Tensei Akuyaku Reijou wa Misekake do S Ouji wo Oshioki shitai

[MangaDex]

 

[Random_Passer-by]

This manga appears to conflate two different concepts.
The first: “What if a woman showed fake wannabe maledoms what it means to be actually dominant?”
The second: “What if the woman was the abuser for a change?”
The first of them, I adore; the second, I hate.

Maybe it's the conflation between “dominant” and “sadistic” that irks me. Take Victoria Ostwen, for instance: She absolutely dominates every single social interaction she has, and people end up worshipping her because they like her. Same goes for Scarlet Castiel. There's nothing like that here, however! Even if we completely swallow the manga's excuse that “well they were actually all masochists so they like the abuse”, they have no reason to seek the abuse from her specifically. Aren't there any, er, “working ladies” who'd be willing to give them what they want?

Even for an unabashed horny manga, I can't enjoy the horny if the voice inside my head keeps screaming “RUN! RUN FAR AWAY!” at the characters. If I've screamed it at female characters, why wouldn't I scream it to male ones?

And, yes, the gender-inverted version of this dynamic is common in shoujo manga. Doesn't make it any better.

 

[Lemongrassv]

This manga appears to conflate two different concepts.
The first: “What if a woman showed fake wannabe maledoms what it means to be actually dominant?”
The second: “What if the woman was the abuser for a change?”
The first of them, I adore; the second, I hate.

Maybe it's the conflation between “dominant” and “sadistic” that irks me. Take Victoria Ostwen, for instance: She absolutely dominates every single social interaction she has, and people end up worshipping her because they like her. Same goes for Scarlet Castiel. There's nothing like that here, however! Even if we completely swallow the manga's excuse that “well they were actually all masochists so they like the abuse”, they have no reason to seek the abuse from her specifically. Aren't there any, er, “working ladies” who'd be willing to give them what they want?

Even for an unabashed horny manga, I can't enjoy the horny if the voice inside my head keeps screaming “RUN! RUN FAR AWAY!” at the characters. If I've screamed it at female characters, why wouldn't I scream it to male ones?

And, yes, the gender-inverted version of this dynamic is common in shoujo manga. Doesn't make it any better.

I admit that this might just be a matter of tastes - I cherish stories that "let" women be the abuser. I like depictions of callous and cruel women using people as pawns. My favorite part of Sadistic Beauty (potentially the most controversial femdom story released in English) was when her jerk sub was financially and emotionally dependent on her and yet she was fully, relentlessly, unironically the worst person in that specific relationship. I wish more people were willing to write women in despicable, yet human roles as they do men. I think it's fun when girls are terrible.

With that said, I still don't agree with your assessment of Freya. At all. "What if the woman was the abuser for a change" is such an odd read of what happens? I'm the one translating this, so I'm biased of course, but thus far absolutely nothing Freya inflicts on these dudes isn't a direct response to their Actual Abusive Actions.

Like the first time she hits Arthur. What was he doing before that? Murder. He was going to murder her. He gets spanked on the butt for openly cheating on his fiancée with her uninterested little sister and then trying to cut her head off. I don't believe in corporal punishment but like as a fictional device/narrative? I feel like you can say that's a tolerable response? An eye for an eye might make the world blind but for the purposes of low-stakes comedic vigilantism, all of Freya's responses are silly and imo unworthy of the term abuse.

I was musing about the frustrating ways shojo-fans will frequently just...not internalize the actions of male characters but come in fists flying the second a female character breathes wrong earlier today, so I actually have a mental list of these ready lol:

• Blake knowingly incites his friend to kidnap a girl, snickering, "you can't even make a woman obey you?"
  • Response: Freya sneers at him for not grasping Emily's distaste for S&M and calls him a virgin.
• Arthur kidnaps Emily, then attempts to rape her. I have the raws and I ran the lines referring to that scene through eight different sources to make SURE I had that line right - kind of a downer but yes they explicitly say that what Arthur was trying to do.
  • Response: Freya beats him with a horse whip.
• After rescuing Emily from probable rape, Blake IMMEDIATELY starts victim blaming, hardcore. "You like when men follow you around don't you, you dirty thing heheh" type blaming.
  • Response: Freya tells him to stop blaming girls, says he's acting like an animal (true), and calls him a virgin.
• Ethan, as Freya herself says, probably had good intentions, but holding someone in a tight grip after they've barely escaped assault, especially when they've asked you to stop is not good.
  • Response: Freya tweaks his nipples. It's not even meant to be horny, she's literally just helping a victim break free. She likes his reaction but she was 100% trying to protect someone from a guy who isn't listening.
• Dance chapter. If you give me a huge assignment that you knew about months in advance and it's due today, then you say "aw, did you do a good job for me? I'll reward you...with myself : )" I'm not saying I should be allowed to beat you. I'm not not saying it, also.
  • Response: Spanked!
• Teddy refuses to work
  • Response: ignored.
• Boys bet on sleeping with Emily (she is not informed of this bet)
  • Response: Makes them not use Emily has an object to bet on and apologize. When they ask her to play again, she says sure but this time loser gets naked - I won't force you though! They consent and they lose.

