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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
In Frieren, a crying demon child is discovered, and they are about to kill it but someone objects, because it's just a child. Some time later, the child kills her human foster family, seemingly just for her own amusement, and after checking if there are any objections this time, the child is killed. This story is relayed to someone to explain that demons are always evil and only speak in order to lie and must all be killed.
The point of those scenes is that appearance can be deceptive
Almost like that's a common through line in anti-colonial narratives where despite the seeming innocence of individual colonists, the end result is still genocide or enslavement
This is a really smarmy response for a scene that beats you over the head with "kill children if they're from the Bad Group." Saying every individual, even someone who to the best of your knowledge seems to be an innocent child, must be killed is not some nuanced anti-colonial narrative, and honestly an insult to anti-colonial theory and writing (and as an aside, do what you need to to fight colonialism, but you probably don't need to kill every last white child in the colony). What you're describing in real life is a systemic problem that extends beyond the intentions of the "seemingly innocent" colonists, what Frieren is describing is very clearly that every single member of Bad Species needs to die because all of them are evil and just waiting to kill you no matter what you do.
Though I don't think it's what the author had in mind despite their very apparent thing for old-timey German aesthetics, it's literally something that Nazis said about Jews (and Zionists also said a version of this about Jews, incidentally, that even a Jewish baby raised by gentiles will, on account of their different blood, have a different nature that cannot be reconciled with that of the gentiles).
I don't know what you want me to conclude from from "appearance can be deceptive," but the function in the narrative is that a demon being innocent or repentant is always a lie, no matter what, so we must follow an unfalsifiable orthodoxy that any such expression is always a lie, no matter what. They aren't subtle in repeatedly saying "demons only learned to speak so that they can lie" (which incidentally seems to not even be true, since they speak honestly to each other and occassionally even speak honestly to others, like the Child That Had to Die explaining to Frieren that she didn't really know the significance of crying "mother" and just said it because she saw how humans responded to it).
I do need to wonder if I'm giving the author too much credit with assuming it's not meant to be fash, since when I think of major anime that really heavily emphasize being Deutscheaboos, the next two examples I think of are Attack on Titan and Bleach: TYBW, both of which were clearly writing with awareness of western racial ideology and some level of justification for it (though Bleach at least says you can be a good Quincy, something Frieren strenuously refuses about demons).
The point is, though, it's not a child. It's not a "bad group." It doesn't have emotions. It is a predator which exploits your empathy in order to kill you. You don't think twice when the group kills bloodthirsty wolf monsters or slimes or giant carnivorous plants, but when the monster can talk and pretend to have emotions now it's a problem. That's exactly what it's betting on.
A species is a group.
They display emotions repeatedly to each other in private, in their internal monologues, and when there is clearly no further gambit because they are about to die and what they are saying clearly won't save them.
Anyway, beyond those statements being false, this is again a "curtains are blue" argument because you are saying that "they are a race of creature that shares countless behavioral traits with humans but has an unfalsifiable malevolence underneath that can never be removed and that means it's good to kill them" and that is also what I am saying and that a story element like that is bad because of the significance of such a portrayal of a race of creature. It's just a way of producing a genocide fantasy where you get to be the good guy for exterminating all of the bad people, even the powerless ones who beg for mercy.
Part of the issue is that it makes a lot more sense with slimes or plants, organisms that clearly substantially lack mental faculties that humans have that mean there is apparently a hard mechanistic limit on how they could potentially be "rehabilitated." Even wolves are intelligent enough that even if you still need to take safety precautions, you can kind of work with them (hence us having dogs now). Intelligent organisms have, as a basic element of how they operate, an extreme capacity for behavioral variance depending on individual differences and personal history. Even the demons could be said to demonstrate this in the way they have varied approaches to accomplishing what is ultimately basically the same goal, but nonetheless it is contrary to the idea of something having intelligence and the ability to learn that it cannot be rehabilitated, even in the absence of having empathy and/or in the presence of emotional reactions that interfere with rehabilitation (as can be seen in real people with, for example, ASPD, who are rehabilitated from what are sometimes very bad states).
"They are a race of creature that shares countless behavioral traits with humans but has an unfalsifiable malevolence underneath that can never be removed and that means it's good to kill them" is just not a good thing to write and it doesn't even really make sense, it's just a fig leaf for fantasies about "moral" pogromism.
