[Manga] Add a content warning for Slavery

[DoubleSnake]

We have content ratings for suggestive, erotica, and pornographic and we have content warnings for gore and sexual violence. I believe it necessary to have a content warning for slavery as well due to the obvious extreme nature of the act. There are obviously age ratings for many things such as shonen and adult themed manga, on television there are warnings for smoking, self-harm, ect. And while there are many mange with on the nose titles such as "My Slave is Way Too Cheerful" there are many isekai titles where a viewer is basically playing russian roulette on whether or not slavery is involved. I personally have read many where there was no mention of slavery in the mangadex, myanimelist, or mangaupdates description. "Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari" has absolutly no mention of slavery in the mangadex or mangaupdates description (Though it does on myanimelist) but I do not blame anyone that made the descriptions for this lack of oversight. It just shouldn't have to come to checking other websites before reading a manga just to avoid something that could easily be tagged. I am not saying this needs to be a tag like villaness or slice of life, but I do think it necessary to have this option in place to easily avoid disturbing those that either at best, find it distasteful or at worst, those that have real world experience suffering that can be triggered.

 

[RogerZero]

Some of the replies are truly unhinged, adding a Slavery tag makes perfect sense, though most of Isekai would be filtered out which is saying something. On another note, seeing people advocating for slavery to own the globalist wasn't on my 2023 bingo card, should have been.

 

[radstylix]

"those that have real world experience suffering that can be triggered"
I doubt anyone who's actually been enslaved are reading Japanese manga online 🤣
No trigger warnings, thank you.

 

[Orvar]

Our opinion at the moment is that Slavery would be fine as a Theme/Content tag, but not a Content Warning. It's prevalent enough in the mountain of isekai and sometimes appears not in isekai

Considering the fact that most staff have read their fair share of manga things that might be shocking for first time viewers might be looked over as most of us are desensitized to the topic, personally I thinking adding the slavery tag is too broad, as there's no in between whether it's just apart of the world setting, or one of the main recurring character's is a slave.

 

[Beregorn]

Yeah not reading these walls of text. Slavery as a tag is fine, who cares right. But are there actually manga with slavery as a main theme? Tagging minor elements is so fucking retarded and I hate very one who does it. If one of the classmates is a gyaru you cannot add a gyaru tag etc.

There are more than plenty, mostly in Isekai Harems, since there is no other way an adolescent doormat would get a girl, let alone multiple of them.

 

[Beregorn]

What reading isekai does to your brain

Not necessarily, but it is still baffling to discover that people like this DO actually exists... Kind of like the first time I heard about flat-earther

 

[BlatBlat]

I see there are discussions touching on this already, but they seem to want the tag to be a content tag next to sexual violence and gore.

I think it should be in the "theme" section, which also has things like incest which is distasteful to some people and is also somewhat of a common theme.

And slavery is definitely a somewhat common theme in manga, there's that demon king and his two slaves manga, there's shield hero, there are tons of stories which have slavery as a central theme.

For the record, I am asking for this because I don't want to read stories where they accept slavery. I am not asking for this to be filtered for other people, nor do I want to effect other people's reading experience in any way. I just want to be able to filter it for myself.

 

[BzzBzz]

Uhmm, I don't read as much as some other people, but I can't remember single title with theme "Slavery".
There's many series with some slavery (mostly isekai and history-related) but never(?) about slavery.

there's that demon king and his two slaves manga, there's shield hero, there are tons of stories which have slavery as a central theme

Nope, just because there's slaves present doesn't mean it's about slaves.

 

[BlatBlat]

Uhmm, I don't read as much as some other people, but I can't remember single title with theme "Slavery".
There's many series with some slavery (mostly isekai and history-related) but never(?) about slavery.


Nope, just because there's slaves present doesn't mean it's about slaves.

How Not To Summon a Demon Lord is pretty explicitly about slavery. The Japanese title even has "slave" in it.

Also, a "theme" is not something the whole story is about, stories can have dozens of themes, or certain arcs can be about a theme, etc. So like, Shield Hero isn't explicitly about slavery, but there's tons of slavery in it.

A more positive example would be Murderhobo and Sword Dad, Fran was a slave and now she kills slavers on sight, that's not what the whole story is about but it is a major theme.

