Here is a better analogy to explain the rapist thing instead of just repeatedly say it is r*pe. You know those movies or television shows or even some other novels where the rapist is some psychologist or hypnotist? That is pretty much what the MC is. He deprives you of your own free will and changes your mind such that you don’t even know it.

Think you some psychological treatment but the psychologist hypnotized you in a h**ny sl*t begging him to have s*x with you. Afterwards, he releases the hypnotism and you go back to your life. But in this case, it is permanent.

So, yes. There is an undeniable fact that MC r*ped 20 female Knights if you think of it this way. However... let’s take a step back. Say MC never had s*x with them and simply took them as s*aves, which they essentially are, and just made them do mundane task or conquer the world. Now MC is a mu*derer. He sends the Knights out as fodder and they die while killing others. And I suppose being a mu*derer is better than a rapist?

I really don’t see the point of arguing in this topic or matter. This is a freaking fantasy novel. Let me take that back, this is a freaking novel, a FICTIONAL novel meant to be written to satisfy certain audiences. Sure, it’s “better” to read a book about a detective solving mu*der cases but there are books like diary of a mu*derer or assassin. And people do write and read those.

So, is mu*der better or r*pe?

Taking two steps back, for the record, the Knights wanted to mu*der him. He, in turn, used a charm skill that deprived their free will. It is very extreme and more than necessary. But that was the only skill he had. What do you call doing whatever you can to avoid yourself being mu*derED? I think it was called self defense.

And analogy would be, MC knocks all of them out with a concussion and they end up losing their common sense and memory. They wake up and became super dependent on the person they saw and “helped” them. And that is basically what the charm skill did. It made them dependent on the MC and orient around him.

And then these newly devoted Knights want to sleep with MC, it’s not r*pe anymore if they wanted it, though you need to remember their mindset changed. There will be arguments with this analogy, so now assume a girl got into an accident, lost most her memories, changed her personality and a lost a few screws. She changed from a person who look downed on men and dislikes them to an open girl. Say, you, who is her rehab social worker that is helping her recover, developed a relationship with her after she recovered and left. You end up sleeping with her despite telling her about her past hatred for men. So, do you call that raping her past self that might or might not reappear? I’m sure if she remembers and if this scenario happened many times, there will be splits between her going to court to file a case on her social worker and accepting her new life.

Last note, do remember what a s*ave is. If you toss a job description to it, it’ll be something like, “expect anything and everything to happen as it is your duty and you have no rights, unless otherwise stated” It’s true. Not American but read their history in the past and back then, their s*aves do get anything and everything, from respect and kindness to r*pe and ab*se. So, the moment you guys and gals read the title with “s*ave harem”, r*pe is already a possibility to the story. It’s a given that it might happen. There’s another novel with “s*ave harem” but in a labyrinth. The author wrote it with much nicer tone. All the girls just willingly accepted their master’s “love”. That MC is a nice guy, more or less. But it’s undeniable that those girls are basically “trained” not to say no. And hence, stripping away their free will. One way or another, you can still think of it as r*pe or manipulative sex/rape, treat them nice so they think you’re nice and then sleep with them while they think you’re nice.

Why the hell are you people arguing on this topic? If you’re going to argue about anything, isn’t it more important the fact that the girls are LOSING their own free will? If you’re going to argue about what’s right and wrong, you should aim at the core of the problem. The MC isn’t just going in, stripping their clothes and raping them. The MC is depriving them of their own free will and make them think that he is their one and only purpose of living.