Quote:
Originally Posted by Frontier
To be honest I've just accepted in humorous fashion that he'll always have to keep working with slave peddlers one way or another  . |
And honestly, I think this is the underlying issue that people with the "slavery issue" have for this series: that it's not really treated that "seriously" by the author and they rationalize it away with "he's trying to do good despite an evil system." Some aspects of it are a bit fetishized, like the power fantasy of Naofumi ordering the slaves around and them experiencing momentary pain ("for their own good"), or how they put Raftalia's slave crest on her breasts (and how she turns her slavery into a pride point). It's not necessarily that the in-lore rationale is purely unbelievable, but most of the complainers tended to dislike the
author for including this element in the story at all in this way. For a lot of people the issue of slavery is still too real/recent to be given such a treatment, and it makes the author come across as particularly insensitive to those people. (This is honestly similar to the issue people had with SAO and its use of sexual violence as a trope, which in that case the author actually apologized for.)
Also, by framing it in this way, the author was perceived by some as writing a story to appeal specifically to people who might legitimately think that slavery is okay (and other such views), or at least not doing more to make clear he doesn't agree with that. So I think the show also got tainted back in the day by some of its more outspoken fans who seemed overly eager/willing to defend slavery (and, really, no matter the context, some people just don't want to hear any such discussion ever, since it crosses a hard line for them). Part of the strong reaction was because people wanted to expressly disassociate themselves from "those people." (Also partly because some of the more vocal critics were speaking in their "real names," whereas a lot of anime fans can just go by pseudonyms, like here.)
In the end, I kind of see what I think the author was trying to do with this topic, but I do also think it's a bit sloppily done (just like the SAO example). In some ways the author is trying to have his cake and eat it too by saying on the one hand it's bad but on the other fetishizing it and making use of it in the plot. It's not treated seriously enough to be actual social commentary, and is recurrent enough to be a theme. But anyway, I think overall the work is defined by more than this one issue, and appreciating this show doesn't necessarily mean you agree with everything portrayed. And in fairness, sometimes anime fans can be a bit quick to go into "defender mode" for their favorite show without further considering other peoples' perspectives or how that defense could be received. At this point, though, I feel like people still sticking around to s3 have already accepted this issue for whatever it is and moved on either way.