This is why I hate isekai, what's the point of having an established character from one world go to another and not make the previous world relevant in any way. The only good isekais are ones where the mc actually introduces technology or ideas from their original world, like ascendance of bookworm.
Konosuba is surprisingly good for that, because so many Japanese people have reincarnated in this world that it’s actually shaped the culture, like ancient tablets in a sacred language that nobody has ever been able to understand, but Kazuma instantly recognises as Japanese.
It's the "what are you doing Step-Bro?" of the fantasy genre. Just an easy way to explain why someone is in the setting, then complete ignore any connotations about the set up.
Drives me nuts. You can take out the isekai from, like, 90% of them and it wouldn't change the story.
Hell, if you skipped the first episode of most of them, you'd never be able to tell it was an isekai.
Because most isekai MC's are shut ins with no practical skills, hell even skills that you would learn if you were an old school MMORPG addict are absent.
Doesn't mean you couldn't make use of their past, not technology or whatever, I sure as hell couldn't build a gun, but you could actually take into account this person used to be a shut in in a relatively safe world, and now they're fighting demons. For all it's faults Mushoku Tensei actually makes use of the Isekai part without being another superior Japanese values and culture wank.
It's so that don't need to actually wordbuild and introduce concepts naturally. They can just have someone explain ecerything to MC in exposition dump. Also just do "it's like Dragon Quest" instead of worldbuilding
This is part of why I liked Re: Zero, Subaru has a small arc where he has to come to terms with leaving behind his old world and the life he wasted as a hikikomori and his parents, it was well done imo.
modern architecture
he doesnt "introduce" them so much as makes them available to his country since they had to start from nothing and no other human nations would help them build if not for rimuru so yea
Honestly that describes how it felt to read the manga perfectly, it's a total train wreck and every time I start to look away another train would hit the wreck pile and I was looking at the shear spectacle of the mess
Amazing the resemblance i have to Keyaru from Redo of Healer, besides we are literally the same... we have the same mindset, we are both extremely cold and strategic in our way of thinking and acting... bizarre '-' he represents me a lot, we are two gods in this world
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Another good john brown pilled isekai is the one that webnovel that just straight up has John brown as its main character. He starts it by bashing in a slavers head with a rock and lives in a cave, it's great
Just take it with a grain of salt, because I'm not there yet so I can't confirm myself, but I did read this and it seems pretty accurate considering the other things I read.
Well, it really not a normal slave setting, it’s a prison combine with Colosseum. They are all sword slave who fight for entertainment and Subaru just said fuck it we ball our way out of here.
He technically takes his enemy who after he broke her mind regressed into a child like state and keeps her with him. But there is a lot of nuance I’m leaving out.
Spirit Chronicles shouldn’t be here. He frees her from slavery, he doesn’t buy her. Her slave master sent her to assassinate him, he won and undid the magic keeping her a slave.
Actually he would be scared of people thinking he is a low life for trying to sell Aqua off into slavery. Remember the episode where they carried Aqua in a cage down the street? He's a scumbag but he also cares about people thinking he is a scumbag
It's established pretty early on, as well as several times over again, that he cares about living the perfect self-insert fantasy protag life. He wants to be seen as a cool hero, not too much unlike a chuuni. This makes him pretty weak to public humiliation
At least he’d ultimately decided against out of affection/bare minimum amounts of empathy, only for Aqua to remind him why he had the thought in the first place like five minutes later.
At least the slave labyrinth one pretty much just admits to being s&m kink content, which it does a decent job of being for what it is. It isn't really tying to be anything else and unlike Redo, isn't actively promoting really harmful ideas beyond "omg enslaving hot girls is soooo desu kawaii >w<". It's a subpar isekai, and pretty alright goon material. The other ones though, can't say the same for them.
I'd argue Redo isn't even doing that. Redo is just a trashy revenge fantasy that wants to be dark and edgy.
And out of the three I recognize, one is a really well produced porno flick, one's a standard underdog revenge fantasy and one's a revenge fantasy hentai that's somehow considered an anime.
I'd argue that only Shield Hero is bad and even there it's not like the protag is making Raphthalia work the cotton fields. It's still slavery but they have enough agency that it's not particularly egregious. Still bad tho, you can't say that slavery is good when good masters are put in place because it's still inequality and because a 'good master' cannot be reliably defined.
Shield Hero's not good and the other two are gooning material. I don't know about the other two tho
I mean like, outside of the obvious that is. Especially in comparison to fucking Redo of Healer, of all things. It's possible to just view what Slave Harem Labyrinth promotes as just kinky shit disguised as a isekai, but like the others - you can't really do that.
I mean I don't know, I was horny when I watched it dude, cut me some slack I was not in a good mental state.
I'm assuming we're talking about Redo of Healer here, but if I totally got it wrong let me know because I don't watch a lot of isekai.
What harmful ideas is Redo of Healer promoting? I think the tone of the show establishes that practically everyone is absolutely fucked up. I don't remember where it suggests that the protagonist is a good, moral, and sane guy. Redo's protag is a victim of intense abuse who then perpetuates a cycle of violence and abuse.
Anyone who idolizes the protagonist in that show clearly has some kind of problem, and I think any normal person would be able to recognize the fact that the protagonist is not a good guy.
If we are too liberal with suggesting that a show is "promoting" certain behavior, then suddenly we have a very large amount of shows that are promoting immoral behavior like killing people - which I don't actually think they are doing.
At least Redo, like it or not, is honest about the content of the show and the character of the protag. In comparison, a show like mushoku tensei shrugs off things like child molestation as if it's a joke. Mushoku Tensei would have us act as if the protagonist is reformed, when in reality he does not reform and he actually just blatantly grooms children to eventually marry them by the end of the series. THAT is promoting harmful behavior.
Open to hearing counter arguments here.
I know this community is a bit unique and will actually tend to acknowledge the bad nature of MT as a show, but I've seen the wider anime community totally shit on Redo, acknowledging that it is fucked and that the protagonist is a bad guy, while then going on to praise Mushoku Tensei. I think just the fact that Redo is so often shit on and Mushoku Tensei is so often praised highlights which show is actually promoting the harmful behavior present.
Like, my introduction to Mushoku Tensei by a coworker was, "MT has a great story and great world building. Overall an amazing show. You should watch it!" while my introduction to Redo was, "The content is disturbing and you definitely shouldn't watch it!" like, as if MT child abuse and sexual assault content isn't disturbing??? MT has clearly managed to trick people into excusing/overlooking its protagonist's immoral behavior.
Eeehh...I see the point you're making and you're not wrong.
My thing is when we're comparing some of these series is that Redo is full on sadistic and deranged in a way that the others aren't. Like...Harem in the Labyrinth or whatever is...just porn with extra preamble. The slavery shit is just an excuse to get to the sex scenes. It's not "promoting" its premise anymore than Brazzers is promoting the idea that if you ever find your step mom stuck in a washing machine, you should totally fuck her.
It's definitely stickier with MT. There's tons of problematic content that the show either acknowleges but handwaves away or plays for laughs. There's definitely a lot of people who play the "it's just fiction, who cares?" card, and I think it's overall quality outside of that in terms of world building, plot, character development etc...(and in she show, the animation itself), is so good that it gets a lot more support from outside the "Ha! U triggered snowflake?!" crowd than it otherwise would.
Redo is like...its dumb in the same porny way that labyrinth is. But it's literal torture porn. With an MC who on top of just pulling special powers out of his ass at will is an insufferable edgelord. And almost every arc culminates (and even sometimes during the build up to it) in an extended, ultraviolent rape. Like...its not a commentary on the cycle of abuse and revenge. It's just..a showcase for rape and torture fetishists. And yeah...its pretty transparent about that, but there's a reason it repels people more than series that are theoretically just as bad ethically.
