That's what is honestly so baffling to me. There's more casual, social violence in your average Tom & Jerry or Southpark episode than in entire volumes or seasons of ZnT.
ZnT is a lightnovel. Those parts read as literal torture.
Yeah that is what astonished me the most.
I honestly thought the Anime made it up...
Did you literally just ignore the rest of the conversation where I was referencing the LNs, lol?
Again, I say tomato, you say cabbage. That was the point I was making. If you read it as torture, sure, but point where the text implies that anyone, Saito included, is more than mildly annoyed?
Back in her room, she closed the door with a deadly silence, and faced Saito. Forcefully biting
her lip, she sent him a murderous glare.
“Like some stray dog in heat...” her voice was quivering. Louise’s hands move faster than her
mouth, and her feet move faster than her hands. It looked like her voice would get shakier soon.
Anger filled her face.
“W-what now?”
“I almost saw you as a person. Looks like I was wrong.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Yeah. See me as a person? Sounds like a lie no matter how I think
about it.
“And you went to wag your tail at that Zerbst witch...” Louise reached into a drawer in her desk
for something. A whip.
“Uhh...M-miss...” Saito started to stutter.
“Dogs must be treated like dogs. I’ve been too soft on you.”
“But why the whip?” Saito eyed the whip in Louise’s hand. It was quite well made.
“I’m going far out of my way to use a horse’s whip on you. You’re just a dog.”
“A dog, huh?”
Louise started whipping. Pishi-Pishi-!
“Ow! It hurts! Stop, you idiot!”
“What? How is that girl better? What is so good about her?” Louise yelled and whipped.
Saito noticed an opening, and grabbed Louise’s hands. She struggled, but the strength of the girl
was not enough. Saito kept his grip on her wrists, and then she stopped.
“Ahh! Let go, you moron!”
“Are you...” Saito bore into Louise. Brown eyes stared back. Up close, one can see an irresistible
face.
Cute. Kirche is a beauty, quite sexy. But Louise is like an empty canvas. Not a single speck of
dirt...a clean canvas. It’s just that her character is a bit... No matter how Saito said it, he liked
Louise better. His heart started beating in sixteenth notes. Is she jealous? Does she have a crush
on me? In Saito’s eyes, thinking like this makes Louise look even cuter. All things considered,
Saito is as weak as Kirche in romance.
"Ow, that hurts, idiot!" "This coffee is too hot!"
And then a couple seconds later, he grabs her, and his mind is already off on another perverted tangent. Even if you want to read this straight, you're ignoring
other realities, namely that Louise is not only 16 but almost abnormally short and thin for her age; her stats list her as being 4'9". If you want to read it without any nod towards authorial intent or tone, she was attempting and failing to whip him. That, or it was a mistranslation and it was a riding crop, which seems likely, given both the dimensions of her room and her build.
Personal experience on both counts here: I've been hit with a riding crop on bare skin. It stings a little, for a minute or two at worst. I've also used a horsewhip, and I had a damned hard time cracking it, and I had close to two feet on Louise at the time, not to mention this thing called muscle tone which a sedentary and largely idle squishy-mage teenager seems unlikely to possess. Mooooving on.
“Louise, my dear Louise, your face; you have the cutest face in the world...” Following that, just
as Saito was about to lift up Louise’s nightgown, she suddenly awoke. Saito was initially
shocked, but he recovered quickly and hugged Louise tightly.
“What... What are you doing?!”
Louise immediately realized what was going on and struggled to break free from Saito’s arms.
“Can’t you just stay still?”
“Why... why... are you hugging me?
“What are you saying? I thought that you liked me!?” Saito stared at Louise in frustration;
Louise felt the anger and stopped struggling.
“What?”
Saito placed his hands on Louise’s shoulder and asked, “Aren’t you in love with me?”
“What... what... nonsense are you blabbering?”
“It’s all right Louise, I understand how you feel. I’m the one that understands you the most.
Don’t be nervous, just relax.”
Saito slowly moved his lips towards Louise’s; Louise’s face became paler and paler.
Me, in love with you??
Louise’s dream just now flashed before her eyes again. Saito was exactly the same as in her
dream, speaking to her in that audacious manner. Thanks to that, the more Louise looked at Saito, the angrier she became. Both the Saito in her dream and the Saito in reality made her mad, really
mad. You could say it was pure rage.
Louise was now trembling in anger, but Saito mistook it for shyness, as Louise had had no prior
experience.
“Are you still nervous, this is my first time too. Relax while I take off my pants...”
Louise felt Saito holding up her waist...
As swift as a flame salamander catches its prey, Louise shot her right leg upward and struck
Saito between the legs.
"Arhhh!"
Saito immediately felt his spine carry the excruciating pain from his groin all the way to his brain.
Saito, not able to take the pain, began foaming at the mouth and rolled off of Louise’s bed.
Louise slowly got up and grabbed the horse whip which was placed next to her bed.
Saito, seeing the whip, tried to escape, but the whip-bearing Louise already had her foot on
Saito’s head.
“What did you want to do to me just now?!”
Saito, slowly recovering from his pain, managed to speak, ”Aren’t we just like lovers whispering
sweet nothings to each other just now?”
Louise using her foot to apply more pressure on Saito’s head replied, “That’s only wishful
thinking on your part.”
“Does it mean that I’m mistaken…? Aren’t you fond of me?”
“Who is fond of whom?”
“Well, don’t you like me, Miss Louise?”
“Haha… Please tell me the reason for you believing that, but you’d better make it simple to
understand, otherwise I will not be able to tell what will happen to you…”
“Well, during the ball, you looked at me, your familiar with those lovelorn eyes.”
Louise with her face turning red replied, “So that’s why you thought that I’m fond of you and
climbed into my bed?”
“That’s correct, Miss Louise. Is your humble familiar really mistaken?”
“You’re definitely mistaken, I have never heard of a familiar climbing into its owner’s bed.”
“I will take note of it the next time.”
Louise gave a sigh and said in a tone that seems to pity Saito, “There won’t be a next time.”
“Master, Look! Look! The twin moons are shining so beautifully tonight!” Saito said in
desperation.
“Anyway, it’s too late…” Louise said in a voice trembling in anger. Under the twin moon’s
moonlight, Saito’s cries of pain could be heard many miles away…
Oh yes, Saito just about rapes her, but Louise is a sadistic harpy because the author wanted a "funny" segue out of the scene. Yes sir, this whipping was completely out-of-the-blue, unjustified torture, and it's definitely what we should be taking issue with in this scene. It's not as if we're ignoring worse things happening literally a page earlier, or ignoring the obvious attempt at physical humor.
But fuck it. I'm done. If you want to just repeat "This is what I think the text says, and that's what counts, regardless of what the genre or tone of the series is, regardless of what the text literally says in many places, &c." have at it. God, I can't believe I've been wasting time on a circular argument about the canon events of a series that's literally only good when a competent author completely ignores canon and uses the setting to tell their own story.