Anyway, I totally understand if people don't care for tit-for-tat justifications for any kind of story, but I feel somewhat frustrated that anyone would think this is a female abuser fantasy type story. It's really not. Nothing she does is ever worse than what's being done to her/Emily. Like she hits an attempted rapist. She calls a victim-blamer a virgin. She's not abusing their power dynamic, she's not inventing reasons to hurt them. I genuinely do not parse how the previous translator got "hypocrite" from her character. The boys perform all their cruelties out of a screwed up love. Freya is protecting Emily first and a pervert second. You don't have to like perverts, but being a pervert isn't hypocrisy.

they have no reason to seek the abuse from her specifically. Aren't there any, er, “working ladies” who'd be willing to give them what they want?

I'm not really sure what you mean by this? Who else would they get it from? Emily wants no part of this and Freya's offering. Two volumes in and they're still refusing to admit they enjoy being degraded - now they're going to go out and pay money for the service they would never ever admit they enjoy? Why not just keep it between you and the girl you definitely 100% don't like AT ALL?

pictured: just your average guy coming up with fantasies of his fiancee punishing him in public. That he hates. Crazy that it even popped into his mind haha, gross, ahh, yuck. You hate to see it!

Also, and just so we're on the same page, you're referring to this Scarlet Castiel, right:

I like her too : )

 

[Kurbo]

I really love this manga. I absolutely detest the archetype of pushy male leads that basically molest the heroine until she for some reason falls in love with them. Though I'm not the biggest fan of how this manga is basically femdom role reversal, I'll excuse it since this is consistently making fun of the male version of it.

 

[Random_Passer-by]

I admit that this might just be a matter of tastes - I cherish stories that "let" women be the abuser. I like depictions of callous and cruel women using people as pawns. My favorite part of Sadistic Beauty (potentially the most controversial femdom story released in English) was when her jerk sub was financially and emotionally dependent on her and yet she was fully, relentlessly, unironically the worst person in that specific relationship. I wish more people were willing to write women in despicable, yet human roles as they do men. I think it's fun when girls are terrible.

With that said, I still don't agree with your assessment of Freya. At all. "What if the woman was the abuser for a change" is such an odd read of what happens? I'm the one translating this, so I'm biased of course, but thus far absolutely nothing Freya inflicts on these dudes isn't a direct response to their Actual Abusive Actions.

Like the first time she hits Arthur. What was he doing before that? Murder. He was going to murder her. He gets spanked on the butt for openly cheating on his fiancée with her uninterested little sister and then trying to cut her head off. I don't believe in corporal punishment but like as a fictional device/narrative? I feel like you can say that's a tolerable response? An eye for an eye might make the world blind but for the purposes of low-stakes comedic vigilantism, all of Freya's responses are silly and imo unworthy of the term abuse.

I was musing about the frustrating ways shojo-fans will frequently just...not internalize the actions of male characters but come in fists flying the second a female character breathes wrong earlier today, so I actually have a mental list of these ready lol:

• Blake knowingly incites his friend to kidnap a girl, snickering, "you can't even make a woman obey you?"
  • Response: Freya sneers at him for not grasping Emily's distaste for S&M and calls him a virgin.
• Arthur kidnaps Emily, then attempts to rape her. I have the raws and I ran the lines referring to that scene through eight different sources to make SURE I had that line right - kind of a downer but yes they explicitly say that what Arthur was trying to do.
  • Response: Freya beats him with a horse whip.
• After rescuing Emily from probable rape, Blake IMMEDIATELY starts victim blaming, hardcore. "You like when men follow you around don't you, you dirty thing heheh" type blaming.
  • Response: Freya tells him to stop blaming girls, says he's acting like an animal (true), and calls him a virgin.
• Ethan, as Freya herself says, probably had good intentions, but holding someone in a tight grip after they've barely escaped assault, especially when they've asked you to stop is not good.
  • Response: Freya tweaks his nipples. It's not even meant to be horny, she's literally just helping a victim break free. She likes his reaction but she was 100% trying to protect someone from a guy who isn't listening.
• Dance chapter. If you give me a huge assignment that you knew about months in advance and it's due today, then you say "aw, did you do a good job for me? I'll reward you...with myself : )" I'm not saying I should be allowed to beat you. I'm not not saying it, also.
  • Response: Spanked!
• Teddy refuses to work
  • Response: ignored.
• Boys bet on sleeping with Emily (she is not informed of this bet)
  • Response: Makes them not use Emily has an object to bet on and apologize. When they ask her to play again, she says sure but this time loser gets naked - I won't force you though! They consent and they lose.