Because that's what they do, they mimic emotions. They don't turn it off when in private because they aren't scheming people, they are monsters that mindlessly mimic human behaviors. They act like people when they're in private and when surrounded by others of their kind because all they know how to do is act like people. The same way a mimic acts like a treasure chest when there are no people around. It's not a person who decided to act like a treasure chest, it evolved to act like a treasure chest because that's what allowed it to eat people.
But you can't believe that it would be possible for a creature to exist which similarly lacks those mental faculties but appears to have them?
This is all addressed in the story. There are monsters everywhere on the spectrum from something like a slime that doesn't appear to have any complex thought to a demon that could convince you it has just as complex an inner world as a human. There are monsters out there which aren't convincingly human but have mastered speech to lure people into their clutches. There are more primitive forms of those who can make noises that kind of sound like speech, or form only a few words. Demons are just the most evolved form of an ecological niche whereby human empathy is exploited to hunt them. They are literally no more internally complex than slimes, they're just good at convincing you otherwise.
There is no reason for a demon to think to himself "I despise geniuses", because there is no circumstance where it should be able to fool anyone, and before you say "telelpathy," if you're already doing telepathy on them, you would probably be able to see the lack of emotion, as evidenced by the Macht backstory where the magic item didn't detect any malice from him. Speaking of Macht, he clearly displays emotions, albeit evidently not malice or guilt, because his, uh, termination of contract is clearly highly oriented by affect and not some plan. He clearly has a meaningful inner world, or he would have pursued a solution that didn't put a huge target on his back and ultimately trap him in the city.
And again, the demons are extremely intelligent creatures, around the same level as humans, and exhibit vastly different behaviors, this isn't merely an insect being strung around by a series of reflexes. They literally are capable of reflection and make choices based on desires that are counter to what they know is their better survival strategy.
I think that you need to establish a motive, since these are intelligent beings who are shown to deceive with intention, lying according to a prepared story, even if they have some natural proclivity to just sort of ingratiate themselves unconsciously anyway (Macht's backstory), because they display emotions in circumstances where it's just a waste of energy to perform or where there are clearly much greater concerns for their ruse than how they feel (like the specific nature of their conspiracies).
The only conclusion that you can draw here is that it's just word of god because the story does not support this interpretation aside from when it says "we used magic to look into your brain and here's what it said". P-Zombie predators are a garbage concept, is what I'm saying, because if you are keeping up a ruse even when it's actually counter to your survival and you know it, it's a shitty survival strategy, and inconsistent with the fact that they do also sometimes drop the ruse when they find it expedient. But there's no line to demarcate between making one choice or the other, so it's just whenever the author says so and we're instructed to just pretend it makes sense because the magic bracelet (i.e. the author again) also said so.
Edit: Also I just hate p-zombies anyway for basically the same reasons, because they are question-begging not having internality when clearly there is a causal basis for being totally consistent with being human. This is most egregious of all with a line like:
Because there is nothing you can tell me to say a p-zombie or a demon is incapable of complex thought based on an array of memories, inferences, and other factors, because whatever process takes the input and turns it into the output that is observationally identical to thought must itself also be a type of thought, even if it's using punch cards rather than circuits or circuits rather than neurons or "magic" rather than any of it. It is still processing information with just the same level of complexity and diversity as a human (perhaps one with an on-and-off emotional disorder in the case of demons), and indeed exactly the same type of information (same caveat for demons again) and exactly the same output. It's like solving a math equation with the same answer in two different ways (neither of which is random) but saying that only one is actually "doing math."
This is loosely the basis of the Turing Test, and obviously we've developed since then, but it's still just the same "ghost in the machine" mistake as Turing was addressing then.
Worth noting insects don't seem to be thoughtless creatures run by reflex.
I personally don't think that is true of any creature. I have no evidence that it was just a framework imposed by the whitest people of history and we bought it.
That being said ants have just recently been shown to pass a mirror test. I am have no doubt ants have more complex inner lives than some other species. However the notion that some creatures lack an inner life doesn't appear well supported.
Substitute with "amoeba," I don't care. It's more appropriate given the slime example anyway.
Nah, I'd say even ameboa have inner lives to consider. Several types of protazoa do for sure ar least.
If we are considering them like virii it is meaningless as they don't display virii like behaviors.
As written it is an excuse that you get to enjoy being rascist a little. Most of us don't get to enjoy that very often so that is a big treat for some people.
