Holy fuck Twitter is basically 4chan now
It’s actually at a point where I think it’s better not to call it twitter because continuing to do so continues to give it credit for what it used to be when it absolutely is not twitter anymore. It is X, Musk’s fascist shithole. I sincerely think it’s more beneficial to just call it that and allow the fascist associations to be appropriately placed. The Twitter brand continues to hold associations people previously believed about it.
23·13 days agoIt i$ 卐, MuSSKKK’$ faSSKKKiSSt SShithol€
LMAO. The MSE script is making this shit so much better.
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
LMFAO so you did add my suggestions! Tyvm.
Interesting point. I kind of like still calling it Twitter, though, to highlight that it wasn’t always full of overt fascism.
Yeah I get that. I just think the twitter brand continues to be viewed by people with some element of positivity and as a “friendly” brand. Refusal to move on from it continues to keep those emotional influences. If we move on, we can make X recognised as the fascist hellhole it is. Twitter is dead, fascism killed it and animated its corpse as X.
Good points. I honestly just hadn’t made the switch in my head because I never really used Twitter or X
I like to call it “X the everything app” because it swings into absurd
Adding this to my lexicon of increasingly terminally absurdist language. I love that!
I actively avoided making the switch for a long time because it felt like giving Musk what he wanted. But the Twitter brand is more popular, friendlier and better than the fascist space it has become.
Twitter is dead, fascism killed it and animated its corpse as X.
That’s a really great way of framing it.
the guy who runs twitter literally believes in great replacement of whites by the jews and throws sieg heils. Not sure why this would surprise anybody.
Now???
The demons in the show are white colonizers
Seriously i thought that was the obvious part. The demons are an an allegory for fascists if we were to say they represented any people at all.
When your allegory for fascists is a core pillar of fascist ideology (the ontologically evil race that can be righteously exterminated), your message is going to get muddled.
Yeah i think thats the issue with giving demons human forms here. If the demons were just talking non humanoid monsters or shapeshifters or explicitly nonhuman constructs it wouldnt be such a shit analogy.
Yeah, same. I genuinely thought people were doing a bit at first when I started seeing the “uhm ackshully the demons are innocent little babies” stuff lmao
The argument being made has nothing to do with whether the demons are evil within the context of the fiction and everything to do with the ideology with which the concept of an inherently evil racial enemy aligns.
Do you think it would be possible to depict anti-imperialists in a show as not being the underdog or would it always end up being co-opted by imperialists?
If you make it as literal and obvious that there is zero shadow of doubt, then sure. Like make Frieren a literal communist who says she’s a communist while wearing a red cape thats held on with a ham-sic brooch while exploding demons dressed like nazis or wearing Klan hoods, etc. Otherwise any sort of layer of depth allows for the viewer to apply their own worldview to what they’re seeing instead of whatever the artist’s intent may be.
And the white colonizers in real life are demons. Symmetry!
Yeah, a lot of what makes the Demons evil is the same stuff that makes real fascists and colonizers evil. Killing the baby parallels the very real practice of revolutionaries killing entire Royal families, even children, because they’re inherently dangerous.
Having not watched it & after noping out of the internet for several hours after reading some of the responses in the linked thread, what is it about the show that lets some people interpret the demons as white colonizers while others see them as various marginalized groups?
There’s a scene where a guy takes pity on a baby demon and decides to raise it in a human village but then the baby demon goes on to kill a bunch of people because it is an inherently evil creature and so not killing the baby demon was sentimental foolishness.
This is such a common fascist idea that, as seen in the tweet, they have a term for it - “suicidal empathy.”
if I made the comparison of demons to zionists I’d be banned instantly
Frieren is such a good show with an amazing premise, but also has a fucking horrible pro-eugenics narrative.
Not as bad as your average Disney film about the inherently dangerous people being accepted by the innately good people, but still messed up.
All anime has this shit. Post-war Japanese culture is basically Imperial Japanese reactionary brainworms combined with American/capitalist imported brain worms. I am yet to find basically any anime that isn’t contaminated by reactionary tropes, misogyny, SA (the “lucky tumble” trope), racism, pedophilia, bio-essentialism, fascist fantasies (obsession with strength, harems, world domination, innate superiority), etc. It’s deeply embedded in anime culture. Even shows like Frieren that “defy tropes” still fall into them. Even critically acclaimed anime popular in the west has this shit in it, like Berserk and NGE. It’s why people used to be ashamed to publicly admit they watched it, because anyone who wasn’t in the anime-cult who watched an anime used to be immediately disgusted by these things. It’s not a good sign that enjoying these fascist fantasies has become normalized in the west, it’s a sign that these pedophilic and fascist brainworms are much more widespread than even before, or at least that publicly admitting you are a pedophile-adjacent reactionary has become much more acceptable.
