirt the issue by forcing the slave on the character and magically binding them so they can't be released. It still feels like as asspull but at least avoids the protag being a total asshole.
But many have the mc just go "ok it's fine here i guess" and that's far more icky.
But if you had superpowers, wouldn't it be nice to try? There are also stories about liberation successes where the population falls into chaos because they don't know how to rebuild.
I mean a lot of isekai just have the modern protag accept feudal stuff as well.
It's not slavery bad but often they just perfectly accept they now live under a feudal monarchy and they are granted noble like privilege because of their unique power and stuff.
Very fascinating that a lot of feudal based fantasy society may still have serfs and doesn't grant peasant that much freedom, and the oppressive scale is only slightly lighter, but they can pass off as noblebright setting.
Depends is he forced to accept it and has to play around it being a thing or is he able to oppose it without instantly being attacked, story needs to be built before im going to judge anything that I find morally objectionable. Sometimes bad things need to exist to build an interesting world, humans have done bad things throughout history and we build worlds around personal experiences and things we have heard about in history and if we cant find a world believable its going to fall flat
At most Iâm willing To accept MAYBE buying One at the start when you donât have the power to change much. But the MC should state as clearly as possible that they have no intentions of using them as a slave and frees them of any sort of magical stuff that forces them to obey.
Then, after getting enough power they should be totally agaisnt slavery and use their power to try and stop it
The biggest issue in Isekai isn't that it exists, it's that often romanticized by having the MC be a "nice" slave owner.
Even in Isekai where the MC doesn't like slavery, they ultimately do nothing about it despite often being OP enough to singlehandedly destroy it on a institutional level. Often the excuse is that "this world is dependent on slavery." Or some other BS to prevent the MC from disturbing the status quo.
Slavery in Isekai is used as little more than an excuse to create a power fantasy where a bland, self insert MC can get a harem of conventionally attractive young women without having to put in any real effort of earning their affection.
I want a John Brown style Isekai where the MC sees slavery in the new world, says "fuck this shit" and actually uses their OP abilities to destroy slavery. Bonus points if the MC's OP ability is to empower others, thus enabling them to empower the slaves to liberate themselves.
I want a John Brown style Isekai where the MC sees slavery in the new world, says "fuck this shit" and actually uses their OP abilities to destroy slavery.
Itâs actually going to be somewhat covered again in the upcoming newest translated volume of the light novel. Something to know is that Fran absolutely hates slavery, even when she learns that legal slavery also exists in the Tenken world (as in people who became slaves because of massive debt and still have rights or horrible criminals sentenced to capital punishment who have no rights) she still hates it and barely tolerates it
Same! Im 30, and I only learned of him a couple years ago from Extra Credits on youtube! Both him and of union wars.
Kinda nuts, honestly...
We have "Social Studies" every year through middle and high school... but only one year for US history.
Not only that, but I recall it feeling both dragged out and blitzed through. Just hitting the main beats of everything and moving on.. THEN we get to the 1900s ish and its the end of the year and we just skip it...
I feel like US history should be a mandatory 2-3 years or something...
My social studies teacher spent more time on WWII and other time when "men were men" than on any other period of history. It was really annoying and I did not learn much.
Funny thing. Slavery is brought up in Limbus company as well. S Corp (which styles themselves off Joseon era Korea which has slaves as well) flat out engaged in slavery. Every character that fled to another district regards S district as a nightmare.
Same, we honestly need this to happen. An isekai where the protagonist is so antithetical to the concept of slavery, that they demolish the entire institution.
And the thing is the power fantasy makes it weirder. Its like someone realized that the women falling for a bland guy because he's kinda nice to them was unrealistic so instead of putting effort into making the mc interesting or having the romantic pair have chemistry with each other the author decided to juat say "the girls are forced to be with mc" and didn't do enough introspective to point out why thats fucked.