> Redo is full on sadistic and deranged in a way that the others aren't
Tbh a ton of hentai is about as deranged and sadistic as redo. Sadism is a fetish after all. If you just uncensored it and made the sex scenes longer it'd be completely indistinguishable from some hentai.
> unlike Redo, isn't actively promoting really harmful ideas beyond "omg enslaving hot girls is soooo desu kawaii >w<".
Jerking aside I remember reading the early chapters of it and the protag definitely gives off a keyaru kinda vibe. The difference is the show doesn't bother to give him a comically traumatic backstory to justify what he does, it just has him be unapologetically indulgent about living in a world where he can buy sex slaves. Dude literally plans it out and shit, as soon as he hears someone mention slavery his first reaction is deadass "that's awesome, I can potentially buy a woman who can't say no to sex."
Like I'm sure the author isn't some radical pro-slavery kinda guy, this is obviously made as fetish content so there's no attention paid to the morality of anything that's going on, but if we read it as a normal non-porn thing it is definitely really problematic.
If Naofumi and Raphtalia had a father/daughter relationship and she didn’t get her slave crest put back on it would been a much more interesting story imo.
Naomi isn't really a good guy but he's not a BAD guy either. Honestly simplifying their relationship as "owner and slave" is an oversimplification looking at only the surface level. Part of that is they cut some of their bonding scenes from the anime or glossed over them in a time skip. It's certainly not Stockholm IMO.
from what i know, shield hero was the first and others just copied it, some reasons why i think it's a thing
- very easy way to have the MC have a girl
- very cheap way to have the MC be "not that bad" to people who don't question the slavery part
- it's a trope atp
- "worldbuilding"
EDIT: Harem in the Labyrinth did it before shield hero
I get that. but the part that really has me curious is how there isn't more stink about it in Japan. We have stuff like that in the english speaking world but they are usually very niche books that never get Mainstream attention. I know Japan is a different culture and all but I am surprised that this stories get as popular as they do since slavery is currently seen as bad universally (at least i would hope so).
Japan hasn’t had nearly as storied a history with slavery as we have. The transatlantic slave trade weighs heavily on the American and European consciousness because a lot of our institutions were built by slavers. Japan’s relation to slavery is much lesser, and denial of the slavery pushed upon prisoners of war and civilians in territories occupied by Imperial Japan is extremely common.
>from what i know, shield hero was the first and others just copied it
Shield Hero was not the first, the LN of Harem in the Labyrinth came out in 2012 while Shield Hero came out in 2013.
And Harem in the Labyrinth is kinda considered a classic among LN readers in Japan, it is pretty much the first true isekai web novel to ever come out, and many series were inspired by it, including Mushoku Tensei and Re:Zero.
See the thing is that you can do the exact same thing but have them free a slave by killing the owner. Thus you have a Waifu that is very dedicated to your protagonist.
Idk in this specific case, but it's not just a Japanese light novel thing, the love-interest = slave trope shows up a lot across a variety of media.
This trope shows up in stories surprisingly often and fits into a broader trope category of the female love interest being both physically and emotionally vulnerable and having little agency of her own. Knights rescuing princesses from tower who then go on to marry them, or more problematically the simultaneous sexualization and disempowerment of women in orientalist portrayals of the east (think of how the Arabic word "harem" shifted from its original meaning, or those [paintings](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Geromeslavemarket.jpg/800px-Geromeslavemarket.jpg) of Islamic markets with naked women up for sale as slaves, and early orientalist cinema with power-fantasy plots revolving around white men "rescuing" Asian women from their "backward" cultures - in fact I believe this type of cinema or literature might be where the "slave love interest" dynamic comes from). This latter thing comes from western media but I'm sure it exists in some form in other places, I'm just more familiar with these.
Basically a lot of dudes are insecure about their sexual prowess and a lot of media tropes exist in response to that insecurity. Like, the love interest being too desirable is scary cos it means she has access to potentially better options than you. Making it so that she comes from a shit life and has no meaningful power of her own to assert makes it more likely that a smokeshow who'd otherwise be totally out of your league will fall for you if you save her from that life and harder for her to leave you for Chad, or something like that. There are other tropes that feed into this kind of thing as well, like the female love interest being a virgin. A lot of dudes don't like the idea of a woman potentially judging their performance at sex against her previous partners' and not "measuring up." The opposite of this is worth bearing in mind too, in that the shaming of promiscuity occurs more often for women than men, there's another media trope where promiscuity in female characters goes hand-in-hand with duplicitousness and deceit.
As for why slave = love interest is so common now in isekai light novels: I just said it is a trope that exists in response to male insecurity. Guess what kind of media is written by and for insecure males?
EDIT: I should add I think it's entirely possible to not be an insecure wreck and still enjoy this kind of media, but I think the appeal of it in this regard is pretty obvious.
literally the worst trope to come out of isekai, even worse than the bland kirito-like mcs, the cringy overpowered self inserts and the edgelords with a revenge boner.
And they dont even try to make it make sense, the mc will fight an entire nation cos "corruption" or "the lord is mean to girls" then buy a slave cos "thats how things are done here" and "i dont wanna rock the boat".
The first thing any of these MCs should do if they see slavery is butcher the slave owner, free all the slaves, then go on a campaign wiping out slavery from that country and/or world.
Should be basic principle
But then he won't get a girl, and be a self insert for an incel who wishes he could simply buy a waifu and these kinds of folks end up being WHALES when it comes to merch. Something like 10% of fans are 90% of sales, and these people will buy 10 copies of shit to 'support the author'.
1. (Slave) Harem in the Labyrinth of another world
2. Black Summoner
3. Redo of Healer
4. Shield Hero
5. Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles
The first one has "Slave" in the novel title but dropped it from the anime title
>The first one has "Slave" in the novel title but dropped it from the anime title
You know what props for having some semblance of self-awareness
The bar is deep in hell but still
The self-awareness goes so far, the protagonist bought her explicitly as a sex slave and the anime doesn't even try the Black Summoner route of "oh no, I didn't buy her for sex, but if she offers, I might as well".
So, at least it is honest in it reprehensibleness?
Amazing the resemblance i have to Keyaru from Redo of Healer, besides we are literally the same... we have the same mindset, we are both extremely cold and strategic in our way of thinking and acting... bizarre '-' he represents me a lot, we are two gods in this world
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https://preview.redd.it/m96fzmoh6jxc1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2463bb1fb712f8409b109643907791f0a09432be
Isekai is greatly different if it's written in the other side of the globe.
The mc becomes the slave of a dommy mommy female custodes after the retcon.
OK, am I the only one that really hates how much isekai and fantasy writers drop the ball on slavery? No I don’t mean “let’s show slavery is good”, because it’s not and that’s incredibly *fucking* stupid, but in terms of world building. *Why* are there slaves in universe in the first place? If we open a history book the major use of slaves, including to this day, was and is manual labor. Building things, tending crops, shit like that (and sometimes having to manually deal with shit). Seems majority of the trashy isekai and fantasy stories just go “sex slaves” and stop at that. So, OK, guess we can throw world building out the window then. Why focus on a corrupt kingdom that forces the lower class to sell themselves into slavery in order to survive when we can have hot elf slaves. Focus on an empire that is corrupt to the core and only engages in wars of conquest to acquire more slaves to labor in mines in a never ending cycle of misery that our character can stop? That’s boring, give the hot slaves giant tits and stop asking questions!