Miyazaki films are the one exception I can think of, and that’s because Miyazaki is basically a communist who hates reactionary Japanese and Anime culture.
There is also One Piece, which has its own problematic elements, but doing blood libels isn’t part of them. Pretty anti imperialist overall. Situation again of a guy that thinks communists are really cool though.
Still has the extreme levels of fan service and skinny young girls in no clothes, but yeah much less of the overtly fascistic undertones in things like Attack on Titan, almost all Isekais, Death Note, etc.
Yerp, definitely not lacking in some of the annoying problematic shit. But at least it’s demonstrably pro liberation and pro queer revolutionary army. Attack On Titan is my go to example of an explicitly fascist anime.
i was gonna bring up one piece and say the Skypeia arc was one of my favorites, but they did the fucking thing where they were like “we know the colonizers suck, but try to work with them to achieve peace!” and I guess they do but still. smh
Yeah, I’d say that’s one of the occasions where the message absolutely gets flubbed by an idealist ending. At the very least, the colonizers also have to change their ways, but it’s still flubbed.
The author has a picture of che on his desk and made a Cuban army in the work that seem to be the good guys fighting the bourgeois while the hero has anarchist adventures
Under communism the only anime people will be allowed to watch will be as follows:
Most but not all Gundam shows
Nichijou
Medabots
Digimon
Kino’s Journey
Miyazaki stuff
Sorry, but that’s all.
Give me my VOTOMS or give me death
Looking at the plot summary on Wikipedia and it says that Votoms essentially means Bottoms, which is pretty funny. The party would have a review board to settle these issues.
Votoms fuckin rocks. Go watch it!
Ftom the rest of what I read it seems super up my alley and I was planning to. Inlove me some sci fi
It really gets good with the OVA sequels. I also like the spinoff, Armor Hunter Mellowlink (ever think “damn, wouldn’t it be cool if a dude fought a mech on foot?”)
this but unironically
I wasnt being ironic
After the revolution there will be a ministry of anime authorization to decide which ones get to be on the approved list.
Humblebrag: im pretty sure i may be number one in something I say being replied to with a Chad emoji.
Missing black lagoon
You can make an appeal to the Party
Megalobox is a cool anime about an immigrant who overcomes his adversity with his fists and then has PTSD from his adversity he needs to get therepy for.
To be fair, half the influence that Anima has is from western movies and shows, geniunely 90% of all hollywood movies are pedo war racist slop.
Yet to see the “9000-year old demon/dragon presents as a scantily-clad 9 year old girl” trope appear in Hollywood. Japan has it’s own flavor of reaction
instead the west has Pocahontas, not 6000 year old dragon ,but still pedo stuff of a real human
Pocahontas came out in 1995. Anime had already been doing it’s creepy pedophilic reactionary thing for decades at that point. I also already admitted that 50% of the origins of this shit comes from the American/capitalist imported culture. Japan certainly takes it to another level though and makes it much more overt. There are weird incel revenge fantasy animes where the entire plot revolves around SAing those who “wronged” the protagonist, I can’t recall anything that depraved being mainstream in the west outside of porn. These animes are available on things like Crunchyroll and Netflix, they are “mainstream” and put up side-by-side with shows like Frieren. (Shield Hero, Made in Abyss, Solo Leveling, Goblin Slayer, Attack on Titan, Death Note, the -monogatari series are all examples of these more overtly fascist/pedo shows that are tolerated and popular in the fandom).
i remember when the nameless incel anime you are referring to was streaming and yeah, it was kinda popular. Glad I never looked into it.
Death Note
Stuff like AoT and Goblin Slayer are obviously bad, but isn’t the fascistic guy obviously the villain? One who loses, at that? I don’t think telling the story from the villains point of view is an endorsement of the villain.
The villain (protagonist) who is shown to be extremely cool, get a hot goth girl, be worshipped as god, and then given a very bittersweet ending. If the intention was to make the teenage readers not like Light then they failed, as evidenced by every comment section ever on the subject being filled with Light defenders who believe his initial quest was righteous and he just got off track. That killing “criminals” en masse is justice.