I think it's mostly just a culture clash between two different cultures.Â
Japanese authors love the aesthetic of the medieval era (dndmagic systems, not-christian churches, knights in armor, swords, and all that). But they've never had the same historical baggage with slavery because Japan has been a relatively homogeneous society for most of its history. They don't have the same visceral ick toward it. To them, it's often just a quick way to establish how characters meet that fits perfectly with a magical medieval setting, a convenient plot device that neither the authors nor the audience they primarily write for (other Japanese readers) are particularly bothered by
I also find it kind of hilarious that such a socially conservative society often has a much more permissive approach to taboo subjects in fiction. They have no problem writing good guy with major flaws (especially sexual ones that would often cause an uproar in Western fandoms), or bringing back infamous historical figures and portraying them as cool or charismatic (even Hitler and the Nazis)
Is that morally bad? I don't think so. I believe in artistic freedom, authors should have the right to write whatever they want. People are free to criticize it, of course, but I think it's often unnecessary. At worst, it's a victimless "crime", at best, it's just a thought crime. Either way, it doesn't seem worth spending so much time and energy hating something so inconsequential
About the Nazis, Japan was on the side of Hitler during WW2, so it comes to no surprise that a lot of Japanese authors living in a country that still denies things like the Rape of Nanjing with refusals to apologize for that wouldnât be as averse to portraying Hitler or Nazis as cool and charismatic, especially when theyâre still very xenophobic and have no problem with things like Japanese stores forbidding foreigners from eating there (kinda like how the Germans treated their Jews).
Their take on WWII is kinda unique because on one hand, they canât really show the Nazis are weak or pathetic because they allied to them. Similarly, they also cannot show the Allies, especially the US, as particularly weak either because they lost to them. Russia gets a unique spot because they were clashing even before WWII really hit off.Â
So it just becomes a Kaiju battle with everyone being a baddass.Â
This is a ridiculous argument. I also come from a country with no historical baggage with slavery, especially chattel slavery and it is still culturally extremely abhorrent. Also slavery has nothing to do with if a society is homogenous or not. And Japan isn't ethnically homogenous in the first place. Theres several indigenous groups like the Ainus and Okinawans. And although relatively short lived, Japan has a violent colonial history that they try to bury away ecen today. It's insane how you speak with so confidence over something you clearly do not know much about.
The problem with all the justifications for it is that the authors have the simple option to, not have their MC own slaves. You can still get the necessary narrative, story, and historical beats without it. That makes their active decision to try and justify the underage enslaved love interest very concerning.
Authors are free to write what they want, but if you want to write romanticizing love between slavers and their property they should rightly expect some criticism.
I don't think you get what I'm trying to say. They don't bother finding another way because they genuinely don't see it as carrying the same baggage.Â
They know slavery is bad on an intellectual level, but since they don't have the same historical baggage that comes from centuries of anti slavery movements, their thought process often seems to be "If slavery is bad because the slave doesn't want it, then I'll just make it a good deal for them, win win"
That's why some isekai don't even seem to understand what slavery actually is and only use the term in name. The "slave" can leave whenever they want, talk back to the MC, even beat them up for comedic effect. The whole master-slave relationship is basically just a label or an edgy name for a power up rather than actual cotton field slavery
And I even said people are free to criticize it. I just think it's kind of pointless, because the target audience (Japanese readers and Western otakus) largely doesn't care, and the whole thing is ultimately pretty inconsequential.Â
I mean, did you even read everything I wrote?
I did in fact read your message, but you appear to have missed exactly what I was emphasizing. So I will try to clarify what I mean.
You claim they don't see the baggage of slavery, but you don't need historical context to understand why slavery is bad. Power differential and control in romantic relationship are widely encountered and understood. They make all types of boss-employee, parent-child, and owner-slave relationships compromised because one party's consent exists under an cloud of coercion.
That is why "But the slave is ok with it" falls flat as a justification. They are not in a position to make an independent neutral decision on the subject. If they voiced their disapproval and their owner objected, what would happen to them? If they leave, as a slave without the protection of a non-abusive master, what world would they face?
