Originally Posted by BWTraveller
Personally, I've only seen certain branches of anime/manga that deal with rape and torture. And yeah, those tend to frequently be done with characters who were extremely evil, but I think you might have it backwards there: it's not that the authors are trying to justify their rape fetish; they're trying to satisfy their desire for vengeance. Vengeance against people that hurt the protagonist is a huge thing. I suspect this's in part due to the fact that many otakus, authors and readers/viewers alike, had rather rough times growing up. Bullying is a huge problem in Japan and people that aren't "normal" have a tendency to be ostracized and put down beyond anything justifiable by their own actions. This kind of pain can fester, leaving people wanting to get the better of their tormentors or take what's always been "flaunted" in front of them and denied with "undue" disgust (I use quotes as, at least in some cases, this may not be flaunted as much as people think or rejected with as much or as unjustified disgust; this's the way with the persecuted). This can lead to all sorts of problems, a despaired impression that the only way to get what one wants is to take it, that the only way to get the bullies to stop is to make them hurt, etc. Thanks to that, a fantasy of killing or torturing people that'd done horrible things to the hero and making girls into slaves until they learn to love him for who he really is can be quite appealing. Doesn't mean the fans actually think any of this is good for real or would ever consider doing it even if they had the opportunity and assurance that they wouldn't be punished, just that as an imaginary setting there can be a certain satisfaction in seeing a character "like me" hurting people "like them".
Of course, at least with slavery, there are at least some other scenarios that try to have a bit more nuance. Shield Hero, for instance (and I'm guessing from some of what you said that you might have been talking to some extent about this specifically here), didn't look to me at least like it was aiming for some sort of slavery fetish. It was again aiming to some extent at the concept of a hero who was unjustly persecuted, but the slavery was never about that. Instead, the story is looking at the issue of trust, how betrayal and abuse can break it and leave a person unable to trust anyone who has any power to act of their own free will for instance. He couldn't fight for himself, but couldn't trust anyone to stand with him without trying to literally stab him in the back, so he bought a slave and convinced himself that he was acting out of malice toward the one who made him like this. At the same time, the girl later chose to remain a slave not because she knew he wouldn't hurt her, but because she knew that even then he'd struggle to trust her without it. Heck, even when it did break the first thing he says is that she's free, in a manner that suggests he thinks she can now leave him. It wasn't done perfectly, but it wasn't just fetish fuel.
There are also some that might be called "slave in name only" or "kind of like a slave". For instance, in the strange light novel series Mixed Bathing in Another World, you have Ravers, individuals who sell off parts of their freedom for money or goods. There are strict limits to how much work they can be made to do, how long they're subject, what can and can't be asked, etc. to prevent abuses, but it does bear some similarities, especially with those that were bound to the status due to criminal activity.
As far as this side goes, I suspect it might also be due to them having different experiences with slavery than us. I don't know the details, but I remember reading for instance that after Siam abolished slavery it was noted that the institution in question had almost nothing in common with what we in the West use the term for. The amount of abuse possible within the law is very different, and the amount of freedom given to the "slaves" is even more different. Whether this is still immoral or not I don't know because I don't know the details, but at the least it would seem like a different discussion than the Western slave trade.
Heck, the East seems to have differences in racism in general. Which makes sense. Racism against black people had a lot more colonialism, with huge gaps between the technology and infrastructure of the invading Europeans and the native Africans. It was easy for Europeans to write them off as "inferior" or even "subhuman". In relations between nations in the East, all parties were fairly advanced from the start, making it harder to simply say that people from this area are inferior and making it often more an accumulation of negative relations. I've noticed for a long time that a lot of racial frictions in fantasy anime/manga has the persecuted race consist of people from another nation that'd been in conflict with the main nation in the past, resulting in lingering hatred more than anything. It's still racism, and some feelings of superiority remain for sure, but there are still differences in the dynamics.
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