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Frieren is so good when you don't have some racist prick in your ear screaming about how demons are libs and minorities
(hexbear.net)
Japanese Frieren fans ask themselves what Himmel would do.
American Frieren fans ask themselves what Himler would do
Isn't there an entire storyline that illustrates those are mimicked emotions solely for the purposes of baiting humans into believing they are sapient beings ?
They're supposed to be like the perfect predator for humanity, a predator that a significant amount of humanity will hesitate to kill because they would prefer not to.
But even when they're not baiting humans they exhibit emotion & inner thought, it's not consistent with the given explanation. Which could be cool! Maybe they are all predators but in-universe, it is justified by saying "they don't think, they're not people" and it isn't 100% interrogated. They could still be adversaries - I just think the "they're not real people" is a weird...idk charged? thing to throw at the demons when you can easily say they're otherwordly predators that exist to hunt humans, but ones that clearly do think and feel to at least some extent
I don't see how something having inner thought is an issue. The thought is not the problem, the complete and total inability for it to empathise or care for humans is the issue.
The closest analog is psychopathy, but even then I don't think it fits wholly because the demons in Frieren are not just self serving psychopaths but actively prey on humanity, whereas a self serving psychopath is not necessarily driven to harm others but will do so while self-serving.
I also think its the artist's intention to have us argue about this and create ambiguity. This causes the entire audience to argue over the topic just as the people who would ultimately be harmed in the setting.
That's a different argument though - they can be described as psychopathic and lacking empathy, sure, but there are humans who lack empathy, and they're still people. The demons clearly have logical thought processes but have very different goals & priorities that are orthogonal to humans'. It all seems very "handwavy" and inconsistent to me, and if that's the creator's 5d chess maneuvers to create a discussion then I suppose I'm not on their level lol.
I'm just weary and wary of this "fantasy race you can just kill without feeling bad about" trope
This reminded me of the parasites in the anime parasite, they are predators and sociopathic, but still clearly people, and the ones who were raised by humans are cool.
Exactly - I think there's a lot of fuel for what, I think, would be interesting fiction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Bill_(The_Silence_of_the_Lambs)