| NOTE: For this discussion to make sense, read my entire post and do not rely solely on the title. Recently there was a new drama on Twitter related to "the demons thread is racist" and it's all because of this video https://youtu.be/hi8ZhcGD4uo?si=phrp41ADA4QGaMhG I personally haven't watched it because my English is too poor but from what I've read, this video contains some good observations and I'm curious what you think about it.... the discussion on Twitter doesn't seem to address the core of his argument at all. Generally everyone keeps repeating in their replies what Frieren and Flamme say about demons. From what people say he addresses this issue in his film but he thinks that "it is inconsistent" what Frieren says about demons, does not reflect what demons really are, in the sense that most of the convincing argument comes from events that will be in the second season of the anime, e.g. (I didn't get to this point in the manga, I'm repeating what others have said) one demon says to another demon (this excludes a lie) that he does not want to coexist with humans because they killed their demon friends (or something like that), according to the author this confirms their empathy so they should be able to redeem/change like other intelligent creatures. This may be true (although I would prefer demons to be the opposite of the positive values that the anime conveys) and demons can be redeemed, these contradictions may be planned idk I recommend watching this video before commenting because I would like you to address his real arguments directly. |
Ba-Cii10Nov 25, 2024 4:10 AM
| Yeah. That sounds about right, it coming from Twitter. I guess Lord of the Rings is also full of racist assholes, slaughtering Orks. Oh, well. I don't mind xD You know, maybe it just wont make for a good story....Sitting down with the demons, having a threapy session, working out how they could be redeemed. Everyone who just watches a Show can understand that, I feel. It's only when you suck all the entertainment out of a fictional Story you start asking these kind of questions, I think. This is so tedious. |
Merve2LoveNov 25, 2024 3:58 AM
 |
| Demons in frieren are honestly more similar to beasts driven by instincts than people. This is why frieren makes a big point out of not being able to coexist with demons |
 |
| He is right in the fact that the demons having sentience, curiosity, and empathy for themselves alludes to their ability to maybe change and show some “humanity” (tho it is hard to tell it these things are genuine, or learned behavior they repeat as drones). The issue is that not a single demon ever shows an inkling of not harming humanity in some way. Frieren is right, with the amount of time it would take to genuinely integrate them into human culture on the off chance that they ever actually would try to coexist peacefully (highly unlikely), far too many people would have died for it to be justifiable. It’s a stupid proposition that she is wrong for thinking how she does, the guy wanted to make an argument out of something that doesn’t need to be argued about. If you don’t like Frieren’s take on demons and how they’re handled, that’s fine. But to insinuate that she’s wrong for wanting to rid the world of them cuz “that’s bad, one of them asked what the word father means” is foolish in my opinion. |
| Actually, after watching the video, I kinda agree with some of what was said. I haven’t finished the Gold arc yet, and I’m planning to reread it. Honestly, I don’t know what direction the author is gonna take with the demons, or if Frieren’s perspective on them will change. I’m also unsure if the demons can truly coexist without more sacrifices to justify it. |
| Just want to say thank you for sharing this video here, since I probably wouldn’t have been exposed to it otherwise and it’s really well-done I pretty much wholly agree with the video, and it reflects a lot of my own preexisting issues with Frieren, particularly how its inclusion of an innately, unchangeably evil race undermines a lot of the series’s fundamental themes and the pretension of the story trying to present it as something more than it actually is just made its handling of the concept feel limp & disappointing, on top of the text of the narrative being pretty poor at actually portraying the Demons in an internally consistent way. It’s a huge part of the reason why I really soured on Frieren as a whole, since it’s a huge part of the story in such a way that fucking it up this badly really harms my enjoyment, and it’s emblematic of the wider problems the series has with how its worldbuilding is often so poorly thought out that it ends up inadvertently sabotaging its higher thematic and narrative aims. |
| Barely catching my breath! Lay my eyes on the crest! Gonna square up to all of the heat that is left! So I carry the torch! To Inferno! Inferno! GENERATION 45: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment. |
Reply to MusashiKarlsefni
He is right in the fact that the demons having sentience, curiosity, and empathy for themselves alludes to their ability to maybe change and show some “humanity” (tho it is hard to tell it these things are genuine, or learned behavior they repeat as drones).