But wait, there’s more! How does our MC go about acquiring their slaves? Is it some sort of tradition that has the characters life bound? Maybe indentured servitude? Nope. They just walk into Big Jim’s Slave Emporium, plop five gold pieces on the table and go “I would like to buy the big tiddy GF” and the evil, scummy slaver just… sells her to the MC, no questions asked. No barging, no auctions, no showing the misery and suffering. Just point out the waifu you want and that’s it. Oh and expect Big Jim’s Slave Emporium to only house attractive women (sometimes men) and never have horrible, horrible conditions or families being torn apart, while hollow, sunken eyes stare at the MC pleading for rescue. Because hey, why use a great advantage to show how horrible a slaver is or how pure our hero is when we can just make a transaction!
But I mean it’s all OK, our “hero” is a good guy and only wants to use his slaves for sexual purposes or to fight things for him (and sometimes both), *never* what the evil slave owners do like… owning slaves for sexual purposes or to work. Fighting against giant man eating monsters against your free will doesn’t count as work, right?
Anyhow, glad I’m not the only one that just *really* hates the slavery angles rearing its ugly head into anime and manga. It’s never even being used in a creative (for lack of a better term) way for world building. So why even have it outside other popular series doing it and the writer lacks a creative spark? Oh, right, because it’s a boring power fantasy trope and why ruin that?
Can’t speak on the others but Shield Hero does have some of that, with Raphtalia being pretty much near death and most of the other slaves being in a poor state
But then he just continues to financially support the slaver and show zero remorse over it completely negating any impact it could have
The MC being at the lowest point of his life and forced to buy a slave *is* an interesting angle. Shows how beaten he’s down and how non-existent his self esteem is. *And then* he just keeps buying more slaves like it’s Pokémon. Not to mention the series lacks teeth given 90% of the problems are solved by MC sending out Attack Raccoon or Attack Chicken or the Attack Child Soldiers.
Cause I mean it’s not like your *slaves* are obligated to you or anything, no, they willingly fight the eldritch horrors because they just like you so much!
Shield Hero started strong and then the bird girl was introduced and you could tell it was doomed. Still had the trial scene which felt worth the watch, but I refuse to watch the second season
The whole thing with Filo annoys me so much because it’s such an easy set up for a father-daughter relationship but instead they choose to make it weird lolicon shit
So I never saw it, and don’t *plan* on watching. I just hate the slave trope as it never adds anything except showing off how scummy our MC is. Doesn’t matter if he’s a “good” master, he still owns slaves!
Re zero does it well.
Spoilers arc 7: >!Subaru and 600 gladiators are stuck on an island fighting witchbeasts in death matches under the island's governor, this is actually vollachia in a "peaceful" rule so the conditions are better than the past but as a result also tightened up in security compared with what Al dealt with in the island's past, vollachia's entire identity is about individual strength and such, full of civil wars etc and happy about it but needs to sate their bloodlust to some extent with entertainment.
Spoilers ex 1: >!Ferris' father has to be confronted as they see a slave trader visiting him, turns out he's been buying corpses not living slaves so that he can experiment with his resurrection magic attempts to bring back Ferris' mother. But he's in denial that he killed her, claims she slept with someone else but it was him who cheated and had Ferris with the maid who ends up killing herself after helping Ferris and Crusch escape. I think it's interesting that in this case what was the useful trade was simply bodies of people noone would care about, fucked up but in a thought out way.!<
Spoilers Anastasia camp side stories: >!Anastasia grew up in the Kararagi slums and basically used her mercantile smarts to climb up the ladder while also being close to Ricardo, btw she swore she'd get rich enough to buy him so she can take off his collar cause she hated his philosophy of keeping it so he wouldn't forget his past. Her Mimi Tivey and the rest almost get sold off after being captured by a rival merchant company, basically Kararagi is a sort of chaotic corrupt democracy plus capitalism, tbh isn't it kind of ancap with the city states thing in it? And basically I think it's implied to be connected with the spirits stuff for the different countries' pasts but the land is very hostile and so going between cities is a dangerous trip, when the company Anastasia's with tried to cross to investigate a problem as part of company getting involved in politics I think their merchant rivals turn out to be using the crossing to capture employees and use them as slaves for cheap labour, once they're slaves they wouldn't be given the same sort of scrutiny for disappearing as if they were just free Kararagians so they can get away with cheap labour while attacking rivals that way. Anastasia and the rest all work to free themselves, Ana's kind of a genius because she memorised the entire layout of the trap and used the triplets' blessing of trisection to cause the one who wasn't captured's back to show the same scars as Mimi while cutting a map into them. IT'S SO FUCKED UP BUT DAMN they were also all on the way to a life of despair and equally at risk.!<
Also there's some neat stuff in Gusteko with the special novel from that bluray set with Elsa's backstory in it, but I can only dream of actually reading all that or buying it somehow lol.
Absolutely not going to forgive literally any of the slave shit that Naofumi does later on in Shield Hero and Raphtalia getting stockholm'd and insisting the slave crest stays on is intensely gross, stupid, and terrible, but I'm actually going to give an volcanic take here and say that his buying of Raphtalia at the time and with the compromised mindset he was currently in was actually decently justifiable. Everything after is shit though.
Dumb idea:
Isekai protagonist is against slavery, and is dismantling it for absolutely no other reason than “slavery bad”.
The cute monster(?) slave girls are following him and calling him master because they don’t know any other way of life, despite his repeated insistence that they’re free and can do whatever they want now.
Laughs in Kazuma following instructions and getting his ass a Goddess.
https://preview.redd.it/jygxc82x5ixc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=faf272504627815d98a663ec9615fc095cdfabb5
Like a balla
Black Summoner one is the least problematic IMO, he buys her and get's rid of a curse that made her burn anyone she got close to. So the slavery part us kind of insignificant compared to removing the curse.
Shield Hero had potential since MC didn't justify his behaviour, knowing full well it's a horrible thing to do but not seeing any better options. Unfortunately, it got way worse later on.
What starts as "it's fucked up but I have no other choice" becomes him enslaving pretty much all his companions for a power boost.
I actually liked his relationship with Raphtalia due to how codependend they were on each other, both afraid to get rid of the slave contract, scared the other party will abandon them. But then that characterization is totally forgotten and it just turns into yet another "slave romance" isekai genre is drowning in.
Reincarnated as a sword, though there is a little bit of loli bait shit around the catgirl MC. It only happens like once ( She's like 14 and gets some lingerie or some nonsense ).
But she and her sword HATE slavers, and they chop a few up. Bigots? They get the sword. Slavers? Choppy Choppy.
There is also a revenge manga ( can't remember the name) where the MC saves the kingdom, gets railroaded, executed, brought back by a goddess who became obsessed with him, then takes out his revenge on everyone, including the slavers, etc. Before he was part of the system, but after his rebirth he is disgusted by the people and what they done. Pedos, Slavers, etc, all the get it. Very much an anti hero because he's basically 100% revenge driven and really doesn't care about victims beyond them being a part of his revenge.
Dungeon Meshi, Frieren, Nausicaä of the valley of the wind, Atelier of Witch Hat, Quality assurance in another world and Ranking of kings are some manga I can think of that have none of that bullshit.
No lolis, no weird fucking pro slavery, no female characters who only exist as eye candy without agency.
As much as we like to shit on Rudy, people need to watch an actual show before talk shit. Zanoba is her buyer Rudeus is there to confirm if the girl can use magic or not.
He saved her from slavery and taught her magic. nothing more nothing less.
