"I can't believe this healing potion was useful for healing."
Come on, man.
Seems like an appropriate response. I don't think anyone's going to complain about killing that guy. Except that guy. But he's going to be dead, so there's no one to complain.
Should've drank the potion while he was there. If you might go mental from a procedure, you want someone there you know you trust.
This is probably one of the more sane, ironically enough, reasons to make someone a slave I've seen in manga. Suicide prevention. It's still dumb, though, because the problem now becomes that she's going to think about the slave contract as what anchors her to stability, and be reluctant to take the step to not be a slave.
I wonder if this is just a difference of culture?
Yes, it's a difference in culture.
The good part is that they're not too woke. That's a whole other topic, but the Japanese aren't too affected by having to force in elements for the sake of representation or what not.
The bad part is that they still force in their own stereotypes quite frequently. They have their archetypes they want to represent, not for inclusion, but for appeal. As always, these tend to fade away for better, more suitable characters as writing quality improves, though.
Another thing to consider is that as far as I know, the Japanese has a much greater distance between fantasy and reality in stories like these. It's more acceptable to have immoral elements in a story, because ultimately, it's not real, and no one's actually getting hurt. Not that there aren't still idiots who fail at that distinction, but on the whole there's less thought policing.
Often anime detractors and haters often use this terminology, normalization, i'm wondering, are you "normalized" after reading such works? You feel the urge to do the same in the real world?
Most serious studies on fiction vs real actions (video games causing violence notably) have shown that causation is often reversed. It's not that these media create deviant behaviour; it's that deviants are attracted to these media, which creates a correlation.
there's probably a fetish component in there somewhere. pretty lady in chains needs help, so MC helps and he gets an enthusiastic and loyal follower.
There's also a component of safety. A slave can't betray the MC.
The fact that it is a fictional story, written by a contemporary author, makes it completely appropriate to judge it by modern standards.
It's still not supposed to represent a modern world. It's entirely appropriate to judge it by the standards it's supposed to represent, which is a pseudo-medieval world.
On the other hand, judging by modern standards means assuming the characters think and act like modern humans, including what's caused by mass communication, and that makes it miss the mark, because those things don't exist. You're expecting one modern thing to exist without others, and that's cherry picking what to judge it on. It's inconsistent, and therefore inappropriate.