The issue is that not a single demon ever shows an inkling of not harming humanity in some way. Frieren is right, with the amount of time it would take to genuinely integrate them into human culture on the off chance that they ever actually would try to coexist peacefully (highly unlikely), far too many people would have died for it to be justifiable.
It’s a stupid proposition that she is wrong for thinking how she does, the guy wanted to make an argument out of something that doesn’t need to be argued about. If you don’t like Frieren’s take on demons and how they’re handled, that’s fine. But to insinuate that she’s wrong for wanting to rid the world of them cuz “that’s bad, one of them asked what the word father means” is foolish in my opinion.
The issue is that not a single demon ever shows an inkling of not harming humanity in some way. Frieren is right, with the amount of time it would take to genuinely integrate them into human culture on the off chance that they ever actually would try to coexist peacefully (highly unlikely), far too many people would have died for it to be justifiable.
It’s a stupid proposition that she is wrong for thinking how she does, the guy wanted to make an argument out of something that doesn’t need to be argued about. If you don’t like Frieren’s take on demons and how they’re handled, that’s fine. But to insinuate that she’s wrong for wanting to rid the world of them cuz “that’s bad, one of them asked what the word father means” is foolish in my opinion.
| @MusashiKarlsefni It feels like you didn’t watch the video, or are at least very much misrepresenting its arguments. It’s mostly about the Doylist reasoning (IE the out-of-story logic behind storytelling decisions, why the author would choose to write it like this & what it means for the series’s themes & such) while you’re arguing about the Watsonian reasoning (IE the in-story logic & worldbuilding which goes into justifying the author’s decisions). The video itself has a whole section on this and especially about how trying to use a Watsonian argument to counter a Doylist one is weird and doesn’t really make sense. |
| Barely catching my breath! Lay my eyes on the crest! Gonna square up to all of the heat that is left! So I carry the torch! To Inferno! Inferno! GENERATION 45: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment. |
Infamous_Empire said: @MusashiKarlsefni It feels like you didn’t watch the video, or are at least very much misrepresenting its arguments. It’s mostly about the Doylist reasoning (IE the out-of-story logic behind storytelling decisions, why the author would choose to write it like this & what it means for the series’s themes & such) while you’re arguing about the Watsonian reasoning (IE the in-story logic & worldbuilding which goes into justifying the author’s decisions). The video itself has a whole section on this and especially about how trying to use a Watsonian argument to counter a Doylist one is weird and doesn’t really make sense. No I watched it (tho I watched it last week) my statement of if you don’t like the way they’re handled reflects his Doylist reasoning which is fair. It’s where I agree with him cuz frankly I can’t think of why they hunkered down on such an irredeemable group of antagonists, especially in tandem with some of the themes. In universe tho I just don’t think it makes sense and is no use arguing about there. Which was (albeit the very minor part) of his argument. It was my bad for not clarifying my stance well enough and focusing on the wrong thing, you’re right. Reading back my response I could’ve explained my perspective better. |
| I am pretty sure this was discussed before in the anime forum. |
| The demons were written to be evil despite having intelligence. |
 |
Reply to MusashiKarlsefni
He is right in the fact that the demons having sentience, curiosity, and empathy for themselves alludes to their ability to maybe change and show some “humanity” (tho it is hard to tell it these things are genuine, or learned behavior they repeat as drones).
The issue is that not a single demon ever shows an inkling of not harming humanity in some way. Frieren is right, with the amount of time it would take to genuinely integrate them into human culture on the off chance that they ever actually would try to coexist peacefully (highly unlikely), far too many people would have died for it to be justifiable.
It’s a stupid proposition that she is wrong for thinking how she does, the guy wanted to make an argument out of something that doesn’t need to be argued about. If you don’t like Frieren’s take on demons and how they’re handled, that’s fine. But to insinuate that she’s wrong for wanting to rid the world of them cuz “that’s bad, one of them asked what the word father means” is foolish in my opinion.
