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Anon buys a can of beans
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2025
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I'm not making an argument, but I'm curious whether you feel the same way about demons in Frieren.
I do.
Frieren seems so chill and passive, except when it comes to demons and then it's like "NO THEIR KIND CANNOT BE TRUSTED", and everyone's like "will you chill? it's just a kid" and she's like "THE CHILD MUST DIE"
See my stackexchange post asking for clarification on this:
https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/68783/on-what-basis-does-frieren-sousou-no-frieren-reject-the-rights-of-demons-to-ex
Apparently the answer is "all is explained in the manga, how dare you ask this question"
Wow the only thing true in this post is that you asked a question on stack exchange
I guess I was trying to be funny, but came across as deranged(?)
Apologies to anyone I offended
It's not that you came across as deranged, it's more that you seem to be of bad faith. People on stackexchange have answered to you calmly, seriously and respectfully, but your take from it was "how dare you" and "read the manga", which is pretty dishonest imo.
They also act like the show doesn't explore the dynamic at all, and that somehow it's not legitimate to say the manga has answers the show doesn't have when the manga is several arcs ahead of the anime. This person just wants to accuse people of being Nazis.
I was with you right until that last sentence. Did I miss something?
That last part was more of a joke. I hope people can look at my other answers (in that exchange and here) and see me as rational. 'Tis Christmas afterall
Couple of things here, demons aren’t an organic species in frieren, they’re crafted directly from magic itself to kill people. They’re 40k orcs, but slower to breed. They’re human shaped because of Darwinian mechanisms that allowed them to live longer in the shape of humans. Each any every one of them is a sociopath masking it with a malevolently high iq, with psychology of an inherently foreign base.
They’re allowed to exist freely, they choose war at every turn as their base. In fact, their king seeks coexistence and understanding, but does so by genociding humanity for a literal millennium in order to build a psychological basis for humankind’s behavior. Some demon leaders suggested that humanity would be completely wiped out long before their king might finally bridge the gap.
Attempts at coexistence continue to occur, but all turned out to be subterfuge, with the ends being genocide. There’s a vague suggestion that this is a time travel based Douglas Adams-esque god crafted world-computer created to quantize human psychology, but that is also monstrous. Anyway, read the comic if you want to understand.
Maybe the themes of a piece of media should be judged by our standards in our world instead of going by the built in justifications of its author
“John Carpenter’s The Thing plays with the premise that rapidly changing attitudes and malleable thinking will get you killed.”
Sometimes an inherently destructive force is just an inherently destructive force. You can choose to discard the premise of a story to suit a narrative of persecution, or you can read a story that is actually about persecution.
brain completely eaten by worms
Dude, you’re on a greentext board arguing about a comic you’ve never read because you’re traumatized by irl events. Go talk to someone instead of misinterpreting me and my thoughts as misanthropic.
I criticized you for your 'the curtains are blue' slop brain and now you're halfway into writing a fiction novel about my life of trauma and persecution. You're absolutely out of your mind.
I figured you were frustrated by something irl because I didn’t think you were just a colossal dick. My mistake for not blocking a tankie who spends their free time picking fights with people online. Your mod log is gross, and I should have checked it earlier. Blocked
tankie is when you criticize my show for writing in that genocide is the correct moral choice
Definitely not, the show is pretty much a 1:1 adaptation of the manga.
That also wasn't the answer they received on stack exchange. The anime is also still being adapted, and the manga isn't even finished.
Did you read the top reply? It doesn't even mention the manga and explains exactly, what I would have thought was the answer to your question. Maybe the manga goes more into detail (later?), but the main parts are there:
Do I find this trope boring? A bit.
Does it fit the show? I think so. Is it wrong to have such a species in a show? No.
It's fantasy and most races can work together. Having an irredeemably evil race as enemy just makes it easier to ignore ethical questions in fights (for me and a lot of other people).
Because if the show tells us, that they are indeed always and irredeemably evil, then we can ignore all those questions and just enjoy the fight. (Jajaja, that's what the Nazis ~~did~~ still do, I know!)
