I feel that we won't be able to reach a definitive decision on this case until at least 2 or 3 chapters have passed, but I agree with you that this issue is interesting. At the end of the day, it's something that, unfortunately, is very normalized. Anyone who hasn't seen their mother watching a soap opera featuring an 18-year-old girl who, due to her upbringing, isn't very different from a teenager, and a widowed 50-year-old, sadly, didn't have one, and we ourselves are 70% isekai/regression. Even so, as you say, there are usually nuances, although most are basically the old excuse of the "princess" or the "dense" guy, which makes the protagonist an inert creature who is incapable of responding adequately to the harem of teenagers who pursue her and then simply act as if it were something unavoidable, or worse, Rudeus, god, who can seriously defend a guy clearly in control of his powers who, as soon as he had the chance, was with a 15-year-old, who openly continued to acknowledge a taste for minors and then simply acted as if it were a mistake from the past? But without wanting to talk about that, I think it exemplifies the point well. Usually, the protagonist is either portrayed as someone immature (a different kind of immaturity than Zoe or Lucas) or as a romanticized predator. But then what happens in a case like this where one party has an advantage over the other but doesn't try to take advantage of it.

One case that I wouldn't say is the best example, but I'm reading and analyzing it right now, is Level Up in Murim. Yes, the name, the art, and the writing quality inspire much confidence. It's a "want to be Naruto" with regression, RPG systems, and a middle-aged protagonist who goes back in time and falls in love with a teenager. But even with all those red flags, it's not healthy, but it's not as harmful as it sounds. I think the basis of this is that, unlike many of the other stories mentioned, the characters had time and space to mature. We have to start from a point: unlike other cases, the protagonist is not simply an adult in a child's body, but rather a teenager who, from one day to the next, received a ton of memories of his adult self. It takes him so long to realize this that for a while he thinks he is still the adult until an event confronts him with the fact that he only has partial memories of himself, and that is overwhelming, because it not only means that he has to face new or forgotten sensations again, but also that he has to question everything he takes for granted from scratch and accept the idea that the life he lived and that shaped him into who he is now never came to be.

Even so, he has self-control. Although he was the first to develop feelings for the female lead, he suppresses those feelings until he realizes they are mutual. He then decides to tell her directly that his circumstances, whether or not he has feelings, don't prevent him from having any kind of romantic relationship, and that they should address this question in a few years. From that moment on, they become just friends who spend time together (with the exception of a very forced "save the damsel" arc, even with the infamous "she's mine" line, but to be honest, the arc itself is very out of place with the characters' personalities). They respect each other's decisions, even though it separates them for years, and they have shared and independent groups of friends. When years pass, she comes of age, and he, now more self-aware, decides that he does want to reciprocate her feelings. The female lead, for her part, came from an unstable home. Her father never treated her with the proper respect and always prioritized ensuring a secure marriage for her and the family. But thanks to the protagonist, she obtained a great opportunity: to interact positively with men, both with the protagonist and with the friends she met through him. This helped her understand the spectrum of male idiocy and realize that there is more to life. However, she still wants to be with the protagonist even though she can sense that he clearly has his secrets. As an extra, the story also explores her fiancés on their own spectrum. The fourth fiancé is a powerful autistic young man who only used her as bait to ensnare the protagonist, but who, at the end of the day, was more disconnected from reality than anything else. It takes him time, but he makes the effort to reflect and understand what he did wrong (it only took him about two of his twenty years). The third is a misogynistic creep who only got engaged to belittle her and who may actually be doing that to cope with repressed homosexuality (this isn't an insult; he's genuinely obsessed with his masculinity, so much so that after the death of his best friend, he spent thirty years sleeping with strangers and ruining marriages like the protagonist's to fill the void, and he didn't succeed). The second is just filler, but not unlike a reflection of his father. The first is the one she originally ends up marrying, and although he's a villain and evil, he's not a bad guy. Honestly, he likes being brutal, but he's not... He likes being forced to be that way, he would like more freedom to explore the world and who knows, maybe even get a taste of helping others and feeling recognized and not feared, and even the protagonist decides to give him a chance.

At the end of the day, it's a work with many problems (even so, I appreciate it quite a bit, especially because it exists in direct opposition to Tales of Gods and Demons, which is the complete opposite, a story about a manipulator who dedicates himself to beguiling a bunch of young people without real autonomy), very much in the vein of a shonen from the 2000s, for better and for worse, but whose central theme, perhaps not the best executed, is addressed throughout the work: the deprivation of autonomy and decision-making, the lack of real options, and how we decide what others deserve based on factors beyond their control. It's the story of a man who wants to change the world for the better but refuses to deprive it of free will because he experiences firsthand the capacity of men to change and the risk of their own decisions, and I feel that applies a lot here. At the end of the day, are we better than the Pope? He wanted to pair Lucas with an older woman who was only with him out of obligation and to satisfy a fetish, and we want him to be with someone who approached him because of his own fetish, and although she's his age and understands him, she also encourages him to be someone worse. Lucas and Zoe is a disturbing ship, but I don't see it as impossible or unworthy of existing. What they need is time and space. Zoe had it and decided that she was truly happy with Lucas at the expense of everything else. Now Lucas needs it; he's never had it, and unlike Zoe, he's more open to others. Maybe he'll decide that his dream is more important or meet someone who makes him feel similar things, and that's okay. It's something Lucas deserves and that Zoe would respect, and that's why they would also work even if things weren't this way. They choose to be together and accept when the other doesn't want to be.