The issue is that not a single demon ever shows an inkling of not harming humanity in some way. Frieren is right, with the amount of time it would take to genuinely integrate them into human culture on the off chance that they ever actually would try to coexist peacefully (highly unlikely), far too many people would have died for it to be justifiable.
It’s a stupid proposition that she is wrong for thinking how she does, the guy wanted to make an argument out of something that doesn’t need to be argued about. If you don’t like Frieren’s take on demons and how they’re handled, that’s fine. But to insinuate that she’s wrong for wanting to rid the world of them cuz “that’s bad, one of them asked what the word father means” is foolish in my opinion.
| @MusashiKarlsefni I'm not sure if he's right, the only convincing argument when it comes to empathy is the words of this Soltar, I haven't reached that point in the manga yet but judging by his other arguments which seem forced to me, I'm convinced he could have stretched it to suit his thesis as well. I haven't watched the movie and I'm struggling with how they presented his argument now, people who agree with him in the comments (so if I'm talking nonsense correct me and tell me about the arguments that made you agree with him) one of his arguments is that "Macht is a pacifist and wants to strive for coexistence with humans so he must have morality/empathy" and everyone seems to miss the fact that his pacifism and desire for coexistence are warped, just like the demon girl in episode 7, he knows the theory of what I want to do but due to the lack of certain traits like empathy, his pacifism is just a failed "copy" of what true pacifism is, instead of refraining from killing, he kills anyone who gets close to him because "oh if I kill everyone next to me there will be no one to fight" or "I will kill people in a sadistic way and others will not want to fight me" he knows the theory but his pacifism is not caused by empathy and a real desire (caused by regret) not to kill people, he just pretends, similarly with his desire to coexist, it seems like it's just curiosity, a desire to get something he doesn't have yet and not a real need to coexist caused by empathy (I'm on volume 9 of the manga so you can have a lot of room to correct me) from the arguments about the anime, for example "Lugnar is outraged by Fern's deception so he has morality, he knows it's wrong" it seems like it's not true because how can a lie that is part of a demon's nature be wrong for him? taking this into account how can this scene be interpreted as a sign of morality? Does consciousness and curiosity mean the ability to change? demons have a different psyche, it's literally a race of sociopaths, demons despite being conscious are still unable to feel certain emotions because they are not biologically capable of it. |
Reply to Flick_on
@Merve2Love
You didn't watch the video, instead made up your own anti-intellectual Low IQ datribe full of absurdities
but whatever floats your boat
Regarding the Topic:
One Side is just 'they're evil because evil' slop consumer (and other stuff i'm not gonna mention) People used to regard that stuff as lazy and childish (Even Characters in Saturday morning cartoons have their own charm) like 10 years ago but now it's sUbVerSive WoooOOOo. (becuase you can't desecrate the golden lamb)
And the other Side wants to engage with all the inconsistencies the demons cause especially since it starts to play a bigger role, feigning complexity and as a result being really PRETENTIOUS, which people apparently hate but now it's completely fine
You didn't watch the video, instead made up your own anti-intellectual Low IQ datribe full of absurdities
but whatever floats your boat
Regarding the Topic:
One Side is just 'they're evil because evil' slop consumer (and other stuff i'm not gonna mention) People used to regard that stuff as lazy and childish (Even Characters in Saturday morning cartoons have their own charm) like 10 years ago but now it's sUbVerSive WoooOOOo. (becuase you can't desecrate the golden lamb)
And the other Side wants to engage with all the inconsistencies the demons cause especially since it starts to play a bigger role, feigning complexity and as a result being really PRETENTIOUS, which people apparently hate but now it's completely fine
| @Flick_on Oof^^ try harder. |
|
Reply to Infamous_Empire
Just want to say thank you for sharing this video here, since I probably wouldn’t have been exposed to it otherwise and it’s really well-done
I pretty much wholly agree with the video, and it reflects a lot of my own preexisting issues with Frieren, particularly how its inclusion of an innately, unchangeably evil race undermines a lot of the series’s fundamental themes and the pretension of the story trying to present it as something more than it actually is just made its handling of the concept feel limp & disappointing, on top of the text of the narrative being pretty poor at actually portraying the Demons in an internally consistent way.