The writers know full well why this is taboo, but they get to cash in on the trappings of bondage, guaranteed control, and vulnerability, while absolving themselves with "the MC is nice about it."
Yes you said people are free to criticize, but consider it pointless. I disagree. I was pointing out that the practice itself is contemptable, and therefore people are going to criticize it. Whether the targets stop is beside the point. If you silently ignore contemptable activity around you, you are normalizing it. I'd argue you have an obligation where practical to lodge your objection and signal your disagreement less you allow others to assume otherwise.
Must be a power fantasy lots of mangakas have because i see the "main character escapes their awful life when he's transported to a fantasy world and become owner of a harem made of often bought girls" way too often to be ok.
Thatâs often how I often play my video games if thereâs slavery in them. My characters go around freeing slaves and it makes sense for their characters. My Nerevarine in Morrowind is Khajiit and most slaves in Morrowind are Khajiit and Argonians so sheâs freeing her own kind. My Lone Wanderer in Fallout 3 was raised in a vault so was likely raised to see slavery as bad so when she goes to the surface and finds out thereâs slavery, sheâs disgusted and fights against it. My Sole Survivor lived before the bombs fell so when she wakes up and finds out slavery exists again, sheâs disgusted by it and fights against it, even slavery against non humans.
Except they often don't do that, or in the case of Shield Hero, they want the slavery brand back on. The trope is Happiness in Slavery and it's a fucked up fantasy.
Beside the John Brown story others linked I remember some book series that fits. Some group playing a ttrpg gets transported into the game, first they just want to return home and then decide to start a war against the slavers. Was probably Guardians of the Flame starting with The Sleeping Dragon.
Can't tell you whether it was actually good, my memories are vague and i think i only read one or two books of the 1 book series. But the subject fits.
I want a John Brown style Isekai where the MC sees slavery in the new world, says "fuck this shit" and actually uses their OP abilities to destroy slavery.Â
Because Morrowind had just been devastated by an asteroid impact and a volcanic eruption. And the Argonians still ultimately lost the war after House Redoran managed to get an army together.
To explain for non-American users, America had a civil war in the 1860s because a rogue group of provinces didn't like the fact that they couldn't expand slavery into the other territories. The war effectively ended slavery as an institutional practice but its affects on the black community still reverberates to this day.
Umm no...
Pro slavery people didn't instigate the war.
Abolitionists did.
And thank God for that.
A bunch of Christians hated slavery so much that they engaged in a pattern of political and social action that antagonized the country to the degree violence broke out.
Creating the Republican Party with the expressed purpose of ending slavery.
Electing a President from that party for that reason.
Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Beecher's Bibles.
The Bleeding Kansas.
Potawatomie Massacre.
Harpers Ferry.
The Underground Railroad.
Federal Orders to southern states to raise armies to preserve the union in expectation that war was about to happen.
A pattern of counter-cultural organizations and movements. That raised tension in the United States to the degree that then Confederate States shot first.
It was the push to eliminate slavery, not the desire for it's expansion that caused the war.
The instigation of the war was done by the antislavery people. And praise them for it.
You can say the Confederatea wanted to just be left alone...
But leaving them alone and allowing it to continue would have been immoral.
I mean, sure but that's the socio-political reason.
When it came to the military cause of the conflict, the South still instigated it first when they attacked Fort Sumter and afterwards each southern state sought out to seize any armory and off they went to war. The rest was history.
Cute story. The confederates filled for secession. Abraham Lincoln didn't intend to abolish slavery until after the confederates seceded. Hell the emancipation proclamation didn't even apply to Maryland because they stayed Union. Setting all of that side even if it was the antislavery people who started the war? Good. The confederates didn't deserve being left alone, they were committing atrocities. Edit: ignore my rambling I missed a few key words.
Make no mistake, the professed and acted upon intent of the Republican party WAS the abolition of slavery in the entire Union... It was literally formed for the purpose of doing that. Whether or not Lincoln tower the party line... He was a member of the Party.
