In the NGL arc, a Chimera ant abducts two children and feeds them to the Chimera Queen alive.
Nice work on the “non-fantasy” example.
“My very narrow and very specific argument still holds because it only applies to this particular title. I will only accept evidence from no other titles, therefore, I cannot be disproven.”
Bullshit. I excluded fantasy because in that genre violence can have all kinds of variant meanings than in realism, like in the Bakemonogatari series, where the protagonist can get torn limb from limb and it’s funny because he’s a fucking vampire who regenerates faster than the enemy can injure him.
My issue is not moral, but artistic. The “comedy violence” tropes are a genre signal that the violence is notional and not to be taken seriously—everybody knows that, which is why the pious lectures about tropes are obtuse. But the Minami-abuse arcs send “realistic drama” genre signals—the basis of her character is that she’s a sweet, loving person with a history of being violently abused by people close to her.
When authors mix not just different but contradictory genre signals, the risk is what happens here—readers go “wtf—how are we supposed to take this?” The story sets up sympathy for Minami as the victim of unjustified violence, then shows Iori suddenly smacking her out of nowhere for being emotionally insecure, and that’s supposed to be funny. Good luck with that.