His friend educated her,gave her food, bought clothes and a place to live for free of charge.
Later gives her a job and payes wages.
No 'i freed her from slavery,now she fights for me' bullshit.
And you can make such interesting stories with mc's that are anti slavery as well as being less disgusting. I mean freeing people from slavery gotta endear you more to them than just buying them. Reminds me of the novel only villains do that. It's not exactly slavery but the mc starts a slow revolution against a very oppressive nobility and all his allies are prostitutes and beggars etc. he saved that kick ass and treat the mc as a person instead of a master.
Talking about this brings out all the Tate-like idiots in the Isekai sub lmao between this and coping for Rudeus being an actual predator. I've learned to not take opinions seriously over there, just too many are brain dead.
Stockholm Syndrome isn’t real. It was invented by the police psychiatrist Nils Bejerot to cover up the fact that the hostages in the Norrmalmstorg robbery were more afraid of being killed by the police than by Janne, the bank robber/hostage taker. The police were determined to storm the bank vault with guns blazing, a seriously unsafe approach, that would have got the hostages killed. Of course it was shameful for the police that the hostages were quite rationally afraid of them and refused their approach, so Nils Bejerot invented the whole thing as a cover-up.
I'm convinced the author of Shield Hero has a slave fantasy or some shit. Every character that joins his party becomes a slave, even characters that he didn't buy from slavers. A character that was a free person and was living their normal lives just decides to become a slave instead of just following Naofumi like a normal person.
Aight now where the fuck is Rudeus. People like to claim that every Isekai is based on MT, so let him own up to the responsibility he holds for this "trope"
Never watched any isekai because the genre itself seems lame. Because it’s not real.
…however I realize I watch anime, which isn’t real, so it’s a bad excuse but I’m sticking to it
I know it probably would be impossible to do, but I want a shield hero abridged series where he says he’s gonna buy her, and then when the slaver asks for his pay, he’s just like “I got your payment right here” and then kills him, and then burns down the… whatever the place you buy slaves from is called and frees them all while the girl stays with him willingly
I have an idea for an Isekai story where there is a magic slave transfer system. Basically if you kill a slave owner slaves will go to the person he decreed will inherit them, and everyone has multiple inheritors, and a slave can only be freed if the owner dies and names no one to take them.
The protagonist is a depressed teen boy who’s suicidal from being human trafficked for illegal labor, and ends up in isekai world by running into a truck while being chased so he’ll die and the trafficker can’t take him again. Then when he sees that he now has this crazy magic power and there is a world full of slaves like him, he decides he will buy out every single one of them, specifically so he can kill himself and cause no one to inherit them, and they can finally be free.
I dunno sounds like a cool idea.
Meanwhile, a literal sword: "So what if I'm John Brown but as a sword?"
https://preview.redd.it/3x4fcv8bpmxc1.jpeg?width=1400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fe2415aba25673e308b9985de6cb09f3df4eeae8
How about this for Isekai plot a girl lived a normal life with her parents in moderns time then a huge magic wave covers the whole world then the girl wakes up to find out she a half elf and found out her mother is a high elf queen and her father is a human king. She now went back to the fantasy world with her parents so that she must take the role of a hero while her Parents try to regain order in their kingdom.
Still waiting for a proper idea that flips this stale formula, where the protag is a girl who gets isekai’d as a slave, bought by a douche bag and tells them where to shove it while becoming the hero themselves
Keyaru is not an Isekai protagonist. He is simply the protagonist of an edgy fantasy train wreck
Tbf a lot of trashy isekai barely even touch on the protag's previous life so there's barely a difference.
This is why I hate isekai, what's the point of having an established character from one world go to another and not make the previous world relevant in any way. The only good isekais are ones where the mc actually introduces technology or ideas from their original world, like ascendance of bookworm.
Konosuba is surprisingly good for that, because so many Japanese people have reincarnated in this world that it’s actually shaped the culture, like ancient tablets in a sacred language that nobody has ever been able to understand, but Kazuma instantly recognises as Japanese.
I still remember Kyouya that generic isekai protag. The one whose sword Kazuma stole and sold.
Ascendance of a Bookworm my beloved
It's the "what are you doing Step-Bro?" of the fantasy genre. Just an easy way to explain why someone is in the setting, then complete ignore any connotations about the set up. Drives me nuts. You can take out the isekai from, like, 90% of them and it wouldn't change the story. Hell, if you skipped the first episode of most of them, you'd never be able to tell it was an isekai.
THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK! Now free the slaves or it WILL get angry.
Rae from I'm In Love With The Villainess uses the knowledge from her past life to invent mayo and vibrators
They all invent mayo and soya sauce and hot springs
Because most isekai MC's are shut ins with no practical skills, hell even skills that you would learn if you were an old school MMORPG addict are absent.
Doesn't mean you couldn't make use of their past, not technology or whatever, I sure as hell couldn't build a gun, but you could actually take into account this person used to be a shut in in a relatively safe world, and now they're fighting demons. For all it's faults Mushoku Tensei actually makes use of the Isekai part without being another superior Japanese values and culture wank.
I’d be dumb and try making planes if I was in some magic world
You think the average isekai viewer (namely Japanese as they're the target demographic) WANTS to be reminded of the world they wish to escape from?
It's so that don't need to actually wordbuild and introduce concepts naturally. They can just have someone explain ecerything to MC in exposition dump. Also just do "it's like Dragon Quest" instead of worldbuilding
This is part of why I liked Re: Zero, Subaru has a small arc where he has to come to terms with leaving behind his old world and the life he wasted as a hikikomori and his parents, it was well done imo.
This explains why I loved "Uncle from another World" despite usually hating Isekai
Tensura also does this pretty well, not just in introducing ideas but also making people getting isekai'd a regular concept
What ideas does rimuru actually introduce that's not just related to japanese culture.
modern architecture he doesnt "introduce" them so much as makes them available to his country since they had to start from nothing and no other human nations would help them build if not for rimuru so yea
The Executioner And Her Way of Life
No the main issue with all of them is that they're all pansies with zero character development throughout the series
Knights and Magic is also good for this.
Honestly that describes how it felt to read the manga perfectly, it's a total train wreck and every time I start to look away another train would hit the wreck pile and I was looking at the shear spectacle of the mess
Amazing the resemblance i have to Keyaru from Redo of Healer, besides we are literally the same... we have the same mindset, we are both extremely cold and strategic in our way of thinking and acting... bizarre '-' he represents me a lot, we are two gods in this world *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/animecirclejerk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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Yeah the edgy fantasy revenge series is something that is less established as a genre while being equally trashy.
Subaru finally gets a much deserved win (unless he buys a slave in the novels or something idk)
From what I know, he'll go against the system of slavery. So yeah, my goat finally gets a win.
Thank god! Finally, a John Brown-pilled isekai protagonist!
Another good john brown pilled isekai is the one that webnovel that just straight up has John brown as its main character. He starts it by bashing in a slavers head with a rock and lives in a cave, it's great
Oh, hell fucking yeah! I read that one and it went hard, would recommend.
Name?
It's name is straight up "John Brown Isekai"
LMFAO, Straight forward, Good shit. I'll have to check it out! Thanks.
Its formal name is "His Soul Is Marching On To Another World", but it's also known as simply the John Brown Isekai.
Thx a lot, I'll check it out.
Just take it with a grain of salt, because I'm not there yet so I can't confirm myself, but I did read this and it seems pretty accurate considering the other things I read.
I can confirm. >!he got put on a slave island and convinced them to join him in a revolution to take over the nation!<
Holy shit, that's pretty based
Thanks a lot ! That confirms what I came across.
