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Originally Posted by stray
Ryona is probably the only genre where you're really going to find the representations of rape and torture that you seem to be looking for though.
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Well, not to speak for them, but I didn't interpret it as though they were actually really looking for shows where the protagonist did these kinds of things without the attempt at rationalization... but just saying that they find it silly that shows introduce these kinds of elements in the first place only to rationalize it away with flimsy/convenient logic to make it seem "not so bad."
Quote:
Originally Posted by stray
I'm sort of curious but what is your take on stuff like Sexual Assault Online where Reki introduces basically every villain with an attempted rape scene?
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A point about this is that even the author himself has apologized for this, recognizing that it was a sign of their immaturity as a writer at the time. And I think fundamentally, as I suggested before, that is probably an issue a lot of the time with works like this. A lot of these stories were written by true amateur writers (basically original fanfic posted online) that only later got popular and then published, and SAO was definitely in that category (along with things like Shield Hero also discussed in this thread).
I think the broader point is that, if you're going to deal with difficult topics like this and do it well, you need to do your research and be very careful in how you do it. It takes very skilled work. And, for SAO for instance, I think it's clear that amateur Reki was not very skilled at writing compelling villains, and so often fell back on the rape trope. In a way, Progressive is a sort of attempt to rectify some of the weaknesses in his old writing and show that he's grown a bit as an author since his amateur fanfic days.
But here too, I think a work can have its clumsy/poorly-written aspects but otherwise still be interesting on the whole, and that's really why SAO worked for a lot of people, even if the over-abuse of the rape trope and poorly-written villains was a common complaint (even among fans) at the time.