#scooping girls outta shitty situations and then making them ninjas

[britcision]

Eeeeh you just lost the lottery so we’re going to play “Cultures That Aren’t The Modern West Exist” and also basic critical thinking

Spoilers for the Adventurer’s Bible and Izutsumi’s actual backstory below, I’ll keep the dungeon stuff out of it

Because you’re right! Izutsumi was bought by the Nakamoto family as a kid, as a possession not a person. The people they bought Izutsumi from kept her almost naked in a cage and never fed her

She was part of a travelling freak show, and every single thing in her life improved after the Nakamotos bought her; she was trained, fed, treated like a person, and not punished from skimping on her chores

(Although when Inutade did them instead and hurt herself Izutsumi did get told off… by Hien, her contemporary

)

This is actually a pattern; Inutade and Benichidori were both also bought by Shuro’s father, Inutade as a prize fighter and Benichidori as a servant (presumably because she’s a tall-man)

The Nakamotos have a habit of buying young women from harsh lifestyles and training them to be ninjas, which includes feeding them, training them, and giving them a stable home where they don’t have to fear being sold again

All this for the low low price of “you’re probably going to die in their service, either of being a ninja or old age”, because that’s how the feudal system works; people in service to a noble family only have the rights that family gives them, and their lifestyle is set and maintained by that family

The Nakamotos notably seem to maintain the loyalty of their elite trained fighting women by taking them from a bad situation and giving them a better one, and all the women have to do in return is remain in service

If Toshiro’s father hadn’t bought Izutsumi, if she were still alive at all she’d be eating live rats and occasional scraps in a cage, half feral

And, just for fun: Izutsumi’s timeline

She was 10 when the Nakamotos bought her. She was 12 when the only real punishment she ever got for running away was administered…

The same babysitting curse that was put on Shuro, potential heir to the leader as a kid

(Note: personally I think this should have thrown Maizuru’s technique as a governess into question the first time it happened, but since she was only trained to be a ninja not a childcare provider it’s not all that surprising)

Raise your hands everyone who thinks a feral 10-12yo beastman, who has already been forcibly made a sideshow attraction once, would have survived

Now use that hand to slap yourself

Every fighting move she knows comes from the Nakamotos and while yes, she was not free as a bird to do what she wanted when she wanted, she’s a fucking teenager

A large chunk of her storyline is going to be her figuring out that she can’t just do what she wants when she wants, because that is how life works

She never faces consequences for having left Shuro’s team, per the comic you posted they were a little exasperated on learning she’d even broken the curse and was therefore unlikely to ever return, but no one tried to hunt her down again

Cuz now she’s old enough and trained enough to probably not immediately die

“Fully a slave” my fucking ass, all three of the girls the Nakamotos bought lived and trained alongside Hien in the same damn bedroom, whose family are established servants of the Nakamoto clan with enough status and prestige that she was raised alongside the eldest son of the clan leader

That, by the way, is a higher honour than being born into the clan directly at a lesser branch, because the heir to the fucking lordship is about as important as it gets

Chilling in the same classroom would give Hien a better education than 80% of the “free” population (likely peasants and most lesser noble families)

Shuro’s family rescued Izutsumi from a literal cage, treated her like a person for the first time since she was 6 and had her body modified against her will, raised and trained her until she was capable of actually surviving on her own, and let her go without a single consequence

She showed extremely early on and consistently that she would not be grateful, loyal, or even inclined to stick around, and while they could have significantly saved money and trouble by just letting her go when she kept trying to escape, they not only brought her back but kept training her to be actively independent and defend herself

Now, this wasn’t a pure act of charity, since she was still expected to at least partially pull her weight with chores and being a ninja

(Hmmmm yet no one’s talking about the ethics of teen ninjas)

But chattel slavery was an entirely unique form of evil that was significantly worse than the millennia of different forms of slavery being practiced across the world for an incredibly long list of reasons that absolutely none of the “OMG SHURO’S FAMILY OWNS SLAVES” are remotely ready to consider

(What the fuck do you want them to do? Personally overthrow the fucking feudal system?)

So let’s simplify to the most basic dichotomy:

You can be free, or you can be safe

(If you have any doubt of which you are, freely stop paying your bills and see what happens)

While she was too young to defend herself, Izutsumi was saved from being a sideshow attraction by Shuro’s family, and then kept safe until she was strong enough to take the freedom she clearly preferred

She’s not wrong to choose freedom, to turn her back on them at the first chance, and she’s not wrong to not feel bad about it. It’s all a valid series of choices, and she never lied about her intentions

Izutsumi deserved a loving home, and she never got it, including from Shuro’s family

But she was fed, cared for, trained in multiple valuable skills, and faced zero repercussions for taking that and running

She had her freedom the second Maizuru believed she’d survive it (by breaking the curse)

There’s a reason we see Inutade so often being so happy to be part of the Nakamoto clan’s servants

Izutsumi chose freedom

Inutade chose safety

And the wish granting fairy that is Shuro’s dad gave them both exactly what they wanted

Them not living to the happy moral standards of the American Dream probably has something to do with the story not being set in America

not to put too fine a point on it but like, isutzumi was fully 100% a slave of shuro's family