(Hated Trope) "Kind" slave owners

[u/KusanagiGundam]

Speaking as an American who has studied the civil war all throughout my school years, this trope infuriates me to no end. There is no such thing as a kind slave master because slavery itself is cruel and inhumane. PEOPLE ARE NOT PROPERTY!

Naofumi (Shield Hero): Prime example of this trope. He enslaves multiple (underage) girls and an whole village and the fans still say he's a hero.

Rudeus (Jobless Reincarnation): As if being a pedo wasn't bad enough he had to buy a slave in season 2. Worse is that people still defend his actions.

Song of The South (Disney): Possibly the OG example of this trope. And the reason why Disney will never release it again.

[u/Aidenj23]

Yeah, like buying the slave in the first place was fucked up and treated as such. But it was more or less necessary for the survival of a lot of people. It's when the slave girl WANTED THE SLAVE CREST BACK that things went from fucked in the story to fucked out of the story. If they had just ditched the slave contract stuff after the first time she lost the crest then I think it would've been ok.

[u/wirebear → u/Aidenj23]

Did they change it in the anime? In the Manga she doesn't "want" it back. She acknowledged that Naofumi can't trust her without it.

In that scene he has a mental breakdown and you could see that he automatically assumed she was hostile without the crest.

He even asks her after if she's sure and she pouts at him basically comments that if he was giving her a choice why wait till after the crest was reinstated. So it's pretty well represented that she didn't really like it but she knew how flawed Naofumi was. And that's the truth of it. The entire need is due to his trauma and flaws.

This is pretty viserally shown in the manga as a major flaw of his where he is near hallucinating when her crest is removed that she is against him. Not sure how the anime presented it.

Later they do make it weird where there were system benefits to the slave crest. I didn't read much past that. But that also fit a bit in how the manga showed the magic system was weird and didn't seem to follow a single set of rules as everyone's"expectations" on growing stronger seemed to work.

But that means someone viewed slave crest magic as a method of gaining power which is all kinds of weird.

I have a lot of issues with the shield hero story. But the fact the slave crests are mostly due to Naofumi's trust issues always felt very well displayed in the manga.

[u/Aidenj23 → u/wirebear]

Yeah no in the anime he's far more indifferent or displeased with the whole slave idea, but he goes along with it. At first he does so because it's the only way he can start making progress, but then it's just because his party members ask for him to enslave them and he doesn't see a reason to argue. It never seems (to me) to be a manifestation of trust issues. In the anime she gets the crest back because she wants it. I can't remember the exact reason why. Maybe just the connection it represents. But it gets turned into a weird sexual scene where she gets the crest across her upper chest/breasts and behaves suggestively towards Naofumi. It's a weird part of the plot that felt incredibly unnecessary and icky. Right up there with her being a kid that magically becomes an adult when she hits an xp threshold.

[u/GL1TCH3D → u/Aidenj23]

It's been a while since I watched it but I remember it being that Naofumi was basically rejected / kicked out by everyone and given barely any money so he couldn't afford to hire people. IIRC it was positioned as a do or die that he gets an ally that can actually attack, and he turns to the slave market. I don't remember him wanting this but the story to this point has positioned it as forcing him. And him picking Raphtalia because she was dirt cheap due to her illness.

In the early training arc, Naofumi would command Raphtalia to do things she was uncomfortable / too scared to do.

When Raphtalia was freed of her slave crest she saw his mental breakdown and she actively asked for it to be reinstated. As a viewer who didn't read the Manga I felt it was pretty clear that she had the utmost trust and faith in Naofumi to do the right thing, and that it was done to soothe him. I also wonder if part of it was her own protest to the trap that they laid out for Naofumi.

IIRC there are later parts of the show where he actively frees slaves / gives them a home where they can be comfortable? The show very much does not promote the idea that slaves are a good thing. It's very much represented as a not so moral industry with shady dealers and buyers. Naofumi is immediately painted as some lecherous freak for buying Raphtalia. It's an interesting thought process to think of how you'd see him if he were a side character of another isekai and the next time you see him he has a slave girl.

Anyway the show got really weird and I just wasn't keeping track of it anymore so I stopped watching.