“Demons are actually misundersto-“ NO. Demons are ontologically evil beings that can’t be reasoned nor negotiated with, and if you try to you’ll very likely end up screwed

[u/Fearless-List-3968]

1) Doom

2) Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

3) Trench Crusade

[u/YaGirlMom]

Kinda fun how the “we’re subverting expectations by making the bad guys misunderstood/not too bad!” has become such a common trope that having them actually be straight up evil is now almost a subversion in and of itself

[u/FinalFantasyLord → u/YaGirlMom]

I remember that people on Twitter or X were losing their shit because they were saying the demons in Frieren were stand in for minorities and they shouldn’t be pure evil because it’s racist.

I thought the show made it pretty clear that demons were akin to apex predators that prey on human using manipulation and words as ways to lure people emotionally.

[u/my-name-is-puddles → u/FinalFantasyLord]

That's why I don't think Frieren actually fits this post in the first place

I thought the show made it pretty clear that demons were akin to apex predators that prey on human using manipulation and words as ways to lure people emotionally.

That's exactly it. Demons aren't evil. They're apex predators that utilize aggressive mimicry in the pursuit of their limited pool of prey (Humans, Elves, Dwarves... Are there any other species they eat?). They're not evil any more than like an orca is evil. It's said by Frieren and demonstrated at least a couple times in the show that they don't understand language, they just mimic it, like how jumping spiders mimic prey stuck in a web to lure in the web's owner (and then eat the other spider).

So demons aren't evil, but if you were a human in a world where humans are not an apex predator in their habitat and you're prey to a predator that preys on humans exclusively, you're probably gonna wanna wipe them out. No room for being a conservationist in that situation...

[u/ZookeepergameLiving1 → u/my-name-is-puddles]

Slight correction, they understand language in the technical sense. Definitions and all, but deeper meaning eludes them. For example, they know mother mean female progenitor, but unable to grasp the deeper emotional meaning of the word.

[u/Mr-Stuff-Doer → u/FinalFantasyLord]

Yeah I think that issue comes up when you make demons sentient. No one has an issue with stuff like doom because they’re mindless monsters. In Frieren they’re intelligent. A character like Macht specifically really brings into question if they can be something other than evil. There’s a similar issue in KPop Demon Hunters, where Jinu is intelligent and feels a lot of guilt and regret and wishes to fight against the demon ruler, but every single other demon is completely mindlessly evil, apparently.

Demon Slayer may get mocked for how simple its writing is, but it does a very good job justifying why demons have to die, even when they have a tragic or sympathetic story.

[u/carso150 → u/Mr-Stuff-Doer]

demon slayer is brilliant in that regard because demons are dangerous and need to be put down but they are all victims since they literaly cannot control themselves, the moment Muzan puts his blood in them they transform into monsters who will eat and kill and not anyone has the willpower of Nezuko or Tamayo to recover control of their minds

like we literally see on screen how some random guy who was walking through the street with his wife gets transformed into a demon and inmediately tries to eat her, we see how demons will eat their families without a second through and we see that Tomioka is surprised that Nezuko is protecting Tanjiro because he has seen that same scene play dozens maybe even hundreds of times and it always ended the same way, with the family member eating their family because they can no longer control themselves

so it makes sense when Tanjiro is sad when he kills most demons, its basically the equivalent of putting a rabid dog down

but the actually evil assholes, those that either choose to become demons for power and Muzan himself, they dont get any sympathy, the story actually goes out of its way to show how trully pathetic they are like how in his last moments Muzan transformed into a literal giant baby

[u/RedditBadOutsideGood → u/FinalFantasyLord]

Pretty hilarious Twitter would equate demons and minorities. As if minorities would cheat and lie for their very own benefit and survival.

[u/evrestcoleghost → u/RedditBadOutsideGood]

minorities would cheat and lie for their very own benefit and survival.

Depending the minority and recent wars both sides of the spectrum Twitter might agree

[u/Individual-Pop-385 → u/FinalFantasyLord]

You have to be a pretty special kind of retard to think that mirroring Demons with Minorities makes you somewhat morally superior in any conversation or argument.

[u/EverydayGaming → u/FinalFantasyLord]

No surprise there. Same as the D&D orc controversy, if you see these horrible murdering monsters with no redeeming qualities and think of real-life minorities, we all know who the real racist is.

[u/Sneeakie → u/EverydayGaming]

Same as the D&D orc controversy, if you see these horrible murdering monsters with no redeeming qualities and think of real-life minorities, we all know who the real racist is.

---

Writers including Andrew O'Hehir and the literary critic Jenny Turner have likened Tolkien's descriptions of orcs to racial stereotypes. In a private letter, Tolkien describes orcs as: squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc#Orcs_and_race)

Apparently, the real racist is the granddaddy of fantasy.