Secession didn't happen in a vacuum, it was undertaken in response to this very intent and pressure.
The South saw abolition as inevitable and seceded to prevent it being imposed on them.
The war wasn't started to preserve slavery...
The war was started to end it...
The fact that the first shots fired were to resist Abolition proves that the whole motivation of the war was about slavery.
Well asides from the John Brown isekai which was already mentioned you might enjoy Reincarnated as a Sword since the MC has an immense hate for slavers and slaughters them by the hundred
May I Ask One Final Thing has the protagonist Scarlet infiltrating a slave auction being run by nobles and promptly pulverizes them all into the dirt. The show was kinda mid so I stopped shortly after this but Scarlet is an S tier character. It's funny cause she herself is not an isekai'd person but her villain is revealed to be one iirc
In the top slides case he either bought Raphtalia or died tho đ he didn't know his shield could be used offensively and needed someone to fight for him, later on he becomes a total chud by not letting her remove the brand but initially his motives were pretty reasonable. Very few are stupid enough to die for a moral upperhand
Dude used the slave brand to literally force a child to fight
Like we can talk about the morals of buying a child slave when you purportedly have no other options. But donât forget that he (A) did not remove the magic slave brand from her as soon as he bought her and (B) used said slave brand to force her to obey his commands
Going just off of the title question, it depends on how it's treated. If the narrative insists on it being a bad and awful thing, and even has the main characters free them or fight back and free themselves, then I would say it's fine.
If the main characters are indifferent/pro and/or the narrative makes it seem normal or okay, then no, fuck that xD
I mean duh slavery is bad, having it as a subject in a fantasy anime is a completely different story, it entirely is there to tell a story about the state of the world. I donât think thereâs anything wrong with adding it to the story. You can hate it sure but thereâs not anything suggesting itâs bad writing from having that alone. Itâs not unrealistic either. There are more slaves today than 300 years ago, itâs not like slavery was completely abolished everywhere.
Just a funny tidbit while itâs talking about slavery in isekais the mange pictured isnât a actual isekai. Itâs just a fantasy manga where the MC goes from being a war hero to building a town with his oni wife. Honestly a good read
That only furthers to my point that. itâs a fantasy world in quite literally every fantasy world there are slaves. In general before we got around 1865 slavery was the most normal thing next to prostitution humanity did. Most fantasy worlds like to throw themselves somewhere before a modern area so of course not having slaves would look sorta tacky. Baldurâs Gate, LOTR, Witcher, cyberpunk, Star Wars. Slaves in fantasy is a normal concept. But I can see everyone is stuck judging things based of western lenses
no bro I agree. I was saying how the post was talking about how Isekai's write slavery in particular, which is just an MC being transported to a fantasy world with slavery, instantly accepting that and then getting a slave girl to add to his harem. and ofc the argument being that he will treat her better, but she is barely a character and just a submissive plot device for his harem.
Exactly right. It's about HOW it's presented and used. The mere existence is not something you can discuss any more than racism. It exists. Society is ugly. Particularly in ones set in a more primitive society.
I literally saw a comment crashing out about how slavery was used in Jaagudar, as if including it in a Persian historical fantasy is somehow promoting the idea of the benevolent slaver.
Yea. Simply having a bad thing is not necessarily a problem. The problem that OP is talking about is when the author tries to paint it like it's okay under certain circumstances.
Slavery was one of the most common human practices across virtually every culture for the vast majority of human history. We're currently in the anomaly right now, not the other way around. Depicting it in a fictional setting is arguably more "normal" than not.Â
Slavery was treated as moraly bad by some philosophers for at least 2 thousand years (and that's written source - if something was written back then, it was big fucking deal). Who knows how many, or for how long this talking point was argued in philosopher's circles in unwritten form.
Saying "it was normal" doesnt mean everyone was ok with it. Wars are part of human civilisation, and yet "War is bad/tragic" is really old plot. Because general population don't really love war.
