You do realise slavery was the norm world wide until about ~1900s where it started to be banned in Europe who then forced everyone they could who still had slaves to comply to their norms.
Also on the frontier throughout history people got married younger ~14 years of age. Also its not Like he is flirting or bedding them. More of acting mayor trying to reunite families.
I'm just pointing out the reality that such things happened. Also I suppose the more relevant detail would be that the parents of most if not all (excluding the moles) are dead... So what is he supposed to do? Leave them to die?
help get them back to their country??? get them out of slavery? Not use them as a child work force that you disguises as uwu wholesome because you gave them some soup and bread? or do i need to just pretend that its totally cool that the hero is just giving a metric shit tonne of money to feed into this slave system thats going to snatch and traffick more children so that mr. slave seller can sell the those displaced kids to the fucking insane perverts that we know are prevalent throughout the kingdom?
no matter how you approach the system, a legal market of slavery is fucking insane to have to interact with as a plot point or to even use as a gag, three seperate families decided to gamble their daughters lifes based on the fact that they know that sheild apperently loves slaves, not knowing if their children would get bought by their cult figure or again, if some creep with enough cash waltzed in.
"oh but shield hero told the slaver to send them home" why would we ever fucking trust this guy? he sells and trafficks children, he has no legal obligation to do shit except take in all the money the mc decides to dole out for the next batch of child slaves the manga wants to pretend hes saveing.
the slave stuff could have just been raph and filo and it would have been fine, a low point in the heros life that turned into a good thing, the orphans could have been from demi human settlements ABOUT to be sold into slavery and it would have worked JUST as well.
the slave stuff is fucking creepy.