Anyway, I totally understand if people don't care for tit-for-tat justifications for any kind of story, but I feel somewhat frustrated that anyone would think this is a female abuser fantasy type story. It's really not. Nothing she does is ever worse than what's being done to her/Emily. Like she hits an attempted rapist. She calls a victim-blamer a virgin. She's not abusing their power dynamic, she's not inventing reasons to hurt them. I genuinely do not parse how the previous translator got "hypocrite" from her character. The boys perform all their cruelties out of a screwed up love. Freya is protecting Emily first and a pervert second. You don't have to like perverts, but being a pervert isn't hypocrisy.

tl;dr Abuse can be mutual. Reciprocation is no excuse.

---

Siiigh… this is exactly what BDSM clubs were feeling when 50SOG came out, isn't it?

You find her behaviour both viscerally satisfying and narratively justified. I find it neither. We can agree to disagree on that; it's more of a matter of personal taste. I'd even be willing to concede “she has the moral high ground”.

But then you go “It's not abuse because they were asking for it. They deserved it. They had to be put in their place. And they even enjoyed it!”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but FUCK. THAT. NOISE.

From where I'm standing, it's almost comical to say “She's not an abuser!” and then proceed to list several different examples of abuse. Your actual counter-point is not “that doesn't constitute abuse”, your actual counter-point is “it's retaliatory and therefore justified”. Which is a motte-and-bailey tactic. I'm conceding the motte; I'm not conceding the bailey. To put it succinctly: Mutual abuse is still abuse. And, for the record, a power dynamic is neither necessary nor sufficient for that.

PS: Condemning someone to death is not murder. At the absolute least, it's disingenuous to claim that they warrant the same response.

 

[Lemongrassv]

tl;dr Abuse can be mutual. Reciprocation is no excuse.

---

Siiigh… this is exactly what BDSM clubs were feeling when 50SOG came out, isn't it?

You find her behaviour both viscerally satisfying and narratively justified. I find it neither. We can agree to disagree on that; it's more of a matter of personal taste. I'd even be willing to concede “she has the moral high ground”.

But then you go “It's not abuse because they were asking for it. They deserved it. They had to be put in their place. And they even enjoyed it!”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but FUCK. THAT. NOISE.

From where I'm standing, it's almost comical to say “She's not an abuser!” and then proceed to list several different examples of abuse. Your actual counter-point is not “that doesn't constitute abuse”, your actual counter-point is “it's retaliatory and therefore justified”. Which is a motte-and-bailey tactic. I'm conceding the motte; I'm not conceding the bailey. To put it succinctly: Mutual abuse is still abuse. And, for the record, a power dynamic is neither necessary nor sufficient for that.

PS: Condemning someone to death is not murder. At the absolute least, it's disingenuous to claim that they warrant the same response.

...I'm going to keep my temper because if I'm fair, I probably came across as condescending, which might have set the tone. It wasn't my intention, and I apologize if I came across as patronizing.

Bringing up 50 Shades is a little funny because I actually have strong opinions about it. Specifically, I think the backlash has had a net negative impact on how BDSM-fans are compelled to talk about fictional BDSM. This is just my personal opinion, but I don't think it's useful to fixate on what constitutes "real" and "fake" bdsm in a fictional context. To drag out that long siiiiigghhhh, the beleaguered educator informing a naive idiot whose clearly unaware that if there's no consent, it's not true bdsm...it's a little insulting, is what I'm saying.

But then you go “It's not abuse because they were asking for it. They deserved it. They had to be put in their place. And they even enjoyed it!”

I...didn't say this? I'm scouring my own comment and the closest I came to saying "they asked for it" is when I screenshot a page where a guy who's introduced as the tsundere character is literally imagining a humiliating event that did not happen. I was joking about his tsundere feelings. He was not actually abused in this situation, even by your own definition of what abuse is. Let me reiterate: when she says "since we both know you don't really hate this❤️" THAT IS A DREAM. HIS DREAM. SHE DID NOT SAY THIS. HE IS CONVINCING HIMSELF THAT HE HATES A FANTASY HE CAME UP WITH.