I wouldn't say they're evil. It's basically like thinking you can be friends with a tiger. They're on a completely alien ethical framework to humans. Killing humans is the natural thing to do, so of course they do it.
Frieren actually is exploring something here. The demons actually aren't human, and the show sets her up as appearing intolerant to show that no, these actually just aren't people
The demons are just demons. They just want to eat people. They're intelligent, but entirely alien
They're the old school pure evil anime demons, but in a time where demons in anime have become relatable
It just feels like a waste kind of to kill them though. Humanity learned so much by reverse-engineering, and then later refining their magic. To kill them before understanding everything they have to offer, feels.... limiting somehow
Don't you see?? That's greed. Why do you need their magic? Only to fight them and each other better!
There's nothing to be gained by keeping them around, they are just predators of sapient people. Their magic is made to dominate and kill
Frieren has the raw strength to dominate and kill, but she doesn't value that kind of magic despite her skill in it. She wants to create fields of flowers, she seeks beauty instead of violence. Her violence isn't about genocide, it's about protecting what she values
You're getting a lot of shit, but I get you. When the demons were introduced, I had a moment of "ayo what if Frieren is the baddie the whole time and demons are misunderstood". The only thing is it quickly solidifies that the demons are just evil, even though I don't necessarily like that one-dimensional narrative of good and evil.
It probably doesn't help that I finished Attack on Titan just before so I already had elusive, internalized fascism on my mind. I think that's sort of the point with Frieren though. She's supposed to be capital G Good, which is inexplicably brutal toward evil, and that's where the dimensionality comes in.
I still can't get where AoT lies on the fascism spectrum
spoiler
On the one hand you've got these group of powerful people who were almost genocided, and then on the other you've get them genociding the rest of the world back as an ultimate survival strategy.But Eren's final form doesn't exactly have the audience rooting for him, even when his motivations are explained. I expected another season where the whole world would unite to take him down, but that did not seem to happen...
So I just can't figure AoT out. Was the whole thing a commentary on fascism itself, or was it literally a revenge/survival plot?
I heard (not sure how true it is) that the manga creator is politically far-right. That's actually hilarious to me, and it might be the reason the message seems odd. The whole anime is like an essay on how shitty fascism is for the fascists, but then it takes a left turn while lying on its side, if you will.
definitely feels like it's trying to say something without saying it
Do you feel the same way about zombies?
They do not exhibit intelligence, learning strategies, and we do not reverse engineer their methods to surpass them. So, no.
Thanks, that's illuminating.
Damn, people are real mad you don't like their elf waifu.
Downvoted for being right, the fact that more people aren't suspicious of an anime with a bunch of german names and aesthetics that also just happens to feature a race of non-people who are incurably evil and can never be trusted is baffling to me
I'd say that the German aesthetic prevails in anime largely because it's got those idealistic ruralist one-with-nature mountain vibes, rather than the love for fascism.
Southern Germany especially is a beautiful idealistic landscape (warst du schonmal in...), though nowadays you'd see the "old europe" more in places like Bosnia than in Germany, but Bosnian culture is less accessible
Frieren's fascism seems to be largely a personal thing specific to her, rather than something that all the other characters exhibit. I'm hoping there's an arc that proves her wrong in her beliefs about demons
Germany is beautiful, sure, so are most countries, you can find similar rural beauty in Africa, the fact that the country that Japan was allied with for WW2 is the go-to for this isn't a coincidence. I'd love to see an arc that alleviates my suspicions, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
I'd rather believe they chose Germany because it's dead center of europe with mashups of all kinds of influences from surrounding regions, densely populated like Japan is, and has wild ancient forests along with long-standing organized institutions (scientific academies, churches, military) that jells with the conservative Japanese obsession for order, custom, and Nature.
(...But, yeah - it could just be axis-love)
It's entirely possible that you're right, we'll see
I'm told there is not.
well, dang.