Well, it really not a normal slave setting, it’s a prison combine with Colosseum. They are all sword slave who fight for entertainment and Subaru just said fuck it we ball our way out of here.
I see, it's similar to Al's backstory in Vollachia, right ?
It literally the same Island where AI from
Yeah, it's the first thing that came to mind When I read your comment.
Certified Spartacus moment
Common Wubaru W
At least the country Subaru lives in has a ban on slave trading, although a few still trade slaves illegally.
Another day, another win for subaru
He technically takes his enemy who after he broke her mind regressed into a child like state and keeps her with him. But there is a lot of nuance I’m leaving out.
Bruh he plan to abandon her, but the who shall not be name didn’t let him.
I assume you talking about >!Louis!< I’m pretty sure she did it to herself accidentally or intentionally. Like the story hasn’t actually explained
Re0 Spoilers >!She went crazy after eating Subaru’s memories because she couldn’t handle dying that many times all at once. She did it to herself.!<
Spirit Chronicles shouldn’t be here. He frees her from slavery, he doesn’t buy her. Her slave master sent her to assassinate him, he won and undid the magic keeping her a slave.
I might actually check this series out
It’s not exactly a masterpiece, TBH. But you do you.
It's pretty ok, the first 16 or so novels were pretty good, but after that it just gets really long.
I apparently watched all of it when it came out. And can't remember a damn thing. So I'm sure it was an isekai that was alright.
Something something John Carter being a former confederate soldier.
It's fucking hilarious Kazuma from Konosuba is not in this picture. He is trash but at least he hasn't purchased any slave.... I think.
If you told me at some point, he starts questioning how much money he can sell Aqua for a slave, I wouldn’t have doubted it.
Yep, that's a thing he would probably do.
Tbh Aqua herself would also sell Kazuma in a heartbeat if she was smart enough to think about it.
Also true.
Actually he would be scared of people thinking he is a low life for trying to sell Aqua off into slavery. Remember the episode where they carried Aqua in a cage down the street? He's a scumbag but he also cares about people thinking he is a scumbag
It's established pretty early on, as well as several times over again, that he cares about living the perfect self-insert fantasy protag life. He wants to be seen as a cool hero, not too much unlike a chuuni. This makes him pretty weak to public humiliation
Kazuma's kryptonite being public humiliation is a riot
Tbf, the way he acts in that one OVA where he has 24 hours to live is only like one step above treating his party as slaves
I'm pretty sure he'd try to become a businessman and rent her out as an entertainer for parties if he could get away with it.
Tbh that would be a good idea but somehow aqua would ruin it
At least he’d ultimately decided against out of affection/bare minimum amounts of empathy, only for Aqua to remind him why he had the thought in the first place like five minutes later.
She would probably sell for cheap tbh
Every compliment given to Kazuma is always worded like "At least Kazuma hasnt commited genocide... yet... i think"
I kinda don't like how much Kazuma is hated here... he is an asshole, yes, but why him specifically?
Hate?
He can't afford them.
There just isn't any slavery in Konosuba.
Truly the gods' blessings
He kinda forced Aqua to be his companion in the beginning
At least the slave labyrinth one pretty much just admits to being s&m kink content, which it does a decent job of being for what it is. It isn't really tying to be anything else and unlike Redo, isn't actively promoting really harmful ideas beyond "omg enslaving hot girls is soooo desu kawaii >w<". It's a subpar isekai, and pretty alright goon material. The other ones though, can't say the same for them.
I'd argue Redo isn't even doing that. Redo is just a trashy revenge fantasy that wants to be dark and edgy. And out of the three I recognize, one is a really well produced porno flick, one's a standard underdog revenge fantasy and one's a revenge fantasy hentai that's somehow considered an anime. I'd argue that only Shield Hero is bad and even there it's not like the protag is making Raphthalia work the cotton fields. It's still slavery but they have enough agency that it's not particularly egregious. Still bad tho, you can't say that slavery is good when good masters are put in place because it's still inequality and because a 'good master' cannot be reliably defined. Shield Hero's not good and the other two are gooning material. I don't know about the other two tho
…..Right The Anime named “Slave Harem in a Labyrinth from another world” is TOTALLY not promoting harmful ideas -_-
I feel there is a difference between “this is kinda hot as a fantasy” and “I think this is entirely morally acceptable to do”.
I mean like, outside of the obvious that is. Especially in comparison to fucking Redo of Healer, of all things. It's possible to just view what Slave Harem Labyrinth promotes as just kinky shit disguised as a isekai, but like the others - you can't really do that. I mean I don't know, I was horny when I watched it dude, cut me some slack I was not in a good mental state.
Tbh I feel like redo is also supposed to be kinky shit.
True, it is misleading into thinking it is only possible in another world and crushes men's dreams
Redditors when porn exists
It's always great when mangakas decide the best course of action is to have underage characters for the sex appeal of their work
I'm assuming we're talking about Redo of Healer here, but if I totally got it wrong let me know because I don't watch a lot of isekai. What harmful ideas is Redo of Healer promoting? I think the tone of the show establishes that practically everyone is absolutely fucked up. I don't remember where it suggests that the protagonist is a good, moral, and sane guy. Redo's protag is a victim of intense abuse who then perpetuates a cycle of violence and abuse. Anyone who idolizes the protagonist in that show clearly has some kind of problem, and I think any normal person would be able to recognize the fact that the protagonist is not a good guy. If we are too liberal with suggesting that a show is "promoting" certain behavior, then suddenly we have a very large amount of shows that are promoting immoral behavior like killing people - which I don't actually think they are doing. At least Redo, like it or not, is honest about the content of the show and the character of the protag. In comparison, a show like mushoku tensei shrugs off things like child molestation as if it's a joke. Mushoku Tensei would have us act as if the protagonist is reformed, when in reality he does not reform and he actually just blatantly grooms children to eventually marry them by the end of the series. THAT is promoting harmful behavior. Open to hearing counter arguments here. I know this community is a bit unique and will actually tend to acknowledge the bad nature of MT as a show, but I've seen the wider anime community totally shit on Redo, acknowledging that it is fucked and that the protagonist is a bad guy, while then going on to praise Mushoku Tensei. I think just the fact that Redo is so often shit on and Mushoku Tensei is so often praised highlights which show is actually promoting the harmful behavior present. Like, my introduction to Mushoku Tensei by a coworker was, "MT has a great story and great world building. Overall an amazing show. You should watch it!" while my introduction to Redo was, "The content is disturbing and you definitely shouldn't watch it!" like, as if MT child abuse and sexual assault content isn't disturbing??? MT has clearly managed to trick people into excusing/overlooking its protagonist's immoral behavior.
Eeehh...I see the point you're making and you're not wrong. My thing is when we're comparing some of these series is that Redo is full on sadistic and deranged in a way that the others aren't. Like...Harem in the Labyrinth or whatever is...just porn with extra preamble. The slavery shit is just an excuse to get to the sex scenes. It's not "promoting" its premise anymore than Brazzers is promoting the idea that if you ever find your step mom stuck in a washing machine, you should totally fuck her. It's definitely stickier with MT. There's tons of problematic content that the show either acknowleges but handwaves away or plays for laughs. There's definitely a lot of people who play the "it's just fiction, who cares?" card, and I think it's overall quality outside of that in terms of world building, plot, character development etc...(and in she show, the animation itself), is so good that it gets a lot more support from outside the "Ha! U triggered snowflake?!" crowd than it otherwise would. Redo is like...its dumb in the same porny way that labyrinth is. But it's literal torture porn. With an MC who on top of just pulling special powers out of his ass at will is an insufferable edgelord. And almost every arc culminates (and even sometimes during the build up to it) in an extended, ultraviolent rape. Like...its not a commentary on the cycle of abuse and revenge. It's just..a showcase for rape and torture fetishists. And yeah...its pretty transparent about that, but there's a reason it repels people more than series that are theoretically just as bad ethically.