This is now in reference to demons again, right?
Yes. It is some recreational rascism for liberals to enjoy.
Alright, then we're in agreement
How do you differentiate a demon faking emotions from a demon experiencing emotions?
I think faking them to sufficient complexity is actually feeling them. I am pretty sure that is how brains work.
The McGuffin of pseudo sentient creatures that can fake sentience is bad writing. No one but a terrible rascist type thinks such a thing is possible enough to think of it as a worthy artistic space to explore.
I think that is worthy in the context of fantasy. It is the exploration of the extension of a fantasy trope dating back to before written history. The man-eating trickster monster which can speak but is no less monstrous or more civilized for that ability. Fantasy has had monsters like this since long before fantasy was a genre of fiction.
Frieren is a story where these sorts of fantasy tropes are explored with more thought and focus than usual. For example, something a lot of people love about Frieren is that an elf isn't just a dude who happens to have seen a lot of stuff. An elf is a fundamentally different type of person. If you're going to live forever, your perspective on events in the tiny human lifespan of ~80 years is going to be different from the perspective a human has on those events.
Demons are just another exploration of a fantasy trope that is taken for granted. What if monsters that can speak to take advantage of intelligent/sapient/empathetic prey were actually the result of a long line of evolution? What would the end result of that evolution look like? What is the most effective form of a monster that preys on your natural inclination to cooperate with your fellow inhabitants of the world? They're not an allegory any more than the giant plant that saps people's life energy to feed itself is an allegory. The giant plant is just a difficult enemy to fight because of its anti-magic properties and its own magical effects it can inflict on people. The story of how it was defeated was fun to watch because of how difficult an enemy it was and how clever the main characters have to be in opposing it. The demons are the same, with the difficulty being that you look like a monster yourself if you just blast it in the streets. That they look and act like people is no more than a challenge for the main characters to overcome.
Real life has monsters that are human in appearance, but completely hostile to human life, the bourgeois. Them having complex inner lives doesn't make the guillotine any worse an idea. Them having no inner life would add nothing to the story especially if they had a simulated inner life that was indistinguishable from just having an inner life. That is just rasisct cost of paint to allow people the room to enjoy it.
If the demons in the story were just demons would it be worse? Are there any plot points that need the demons to lack powers of complex thought to work?
I guess I just don't understand why you feel it's necessary to ignore everything the story told you about this particular type of monster in order to reinterpret it as a racist story about about how some peoples need to be exterminated. What exactly does that add to the story?
Verisimilitude. The work is written in a world that seems like ours. In worlds like ours that is a thing people say and are both lying and wrong. So, it is a more artistically dense view to consider it in the context of them being an unreliable narrator.
A bunch of people that don't exist talking about situations that can't exist has less intresting things to say about life.
That may be true within the context of the fiction, but that fiction itself exists in a context in which fascists did and do give this exact justification for killing the children of minority groups. That real world is where the people engaging with the story exist and so that context is going to color their reading of the story.
My point that you missed entirely is that the scene is not simply "kill every member of bad group" because ironically that take is some real "Curtains are blue" type shit
First the claim is that the subtext is racist, and then when I point out the subtext is saying something different; as in Demons engage in Genocide, False Appreance, False Overtures of Peace, The Importance of Status, Arrogant Sense of Destiny....any of this ringing a bell in a colonial sense?
Are the Demons European and aristocratic coded on accident? Is their social obsession with status and conquest just irrelevant because it's inconvenient to your claim the author is antisemitic and is making an allusion to Jews?
Apparently what matters is we take a scene in isolation, ignore the subtext and the context and then claim the series is saying the opposite of what it's subtexually alluding to, because some chuds like it, like be for real
Except that is the nuance when you don't ignore the rest of the serie's subtext and the context of the scene itself
The child is a stand in for the initial innocence and peaceful oveetures that arrive during the beginning of a colonial process, you may not like the presentation, but that is the subtext expanded on later in the series
Colonialists don't just jump immediately to genocide, far from my take being an "insult" to anti-colonial theory, I'm pointing out the subtext is illuminating a uncomfortable but well known element that many Japanese people (despite their own colonial history) understand culturally through the history of the west "opening up Japan" and is something even most westerners can understand through the narratives surrounding Thanksgiving; sitting together at a table enjoying a meal, next thing you know your village is burning and demons rule over the land, hmmm almost like that's the scene verbatim, except I acknowledge the subtext
Having gripes about the mechanism of delivering that subtext (a kid eating it) is fine, but the scene is not saying "kill kids of group you hate" it would if the scene was a short story totally in isolation from the rest of Frierens narrative concerning the nature of Demons
But it's not, so you and the chuds don't have a leg to stand on, despite your gripes about how the narrative is presented
No. Frieren is explicitly a "kill demons on sight" enjoyer and is clearly explaining why demons need to be killed on sight whenever possible.
