17 Anime With Slavery and Enslaved Characters

Who really knows as to why, but over the past few years, slavery has come back in style. This time, thankfully, just in anime. From living the power fantasy of freeing people from bondage to living a different sort of fantasy of buying a pretty girl for your own use, anime has developed a bit of an unhealthy adoration for slave characters in a few select series.

I had hoped that slavery anime was something I didn’t need to write anime recommendations for. I had hoped that the anime series that kicked off what is becoming a trend were just a lapse in the judgment of a few creators, but now here we are.

Now I get to walk the fine line between giving weebs the anime recommendations that my analytics say they crave and not stepping on a cancel culture landmine. So if slavery anime is what you are looking for, then these anime recommendations are for you.

Anime With Slave Characters

Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World

Isekai anime is all about escapism and wish fulfillment. It is what makes it so popular.

As such, an isekai series about a teenage boy isekai’d to a fantasy world where dungeon crawling is a profession and you can buy cute animal girls to fight beside you and have questionably consensual sex with every night is perhaps one of the more honest isekai depictions.

We all like to think we’d be a world-saving hero, but probably most people would use power in a new life to fulfill their less acceptable impulses.

Now and Then, Here and There

If you wish for a more depressing isekai world, this older series follows an idealistic young boy sent to a new world under the rule of a dictator.

In this world, he discovers the harsh reality where children are often captured and sold.

For the male children like the main character, they have a harsh and violent life as a child soldier ahead of them. For the female children, they have a similarly rough life as breeding stock.

The Rising of the Shield Hero

The Rising of the Shield Hero features slavery with a wholesome coat of paint slapped across its face. The main character, bitter and betrayed as a hero for the kingdom, decides to gain the offensive strength that he lacks in battle as a fighter that can only use a shield by buying a slave to be his sword.

He chooses a small, malnourished raccoon girl who, after a few episodes, uses the magic of anime plot convenience to grow up into a woman who loves him and is happy to be enslaved by him because he pats her head and feeds her food.

Alongside happily remaining enslaved, she and the main character also gains more slave companions that also love him. Some of which were free and became a slave for him voluntarily.

Black Summoner

This isekai plays a little coy with slavery at first. The main character is sent to a fantasy world after charming a goddess and gaining the rare class as summoner. The goddess herself is one of his summons, but being too high level to actually use yet, he starts defeating and contracting monsters to be his summons.

This is all well and actually pretty great right up until he buys an elf girl to increase his party strength. After breaking a curse that prevented people from touching her, she is in love with him, and thus has no problem being his slave.

Unlike other series, he at least displays inner conflict doing anything lewd to her because she is a slave, but she still remains one.

Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody

This was an isekai made back before they decided to slowly phase out the pretense. In this series, the main character is actually a developer of the game world that he was sent to. He has access to tremendous power that earns him admiration.

While on his travels he used that power to rescue a group of enslaved demi-humans who are fine being beholden to him because demi-humans are frequently enslaved.

“If not him, then someone else will claim them. So mind as well him,” is the line of thought they follow.

While that is pretty standard, his adventure party continues to expand as he buys two girls from slavers after being brainwashed by one of those two slave girls.

As this is anime, there is some contrived reason that prevents them from being freed. As this is specifically isekai anime, all of these slave girls are immediately in love with the main character.

Skeleton Knight in Another World

Unlike other isekai anime where slavery is used as a way to expand the hero’s party in a very low effort way, Skeleton Knight in Another World features a main character who gets pulled into the plot of his own anime after just enjoying his new life by saving some slaves he happened across. He meets his a not enslaved elven woman who was investigating illegal elven slave trade, so they begin to work together to unravel that.

The anime actually gets rather interesting as they search out these illegal slave caravans and discover that they are just the tip of the iceberg of a political conspiracy brewing amongst the nations.

Chained Soldier

True to the world of gender equality that Kazuma sacrificed himself for, Chained Soldier twists the narrative – just a bit – by being about a boy who is taken on as a slave to a girl and her whole platoon.

Chained Soldier takes place in a world where women are capable of awakening powers that they use to fight a constant onslaught of creatures. As such, men have taken on housekeeping roles like cooking and cleaning.

For one high school boy who dreamed of one day becoming a hero, after an incident, he is taken on by a commander of these female troops whose power is to turn creatures – and also men, apparently – into slave soldiers, whom she then has to reward. For the main character, his reward is – as this is a lewd harem anime – all sorts of fetish-feeding debauchery.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans

Being a futuristic space series, you don’t see a ton of slavery in the different universes of Mobile Suit Gundam. However, Iron-Blooded Orphans has slavery under a different title.

