Like murder, rape can be funny...
First off excellent animation, drawings, sound design, and voice acting, this should be a great series, but the thing that keeps hampering it is the fucking shitty scripts.
The last two entries into this series were dismal failures, this one is marginally better in that it at least invoked a chuckle out of me with the bit about "Lemme".
However you lost my interest when the whole "dungeon rape" aspect of the cartoon came into play, it wasn't because I was offended (although the concept of real rape repulses me). It's just that whole bit was played too seriously to be funny.
I get that the joke is that these are cartoons, and Zone Tan is supposed to be a psycho-bitch or something, plus the idea that there is some sort of sex dungeon where cartoons characters are enslaved is kinda funny.
The thing is the tone of the scene didn't fit within the context of the rest of the upbeat cartoon, it maybe it would have worked if the series was darker, or if it was played differently with a kind of "wink wink, this is a cartoon, nudge nudge" attitude.
To be fair making rape humorous is a hard sell, I think only "South Park" has gotten away with that consistently, but again it maybe because of the art style is very cartoony and hard to take seriously.
With this cartoon, it almost seemed like you were condoning rape, which made me really uncomfortable, probably because this isn't meant to be erotic, and that changes the context of the scene.
If you were making a porn film, and it featured rape in it, (even if it was hardcore) it somehow wouldn't be as off-putting to me since the only purpose of porn is to be erotic, and people certainly find rape erotic (not just men either, "Story of O" was written by a woman after all).
Porn isn't supposed to carry a message, it's meant to get people off, and in that sense allow people to live out impossible fantasies, which I think is a good thing as long as no one is actually being hurt.
People seem to root for mass murders, look at the "Madness" series, not much of a story there, so the way I see that kind of senseless violence is as a different kind of pornography. Instead of the money shot being a chick getting loads of man-milk in her face, it's a dude getting his head blown off.
Which one of those is worse? Somehow this form of Sadistic fantasy has become socially acceptable, but the fantasy of sexual sadism isn't. That's probably because it makes people uncomfortable to think that either they themselves are attracted to this paraphilia, or there are individuals out there who are.
I theorize this may be because sex hits closer to home, not everyone is born with the natural desire to kill another person, but 99.99% of the population is born with the desire to fuck, and when ones sexual tastes are illegal it becomes an icky issue.
So I hope you know I'm not accusing you of actually condoning rape, all I'm saying is the scripts for your series need serious intervention, well at least if you want them to be funny...
Lots of love,
- Celx Requin