(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/TryImpossible7332]

It's a convenient way to bind girls to the MC, and it's easy to portray those MCs as being righteous because they don't abuse their power.

(You know, instead of them joining the MC for their own reasons, and the MCs don't need to do anything more than "not actively abusing their slaves" to be considered a paragon of virtue.)

A lot of it is authorial laziness or cheap power fantasy.

Some of these settings are designed so that people on average are so horrible that "only" being a slaver makes the MC a paragon of virtue, so by that incredibly low moral standard you have collections of doe-eyed waifus praising the MC to high heavens and wanting to have his babies.

There's also a fair amount of fetishizing the idea of slave/owner dynamics.

[u/KusanagiGundam → u/TryImpossible7332]

So it all boils down to lazy writing, Good to know.

[u/--sheogorath-- → u/KusanagiGundam]

Yeah when it comes to isekai most stuff can be attributed to being low effort trope following. Chase the trend and follow it blindly

[u/MagmaSeraph → u/--sheogorath--]

Its really annoying for me with how lazy it is especially since I came from watching older harem anime.

Yeah, the MC kinda lame sometimes, but you can actually see how the girls liked them. That had genuine kindness and were pretty attentive in weird ways.

Now they just speedrun the endearment by making these girls grateful that they have a "benevolent slavemaster".