Many saw the moral as “absolute power corrupts” and not “who gave this fascist little shit god powers”. Of course we can see that his “downfall” was inevitable since second 0 he was acting like an unhinged reactionary incel, but there are many who instead see it as a legitimate Icarus/Lucifer/downfall story where he was correct at the start - similar to how Lucifer had a point in the war in heaven (that god should save all souls instead of letting some fall into sin).
Lucifer’s original point at least had in its core a good intention, Light is like if Lucifer started out evil in Heaven already wanting to “punish” all the evil souls cause he was just inherently a bitter little shithead, but all the Light fanboys fail to make the distinction because they see being a bitter little shit as a positive thing.
I actually have a terrible hot take about goblin slayer being good axtually.
I would give a good answer if I was the kind of person to watch anime or western movies and shows (treatlerite)
Unfortunately, I didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. I exist in the context of all in which I live and what came before me
A while ago, I was travelling by bus, and they played the iron man movie. I was so offended by it I stoped watching western movies. I don’t remember any anime that was as bad as that.
Like I said, bad in different ways. One is chauvinist, imperialist propaganda and billionaire ideology. The others have imperialist propaganda, chauvinism and capitalist ideology as well plus pedophilia, incel fantasies and tons of sexual assault downplayed as silly goofy stuff by the main character.
I’m not going to defend anime, I also can’t finish watching most series. I never saw the point of friendren for example ad dropped it after a few episodes.
Someone here recommended chainsaw man because it’s politics were “death to america” and I said, “death to america, of course”. it was ok, but there was a lot of lib shit, and I didn’t really feel the death to america vive.
Any way. I find western tv more offensive.
I also hate western TV don’t get me wrong. I was just ranting on subject based on the OP and the comment I was replying to. The problems with the two are different though. Western TV is pro-cop, pro-war and extremely cruel and vindictive. Anime is better on those first two subjects usually, but is more overtly pedo-ey and fan service-y, as well as more overtly fulfills taboo power fantasies like harems, vindictive/punitive SA, having special powers that make you the most special boy, etc.
One is made for American boomer war pigs, the other is made for weird nihilist incel Japanese teenage boys. Of course they will be different
the more explicit anti america parts are in part 2 and are not animated yet (portrayed as the war devil’s relationship with america) but csm is more of a story about survivng abuse and grooming in general, as well as religious cult behavior.
Chainsaw man is specifically pro union.
Oh come on. Samurai Pizza Cats barely had any of that
ANOTHER FRIEREN 500 COMMENT STRUGGLE SESSION LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
We will surely build the communist revolution by analyzing Frieren, the anime, and having all “leftists” who enjoyed/hated/ignored Frieren conduct public self crit of their enjoyment/hatred/indifference, and banishing all who agree/disagree/neutral on this issue
Nobody’s going to build a communist revolution on Hexbear lmao
This is the way
Fucking Frieren again, of course.
I know there’s an idea of “contest every space, fight for what’s ours, don’t let the nazis have anything fun” but we should just let them have Frieren and not try to salvage anything from that story. This is so disgusting.
Yeah Frieren traffics in so many fascist tropes that I don’t think there’s any point in trying to reclaim it.
“This story about a diverse, female-led cast of characters with themes of valuing human connections, leaving a positive impact on others, and generally abhorring and devaluing violence is secretly fascist, because its villains are the remnants of an empire of ontologically fascist conquering monsters which is presented in a way that lines up with fantasy literature cliches.”
Didn’t we literally just have one of these threads about Frieren a few weeks ago? How is “someone has a bad take about Frieren” now just a regular struggle session?
Because people keep jumping down the throats of anyone who points out that Frieren does traffic so heavily in fascist tropes that some of us actually felt too uncomfortable with it to bother consuming more of it. Better to ask, “why do people keep starting struggle sessions with people for being bothered by bioessentislist ontological evil as a fantasy trope?”
I am less interested in fantasy as a genre nowadays because this shit was getting old 20 years ago.
It’s fantasy.
Not every villain needs to have a complex backstory for why they’re sympathetic and actually human. Great example: the Disney Cruella remake. The character is more fun as a literal human demon who wants to make a dog skin coat. She doesn’t need to be a humanized person.