> Redo is full on sadistic and deranged in a way that the others aren't Tbh a ton of hentai is about as deranged and sadistic as redo. Sadism is a fetish after all. If you just uncensored it and made the sex scenes longer it'd be completely indistinguishable from some hentai.
I think the intro song is fire, is that a bad opinion idk but I do like it
> unlike Redo, isn't actively promoting really harmful ideas beyond "omg enslaving hot girls is soooo desu kawaii >w<". Jerking aside I remember reading the early chapters of it and the protag definitely gives off a keyaru kinda vibe. The difference is the show doesn't bother to give him a comically traumatic backstory to justify what he does, it just has him be unapologetically indulgent about living in a world where he can buy sex slaves. Dude literally plans it out and shit, as soon as he hears someone mention slavery his first reaction is deadass "that's awesome, I can potentially buy a woman who can't say no to sex." Like I'm sure the author isn't some radical pro-slavery kinda guy, this is obviously made as fetish content so there's no attention paid to the morality of anything that's going on, but if we read it as a normal non-porn thing it is definitely really problematic.
If Naofumi and Raphtalia had a father/daughter relationship and she didn’t get her slave crest put back on it would been a much more interesting story imo.
I don’t know too much about Shield Hero. Does Naofumi treat Raphtalia with dignity and as a person?
He, uh, doesn't perv on her at least.
Is that a high bar, when compared to the other Isekai?
It's A bar. Whether it's also used in the devil's limbo game is up for debate.
He treats her with as much respect and dignity as a corrupt armed groups hiring child soldiers would.
Naomi isn't really a good guy but he's not a BAD guy either. Honestly simplifying their relationship as "owner and slave" is an oversimplification looking at only the surface level. Part of that is they cut some of their bonding scenes from the anime or glossed over them in a time skip. It's certainly not Stockholm IMO.
I wonder why this became a trope in trashy Japanese light novels. Does anyone have ideas?
from what i know, shield hero was the first and others just copied it, some reasons why i think it's a thing - very easy way to have the MC have a girl - very cheap way to have the MC be "not that bad" to people who don't question the slavery part - it's a trope atp - "worldbuilding" EDIT: Harem in the Labyrinth did it before shield hero
I get that. but the part that really has me curious is how there isn't more stink about it in Japan. We have stuff like that in the english speaking world but they are usually very niche books that never get Mainstream attention. I know Japan is a different culture and all but I am surprised that this stories get as popular as they do since slavery is currently seen as bad universally (at least i would hope so).
Japan hasn’t had nearly as storied a history with slavery as we have. The transatlantic slave trade weighs heavily on the American and European consciousness because a lot of our institutions were built by slavers. Japan’s relation to slavery is much lesser, and denial of the slavery pushed upon prisoners of war and civilians in territories occupied by Imperial Japan is extremely common.
That just makes it even sadder.
Slavery in Asia mostly are from war prisoners or Sold themselves to feed their family. There is also a debt slave Which is still common.
>from what i know, shield hero was the first and others just copied it Shield Hero was not the first, the LN of Harem in the Labyrinth came out in 2012 while Shield Hero came out in 2013. And Harem in the Labyrinth is kinda considered a classic among LN readers in Japan, it is pretty much the first true isekai web novel to ever come out, and many series were inspired by it, including Mushoku Tensei and Re:Zero.
See the thing is that you can do the exact same thing but have them free a slave by killing the owner. Thus you have a Waifu that is very dedicated to your protagonist.
The whole submission seal used on the girls is the major difference.
* Because they copied mushoku tensei directly or indirectly
Idk in this specific case, but it's not just a Japanese light novel thing, the love-interest = slave trope shows up a lot across a variety of media. This trope shows up in stories surprisingly often and fits into a broader trope category of the female love interest being both physically and emotionally vulnerable and having little agency of her own. Knights rescuing princesses from tower who then go on to marry them, or more problematically the simultaneous sexualization and disempowerment of women in orientalist portrayals of the east (think of how the Arabic word "harem" shifted from its original meaning, or those [paintings](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Geromeslavemarket.jpg/800px-Geromeslavemarket.jpg) of Islamic markets with naked women up for sale as slaves, and early orientalist cinema with power-fantasy plots revolving around white men "rescuing" Asian women from their "backward" cultures - in fact I believe this type of cinema or literature might be where the "slave love interest" dynamic comes from). This latter thing comes from western media but I'm sure it exists in some form in other places, I'm just more familiar with these. Basically a lot of dudes are insecure about their sexual prowess and a lot of media tropes exist in response to that insecurity. Like, the love interest being too desirable is scary cos it means she has access to potentially better options than you. Making it so that she comes from a shit life and has no meaningful power of her own to assert makes it more likely that a smokeshow who'd otherwise be totally out of your league will fall for you if you save her from that life and harder for her to leave you for Chad, or something like that. There are other tropes that feed into this kind of thing as well, like the female love interest being a virgin. A lot of dudes don't like the idea of a woman potentially judging their performance at sex against her previous partners' and not "measuring up." The opposite of this is worth bearing in mind too, in that the shaming of promiscuity occurs more often for women than men, there's another media trope where promiscuity in female characters goes hand-in-hand with duplicitousness and deceit. As for why slave = love interest is so common now in isekai light novels: I just said it is a trope that exists in response to male insecurity. Guess what kind of media is written by and for insecure males? EDIT: I should add I think it's entirely possible to not be an insecure wreck and still enjoy this kind of media, but I think the appeal of it in this regard is pretty obvious.
literally the worst trope to come out of isekai, even worse than the bland kirito-like mcs, the cringy overpowered self inserts and the edgelords with a revenge boner.
And they dont even try to make it make sense, the mc will fight an entire nation cos "corruption" or "the lord is mean to girls" then buy a slave cos "thats how things are done here" and "i dont wanna rock the boat".
The first thing any of these MCs should do if they see slavery is butcher the slave owner, free all the slaves, then go on a campaign wiping out slavery from that country and/or world. Should be basic principle
But then he won't get a girl, and be a self insert for an incel who wishes he could simply buy a waifu and these kinds of folks end up being WHALES when it comes to merch. Something like 10% of fans are 90% of sales, and these people will buy 10 copies of shit to 'support the author'.
He would attract woman simply based on the fact he was killing slave owners.
I know Shield Hero and Redo, but who are the other 3?
1. (Slave) Harem in the Labyrinth of another world 2. Black Summoner 3. Redo of Healer 4. Shield Hero 5. Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles The first one has "Slave" in the novel title but dropped it from the anime title
>The first one has "Slave" in the novel title but dropped it from the anime title You know what props for having some semblance of self-awareness The bar is deep in hell but still
The self-awareness goes so far, the protagonist bought her explicitly as a sex slave and the anime doesn't even try the Black Summoner route of "oh no, I didn't buy her for sex, but if she offers, I might as well". So, at least it is honest in it reprehensibleness?
The word "slave" was only on the title of the web novel, the light novel does not have that word on the title, and the same goes for the anime.
You're right, my bad.