Everything is European-coded, the entire setting is deutscheaboo as fuck and wears that on its sleeve! It's not like this is a Japanese setting and then in pop these Germans, everyone is German!
My central claim is not that it's antisemitic and I am explicit that I'm mainly using antisemitism as an example, though I note at the end that it's possible that it's antisemitic given there's some antisemitism in other big deutscheaboo series.
That said, are you not familiar with what the Nazis said about Jews? Because the demons being obsessed with status and especially conquest is not actually a counter-argument. It's a huge part of their narrative that Jews want to control the world and thereby are inclined to use whatever political and financial means they can get their hands on to accomplish that goal. I'm not interested in trying to argue that the demons definitely are Jews, but this attempt at a slick own is a failure.
I consider this a complete aside, but it's also mentioned that status among demons is decided almost entirely by the magical power one personally possesses rather than any other factor, and this is contrasted with the way that humans need to signal status with things like clothes. I think it is therefore an inevitable conclusion that the one coterie of demons dressing as aristocrats are doing that to impress the humans, since we certainly see other demons (including Qual, who was an extremely accomplished mage in the Demon Lord's army) not dressed that way at all. I don't think this is very important, but I thought you might find it interesting to consider.
Also things said about Jews by Nazis, though again I'm not arguing that that's specifically what the author is going for. Part of the issue is that the rhetoric of fascism itself often heavily involves a sort of false anti-colonialism, both with the idea of resisting the colonization of one's own land by foreign capitalists and pretending to be a liberator of other colonized nations (see Imperial Japan in Southeast Asia).
Another helpful reference point is accusation-in-mirror, the argument that "X group is trying to genocide us, so we must genocide them." Even if X group as a political force are genocidal, that does not mean the correct answer is to commit genocide against X group, and the series sure would have a much easier time claiming to be anti-genocide if it actually analyzed demons as a political force rather than a racial group.
I don't care what chuds think and never referenced anything they've said about it, so you're just putting this on me without evidence. I've watched the whole anime that's out so far multiple times and read most of the manga (I didn't bother to keep up with it actively) and these are my opinions from the actual content of the show. The child example is the most egregious, but the mini-arc that it's being used in does not contradict what I'm saying. The broad strokes of the arc (not the child sequence, but the rest of it) do not contradict what you're saying either, but there are details that clearly do, like the repetition of the claim "Demons only learned to speak in order to lie." They are clearly stated over and over to be ontologically sub-human and evil, which is why you have people elsewhere in this thread saying they're actually like zombies or sharks or something.
The child is also a child, and Frieren's explicit ideology that she and the demons beat you over the head with is "demons learned to speak to lie, they are only interested in killing people".
I await your explanation.
I know that I'm annoying, but I've been trying to rein it in in terms of completely useless affectations of smarmy gloating. I would appreciate if you did too (and feel free to point out where I have failed, of course).
It feels like you're so interested in your interpretation of the scene that you don't see what's in front of you, most of all that demons are a species. There is no need to make colonizers an ontologically evil species. It is still literally the case that if Frieren encounters a demon child, she will kill the demon child and advocates that everyone do the same, and there is no such thing as a good demon, a good member of this species, not by nature and not by nurture.
A lot of my argument can be summarized that fascists have a history of claiming to be victims of colonization and portray their enemies in what is sometimes a very similar way, which logically causes a little bit of an issue with distinguishing the validity of your account and mine (hence my mention before of ways your reading is not contradicted). Perhaps in the last dozen chapters of the manga that I haven't read there's a smoking gun for your interpretation that you haven't seen fit to show me, but so far I can confidently say that the closest thing to a smoking gun is in my favor, which again is that the demons are a species rather than a political faction, and there is no segment or even member of the demons who sincerely sympathizes with people and fights the other demons. This is exacerbated by the fact that some of the demons (the members of the demon lord's army) are in a political faction, but explicitly many are not and generally don't have a "society" as such, but live independently and all nonetheless possess the same basic malevolence that they can never be disabused of.