Obviously when tropes combine (looking at JKR and the goblin bankers) that’s a different thing. But the fact that many of the Demons are ATTRACTIVE is part of why we should recognize them as (if anything) analogs to fascists.
To think through this: is it “problematic” that certain creatures in nature use aesthetically pleasing colors to trap prey? Is this somehow something we should “humanize” rather than recognize the cold calculation of nature at work (and perhaps, as communists/marxists, work to fight against the logic of nature and fascism’s evil cooption of it. After all, don’t we believe that men make history, but not as they please, and thus are beyond mere “nature”).
The key difference between the fash cooption and the reality of the story is that the demons are not human. They’re angler fish/carnivorous plants that use language. This idiot’s take (the OP image) obviously assumes the inhumanity of his subjects and that’s all you have to do to undermine every Frieren bad take. Simply put, the real “analogy” is if you went to go make friends with a starving tiger in the wild. It doesn’t see its actions as good or bad - it’s “beyond” good and evil not because they’re niezschean ubermensch but because they’re simply nonhuman. Now, this doesn’t mean we should kill every nonhuman entity in the world (though cattle ranchers would do so with wolves, evil fucks). We can recognize ecosystems and our role in it. But it’s a fantasy story, and should be taken on its own terms until it gives reason not to (and again, if every demon started looking like a JKR goblin or something, then I would immediately reverse my position).
Always evil races, or armies of questionally sapient drones that act as convenient meat waves for the protagonists to cut down are worth scrutinizing and critiquing even if their narrative purpose (being convenient meat waves for combat set pieces) is obvious enough.
However, in those examples, orcs, goblins, bugs, darkspawn, what have you, the protagonists generally aren’t in the situation of being presented with their child forms and having to kill them. Again, because their purpose is threatening armies. They’re often even born as adults for this purpose.
Frieren is the one that looks directly into the camera and says No, you Must kill the child. Sympathizing or showing mercy is the wrong choice, you Must snuff them out wherever you find them, because they will grow up to be dangerous and subversive No Matter What because that is their nature
and I don’t think they had to do that. and yeah that’s much closer to fascist propaganda than it is Tolkien orcs
Frieren is the one that looks directly into the camera and says No, you Must kill the child. Sympathizing or showing mercy is the wrong choice, you Must snuff them out wherever you find them, because they will grow up to be dangerous and subversive No Matter What because that is their nature
I mean, that’s one reason among other very problematic ones that I didn’t watch goblin slayer.
The key difference between the fash cooption and the reality of the story is that the demons are not human.
“It’s not
pedophiliagenocide because the child is actually a 1000 year old demon”That is the dialectic. The story as presented is actually alien to us because demons are not real. So we interpret it through the lens of extant reality and while it is intresting it doesn’t actually fit in our frameworks and falls appart.
It’s fantasy. Ontologically evil creatures can exist.
It would be like if the utility monster were real. Does that mean we should accept it under human ethics? It’s a sentient being, so we need to accept it’s claim to our unhappiness?
Putting it another way, maybe we shouldn’t try to use absurd thought experiments with morality.
It’s fantasy. Ontologically evil creatures can exist.
Nobody is disputing that it’s possible to create a fictional work in which ontologically evil creatures exist. I’m saying that putting such creatures in a work inherently aligns it with fascist ideology because the idea is a core pillar of fascism. You want to stop at “it’s fantasy” without considering the question of “but what is the fantasy?” What is the answer in this case if not “to be able to commit genocide without feeling bad about it”?
Frieren does traffic so heavily in fascist tropes
It quite literally does the exact opposite, repeatedly and emphatically devaluing everything Fascists value and making its villains just do literally every Fascist thing. Its only misstep is in making a species of ontologically-fascist demons who just can’t help but do fascist things. If Frieren were fascist it would be oriented around fascist ideals instead of just stumbling into a problematic analogue to one facet of real-world fascist propaganda by making its might-makes-right, anti-empathic, elitist, warrior-cult, racial-supremacist villains innately fascist by dint of being magical predators, instead of making them simply indoctrinated into that ethos or the like.
This is even more tiring than the Dandadan struggle sessions.