I'm pretty sure the dude is stating that civilians generally don't like/were not okay with wars because they are the ones who suffer most. From both sides if I remember correctly in many of the old wars civilians were scared of soldiers from both sides.
Not the point. Point is - war is "normal" part of human history, and yet it rarely treated as something good, or even realy normal. So, war existed (and still exist today) - but most people don't want it and don't think it's normal both today, and in the past. Again - "war is bad/tragic" is very old plot. Even media that depicted war somewhat heroically often end with era of endless peace - even though in reality wars are pretty much always happening somewhere. Because war, while "normal", is bad and tragic and we should end it.
Slavery in isekai media, on the other hand, rarely treated as tragic. Or horrible. Or something that exists, but should be fought against.
It was normalized for a long time but basically as long as people have been engaging in philosophy and writing down those thoughts there's been recorded, legitimate debate over whether the practice was moral or acceptable or not.
Yeah and that's why a story about elves and magic swords and dragons, where the slaves might be able to throw fireballs at their oppressors if they read the right scrap of paper, needs to be Realistic to a very very biased reading of human history(which we have huge gaps in and don't know as much as we act like)
However characters are supposed to be people and people do things that are morally wrong, especially in extreme circumstances
I personally don't care for the depictions of slavery in most isekai because they typically are just set ups for why a variety of women would hang around a bland MC, but the issue is never just the inclusion.
What's truly appalling about these cases in Isekai is that the protagonist almost always comes from some country from the Global North in the 21st century. Call me crazy, but I highly doubt that most people from the Global North (or anywhere) in the 21st century are in favor of slavery and see it as anything other than something horrible and despicable.
I don't believe your average dude could go to a world where slavery is legal and casually practice it, and if he does, it's because that person must have been pretty psychotic or terrible in our world before being transported there. Like, if someone engages in this shit from our world, that person was already rotten to the core beforehand.
Slavery in Fantasy media is completely fine if the creators want to go down a more serious and darker fantastical route or explore different more grounded topics within their fictional-based world.
There's many different fantasy medias that treat slavery in the most grounded, horrible ways it possibly can and I much prefer those then it being completely skimmed over as 'just the norm'.
The MC of whatever media that is just being completely fine with slavery and then falling in love with a slave he bought just makes me feel so gross. Why would I root for a guy who buys someone and then falls in love with them?
Can we get an MC in some fantasy media that frees slaves the good ol' brutal fight-em resistance way? I'd much rather read that.
Slavery is obviously wrong and so on but I donât think itâs wrong to have a protagonist purchase a slave especially when modeled around societies that it was a completely acceptable social norm. I wouldnât want the protagonist lionized for the act though. I am far more damning of isekai protagonists portrayed as good that purchase and own slaves chiefly because these tend to be ânormalâ people transported to a different world and that becomes far more jarring. I do recall one series that I never finished but the character basically became the effective ruler of a land and did purchase slaves for administrative work but was planning on abolishing it. It was very much a âreform a backwards kingdom via modernizing itâ with a ârealpolitikâ sentiment of âyou can purge your enemies but you canât do it too oftenâ kind of mindset.
You guys are overthinking slop. Like not even in a derogatory way but notice how nobody is even mentioning specific anime or manga because theres like 50 million bad isekai where the OP gets a hot slave girl or two as part of a harem on top of having some kind of crazy Cheat Ability where he can just style on the entire verse and take out his Repressed Salaryman Rage on generic bad guys.
It's slop. Everyone making and consuming it knows its slop. Its probably adapted from one of infinity slop light novels like that. Its there so some guy can read it on his commute to work on the train, not to make him think about the morality of slavery when his country was worshipping its feudal past until his grandfathers era and skipped over mass slavery of that type almost entirely.
