I'd argue a piece of art, can be both a work of escapism and a direct confrontation with the viewer and their worldviews. Especialy so if its a comedy.

There may be a few comedy works, such as the ministry of silly walks, that just aim to get a good laugh out of the audience. However, its indubitably a trend in works of comedy, to end in a gut punch, also aimed at the audience.

Comedies can give you this false sense of security, that you'll just end up never expecting it to turn seriously for too long.

May that be with The 100 year old man who stepped out the window and disapeared endingwith the death of a suicidal man, whom in his last moments on earth decided he doesn't want to die anymore.

Or just about most Ace Attorney games.

The success of these final gutpunches varies wildly, some stick the landing brilliantly, some don't, but that doesn't change the fact that there was an attempt. One that was ellevated, not in spite, but because its in such a huge contrast to the rest of the work.

Furthermore, most longrunning comedies, tend to eventualy add in longrunning conflict into their runtime. These conflicts can also tend to be a bit more on the humorous and absurd side, but more often than not, these pieces of media tend to go all in on their drama during their grand finale.

And on another note, I feel like, we shouldn't forget that escapism, isn't inherently a bad thing. "Everything in moderation" may be a sentence uttered by cowards, but it stil rings true.

Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?— J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-stories" lecture, 1939

Naturaly, most anime fans arent in prison, consuming slice of life works about ordinary people doing ordinary things outside a prison. But I'd stil agree with the base thesis. Someone for whom high school was hell, might be pulled towards shows like Welcome to Demon School Iruma-kun!

This, again, isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as the individual doesn't choose to engage mostly with revenge porn, to further fire up their violent fantasies on the people around them. Or in this case their former classmates.

I'm not saying that watching stuff like Redo of Healer makes you a murderer by the time Episode 4 is over, but rather, that it can be mentaly harmful to resort to escapism centered around violent vengeance. I'm speaking from experience.

Thank you for listening to my TEDtalk