No Payoff
I browsed Tomo Maeda's Black Sun, Silver Moon, vol. 1, and enjoyed a lot of it. (The unconnected story at the end did absolutely nothing for me.) Taki becomes Shikimi Farkash's indentured servant to pay off the large debt his family owes the church. He nearly gets killed finding out that one of his new duties is zombie slaying. Taki's appealing, the dog is cute, Shikimi can be appealing at times in that smiling sociopath Hakkai way, etc. but I ran into something that curdled it somewhat.
Why is there so much anime/manga in which the reader is supposed to find it funny or endearing for the debt-holder to toy with his/her indentured servant? (From what I can tell, that seems to be the reaction these stories expect.) I'm talking behavior that ranges from nearly getting the indebted killed by declining to explain anything in advance to deliberately making more messes and weird demands with a smile on their face the whole time to raising the amount of the debt for healing and damages the servant incurred while following orders in his/her service. I don't care if some of the debt-holders have an angsty past or weighty responsibility that's supposed to make me excuse this behavior. My reaction is never "Oh, tee hee, Whomever will never be free of his/her debt!" It's more like anger and resentment.
This is a common thing. I'm aware of it in xxxHolic, Legal Drug, Gorgeous Carat, Ouran High School Host Club, and Black Sun, Silver Moon just off the top of my head, and I'm sure a lot of you can think of others. (Notably, none of these series are favorites of mine.)
Am I missing something?
Why is there so much anime/manga in which the reader is supposed to find it funny or endearing for the debt-holder to toy with his/her indentured servant? (From what I can tell, that seems to be the reaction these stories expect.) I'm talking behavior that ranges from nearly getting the indebted killed by declining to explain anything in advance to deliberately making more messes and weird demands with a smile on their face the whole time to raising the amount of the debt for healing and damages the servant incurred while following orders in his/her service. I don't care if some of the debt-holders have an angsty past or weighty responsibility that's supposed to make me excuse this behavior. My reaction is never "Oh, tee hee, Whomever will never be free of his/her debt!" It's more like anger and resentment.
This is a common thing. I'm aware of it in xxxHolic, Legal Drug, Gorgeous Carat, Ouran High School Host Club, and Black Sun, Silver Moon just off the top of my head, and I'm sure a lot of you can think of others. (Notably, none of these series are favorites of mine.)
Am I missing something?