 

[Ncararc]

...this seems too much like a people sit on chairs thing; should slavery when it was widespread and legal (before the 19th c., isekai or otherwise) still be noted, or should it be counted as part of the setting? What about so-called wage slavery, or human trafficking? Just because some work has slavery in it does not make it into a community-needed notable theme. It might trigger some people, but if we account for everyone's tastes... we'll soon see themes about drying paint.

 

[BzzBzz]

a "theme" is not something the whole story is about, stories can have dozens of themes

Yep. But even if "something" is major part of series doesn't make it "theme".
Very simple example - in every series there's some type of transportation system. Be it horse cariages or dragon riding or modern trains or even simple walking. In every chapter. In every series. But even you wouldn't suggest "transportation system" for theme, would you?

 

[Arin-san]

They should add the slavery tag and make it so you can only include it but not exclude it.

 

[ieatass69]

They should add the slavery tag and make it so you can only include it but not exclude it.

gigachad move

 

[Adverso]

This is getting out of control. Iknow that most isekai are just power fantasies, but this is just too much. Hell, i'd also add a "power fantasy" tagif possible.

 

[Doedoel]

I've been waiting for tag block feature as well.
Btw, sorry if you were expecting a helpful comment....

 

[TestAddress]

Isekai = start at the bottom / slave in the beginning

 

[Pokari]

Why only slavery? We're gonna need something similar for suicide, child abuse, murder, rape etc cause they're extremely distasteful and offensive. This is dumb.

I agree with everything except the last three words. (And... we already have something for rape, yanno...).

Tags are generally fine as they are. Let's not turn the site into like Dynasty or MU by adding those specific spoilerish tags. I fucking hope not.

If you really don't want to know what's in something, surely you already don't want to read the tags? Like the well-established "Tragedy" tag already reveals more important spoilers than most of the stuff you're upset about, when used properly...

From a technical standpoint, implementing these explicitly as some new tag category of "trigger warnings" and having them be hide-able would probably be a decent split-the-baby approach. Lot of work for someone, though. And there are, I suppose, also the weirdos who seem to conversely get extremely triggered (in quite another sense) by the very concept of trigger warnings.

Speaking of which, I see many people being offended by slavery element in isekai stories, even though I think all of the ones I've read has slavery be a very trivial part of the plot. And these isekai stories are set in a world based on medieval Europe, so of course slavery is to be expected. I assume some people just don't like seeing part of their dark history in a manga...?

A few points

• You've been rather lucky in your isekai reading, then (For which I'm happy for you)!
• The worlds that isekai series are set in are full of anachronisms, to the extent that they're in any way historical in the first place. I could count the isekai manga I've read that try to faithfully recreate the air of medieval europe on the fingers of one hand... or one head. The decision to include slavery is a choice...
• ...which when prominent, seems to lately be increasingly-often for slavery-fetish reasons, or other things that some of us find very off-putting...
• ...but we can't just have a "Author Paints Slavery In a Positive Light" tag, because that involves some extremely subjective judgements which are inappropriate to the nature of tagging (and invite flame-wars over tags for no reason).
• So a simple "slavery" tag is the sensible choice.

 

[OisE]

Like the well-established "Tragedy" tag already reveals more important spoilers than the stuff you're upset about

It's not that spoiler-ish, imo.

"tragedy is clean, restful, and flawless. In tragedy, everything is inevitable, hopeless, and known."

 

[CucarachaEnojada]

Nah,if The Bible doesn't have one,why a f@cking manga?

 

[mrowp]

according to that logic you would need to add a warning for everything. slavery just isn't that big of a deal

I don’t see how this would be a bad thing realistically… it would help me avoid a lot of bullshit titles to be frank lol mangadex having tags the same way fanfiction sites do for the sake of sifting through shit I don’t want to read would be nothing but a plus for me

 

[infinity781]

Please don't. There is already enough as it is. What's next? Importing every hentai tags in existence? This is a general purpose manga site, there's tame one, there's erotica and there's straight up porn. If you need more information then literally just copy the first few character of a manga (if it is longer than 1 line) and add the "wiki". There is a wiki fandom for about as many mangas there are out there (if it doesn't exist yet, look inside wikipedia, those always work) and look in the relationships (or characters if you are on wikipedia) section to see if he has got any slaves/servants and decide for yourself.