Your argument is therefore forced to claim that "This fantasy race of creature isn't actually a fantasy race, it's a political orientation and when the protagonist looks at the camera and says 'kill every member of this race, even crying, helpless children,' it's a metaphor for rejecting the diplomacy of those political factions." As for why no demon can ever be rehabilitated? I guess the claim is "colonizers are tricky, so it's a metaphor for how the colonizers will always trick you."
I just think it's the sort of attempt at interpretation that goes too far in picking out details to make an interpretive narrative while ignoring the actual events of the story. If this is supposed to be a metaphor for colonialism, it's the most catastrophically poorly-written one that I've ever seen because there was literally no reason to make the colonizers racially essential. It would be so easy to make them an actual political faction and not a 2000 IQ allegory for how this child is really a personable diplomat who must die, so let's kill the kid (especially since I don't think the kid is even an agent of the Demon Lord, just a kid left behind by some other band of demons that was wiped out already). What does them being a species add? Because I can only see downsides if you're hypothetically correct. There are so many things the author could do to destroy this narrative in one speech bubble, but they don't (pending the subsequent elaboration that you alluded to but haven't shared yet)
Yeah because they're hell bent on genocide, conquest and their mana farming obsession prevents them from seeing humans as equals, sound familiar? The Demons are the bourgeois, not minorities
German AND aristocratic, German and genocidal, German and obessed with status, German and convinced of their manifest destiny. The German-ness of the Demons isn't their only attributes and I never claim it was and you know I never claimed that. You're simply cherry picking my words and ignoring anything I say that contradicts your claim
You claim it's not antisemitic, then you send three paragraphs outlining how it Actually is antisemitic (while butchering and ignoring the actual narrative of Frieren)????
You're waffling and you can't have it both ways, saying "yes this is exemplary" of antisemitsm while at the same it isn't really antisemitic, is just an untenable and contradictory position
Either the Demons of Frieren are an allusions to Jewish people or some other marginalized group or they're not, it's not a claim you get to waffle on, make up your mind
Is Frieren antisemitic or not?
If its not then you wasted your time on those paragraphs and you need to substantiate what's actaully wrong with the series without ignoring the subtext and narrative
Yeah I'm the weird one for paying attention to details, subtext and how they connect to the narrative, meanwhile my take is repeated and comprehended wholesale even by libs on the massive Frieren subreddit, while everywhere else people (chuds and pop leftists alike) who are claiming Frieren Demons = Jews, are ruthlessly made fun of
Even libs understand the Demons = The rich
But that wouldn't capture the totalizing nature of colonialism and the brutal realism that manifested as a result of those conquests though deception, again you may not like the presentation of specific scenes. But calling Frieren nazi propaganda is such a radical violation of the "Be Normal" and "Touch Grass" clause most leftists understand is important to our appeal and worst of all its not supported by the narrative or the subtext that the narrative explicitly outlines while it's explaining the nature of Demons;
"they're descended from monsters who cried help"
"they don't give dignity to those with little mana"
"They're individualists who form the barest connections necessary to fight humanity
Hello, that's how the narrative outlines the subtext, this isn't nazi dogwhistles, this is a fictional partially essentialized version of the capitalist class tearing its way thru a feudal world
COOL
Yeah colonizers never engaged in tricky shit, never used deception, never broke treaties, never made false overtures of peace, never engaged in Genocide
No the only people who were accused of doing deception in world history were the Jews, so obviously anytime someone writes about a species of man-eating monsters they must be talking about Jewish people, great take
While I'd certainly humor an argument about antisemitism, I don't think there's that much reason to render such an accusation except for the deutscheaboo thing, which I think is not enough reason. My specific point in using it as an example is that I'm pretty familiar with it and hope that I can either use it as a common reference point or at least that you can pretty easily find what I'm talking about. My general point in using it as an example is that it functions as a counterexample to your inferences, that x set of traits precludes them being about y subject (some scorned race), so here's an example of an ethnic group about which all of these things were said, demonstrating that your inference is inadequate, and also that your claim that it's not about Jews is so far inadequate (which is not proof of the antithesis, just a disproof of your proof).
