How NOT to Enter a BDSM Relationship: Consent and abuse in Demon Lord

CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of sexual abuse, slavery, and BDSM; NSFW screenshots. SPOILERS for the entire How NOT to Summon A Demon Lord anime series.

Is it okay to own another person? Frankly, the answer is no. Notwithstanding the historical foundations of slavery the United States is built upon, there’s still modern-day slavery perpetuated by the prison-industrial complex. Another source of concern are victims of human trafficking, notably for sexual exploitation. The end-all argument is that it is unethical to own another person and deprive them of their free will.

Yet here I am, wearing a collar around my neck.

Hi, my name is Chiaki and I’m a polyamorous cat owned by a lovely lady and I own a second beautiful girl as well. I proudly wear my collar whenever I can and happily serve my Mistress as a devout and loyal pet.

There’s something about the thrill of being owned, a vulnerability that stokes a passionate fire in my heart. It’s an opportunity to let go of everything that worries me and allows me to just enjoy myself. I take pleasure in seeing the people I love happy, and being in their service means I get to focus on them and only them while I forget about all my other life responsibilities.

Being a pet or a submissive in a relationship, however, differs from the classic definition of a slave. While the BDSM lifestyle evokes the image of whips and chains, the reality of kink is that it is a hobby or lifestyle between consenting individuals. Just as sexual exploitation is sometimes conflated with legitimate sex work, there is a difference between abuse and kink.

Partners set boundaries like any other relationship, and a consensual relationship respects them. And while I might be in a 24/7 arrangement with my Mistress, my situation is perhaps in the minority—most people who enjoy BDSM do so only in the bedroom or at designated group gatherings.

There is an element of fantasy that lets me explore what would normally be taboo. Being a pet means I can turn off who I usually present as in public and even explore or push my own boundaries in a controlled environment where I feel safe to do so. As J.A. Rock wrote for the Huffington Post:

Words like submissive, slave, master, owner, property, etc. have different meanings in the kink world than they do in the real world, absolutely. But these words get their weight and their power from a larger context. And to be very clear, in kink, it’s not always a matter of creating a “game” or a “fetish” around a serious issue. Often it’s about using kink to confront that issue, and reclaiming power over an event or legacy that has held power over you. A rape survivor may use rape play to reclaim a sense of agency—to explore the idea of being helpless and brutalized in a context where they do have ultimate control over the situation. A black submissive or bottom might use race play to subvert real life racist institutions by being the one who sets the terms and limits of a racially charged scene.

I often seek a better understanding of myself through what I experience in kink. This goes for how I negotiate my status as a pet and the way I consume entertainment.

Whereas anime often caters to the male-gaze with a male-lead audience surrogate, I’m often busy exploring what it would be like to be that heroine suffering through that voyeurism. I want to be that girl getting collared and told to bark like a dog (even though I’m a cat) and I want to imagine what it’s like to be in an embarrassing or compromising situation.

Thus, when I first saw the big heavy metal collar adorned on a voluptuous elf on the cover of How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, I immediately thought “this is gratuitous and bad,” and also “let me at it.”

The premise was easy enough to understand: Takuma Sakamoto, a.k.a. Demon Lord Diablo, is a shut-in who one day finds himself in a world mirroring the MMORPG he religiously played. No longer human, Sato inhabits the near-invincible Level 150 avatar he used to play in the game.

He was summoned by Rem Galleu and Shera L. Greenwood, who wished to keep him as a summoned beast to serve on their adventures, but Diablo’s superior equipment reflected their summoning ritual and instead bound the girls to him as his slaves. Possessing no communication prowess save for his ability to roleplay as a demon lord in-game, he adopts an aggressive and evil persona in order to communicate with people around him.

Thus, nice-guy-Takuma-Sakamoto-who-totally-didn’t-mean-to-enslave-two-women sets out on his adventure. Sexually charged hijinks ensue.

Fantasy often does not present slavery in a realistic sense. Considerable leeway is given to romanticize or sanitize it in favor of delivering entertainment. Even the trope of apparently consensual servitude often does not make the cut for being healthy, and while Demon Lord’s Rem and Shera eventually willingly serve Diablo, their relationship’s foundation is not entirely wholesome.

Power exchange takes a considerable amount of trust in reality. As the submissive in my relationship, I ultimately hold the power in what happens. My Mistress may command me with self-serving requests, but I take pleasure out of seeing her happy, and she commands me knowing I’m having just as much fun. And while I may be ordered around and teased as she pleases, I retain the right to refuse or stop her at any moment.

The girls in Demon Lord, however, are magically bound to follow Diablo. Though he seldom forces his will on them and they explicitly indicate they are following him because they trust and love him, they did not enter the relationship of their own volition nor can they leave. Living under duress, Rem and Shera cannot give Diablo their full consent.

Demon Lord deftly avoids begging the question of why Rem and Shera should continue to hang around Diablo either. In the very first episode, Diablo firmly establishes to Rem that he’s the stalwart ally she’d been looking for all along to confront her inner demon. Shera, being a carefree and trusting girl to a fault, quickly warms up to Diablo and presents no reason why she should renege on their relationship, should she ever even have the choice.

And though neither Shera nor Rem accept Diablo as their master outright, both girls change their tune and pledge their fealty to him at the end of episode four after Diablo rescues Rem and the entire town from certain slaughter. In a sudden change of heart, both Rem and Shera profess they’re happy to be his slaves when Diablo, attempting to roleplay his demon lord-sona, insists he only came to their aid to protect his property rather than exhibiting any sort of compassion.

