this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2025
51 points (100.0% liked)
Anime & Donghua
11423 readers
205 users here now
Welcome to c/anime on Hexbear!
A leftist general anime and donghua community for discussion and memes.
Simple rules
-
Be nice.
-
Use spoiler tags.
-
Don't sexualise underage characters, including 1000 year old loli ones.
-
Don't post hentai here. This is an anime community.
High quality threads you should definitely visit
Gigathread: Good Anime Talks, Presentations, Conventions, Panels, etc
Piracy is good and you should do more of it. Use https://aniwave.to/ and https://4anime.gg/ for streaming, and https://nyaa.si/ for torrents. Piracy is the only means of digital protest that audiences have to fight poor worker treatment.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
As far as well-made (yet tame) anime that have premiered during the last few years, I'd say Frieren and Dungeon Meshi meet the criteria you're looking for
Honestly, the upcoming second season of Frieren is likely to propel it into becoming the most acclaimed anime of the last decade
You're the second person to suggest Frieren so it's going on the list for sure. Thanks a lot.
FWIW there is criticism of Frieren along the lines of those leveled at Attack on Titan, that is, there is a humanoid race of demons that are ontologically evil and deserve to be exterminated. It's a simplistic, unexplored theme that sits extremely at odds with the empathetic, personalised narrative of the first few episodes. It's not egregious like AoT and but it definitely sinks it to the background level of ambient fascism inherent in many anime
This reading of Frieren never sat right with me. If anything it's the demons themselves who are the fascists in the show imo, it's explicitely stated that their goal is to kill all the elves, and heavily implied that they're also out to exterminate or at the very least subjugate every other race as well. When Frieren and Flamme both say they wish they could exterminate all the demons that doesn't seem any different from one of us saying "the only good nazi is a dead nazi"
Only about halfway through the series at the moment (so no spoilers please!), but it did stick out like a sore thumb and seemed very fash when the demons were treated as inherently evil beings with no ability to ever integrate within society(as this is how fascists dehumanise their enemies), if it was established that demons are raised in a culture of violence and that is why they are the way they are, it could be better, but the show goes out of its way to say that any and all demons are inherently evil and can never integrate with society and must just be destroyed. Which ok, fantasy world, they are literal monsters that just look like people, but it is still a little worrying and weirdly poorly thought out compared to everything else I've seen in the show, which is probably why people criticise this part so much. Maybe it gets better later, but so far it's easily been the only thing I can say is a full on "negative" about the show, it seems at odds with the rest of the show's philosophy and messaging.
Fair. I tried writing out a whole-ass thing a few times but I don't really have my thoughts in order and I'm also sleepy.
Agree.
Also their use of language as a means to kill people is very much in line with fascism.
That's good to know too. The list of suggestions is growing and if I have to move some stuff to the bottom of the list it probably wouldn't even be noticed. Thanks.