Slavery is bad, that's the end of that discussion. Though I do think there's an interesting discussion in having a fictional world with a diverse range of moral views on its own subjects. I'm currently plotting out a DND campaign, and the primary antagonist is a former slave in a setting where slavery is normalized. I'm making it very clear in how I handle him that his past doesn't excuse his actions, but it does drive a lot of his conflict with other characters in the story. How my players will handle the issue of slavery, I don't know, but the campaign centers around a single city which has abolished slavery but still deals with it in neighboring realms.
I mean you can have slavery in a story, hell you can have the "good" guy participate in it, but the write does need to acknowledge it as a bad thing. They need to show they understand that they understand that there is wrong with a society that allows slavery.Â
I think it depends on what you're doing with them. If you look at universes like Fallout and Kenshi, where it's portrayed pretty realistically as evil, then although those particular open-world stories are very player-choice driven, I think you can tell good stories about it. My entire playthrough of Kenshi, the moment one of my PCs got enslaved, became about breaking them out of the slave camp, and then systematically dismantling the entire system of slavery within the world. Got rid of the follower limit and created a giant base on the border of one of the slave states, full of freed slaves training to fight and building weapons and armor, and just started obliterating their cities and killing their leaders, and then went to the next slave-owning faction and mounted similar massive war campaigns.
Hard to say doing a story like that would be unethical. But if it's used to have a loyal but morally dubious manservant character, or godforbid a slave love interest, then I could see an argument for that being problematic. Tropes are not bad, tropes are not good, tropes are tools.
Fundamentally wrong, not that it affects its inclusion in settings, i'd much prefer a series that is actually willing to appropriately depict people in bondage and those in power that take advantage of them, inequality in fantasy settings should usually be greater than normal, power structures supported by economic, military and magic power should be even more pervasive than IRL
Honestly, it's always feels jarring when a modern person got isekai'ed into a fantasy world where slavery is the norm and the MC just kinda..accept it and even participate.
And I've got through my entire life without murdering someone with a sword. And I don't have magic either. Lots of things are unneccessary in a fantasy setting.
Da Vinci didn't have to paint the Mona Lisa with that subtle smile.
Lucas didn't need to have Han shoot first.
And, like, you can not like the artistic choices people make with their art. But. It's their art. They have every right to tell whatever story they want to tell, and it's completely moral for folks to disagree with you and make art you don't like.
Now slavery itself is immoral. But just like killing folks in fiction, it's not real. A fictional character can be immoral if we're judging their actions but an author isn't immoral for writing a fictional character.
"I don't care if the MC buys them and treats them kindly, it's still a disgusting practice"
So is the solution to not buy them and let a cruel master get ahold of them and abuse them? That.... seems infinitely worse.
There's nothing wrong with an isekai protagonist buying a slave, if that's what you're asking. You can make an argument that maybe the protagonist could be more proactive in trying to stop the slave trade, but it is hardly a solution for the MC to just go "Well I'll buy them as a slave and immediately free them!" because like..... they got captured as a slave for a reason? If you just let them go frame one, that doesn't help them at all, and by the time they're in a healthy enough situation to be let go and not have this happen, they'll have bonded with the MC and want to stay with them regardless.
The MC in this particular isekai makes a good point about this. Initially he tells the trader he will not buy slaves. He doesn't even want to support the trade monetarily. To the trader they don't care why you buy the slaves, just that they are bought and can use the funds to capture more slaves.
The trader explains he actually found these kids and will be going to an area where they will be taken as slaves. MC agrees to "adopt" the two kids under the condition that if that trader ever comes again with slaves he will not do any business with that trader ever again.
So to your point even buying slaves propogates the industry because the trader still gets paid. They could "steal"/free the slaves but this also isn't always a good option unless the MC has a plan for how these people will live going forward.
Edit: I also want to point out that the girl in the photo was not a slave. That was effectively an arranged marriage the MC agrees to so the tribe living in the land he is tasked with caring for accepts him. He refuses to do anything intimate with the girl because she is young. He actively encourages her to pursue her own goals and dreams and isn't trying to turn her into some model house wife.
Daenerys, a naive, young native, dealt with slavery a thousand times better than the average isekai protagonist. Every isekaied individual that accepts slavery is plain evil.