You asked why they can't just find sex workers and I answered your question. I didn't blame anyone, I pointed out that this guy is fantasizing about being spanked in front of someone on his own free time but struggling to accept that, thus it's unrealistic that he would verbalize these desires to another party.

This is difficult to talk about because I can sort of tell we have very different beliefs about how fiction does and should work, especially since you didn't engage with my

I don't believe in corporal punishment but like as a fictional device/narrative? I feel like you can say that's a tolerable response? An eye for an eye might make the world blind but for the purposes of low-stakes comedic vigilantism, all of Freya's responses are silly and imo unworthy of the term abuse.

at all. This would be fine, except you're definitely insinuating I'm fine with abuse and worse, insulting my reading skills. So I'll try again and hope we're on the same page this time:

When I say I don't consider this "abuse," it's NOT because I think abuse is okay when the person is bad. It's NOT because I'm unfamiliar with mutually abusive relationships. It's NOT because I think abuse is negated once someone derives pleasure from it. If I were in a more annoying mood, I would outline why those specific accusations are especially wild given my personal tastes (hint: I like stories about abuse and the realistic ramifications of it, I LOVE stories about unlikable victims whose abuse is ignored/dismissed because they're hated, and I drop stories for handling those particular topics poorly. 19 Days, you should have just dropped the bully couple).

I don't consider this "abuse" because...It's just not that kind of manga. In the same way I don't consider the average Spider-man vs Mysterio comic about abuse. I didn't really think I'd persuade you but this manga is the gag comedy BDSM version of this to me:

Like yeah, I could definitely argue that this is an image of mutual abuse, but it feels kind of trivializing and a bit disrespectful to do so*. When I gave examples of Freya retaliating, I didn't mean her actions were cancelled out and her victims deserved her abuse, I was emphasizing the vigilante elements that make it odd to think in terms of relationship abuse:

• she only acts in retaliation
• her reactions are not excessive or out of pocket. mean words to mean words, rapists get a butt smack
• she's not making up reasons to abuse people.

She's swooping in to save Emily and backtalk sexism. From a narrative, contextual perspective, I just can't view it in the same lens as you. We can agree to disagree, but I don't like you telling me my perspective is the same as victim blaming and I really don't like you implying I'm an abuser. We have different comic book opinions, that's it.

And on a more serious note, mutual abuse/mutually abusive relationships aren't typically "I only hit if you hit me first." That's another reason I hesitate to call it mutually abusive - that term implies a complexity and nuance that isn't depicted here. I'll keep saying that it's my personal opinion because it is but it really does feel dismissive to refer to hitting someone after they tried to rape your sister or telling someone to fuck off after they slut-shamed your sister as "mutual abuse." Like I guess...? I'm not justifying her actions, I'm saying that just...doesn't feel like the right term to me.

PS: Condemning someone to death is not murder. At the absolute least, it's disingenuous to claim that they warrant the same response.

Oh, okay, what happens after the villainess gets condemned in an otome game. What happens when the monarchist's heir of a fantasy sadist land says you're going to die. Fair trial, right. Jury of your peers.

*don't @ me, I used to be cape comic fan. I'm well aware they can explore abuse motifs. They usually aren't though.

 

[hiroen]

Thank you for translating this manga into English! It's hilarious and I love it!

I think it's a bit unfair that shoujo/josei manga are often held to standards where the characters are expected to always be the epitome of what a healthy character/relationship should be like. I don't think it's the responsibility of comics to always portray what is "correct".

This manga has its flaws and many would probably say it's "problematic" but I like it! I enjoy how Freya is doting and protective of Emily. I also appreciate the manga's lighthearted but a little dark (?) comedic approach.

On an unrelated note, this reminds me of otome games like Diabolik Lovers. I love it but sometimes I think Yui should get to spank the Sakamaki brothers as a treat. Iirc there's an otome game with a similar premise, it's KLAP, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[NiceGhost]

I don't like the character design or the art style but I love reading this. It's just fun. You guys can say what you want about the lead but she started this thinking she would die. So you can give her the first spanking. She's still living with the thought she could die any day so she's living out her dreams.

 

[Ti92Plus]

a different kind of comedy gold

 

[kyousuke_hasegawa]

Somehow Emily art reminds me of Mikan from Gakuen Alice 🤔