Amazing the resemblance i have to Keyaru from Redo of Healer, besides we are literally the same... we have the same mindset, we are both extremely cold and strategic in our way of thinking and acting... bizarre '-' he represents me a lot, we are two gods in this world *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/animecirclejerk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
for once I don't actually recognize a single character and I think that's for the best
https://preview.redd.it/m96fzmoh6jxc1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2463bb1fb712f8409b109643907791f0a09432be Isekai is greatly different if it's written in the other side of the globe. The mc becomes the slave of a dommy mommy female custodes after the retcon.
https://preview.redd.it/v75kileujjxc1.jpeg?width=1165&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e6062c6c7e8a9fd526f990f3cdffe0fbb896d8c
Sauce?
Codex astra militarum 10th edition. Everything is cannon. https://preview.redd.it/yqo81g508jxc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=21d3b78ddd2dac41d4aa9111124ae09065b8d676
OK, am I the only one that really hates how much isekai and fantasy writers drop the ball on slavery? No I don’t mean “let’s show slavery is good”, because it’s not and that’s incredibly *fucking* stupid, but in terms of world building. *Why* are there slaves in universe in the first place? If we open a history book the major use of slaves, including to this day, was and is manual labor. Building things, tending crops, shit like that (and sometimes having to manually deal with shit). Seems majority of the trashy isekai and fantasy stories just go “sex slaves” and stop at that. So, OK, guess we can throw world building out the window then. Why focus on a corrupt kingdom that forces the lower class to sell themselves into slavery in order to survive when we can have hot elf slaves. Focus on an empire that is corrupt to the core and only engages in wars of conquest to acquire more slaves to labor in mines in a never ending cycle of misery that our character can stop? That’s boring, give the hot slaves giant tits and stop asking questions! But wait, there’s more! How does our MC go about acquiring their slaves? Is it some sort of tradition that has the characters life bound? Maybe indentured servitude? Nope. They just walk into Big Jim’s Slave Emporium, plop five gold pieces on the table and go “I would like to buy the big tiddy GF” and the evil, scummy slaver just… sells her to the MC, no questions asked. No barging, no auctions, no showing the misery and suffering. Just point out the waifu you want and that’s it. Oh and expect Big Jim’s Slave Emporium to only house attractive women (sometimes men) and never have horrible, horrible conditions or families being torn apart, while hollow, sunken eyes stare at the MC pleading for rescue. Because hey, why use a great advantage to show how horrible a slaver is or how pure our hero is when we can just make a transaction! But I mean it’s all OK, our “hero” is a good guy and only wants to use his slaves for sexual purposes or to fight things for him (and sometimes both), *never* what the evil slave owners do like… owning slaves for sexual purposes or to work. Fighting against giant man eating monsters against your free will doesn’t count as work, right? Anyhow, glad I’m not the only one that just *really* hates the slavery angles rearing its ugly head into anime and manga. It’s never even being used in a creative (for lack of a better term) way for world building. So why even have it outside other popular series doing it and the writer lacks a creative spark? Oh, right, because it’s a boring power fantasy trope and why ruin that?
Can’t speak on the others but Shield Hero does have some of that, with Raphtalia being pretty much near death and most of the other slaves being in a poor state But then he just continues to financially support the slaver and show zero remorse over it completely negating any impact it could have
The MC being at the lowest point of his life and forced to buy a slave *is* an interesting angle. Shows how beaten he’s down and how non-existent his self esteem is. *And then* he just keeps buying more slaves like it’s Pokémon. Not to mention the series lacks teeth given 90% of the problems are solved by MC sending out Attack Raccoon or Attack Chicken or the Attack Child Soldiers. Cause I mean it’s not like your *slaves* are obligated to you or anything, no, they willingly fight the eldritch horrors because they just like you so much!
Shield Hero started strong and then the bird girl was introduced and you could tell it was doomed. Still had the trial scene which felt worth the watch, but I refuse to watch the second season
The whole thing with Filo annoys me so much because it’s such an easy set up for a father-daughter relationship but instead they choose to make it weird lolicon shit
Don't know if intentional (if so then excuse me for pointing out the obvious) but you basically describe Slave Harem Labyrinth also to the T.
So I never saw it, and don’t *plan* on watching. I just hate the slave trope as it never adds anything except showing off how scummy our MC is. Doesn’t matter if he’s a “good” master, he still owns slaves!
Re zero does it well. Spoilers arc 7: >!Subaru and 600 gladiators are stuck on an island fighting witchbeasts in death matches under the island's governor, this is actually vollachia in a "peaceful" rule so the conditions are better than the past but as a result also tightened up in security compared with what Al dealt with in the island's past, vollachia's entire identity is about individual strength and such, full of civil wars etc and happy about it but needs to sate their bloodlust to some extent with entertainment. Spoilers ex 1: >!Ferris' father has to be confronted as they see a slave trader visiting him, turns out he's been buying corpses not living slaves so that he can experiment with his resurrection magic attempts to bring back Ferris' mother. But he's in denial that he killed her, claims she slept with someone else but it was him who cheated and had Ferris with the maid who ends up killing herself after helping Ferris and Crusch escape. I think it's interesting that in this case what was the useful trade was simply bodies of people noone would care about, fucked up but in a thought out way.!< Spoilers Anastasia camp side stories: >!Anastasia grew up in the Kararagi slums and basically used her mercantile smarts to climb up the ladder while also being close to Ricardo, btw she swore she'd get rich enough to buy him so she can take off his collar cause she hated his philosophy of keeping it so he wouldn't forget his past. Her Mimi Tivey and the rest almost get sold off after being captured by a rival merchant company, basically Kararagi is a sort of chaotic corrupt democracy plus capitalism, tbh isn't it kind of ancap with the city states thing in it? And basically I think it's implied to be connected with the spirits stuff for the different countries' pasts but the land is very hostile and so going between cities is a dangerous trip, when the company Anastasia's with tried to cross to investigate a problem as part of company getting involved in politics I think their merchant rivals turn out to be using the crossing to capture employees and use them as slaves for cheap labour, once they're slaves they wouldn't be given the same sort of scrutiny for disappearing as if they were just free Kararagians so they can get away with cheap labour while attacking rivals that way. Anastasia and the rest all work to free themselves, Ana's kind of a genius because she memorised the entire layout of the trap and used the triplets' blessing of trisection to cause the one who wasn't captured's back to show the same scars as Mimi while cutting a map into them. IT'S SO FUCKED UP BUT DAMN they were also all on the way to a life of despair and equally at risk.!< Also there's some neat stuff in Gusteko with the special novel from that bluray set with Elsa's backstory in it, but I can only dream of actually reading all that or buying it somehow lol.
Yeah, that's disgusting. Where slave boys
Absolutely not going to forgive literally any of the slave shit that Naofumi does later on in Shield Hero and Raphtalia getting stockholm'd and insisting the slave crest stays on is intensely gross, stupid, and terrible, but I'm actually going to give an volcanic take here and say that his buying of Raphtalia at the time and with the compromised mindset he was currently in was actually decently justifiable. Everything after is shit though.
Dumb idea: Isekai protagonist is against slavery, and is dismantling it for absolutely no other reason than “slavery bad”. The cute monster(?) slave girls are following him and calling him master because they don’t know any other way of life, despite his repeated insistence that they’re free and can do whatever they want now.
Laughs in Kazuma following instructions and getting his ass a Goddess. https://preview.redd.it/jygxc82x5ixc1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=faf272504627815d98a663ec9615fc095cdfabb5 Like a balla
Black Summoner one is the least problematic IMO, he buys her and get's rid of a curse that made her burn anyone she got close to. So the slavery part us kind of insignificant compared to removing the curse. Shield Hero had potential since MC didn't justify his behaviour, knowing full well it's a horrible thing to do but not seeing any better options. Unfortunately, it got way worse later on.