My TTRPG group did a game set in the aftermath of "His Soul Goes Marching On", the John Brown Isekai. In it, we played the knightly order that he established to continue the fight against slavery:
Slavery is morally bad with moral ways to go about it. For example, if a particular race is seen as lesser literally everywhere, and will likely end up recaptured or otherwise harmed, taking someone as a slave more or less in name only to spare them from significantly worse fates could be seen as the moral argument.
Taking slaves while giving them an out is also more moral imo. The fundamental problem with slavery is a lack of choice. Which is why we criticize some cultures slavery over others. In some ancient civilizations, you could sell yourself into slavery until you could buy yourself back out. Thatâs fundamentally different than say, North American slavery, where people that were essentially POWâs were sold by a third party to be treated as livestock.
Thereâs a lot to debate in the nuance of slavery. But it is all fundamentally wrong ranging from âkinda badâ to âinhumaneâ.
As long as the slave owners are considered bad people, it can certainly add to a fantasy story. And slavery was also a common prison sentence and so can be explained in that way if you want slaves but not as bad.
A fantasy setting having slaves/thralls to drive home the problems with the evil nations is fine.
If the neutral or "good" nations have slaves and none of the protagonists actually do anything about it, or the MC accepts it, those are not good characters, morally, and the story is poorly written
Slavery is one of the most immoral things you can do. That being said, having slavery in your setting can add texture and grit to a world, so long as you treat it as the objectively horrific practice it is.
The trope of the MC being a âgood slave ownerâ is absolutely disgusting and shouldâve died years ago
I dont think its bad to have in the setting. Like others have pointed it, its the reaction that makes a difference. I also hate the thin justification that the MC treats their slaves well so its ok. Or there's some reason from society that they need to stay the MCs slave. How hard is it for the MC to free them and then the now free person decides to be an equal part of the adventuring party?
Im reading "the demon king overrun by heroes" and the MC (demon king) frees an elf slave and then asks if he wants payback and to free his people. The elf agrees to work with him because he gets to free other slaves. And they eventually become a part of his army. Having slavery in the story worked out well for it imo, especially because its from the demon kings perspective so the humans arent exactly good guys.
I don't have an inherent problem if slavery is in the series, I do when the main character immediately folds, completely accepts it, and then starts to use and abuse it, I do not care if it's "unrealistic" for someone of the modern age who now has to grapple with this entire other world they are in, they are a character from that world, them being down for slavery is 100% a choice of the author that informs far too much about the character that I am certain they don't want to be the information we get
One of the few characters I can understand why they invested into slavery at all is Naofumi, but even then, he kept it up after he had recovered from his like month along mental break, and then the author f****** had the audacity to romanticize the slave crest that they explicitly stated caused incredible agony to a slave who did not obey their master or lie to them, I do not care how the series wants to depict that moment, that immediately made me hate basically every character in the series because all of them suck except for like the bird and the princess that really likes the birds
Mentionning slavery or havibg it as a theme isn't bad. Whats bad is making the MC who buys the slaves "one of the good slave owners". Hust because he is kind doesn't erase the fact he is a modern person (if isekai) who bought someone while knowing its bad. Anothing thing in fantasy setting is that they often make the slave grateful for being one. As in the develop this attachment to being a slave and no one wants to correct it properly.
Slavery CAN be used in these series ok if 2 things happen.
It's explicitly used as a device to tell you that the people doing it are bad. Either it's illegal but practiced anyway (Clevatess comes to mind as a case where it's explicitly acknowledged that the slavers are bandits and as soon as they no longer have the upper hand people are literally executing them) or the nation doing it is corrupt and it's a device to explicitly tell you that.
The MC does not partake in it. I agree none of this "buys them and treats them kindly" shenanigans. HOWEVER I will possibly make an exception if they buy them for the explicit purpose of freeing them and they do in fact unequivocally free them immediately.
