this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
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Man. I hate this struggle session.
It is blatantly obvious that the demons in Frieren are more socially complex than being animals that imitate emotion just to deceive humans.
They have incredible pride in their abilities, they have huge egos, they make mistakes because their emotions cause them to do stupid shit like when Lugner chooses not to kill Fern in order to gloat and get some revenge for earlier on.
They are absolutely not emotionless beings or mere animals or whatever.
They do however have a completely different moral interpretation of the world, they only see humans as food, they can't really sympathise or emotionally connect with humans. With that said they also don't really emotionally connect with each other.
My take is that they lack an ability to care for creatures, they lack empathy, they lack the ability we have to emotionally connect with each other and creatures. This is essential to forming bonds.
It is this inability that causes them to have an entirely different moral framework to humanity.
Theory: Perhaps in the long long long term they are capable of creating bonds, it's just very difficult and takes a huge amount of time. If that is true, which would be in-keeping with a lot of the other themes of the show, then I actually think what the author is going for is that Frieren and the demons aren't very different. Frieren has been incapable of forming bonds with other creatures for most of her life, she chooses to be pleasant to others but consistently shows a clear and obvious inability to really emotionally connect with them, only through Himmel's death did she truly first experience this connection, and now in her current journey through the motherly/sisterly relationship she's built with Fern.
If I were the author, I would eventually go ahead and build on this. Frieren's lack of emotions is not all that different. The strange moral framework of other elves is also another issue entirely.
Also as a sidenote, if demons are now being slaughtered by humans then natural selection would produce demons who survive this by actively avoiding any contact and conflict with humans. If we skip ahead a couple hundred years this would manifest. I think it is inevitable that this would change into cooperation - the most effective survival strategy socially.
Almost everything that we know about the universe is from in-universe sources. Flamme is not a reliable narrator. Frieren is not a reliable narrator. They only know what they know, what they have experienced, it doesn't mean that they're correct.
I think a lot of discussion around Frieren is coming from people who view everything as a commentary on politics and society, when Frieren and it's creators are really just interested in making a derivative commentary on Fantasy tropes.
The show doesn't call them "animal-like", but "beast-like" - it draws a spectrum from "dumb" monsters to those who practice mimicry to the Demons who have internalized human speech. Many of the other monsters in the show are clearly more intelligent than ordinary animals as well. And I've seen many people who comment on the show fail to mention that ordinary animals, too, can have complex social structures and dynamics.
And all that being said, the manga isn't done being written yet, and I think it's clear (and feel free to I-told-you-so me in five years or w/e if this isn't the case) that they're building up to the reveal that Frieren is wrong, the Demons can be reformed.
Yes I do hope so. Too much of the show is too wholesome for a whole lessons of time thing to not be extended to this too.
Most of the show is demonstrating how past ideas can change and improve. It would be a significant blindspot not to include it.
Eventually I suspect it'll be a "Flamme worked this out a thousand years ago but knew nobody was ready for it so she planted the seed to bring about that change when someone would finally be ready"
That or it'll be a "Actually people a thousand years ago had pretty shitty ideas about the future" reveal, but I think Flamme has been built up too much as a prescient genius among geniuses of her time to then go and shit on her later. It's certainly one way it could be taken though.
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I see them as an allusion to nobility tbh
But I do hope they work on idk reeducation for both the demons and the humans and learn cooperation. I'm two tired to think rn
Basically the same as vampire stories then? I can see that interpretation. Vampire stories often do the same thing with bioessentialism for most vampires with a mere handful who try to fight their urges and lack of morals, or kill themselves, etc etc.
It's also the easiest way to undercut right wing attempts to coopt Frieren. Everyone will understand the comparison to vampires without the need for walls of text.
Absolutely. I'll use this if there's any struggle sessions in the wild moving forward thank you for this