If you claim that P -> Q, me arguing that P does not imply Q does not say anything about whether or not Q is actually the case, just whether your inference is false. One way to disprove it would be to establish that Q is not the case even though P is, but that's just one way and I don't think there's really adequate evidence for making that argument. If you want my feeling about Frieren's demon depiction, it's that it isn't about any particular race/ethnicity, but is evidently informed by some underlying element of chauvinism because it's still a pogrom fantasy even if it doesn't correspond to any race and isn't meant to either.
I'm sure we can agree that this conversation is a poor use of time, so we can stop here, I just wanted to explain that one point because you asked.
But what are you basing this claim on besides vague intuition? The Demons in the setting are the chauvinists, their entire society is stractured around elitism and domination, they're not a put upon minority ethnic group
The concept of monsters or even races of monsters is not inherently tied to real world realities concerning race and ethnicity, you need the allusions that actually form that connection to make that claim, and you can make those claims about AOT and some other suss anime, but not Frieren
The allusions that define the Demons of Frieren are those of imperialist Europeans and the deprivations of European nobility, that's why the Demons are always ridiculously dripped out, they're what the rich in the real world want to be, their ideal platonic form
The Demons are the ones committing pogroms, they explicitly genocide the elves because the Demon King ordered it, Frieren is literally a victim of genocide, that's the source of her hatred, her character has more in common with the popular imaginary of a post war Nazi hunter than some Gestapo thug looking for "demon" girls hiding in an attic
They aren't people though. They are literally hyper evolved monsters. If a zombie child comes after you you don't think twice. Same goes for the demons. They are simply apex predators. It would be like a shark that could say "hey hang out with me" so it could eat you (and yes I know sharks don't actually kill humans frequently)
Zombie children tend to not cry and beg for mercy, and if our conclusion about sharks (ignoring what your parenthetical) is that we need to kill all of them, that'd be kind of fucked up, and that's in our world where we don't have magic as nearly a blank check for solving problems.
Also, again this is a "curtains are blue" sort of argument, because you could say just the same thing about the writing in Goblin Slayer ("they're just monsters, bro"), but that doesn't mean all that much for looking at the message compared to how they are written. Like yeah, it's a fantastical excuse for a moral obligation to commit infanticide, that's exactly what I'm calling it too. Goblin Slayer has SV and, while I think it makes the work itself much more despicable because of the exploitative way that it's handled, in-universe it's not hugely morally different from Frieren demons, it just is written in such a way where it's evidently easier for people to recognize that it's a fucked up thing to write.
Like, doesn't the board talk every now and then about The Iron Dream? It's literally just another one of those, but as a side plot for what is otherwise an incomparably better story.
Sharks don't engage in colonialism, sharks don't engage in Genocide just because the "Shark King" ordered them to, sharks (and the Goblins of Goblin Slayer) don't have a sociopolitical system that conditions them to "only give dignity to those with high mana"
Again missing that crucial bit of subtext and narrative context that blows up your whole take
Tell me more about how the demons are presented as having conditioned traits rather than essential ones. As I said in the other comment, your claims about them being a political faction that is not racialized is undermined by the fact that they are a race and their most salient features in terms of their villainy are presented as essential to their race.
Its not a rather or thing, its clearly both, they have no empathy and they're conditioned by the hiearchry of mana
My point tho, that you are continually ignoring in favor of harping on about surface level presentation. Is that demons and the way they operate in the world of Frieren is a direct allusion to the elites of our world
Their presentation as a "race/species" who hunt and dominate humans for sport, is also an allusion to the mindsets of real world elites
The presentation make not be to your likely, but simply ignoring subtext and narrative isn't a good way to analyze media either
It's wild that so many people on here don't get this, it's like they actively want the show to be fascist/racist/whatever lol
It is hard to accept the premise because the way our elites prey upon the masses is a form of social cannibalism, not an outsider alien species of predator-persons preying upon people out of impulse and sustenance.
It is in the way of "othering" social cannibalism and class predation into an intrinsic trait of a hostile species is why I have come to view it as a Goblin Slayer style characterization of an enemy of the in-group.
The evil of class dominance, predation, and subjugation is an evil as old as agricultural society, as are witch hunts or internal purges for phantom enemies. This evil that we call oppression is birthed by the antagonisms inherent in class society, and not inherent to human beings themselves. What is inherent to human beings is violence and our capacity for good and evil; these evils are both within us and birthed by the conditions which make us. Not a phantom outside species. No angels, gods, or demons make us do anything.