At this point I’m half expecting the “Frieren is fascist” gang to start going off about how nazis need to be humanized in any WWII media lol
But the German barbarians are not ontologically evil. They are evil, because their material conditions determine their consciousness.
deleted by creator
The worst part of the dandadan struggle sessions is that I had to learn about the klanklklan controversy (how a bunch of racists tried to ruin the show for non white people) on youtube, I would’ve expected it to come up here
Anime is a visual medium. You are correct about the writing. You still have the visuals of a bunch of Germans who like doing genocide to undermench coded women ans children.
Every demon in the show is not only a soldier, but an officer commanding troops as part of an actual, tangible military force that is doing genocide. Like they’re not even settler colonialists bringing and settling civilians alongside them, they’re the actual formal military of an invading genocidal empire, who are uniformed and engaging in atrocities in uniform. They’re also explicitly elite forces, with even the weakest of them being akin to elite human warriors or mages. The only “child” demon is a small one that some humans tried to raise as a pet.
Which is not communicated visually. So, while the writing about it may be well done there vibes require context to interpret that seems to get lost often enough that there is a flaw somewhere
Chuds: “The demons are minorities and this is BASED!!!”
Leftists: “The demons are minorities and this is PROBLEMATIC!!!”
Normal people: “idk maybe the demons are just demons and like…a thematic foil to Frieren.”
is secretly fascist
If you’re going to reply to my comment, respond to what I actually said. I didn’t say it’s secretly fascist, I said it traffics in fascist tropes. Fascist tropes such as, for instance:
[CW: racism, antisemitism, transphobia]
“Certain races are born evil. Even the children think only of your own race’s destruction, and that is why you must commit defensive genocide against them to protect your own race.”
- “The Jew always lives from the blood of other peoples, he needs such murders and such sacrifices. The victory will be only entirely and finally achieved when the whole world is free of Jews.” - Julius Streicher
- “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians!..Kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice.” - John Chivington
- “I wouldn’t have accepted that [Tutsis] were human beings. You would see an infant who’s just learning to smile, and it smiles at you, but you still kill it.” - anonymous Hutu
- “Every [Chinese] … was treated as a Boxer, by the Russian and French troops, and the slaughter of men, women, and children, in retaliation, was revolting.” - Roger Keyes
- “Yes, I’m the one who said ‘without the kids, you can leave.’ Because all the trouble starts with the kids. Your nation doesn’t deserve to exist.” - unnamed Nazi officer, Come And See
.
“Certain races are inherently untrustworthy.”
- “The Jews are masters at fitting in to their surroundings without in any way changing their nature. They are mimics. They have a natural instinct that senses danger, and their drive for self-preservation usually gives them effective ways and means to escape danger at no risk to their lives or any need for courage. It is difficult to detect their sly and slippery ways. One has to be an experienced student of the Jews to recognize what is happening.” - Joseph Goebbels
- “Islamic law unambiguously splits the world into two perpetually warring halves — the Islamic world versus the non-Islamic — and holds it to be God’s will for the former to subsume the latter. Yet if war with the infidel is a perpetual affair, if war is deceit, and if deeds are justified by intentions — any number of Muslims will naturally conclude that they have a divinely sanctioned right to deceive, so long as they believe their deception serves to aid Islam ‘until all chaos ceases, and all religion belongs to God.’” - Rami Zahra
- “In the Jewish lawbook ‘Talmud’ the Jews are told that the possessions of gentiles were ‘ownerless property,’ which the Jew was allowed to obtain through deceit and cheating.” - Julius Streicher
- “The Chinese will cheat at anything if given the chance.” - a Reddit comment with over 300 upvotes
.
“Empathy for the other is naive and stupid. They may look human, but they’re actually just monsters in human guise. Empathy for them is a suicidal mistake that will only get your own people killed.”
- “Just look at the insane inversions we tolerate daily: we prefer illegal migrants over our own legal citizens and veterans, permit drug addicts to threaten children’s safety in parks, and elevate transgender ‘women’ above biological women in sports and safe spaces. Common sense is dying in a deluge of misguided compassion.” - Gad Saad
- “Christianity, or perhaps Churchianity, tends to endorse suicidal collective behaviors. Progressives and Christians eagerly strive to outdo each other in how thoroughly they get cuckolded. Note how Christians and progressives both demonstrate superior holiness by adopting subsaharan blacks – who tend to grow into adult subsaharan blacks, with consequences as disturbing as adopting a baby chimpanzee.” - Jim, of Jim’s Blog
- “The Jew cries out in pain as he strikes you.” - common antisemitic proverb
Is “these magical predatory animals are basically born in SS uniforms and are naturally inclined to do fascist things and orchestrate a fascist society” a flawed and problematic premise? Sure, it could have been done better, but ultimately the demons are bad because they are fascists, because they act like fascists and do typical fascist things. The conceit behind them is “what if a predatory magical animal species that’s basically a walking weapon of mass destruction became sapient” rather than equating the elitist, extremely stratified, racial supremacist warrior empire to powerless real-world marginalized groups that elitist, extremely stratified, racial supremacist warrior empires claim are sneaky infiltrators trying to destroy everything from within.