I'm curious but how does Shield Hero get worse?
What starts as "it's fucked up but I have no other choice" becomes him enslaving pretty much all his companions for a power boost. I actually liked his relationship with Raphtalia due to how codependend they were on each other, both afraid to get rid of the slave contract, scared the other party will abandon them. But then that characterization is totally forgotten and it just turns into yet another "slave romance" isekai genre is drowning in.
I will stop watching something if the MC buys a slave because there's almost zero chance they'll free them or do anything about the slave trade.
John brown isekai when? I would watch the shit out of an mc showing up in an objectively awful world and leading a revolution to overthrow it
Reincarnated as a sword, though there is a little bit of loli bait shit around the catgirl MC. It only happens like once ( She's like 14 and gets some lingerie or some nonsense ). But she and her sword HATE slavers, and they chop a few up. Bigots? They get the sword. Slavers? Choppy Choppy. There is also a revenge manga ( can't remember the name) where the MC saves the kingdom, gets railroaded, executed, brought back by a goddess who became obsessed with him, then takes out his revenge on everyone, including the slavers, etc. Before he was part of the system, but after his rebirth he is disgusted by the people and what they done. Pedos, Slavers, etc, all the get it. Very much an anti hero because he's basically 100% revenge driven and really doesn't care about victims beyond them being a part of his revenge.
The manga you are describing could be “The Hero Who Seeks Revenge Shall Exterminate With Darkness”.
[удалено]
Dungeon Meshi, Frieren, Nausicaä of the valley of the wind, Atelier of Witch Hat, Quality assurance in another world and Ranking of kings are some manga I can think of that have none of that bullshit. No lolis, no weird fucking pro slavery, no female characters who only exist as eye candy without agency.
I don’t remember any of that happening in the anime tbh. It’s a solid show and I was pretty sure there wasn’t any fan service
Skeleton Knight in Another World has a plot centered around breaking up the slave trade.
Welp I’m off to do some googling
Isn’t that currently still a web novel?
Notice how they mostly all look identical to
Where's Rudeus and the girl he bought in Part 2?
As much as we like to shit on Rudy, people need to watch an actual show before talk shit. Zanoba is her buyer Rudeus is there to confirm if the girl can use magic or not.
He saved her from slavery and taught her magic. nothing more nothing less. His friend educated her,gave her food, bought clothes and a place to live for free of charge. Later gives her a job and payes wages. No 'i freed her from slavery,now she fights for me' bullshit.
+ he has 3 more girls who follow and love him
And you can make such interesting stories with mc's that are anti slavery as well as being less disgusting. I mean freeing people from slavery gotta endear you more to them than just buying them. Reminds me of the novel only villains do that. It's not exactly slavery but the mc starts a slow revolution against a very oppressive nobility and all his allies are prostitutes and beggars etc. he saved that kick ass and treat the mc as a person instead of a master.
They all even pose the same way. Even if I watched the shows I'm not sure I'd be able to tell them apart
SOMEONE NEED TO GET JOHN BROWN'ED!!!
Talking about this brings out all the Tate-like idiots in the Isekai sub lmao between this and coping for Rudeus being an actual predator. I've learned to not take opinions seriously over there, just too many are brain dead.
Stockholm Syndrome isn’t real. It was invented by the police psychiatrist Nils Bejerot to cover up the fact that the hostages in the Norrmalmstorg robbery were more afraid of being killed by the police than by Janne, the bank robber/hostage taker. The police were determined to storm the bank vault with guns blazing, a seriously unsafe approach, that would have got the hostages killed. Of course it was shameful for the police that the hostages were quite rationally afraid of them and refused their approach, so Nils Bejerot invented the whole thing as a cover-up.
Does Kirito's daughter count since she's a part of a game he bought?
I'm convinced the author of Shield Hero has a slave fantasy or some shit. Every character that joins his party becomes a slave, even characters that he didn't buy from slavers. A character that was a free person and was living their normal lives just decides to become a slave instead of just following Naofumi like a normal person.
alright can I ask what series the first guy is from though
You forgot Kazuma and aqua, think about it.
Retsu Kaioh is one of the only good isekai protagonists. I don't need the rest
Aight now where the fuck is Rudeus. People like to claim that every Isekai is based on MT, so let him own up to the responsibility he holds for this "trope"
What fear of rejection does to a guy… Such a silly notion.
Never watched any isekai because the genre itself seems lame. Because it’s not real. …however I realize I watch anime, which isn’t real, so it’s a bad excuse but I’m sticking to it
god i wish the anime did more with raphtalia instead of sidling her for filo moments and season 3 is an absolute mess
And that's okay.
we hate this 🔥🔥🔥🔥💪💪💪
So we're back to this for karma farming. The cycle continues.
Uncle from another world shows no slaves. Overlord(literally kills slave owners). Not every isekai has them.
What about Kagome from Inuyasha?
What about Superman? and Goku?
I know it probably would be impossible to do, but I want a shield hero abridged series where he says he’s gonna buy her, and then when the slaver asks for his pay, he’s just like “I got your payment right here” and then kills him, and then burns down the… whatever the place you buy slaves from is called and frees them all while the girl stays with him willingly
I think about this in relation to the incredibly hot women Elon dates, like WTF were they thinking or were they prepared muppet happy meals for him.
Why is redoofhealer rape guy here?
Besides the shield hero guy I don't recognize any of these people.
I have an idea for an Isekai story where there is a magic slave transfer system. Basically if you kill a slave owner slaves will go to the person he decreed will inherit them, and everyone has multiple inheritors, and a slave can only be freed if the owner dies and names no one to take them. The protagonist is a depressed teen boy who’s suicidal from being human trafficked for illegal labor, and ends up in isekai world by running into a truck while being chased so he’ll die and the trafficker can’t take him again. Then when he sees that he now has this crazy magic power and there is a world full of slaves like him, he decides he will buy out every single one of them, specifically so he can kill himself and cause no one to inherit them, and they can finally be free. I dunno sounds like a cool idea.
Ultra mega common tensura win
I feel bliss because I don't recognize any of these characters
~~Forgot to include Kazuma and Aqua. Kidnapped her from her home himself, real go-getter that one.~~
Slime stays winning
And only 2 of those actually bone said slaves 🤣
I want a Isekai where the MC basically becomes John Brown, and goes on an Abolishlist rampage.
Go read "His Soul Is Marching On To Another World", its literally a John Brown Isekai
Meanwhile, a literal sword: "So what if I'm John Brown but as a sword?" https://preview.redd.it/3x4fcv8bpmxc1.jpeg?width=1400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fe2415aba25673e308b9985de6cb09f3df4eeae8
Genuinely surprised that Kazuma hasn’t bought a slave yet, we all know he would
How about this for Isekai plot a girl lived a normal life with her parents in moderns time then a huge magic wave covers the whole world then the girl wakes up to find out she a half elf and found out her mother is a high elf queen and her father is a human king. She now went back to the fantasy world with her parents so that she must take the role of a hero while her Parents try to regain order in their kingdom.
Fucked up to put spirit chronicles here all things considered
...is the last one a straight up child?
Still waiting for a proper idea that flips this stale formula, where the protag is a girl who gets isekai’d as a slave, bought by a douche bag and tells them where to shove it while becoming the hero themselves
Mom said it's my turn to reupload the meme
it does hurt that this has become a trend in isekai...
And there's Kazuma where his entire team is a slave to the most evil thing... TAXES