me @ the antis losing their shit over Loveless all of a sudden, when this series has been a thing since 2002: ...Congrats, y'all immediately latched onto Soubi and Ritsuka's extremely complicated relationship, boiled it down to 'grooming', and completely missed the point that this is not a romance series and it in fact heavily tackles themes of abuse.
Both Soubi and Ritsuka are abuse victims with submissive personalities. Soubi was repeatedly sexually, physically, and emotionally abused ever since he was a young teenager, and now as a 20-year-old adult who has never received therapy... yeah, he has a very skewed idea as to what is healthy for a relationship. Especially since he then ended up in an emotionally abusive relationship with Seimei as Seimei's Fighter; he's never known what it is to have a healthy relationship--platonic, romantic, or sexual.
Ritsuka has selective amnesia regarding his older brother Seimei, has been domestically abused by his mother in the two years since Seimei's death, and it later revealed in the manga (the anime never got this far) to have been molested by Seimei -- not to the extent either of them lost their cat ears and tail, but it was still sexual abuse.
Yes, Ritsuka is 12 years old at the start of the manga/anime (and for a good chunk of the main story, I believe) while Soubi is 20 years old, but this is very much not a series aimed at kids/young teenagers. It's a josei manga/anime, with the target demographic being adult women.
It's not the author's fault that North American publishers (when it was translated into English) chose to market it for older teenagers . . . and 11 - 15-year-olds picked it up instead. When, again, in Japan, the target audience is adults.
I don't really have a major moral standpoint here; I'm just fucking annoyed.
All of that being said, I would find a reading of Seimei as a potential sociopath interesting. As someone who has loved and been loved by a person diagnosed with ASPD and obsessive compulsive tendancies, the relationship he has with Ritsuka vs the rest of the world rings extremely true to life. Such a person desires absolute control, but their crimes can be sloppy and impulsive. They attach onto one special person who they decide to own and protect while totally disregarding social norms and the rights of anyone else.