It’s a huge part of the reason why I really soured on Frieren as a whole, since it’s a huge part of the story in such a way that fucking it up this badly really harms my enjoyment, and it’s emblematic of the wider problems the series has with how its worldbuilding is often so poorly thought out that it ends up inadvertently sabotaging its higher thematic and narrative aims.
I pretty much wholly agree with the video, and it reflects a lot of my own preexisting issues with Frieren, particularly how its inclusion of an innately, unchangeably evil race undermines a lot of the series’s fundamental themes and the pretension of the story trying to present it as something more than it actually is just made its handling of the concept feel limp & disappointing, on top of the text of the narrative being pretty poor at actually portraying the Demons in an internally consistent way.
It’s a huge part of the reason why I really soured on Frieren as a whole, since it’s a huge part of the story in such a way that fucking it up this badly really harms my enjoyment, and it’s emblematic of the wider problems the series has with how its worldbuilding is often so poorly thought out that it ends up inadvertently sabotaging its higher thematic and narrative aims.
| @Infamous_Empire It would be nice if you could provide some examples to support your position, because you are being too vague and I don't understand what you are trying to say. How is the world poorly thought out and sabotages two higher thematic and narrative goals? How does the "evil race" undermine the series' theme? It literally reinforces it by presenting the antagonists as fundamentally opposed to the positive values the anime wants to convey, thus emphasizing why they are so important. The demons reinforce that Frieren is fundamentally the same as everyone else, regardless of distance. If you don't like that, then it's possible that all the supposed contradictions in the demon arc could very well be foreshadowing that there is a way for the demons to redeem themselves, and Frieren's ultimate development could be understanding this, the fact that we are not given an image of the demon lord gives the series room to play, so it's a bit unfair to pass judgment before the manga is over. |
Ba-Cii10Nov 25, 2024 1:45 PM
That's the spirit!^^ |
|
Reply to Ba-Cii10
@Infamous_Empire It would be nice if you could provide some examples to support your position, because you are being too vague and I don't understand what you are trying to say. How is the world poorly thought out and sabotages two higher thematic and narrative goals? How does the "evil race" undermine the series' theme? It literally reinforces it by presenting the antagonists as fundamentally opposed to the positive values the anime wants to convey, thus emphasizing why they are so important. The demons reinforce that Frieren is fundamentally the same as everyone else, regardless of distance.
If you don't like that, then it's possible that all the supposed contradictions in the demon arc could very well be foreshadowing that there is a way for the demons to redeem themselves, and Frieren's ultimate development could be understanding this, the fact that we are not given an image of the demon lord gives the series room to play, so it's a bit unfair to pass judgment before the manga is over.
If you don't like that, then it's possible that all the supposed contradictions in the demon arc could very well be foreshadowing that there is a way for the demons to redeem themselves, and Frieren's ultimate development could be understanding this, the fact that we are not given an image of the demon lord gives the series room to play, so it's a bit unfair to pass judgment before the manga is over.