Rem, who had been fiercely independent up until this point, happily accepts that she is Diablo’s property and is overjoyed by Diablo’s protection. Shera, meanwhile, also asks to be a slave too, fearing she was being left out.

Demon Lord goes on to further affirm that Rem and Shera’s relationship with Diablo is consensual throughout the series: most notably in the final episode of the anime, the girls state the relationship is wholly consensual to the Demon Lord Krebskulm, whom they try to persuade to become Diablo’s latest servant.

Diablo cuts a deal to allow Krebskulm, or Klem, to stay with them on the condition she become his slave. Doing so would give Diablo the power to stop her from any future outbursts, which could endanger human lives. Klem rightly questions if doing so would forfeit her freedom, but Shera and Rem assure her that being a slave to Diablo isn’t that bad.

In what is sadly probably the healthiest display of submission in the entire series, Klem consents to be collared of her own volition. That said, her childish presentation and appearance as a waifish demon with a penchant for cookies casts doubt on the legitimacy of her consent, since she looks a whole lot like a minor and minors cannot give consent.

(And, as an aside, while never explicitly stated in the anime, Rem and Shera are apparently 14 and 15 years old respectively to Diablo’s 30, according to their profiles listed on a Wiki-page. I have tried to verify this for myself, to no avail.)

I do take comfort in knowing that Diablo isn’t a totally bad person. While he woefully lacks communication skills, the story is told from his point of view and lends frank and truthful insight to the ulterior motives behind his evil facade. Diablo continues to inwardly express sympathy and a proper concept of right and wrong even if he outwardly fails to embody them while roleplaying a bad-to-the-bone sorcerer.

The audience knows to read the titular hero in a positive light, but that insight is not readily available to those around him. As Diablo proclaims both Rem and Shera as his property and that he only saved them to protect what’s his, the dramatic irony that he’s unsure how a demon lord might accept gratitude is not available to Rem and Shera. They must take his words and interpret them on their own. And despite the history of manhandling and abrasive arrogance, the girls look past that and embrace him as their master in gratitude for his protection.

The issue, however, is that even though Diablo himself has no malicious intent, his actions do mirror a very familiar type of abusive person within the BDSM community. A relationship crosses over into abuse when a partner refuses to respect boundaries. This is the same for vanilla relationships as well, but the lines seem muddled when your relationship involves power exchange and when sometimes “no” still means “yes” until a safeword is uttered.

In real life, a dominant partner must strictly adhere to a submissive’s boundaries and needs. Anyone would like to portray themselves as the well-meaning but abrasive Diablo, but that “act” is sometimes their true persona. It’s impossible to tell unless they respect their submissive’s boundaries

For Diablo, the fact that he can’t turn off his demon-lord act more or less means that he can’t respect those important boundaries. He is unable to perform aftercare, nor can he stop himself when he’s clearly gone too far.

When he “interrogates” Rem into opening up to him in the first episode, Diablo pushes her over on the bed and begins to fondle her ears until she gives in from embarrassing pleasure. While the scene ends with Diablo gaining Rem’s trust, the premise was entirely non-consensual the moment he refused to accept “no” for an answer, especially given Rem had not yet accepted him as her master.

The story, however, likely didn’t think that far into Diablo’s character. Rem and Shera read him as the audience does: as a caring and kind man who simply cannot communicate normally. And whenever the story hits a point where Diablo needs to calm down, his demeanor conveniently shifts to a more well-adjusted one; such as when he, without argument, expresses he is open to working under the guild master even if she’s far weaker than him.

While the story does not delve into the abusive nature of Diablo’s relationship with Rem and Shera, it does introduce Shera’s brother to serve as a textbook villain as contrast to Diablo. Prince Keera L. Greenwood is suave and collected on the outside, hiding an ugly and twisted inside that wishes to force his sister to return home so that he may impregnate her with his child.

In an effort to express just how bad things could be for slaves like Shera, Demon Lord writes Keera to be as evil as he can be. He uses mind-control and clearly forces Shera to do what she doesn’t want to do. Holding her in bondage, he then proceeds to interrogate and molest her while the story, pointedly, notes that Diablo had only ordered Shera to do one thing, and it was to shake hands and smile at Rem when they all first met.

In the climax of episode seven, Diablo confronts Keera and asks Shera to truthfully state her desire. She proclaims: “I want to be free! I want to be with Diablo and Rem forever and ever!”

Shera’s wish to remain free while also remaining with Diablo resonates with my own desire to be a pet. It is her choice to serve and stand beside him while Diablo must take responsibility to not abuse the power she has bestowed upon him.

Ironically, though, Shera’s heartfelt moment of truth was only made possible because Diablo ordered her to “tell the truth” through the power of her slave collar. The moment is thus ruined and devoid of meaning since, while the outright abusive spell from her brother is broken, it still remains that Shera is under Diablo’s power for better or worse.

How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord is by no means a safe nor sane application of a BDSM relationship. Though I admit that I have an unironic fondness for the series despite all of its problems, its premise exemplifies a romanticized, unhealthy concept of a dominant and submissive relationship.

While the story demonstrates Diablo is a nice guy and that Shera and Rem are happily under his care, real relationships do not truly lock submissives into a dependant and disadvantaged situation. In reality, submission is a choice and it’s one that can be taken back, no matter how permanent that choice may seem.