Human Debris is a system in which young children that are orphaned are often captured, contracted, and sold to others at a low price. As they capture the subjects as children, the often berate their self-esteem so low that they grow up and see little value in themselves even when presented with their own freedom.

Vinland Saga

As Vinland Saga takes place during the Viking invasion of England, taking thralls, or slaves, is a common practice.

You see several thralls throughout the first season of Vinland Saga, but it will become even more applicable in the second season of the show which has a larger focus on the life of a thrall.

From the New World

This series entices you by showing a small percentage of humans in our modern world developing psychic powers. It then jumps 1,000 years into the future where the plot takes place.

The world has disintegrated into a more isolated, less modern state where normal humans are gone, and a sentient race of rat-like people has apparently evolved.

As is our way, the new modern humans have oppressed and enslaved these rat-people who cry for freedom.

Seraph of the End

When a virus wiped out all of the adults, it was the vampires who rose from the shadows to care for the children left behind.

By “care for,” I of course mean that those kids were enslaved by the vampires to live as livestock. The series starts with a child slave breaking out and taking up with the rebellion.

If you are looking for a series with a large focus on the slave aspect, this is not that. It is more so just a part of the world that takes place off-screen.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride

The small twist in The Ancient Magus’ Bride is that the main character is a slave, but she sold herself into slavery. She had no value in herself and thought it might be easier if she just did what someone wanted of her as a slave while having her fundamental needs taken care of.

Unlike many other non-isekai series about slavery, this series is actually a rather happy and slightly more wholesome than usual.

She is purchased by a mage who trains her to be his apprentice and perhaps later be his bride. While the romance is sluggish, what is really the happier part of this series is that he teaches her to have value in herself.

An Archdemon’s Dilemma: How To Love Your Elf Bride

While not the first series on this list to make slavery cute, An Archdemon’s Dilemma does offer the cutest version of it – and not in an isekai package this time.

This fantasy romance follows a powerful mage who goes to an auction to peruse the possessions of an recently deceased Archdemon-level mage, and is captivated by the beauty of the elven slave that old man had been keeping.

So, he buys her for an exorbitant sum.

As is tradition in these affairs, she is demure, innocent, endlessly sweet, and with the low self-esteem that some people seem to enjoy in their female leads. However, her new owner, thanks to years of solitude, lacks the social skills to express his ever-growing love for her. While the initial draw is watching two cute people fumble around with their feelings, the series does offer a good bit of action as well.

While a cute romance, it is also one of those “I’m fine with slavery if you are my master” sort of affairs.

Magi

Although it takes place in an Arabian Nights/Middle Eastern-inspired world, much like other series on this list you only see moments of slavery in passing.

What makes it notable is that Morgiana, the female member of the the main trio, was a slave who was freed by the other two and, after initially trying to go home and kind of failing, ends up joining them.

Aside from freeing her, you don’t actually see slavery in many other instances in the story, but it is still something clearly happening in the world.

Doreiku

This series is all about enslaving people. Doreiku follows the duels between those engaged in the Slave Control Method (SCM). When two SCM users duel, those that lose the parameters of the duel are bent to the will of the winner, becoming their willing and malleable slave.

The series is all about those duels, which play out like a clever series of games. It has more intrigue than your standard slavery anime.

Cestvs

While Cestvs is considered a bit of a mess both visually and as an adaptation of the source material, it is still an apt inclusion to this list.

The series follows the struggles of a Roman slave who is serving as a gladiator. He is a slave, wishes to escape that lot, and the only way to do so is to fight for his freedom against other slaves serving as gladiators.

Redo of Healer

You thought I was done with the isekai slavery plague, didn’t you?

No, no, I was just saving the worst for last. By “worst,” I mean the most shocking in hopes that anyone except the most determined degenerates have already moved on.

Like most light novel-based anime, Redo of Healer lives up to its extremely on-the-nose title. It is about a used and abused healer given the chance to redo his life.

In this redo, he rapes, tortures, and brainwashes all the female members of his previous party that walked all over him, and just murders the male ones.

The brainwashing magic he does on his adventuring party means that all of them are perfectly pleased to do every and any lewd thing he asks.

Do you know more anime recommendations that makes slavery a part of the story? Let fans know in the comments section below.