Ba-Cii10 said: It would be nice if you could provide some examples to support your position, because you are being too vague and I don't understand what you are trying to say. How is the world poorly thought out and sabotages two higher thematic and narrative goals? How does the "evil race" undermine the series' theme? I'm glad you asked! Fundamentally, Frieren is about someone who's trying to overcome her own nature in order to connect with the people around her. It is in her nature to see time differently & thus be unable to connect with humans on their level because of her biology, but the fundamental point of the series is that she can overcome that by making an effort, and that just because humans are so different from her, that doesn't make them any less worth understanding or appreciating. However, when it comes to the handling of the demons, the show takes an opposite stance, that they simply can't overcome their nature and are so inherently different as to not be worth understanding in the slightest. It's a shockingly ill-conceived way of approaching such a concept, from a thematic perspective, and its weirdness only grows with each passing arc as the series has tried to explore demonkind more yet never really tries to challenge any of the thematically contradictory framing, instead just continually validating the idea that they're monsters that must all die and have no capacity to truly act outside of their nature. Ba-Cii10 said: If you don't like that, then it's possible that all the supposed contradictions in the demon arc could very well be foreshadowing that there is a way for the demons to redeem themselves, and Frieren's ultimate development could be understanding this, the fact that we are not given an image of the demon lord gives the series room to play, so it's a bit unfair to pass judgment before the manga is over. If the series does turn itself around in this respect, I'll be the first to congratulate it. But even so, letting a flaw like this just sit for so long at this point really does wear on my patience, and for a series so focused on how the journey is worth more than the destination, the journey in regards to the exploration of demonkind sure is a weak one if the only hope still pulling me along for it is the idea that whatever destination the series reaches in that regard might be worth it. |
| Barely catching my breath! Lay my eyes on the crest! Gonna square up to all of the heat that is left! So I carry the torch! To Inferno! Inferno! GENERATION 45: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment. |
| Don't care. Don't watch. Anyone who tries to imply or say Frieren is "racist" for exterminate demons don't pay attention to the show and they have a lack of sympathy for the victims of demons. You can't co-exist with evil and evil does exist. Based Frieren. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYu6DxOW8AA0wA9?format=jpg&name=small |
| BANZAI NIPPON. Nippon is the Land of freedom. Nippon is the Land of Peace. Nippon is the Land of Justice and Prosperity. In Nippon, we trust. We love Nippon, we love Anime. Anime love us, Nippon love us. 日本 |
| i watch half of it and gave up he seems to think demons having empathy means they are moral beings too nah psychology has the dark triad qualification to know who is evil, and even among humans those who score high on dark triad test can be considered evil also psychopaths which is part of dark triad knows cognitive empathy rather than emotional empathy and i say demons in frieren have cognitive empathy but not emotional empathy sure you can argue that there are functional psychopaths like james bond so maybe demons have functional psychopaths too among them but not all of them |
| To be completely honest I do dislike "always chaotic evil" race tropes because it seems unrealistic to me, but in a way that often makes a work less interesting. It is hard for me to accept the idea that any sentient group of beings can be evil by their nature, as it dismisses the idea of any true agency. I can of course entertain magic, but it is harder for me to reconcile a group of sentient beings always being evil, because it seems too convenient. I can except casting fireballs out of a character's hands, but it comes with the assumption that throwing a fireball at someone is going to incinerate or maim them, that being burnt hurt; we expect characters to act as we would expect people in the real world to react. We expect them to fall in love, we expect them to care and to mourn and to swear vengeance. Yet now we are suppose to believe an entire group of highly intelligent beings are always evil sadists? Demons are evil because it is in their nature is often boring, and it is not the same as say, Jujutsu Kaisen's Sukuna. Sukuna is evil because it is his nature, I can see that, but also because of his ideological way of viewing the world from the position of history's strongest curse. Though it does not make him necessarily a complex character, it does say something about the themes of the ongoing story. On the other hand, I am not sure demons in Sousou No Frieren say anything to that nature. More than that, we have had a rich history of having always assumed that this group of peopkle was intrinsically this, and I think it is imaginatively bankrupt, and on some level impossible to completely seperate from our history itself. I can understand it feeling icky and outdated, to be completely honest. I do not want to say no series should have this trope, but I do share some level of discomfort here. At least the Goblin Slayer has its goblins not be much more developed than man, at least Orcs were the product of a truly horrific corruption of elves. I don't think it ruins Sousou no Frieren for me, but I do dislike the trope itself. |
| Auroraloose's Aurorasimp |
| "Drama from Twitter" Please stop giving these people attention, when is there NOT drama from them? |
| "Well, she's flatter than a pancake" -Mimi Alpacas |
| Gonna be completely straight with ya, he is basically 100% correct. |
| Hello, please don't take anything I say as an insult, it is not meant as an attack against you as a person. If I directly disagree with you, that does not mean I think you are wrong, I am just more correct. |
Reply to Nurguburu
Don't care. Don't watch.
