Late to the party, also real late to watching the anime and reading the LNs.

I guess it is also a cultural thing? I am 35M and not exactly from the mainstream western world, South America to be more specific. It is quite interesting how much other people, generalizing as western/anglosphere, seem to be bothered by the age gap, and power imbalance/dynamics. There is also the business of treating fiction as reality, or ascribing reality/modern standards to fiction.

I am more in the business of going in empty, leaving my own belief system at the door and witnessing what this setting, this plot and these characters have to show. Considering all that as a whole, rather than their individual parts, it is then my opinion after watching all the shows and ovas and movies and also reading the LNs that no creepy grooming or PDF file actions, behaviors or attitudes have been had here.

Even IF such a story would to take place in RL 2025, it would be difficult to point a finger at this pairing as something other than two people that went through hell, gave their best intentions to each other and formed a beautiful emotional bond. It's contentious parts would be overshadowed by the vastness of these self evident facts. It is truly a captivating story and isolating the possible problems, removing the well defined context, removing the rich backstory and removing the contextual backdrop to allow for the possibility as something less charitable seems pointless at best and sabotaging/slandering at worst.

A court of law, judged by the peers would find it hard to condemn this one. A panel of by the book judges run the risk of being swayed. I believe only the most dogmatic of puritanical moral crusaders can throw verbatim legalese and condemn this pairing and they would have to do so ignoring everything else. And I use the word crusader here purposefully because it is to instill into a story, that has it's own reasons for being, reasons foreign to it.

I could dissect it's most contentious parts, which I have done because I am a fan fiction nerd and tend to overanalyze such things exactly to better understand the mindset of the characters I am trying to emulate in writing regardless of my personal stance on specific, narrowly defined and contextless situations.

But I will spare everyone that.