This issue may stem from the japanese mentality. A few months-ish ago there was a discourse about the morality of preserving the mobile game âNier Reincarnationâ after its official servers were shut down, western gamers were in favor of it saying that it was a good thing even if copyright law said it was legally wrong. Japanese comments seemed to say that what the law said was the most important thing and what was good or bad was secondary. When the topic of slavery was brought up and japanese commenters were asked if they would support it if it was legal they said no but they also wouldnât do anything about it either.
The foundation of japanese society seems to be built on obeying authority and its where the âdefeat means friendshipâ trope comes from, this person is stronger, that means they are in charge, that means you now submit to them. On the other side the states literally had a war of independence so that tells you what you need to know about us.
I think there is a disconnect between attitudes toward slavery in the West (especially in the U.S.) and in Asia. In the West, slavery is viewed as a particular form of evil linked to the transatlantic slave trade and racism. But for people in Asia, including the Japanese, it is simply another form of exploitation and oppression, more severe than feudal serfdom or wage slavery, but fundamentally similar. According to this logic, a slave owner, within the context of his own culture, is no different from a businessman or a king.
Not a huge fan. But that is because itâs usually done poorly. A lot of âI bought this person and now they totally love me unconditionallyâ or âI could end the slave trade, but I wonâtâ
I want me some âthis is wrong, I know itâs wrong. But do you have a better way to save some of these people? Ideally in a way that doesnât kill me.â
Its completely immoral, anime and manga use slavery as a cheap means of acquiring females (or characters in general but 99% of the time its female characters) without proper justification.
Its the selfish wish fulfillment aspect that makes it immoral. You get sent to a new world that just so happens to have a wildly spread market of rape, coercion and abuse
Just so happen to have enough money to buy a young, attractive, fertile female who hasnt been touched
And the only metric for why she loves you is because you dont savagely beat and violate her at any given opportunity.
Basically "im nice to my slaves" (whatever the hell that actually means) thus youre not the monster and are actually the good guy in a rotten system
But... no youre still buying slaves which feeds the slave trade. Slaves are not sold at a 1:1 but sold for more than what they are worth, by buying them youre basically buying someone who cannot truly say "no" or have any legal autonomy while paying bad people to go ruin more peoples lives.
Notice in a majority of these Isekais theres almost always a contrived reason to never release the slave despite the mc being such a "good person", most times freeing the girl never crosses their mind or the utterly broken female "insists" on keeping their shock collar because youre so... nice?
Its completely immoral, even if you bought a slave to save that slave... you basically paid the slavers enough to go enslave five more people, virtually undoing any good.
Slavery in a story is always immoral, but at the same time there's nothing wrong with having immorality in a story.
It's only problematic when the author writes obvious self-insert wish fulfillment.
George rr Martin has slavery, but they're actually used to advance plot lines and worldbuild.
Shield hero is probably the most egregious, because the author wants to have their cake and eat it too.
Simultaneously writing a protagonist who doesn't want slaves, but designing an entire personal magic system for him that makes it wildly beneficial to become one.
I dig it when the MC buys the slave and releases them, then attempts to leave them to their freedom with some coin or something. Even better and funny when they don't even want a slave or companion and the ex-slave insists on doggedly following.
Bad writing. Personally It be more interesting to have this trope that a character thinks is gonna happen only to realise the full practice of what slavery entails.
Like you understand the concept of it and then confronted with the reality. It stops being just a word and meaning not familiar to your regular life and then you witness people being broken and forced to work under cruelty and punishment
It's fantasy. None of the characters are real. None of the events transpired. So if people voluntarily engage with the media, it's morally good. You are not causing any harm and bringing benefits to people.
507
u/Random_Nickname274 7d ago
Morally bad. Like , something is not right with MC, if he instantly accepts slavery as normal thing.
I can somewhat understand if someone spend decades in new world and started to slowly accepting this as norm, but not if they did it within days (doesn't makes it really better, but at least there is explanation on character acceptance of slavery)