Anyone who tries to imply or say Frieren is "racist" for exterminate demons don't pay attention to the show and they have a lack of sympathy for the victims of demons. You can't co-exist with evil and evil does exist. Based Frieren.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYu6DxOW8AA0wA9?format=jpg&name=small
Anyone who tries to imply or say Frieren is "racist" for exterminate demons don't pay attention to the show and they have a lack of sympathy for the victims of demons. You can't co-exist with evil and evil does exist. Based Frieren.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYu6DxOW8AA0wA9?format=jpg&name=small
| @Nurguburu What do you mean "they have a lack of sympathy for the victims of demons"? Demons aren't real, if we create a race of pure evil and make them similar to humans, we fundamentally arrive at racism, because that's just what racism is, the implication that such a thing as an evil race exists. You are literally saying, Nazis aren't racist for exterminating Blacks, Asians, Hispanics or Latinos, because the Nazis told you that those races are "evil". The claim that such a thing as an evil race exists is in itself racist, because, no, there are no evil races. If you are a fantasy author, and you write an evil race, than your writing is just straight up racist, it is that simple. Such a thing can stem from ignorance, I for example do not believe the author of Frieren to literally be racist, but what they wrote still is. You can't pretend like fiction has no effect on reality, if you were to read the Lord of the Rings, and they started slaughtering Jews instead of orcs, that would be fucked up, right? Demons, Vampires, Orcs, those are groups we view through the eyes of an outsider, the same way many of us look at cultures we aren't used to, if fiction tells us that what we don't know is evil, then that has consequences. People listen to the shit they read, we can't pretend like this all doesn't matter, because it does, it just does. You can tell yourself you don't care, but you literally can't escape these things and your stance either stems from ignorance, or from already being so absorbed in these things that you can't even question them any more. |
LucianaelJan 16, 7:31 AM
| Hello, please don't take anything I say as an insult, it is not meant as an attack against you as a person. If I directly disagree with you, that does not mean I think you are wrong, I am just more correct. |
Reply to mccreepyy
didn't read it all since I'm fucking tired. This is also not meant in a bad way or directed at you or anything but people gotta realize, there's always gonna be racism in one way or another in every world no matter what
| @mccreepyy The question is, whether we mark it as something bad, or agree with it... Frieren agrees with it, that's the problem. |
| Hello, please don't take anything I say as an insult, it is not meant as an attack against you as a person. If I directly disagree with you, that does not mean I think you are wrong, I am just more correct. |
Reply to Merve2Love
Yeah. That sounds about right, it coming from Twitter.
I guess Lord of the Rings is also full of racist assholes, slaughtering Orks.
Oh, well. I don't mind xD
You know, maybe it just wont make for a good story....Sitting down with the demons, having a threapy session, working out how they could be redeemed.
Everyone who just watches a Show can understand that, I feel.
It's only when you suck all the entertainment out of a fictional Story you start asking these kind of questions, I think.
This is so tedious.
I guess Lord of the Rings is also full of racist assholes, slaughtering Orks.
Oh, well. I don't mind xD
You know, maybe it just wont make for a good story....Sitting down with the demons, having a threapy session, working out how they could be redeemed.
Everyone who just watches a Show can understand that, I feel.
It's only when you suck all the entertainment out of a fictional Story you start asking these kind of questions, I think.
This is so tedious.
| @Merve2Love I think that's a bit simple-minded. This isn't about Frieren turning its viewers into neo-Nazis, rather it normalizes the idea of "evil races", which then leads people to garner views of racism later down the line. It doesn't matter whether a thought distracts from the entertainment of a work, when that work promotes an ideological basis for discrimination, that is a problem. If you honestly believe that people who care about minority rights are just "too boring", then you fundamentally miss the point. This is simply a problem you don't understand or fail to see the importance of, that does not make it irrelevant. |
| Hello, please don't take anything I say as an insult, it is not meant as an attack against you as a person. If I directly disagree with you, that does not mean I think you are wrong, I am just more correct. |
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