My contention is that Frieren emerges with its lore about demonkind is that it contributes to the externalization of evil even if the in-universe lore is that actually, they're a super advanced predator species that just imitates life. It's not a viable excuse because its the same pseudoscientific approach that was used to justify slavery, colonization, and eugenics.
Extermination as an absolute as a necessary measure against a predatory species lends credibility to audiences who think this way about other human beings.
Gotta stop defending cartoons.
That literally describes the countless histories of colonialism, actual cannibalism was a real facet of colonial brutality and indigenous groups all over the world were literally hunted by Europeans like game
What the Demons are doing in the setting wouldn't be out of place in any given history concerning colonial atrocity
How much ink is spilled in the later chapters expanding on just how much land humans had lost to the Demon's relentless 1000-year expansion and war of extermination. Humans were reduced to a third of their original territory - Hm, I wonder what that narrative could possibly be alluding to?
Leftists need to stop constructing their takes about media based off what chuds think, chuds are always wrong and by extension your take based on their incorrect assumption will also be wrong
'What chuds think' didn't enter into my thought process. The first thing I learned about Frieren was the baby demon subplot. My thoughts were, in order:
Did you actually watch Frieren or are you just going off second-hand reports about a single scene in isolation?
Why would I watch an anime I thought would be Goblin Slayer-esque cryptofash shit?
Maybe because you're wrong and you've been misled? Have you considered that possibility?
Goblin Slayer is doo-doo garbage, Frieren on the other hand is going to become anime of the decade, the Demons aren't some metaphor for oppressed real world people, they're the ideal Platonic form of the bourgeois and they act like it, both subtextually and in-universe
I'm not kidding, season 2 is a few months away and the chapters that are being animated are going to turn this anime into a global sensation
As a result leftists misled on this series are going to hit a brick wall of cultural delegitimization, if they insist on leveling nonsensical accusations of racism at the frankly hype shit that's about to hit
When I've seen 99 stories use their "inherently evil race that can be righteously exterminated to the last individual" to push fascist ideas, I'm not inclined to expect the 100th to be different. Frieren has built itself on a premise tainted by the ideology and actions of historical and contemporary fascists. People are going to see that and make a judgment based on that because nobody has the time or the patience to watch every episode of every show that comes to their attention, especially ones they don't expect to like.
The plot itself is irrelevant, it's what the externalization of evil onto another species is in this forced metaphor.
That makes no sense
Your Honor I object! And I move to strike!
On what grounds?
On the grounds that it is devastating to my case!
Overruled
Good call!
lmao I've written an essay worth of paragraphs blowing up takes like yours all over this thread, you guys don't have a leg to stand on beside vague tumblr-ass intuition
At this point I'm beginning to suspect none of you have even watched the anime
Your takes were addressed and then you avoid the central thesis: Using an archtype/trope of demons being intrinsically predatory, unthinking, and only able emulate humanity is rhetoric and ideology that lends credibility to the viewer/reader that these tropes could be imported to real people. For they have been imported to real people in the past.
All you're arguing is about the text itself and sticking to the canon of the story. The story, canon, is irrelevant save for the central characterization of the demons: 1) they're a metaphor for aristocracy/predator class , 2) They're a different species , 3) They don't think, look, or act like us.
That leads to the conclusion and takeaway from the reader & viewer is: enemies of my In-Group that do not think, look, and act like us are not considered fully human.
It's chauvinism disguised in a children's story. The metaphor that aristocrats/predators are a different species is also lost on me; the capacity for evil is within all of us and the environment that creates us. Purging the alien is not a solution to anything.
All you've done in your replies to me is go "nuh uh".
I don't block people, but this conversation is over. You can make a new post on this thread.
Except again, none of you have established HOW it would be imported to real people, when the anime's subtext, lore, presentation, and narrative details and defines demons as the platonic ideal that elites in the real world believe or wish themselves to be
Be honest, you didn't watch the show, that's twice now I've confirmed I'm talking to someone who doesn't have a clue what the anime actually presents
You're just guessing, going off second hand reports and relying on intuition, so you're right I can't argue against a phantom show, so no point in continuing a conversation at this point
The first thing I learned about Frieren was this scene and my immediate reaction was "Oh, another Goblin Slayer. About what I expected, Japan is mired in fash shit just like the rest of the West."