The demons also notably exist as a discrete power bloc, and the only examples of them being sneaky are one attempt at perfidy - something the US and its allies frequently do - and one case of a captured demon demonstrating a confused and alien sort of morality when humans try treating her like a pet.
Is “these magical predatory animals are basically born in SS uniforms and are naturally inclined to do fascist things and orchestrate a fascist society” a flawed and problematic premise?
I think yes, because they are sapient - meaning they’re created (by the authors) in the image of humans and this naturally (because they’re a race in the narrative) makes them read as an allegory for human “races”, hence the appeal for chuds. I understand that probably wasn’t the intent of the writers, but if not, it seems like it was poor execution on their part.
It’s never going to be a good idea to have a “race” in fiction that is actually evil by nature, I think.
Is “these magical predatory animals are basically born in SS uniforms and are naturally inclined to do fascist things and orchestrate a fascist society” a flawed and problematic premise? Sure, it could have been done better
That’s all I wanted.
Look, I don’t think liking Frieren automatically makes someone a fascist or that it was intentionally created as a work of fascist propaganda or that there’s nothing about it that points to a reading of demons as aristocrats/capitalists/what-have-you. I have no patience for bona fide fascists and if I thought all Frieren fans were just fascists I wouldn’t have bothered with that effortpost.
Everyone likes problematic media, myself included. But I don’t hesitate to acknowledge the reactionary undercurrents in media I like, nor to I blame anyone who finds those undercurrents repellent to the point of not wanting to engage with that media, and that’s a courtesy that should be extended to everyone.
A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
I remember getting into so many arguments on
trying to explain why this shit was problematic only for 
to down vote me and being spammed with their miserable bot with the same message about frieren over and over again. Shit is so not worth it, especially when the devil may cry Netflix came out and the dog whistle became a bullhorn I just couldn’t take white people and their comfort slop.
here, I do agree others here about it being a representation of fascists, colonizers, nobility, and the ruling class, but to use it tied to (fictional) race is 
That was a good part ngl especially when they dressed as nobles and all I think for me it was just those very loud racist fans that kinda ruined it for me. I’ll probably give it another go down the line when that crowd has moved on to something else.
Yes stay away from
. I only peruse it for… Things… So unless it’s a hobby or something niche I avoid it like the plagueIt’s tough because there are only maybe 3 sites now online and reddit happens to be one of them
The other being the hex of bears and xitter?
Pretty much guess yt also
I get that its problematic, but it feels like such a small part compared to all the themes around loss, love, moving on, and aging that I still enjoyed watching everything that’s out.
Apparently the bioessentialism will be stronger in the future parts of the anime? Idrk though.
:/
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.
Unlimited Anime Struggle Sessions on Hexbear.net
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 rnBasically 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
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.
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.
“i swear officer the young child in my basement is actually a demon it tricked me”
-this dude, probably
uhhh it’s actually a 9000 year old demon queen
Countries should ban Xitter and treat it as a misanthropic terrorism.
Personally I was really enjoying Frieren due to some of the themes of lifespan, memory, and connection that almost coded Frieren as autistic, but, once it strayed into the demon stuff it left a pretty sour taste. Whenever you stray into the absolutes of good/evil dichotomy, you’ve lost any grasp of reason or self control.
As soon as the demons appear, and then later the shonen school arc begins, Frieren collapses from something special and unique back into lukewarm anime slop.
tv show made in reactionary society has reactionary politics baked in even when the author is trying to do something else, more at 11
90+ comment thread of anime slop in /c/slop
Ironically enough, the only demon in this situation are crakkkers. Free block list at least.
Welp, turns out I’m not in the right headspace for safe slop consumption right now.
![[CW: Racism] I was a much happier person before I'd heard of Frieren](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/4f3895d3-ba9b-4da6-b745-d43ddc2847c6.png){kind=link}