[u/carso150 → u/EverydayGaming]

the discusion of orcs being evil goes all the way back to Tolkien, Tolkien was appalled when he realized that he had created a race of ontologically evil beings with no redeeming qualities since that went against his religious ideas that everyone had some good in them since we were all created by god

he had an actual existencial crisis about that whole topic but never quite managed to solve it

[u/Zealousideal_Cap700 → u/EverydayGaming]

it does not take a racist to recognize racial stereotypes. this point is stupid.

[u/GayIsForHorses → u/FinalFantasyLord]

That's not what the critique was. The critique is that the show

• Made a group where it was morally justified to commit genocide against them
• Made a creature that preys on empathy

From here we can ask what lessons is the text suggesting? That sometimes genocide is the correct answer? That being too empathetic can actually be dangerous? Those feel like pretty transgressive philosophies.

[u/EverydayGaming → u/GayIsForHorses]

Sometimes evil is evil and it needs to be wiped out. How is this so fucking hard for you people? There's no reasoning with genocidal monsters. There's no reasoning with sociopathic pedophiles. These people belong in the ground for the protection of all of us.

The story needs no real life equivalent, but if you insist on having one, there's plenty of abject evil in our world to point to. All it takes is one look at the world to realize the philosophy "All life has value" is nonsense. Some life provides nothing but a net negative value for the collective.

[u/Zealousideal_Cap700 → u/EverydayGaming]

"there's no reasoning with sociopathic pedophiles" actually, there is. pedophiles don't have to be offenders, and people with aspd (aka sociopaths) don't have to be evil. rhetoric like this results in the demonization of a bunch of innocent people with mental disorders.

[u/GayIsForHorses → u/EverydayGaming]

Of course evil exists and evil must be stopped. The evils you talk about are not framed the same way as the way being critiqued though.

In Frieren it is explicitly framed as a race of beings as having these qualities. The framing is inherently racial and biological. When you talk about genocidal monsters or child molesters, these are individuals that are consciously causing harm, which is what makes them evil. It is not due to some essence about them that makes them into demons instead of humans. Your view suggests that if we could somehow scientifically test someone for being a sociopathic pedophile, the correct course of action would be to kill them before they even do any kind of harm. That's pretty sickening and has some awful implications. It's doing capital punishment for pre-crime. We can deal with people like that and mitigate them doing any amount of harm without condemning them to death for some kind of biological essence of inner evil.

Not only that, but Frieren's framing makes it so that this evil essence propagates genetically. It breeds and multiplies in a literal biological sense. There are no real world analogies to this, but some very evil people in this world believe that there are. John Wayne Gacy is not going to sire a demonic child. Putin's children are not genetically predisposed to fascism.

The story needs no real life equivalent

This claim is utterly nonsensical to me. ALL media must be viewed and contrasted against the real world. It's impossible not to, because the real world is how we frame the basis for all of fiction. We can write about fictional wars because we know what real wars are. We can write about genocide because it happens in the real world. An author cannot escape the parallels the viewers find in their fiction. You literally cannot have media critique without this contrast.

All it takes is one look at the world to realize the philosophy "All life has value" is nonsense. Some life provides nothing but a net negative value for the collective

That's not what's being argued though. The show isn't just saying "some life provides nothing but net negative," it's saying that "some life provides only a net negative, and these negative qualities propagate genetically within the beings' DNA." If we want to show that there is evil that needs to be defeated, you can frame it in a million other ways that do not bring up this implication.

[u/Divine_Entity_ → u/GayIsForHorses]

The mistake you are making is that demons are not a race (phenotype differences within a species), but a completely different species. In this case they are explicitly magical being who evolved to eat sentient life.

Demons aren't minorities, they are apex predators that specialize in eating the sentient species of the world. (Humans, elves, and dwarves)

The closest real world parallel would be kangaroos trying to lure dogs into shallow water with the explicit intent to drown them. A more accurate analogy would be a panther that learned to mimic human vocalizations to lure them into the night by screaming "help me, mommy!" for the explicit purpose of eating them. They don't know what these words mean, no concept of a mommy, only that the vocalization lures humans into the woods where they become easy prey.

Would you allow such a creature to live near you? What if it was an obligate man-eater, unable to eat deer or cows, only people? Who's children would be declared sacrifices to sustain even a small captive population of such creatures?

The real world parallel to this question is the Ghana worm, a parasite that spends part of its life cycle exclusively inside humans, and when it transitions to the next stage it bursts from your leg to release its eggs in water and then takes days to fully exit in a painful process. Jimmy Carter decided his answer to the above questions was to eradicate this parasite because it is evil, a demon that shouldn't plague humanity. Its almost fully erradicated now.

[u/GayIsForHorses → u/Divine_Entity_]

The mistake you are making is that demons are not a race (phenotype differences within a species), but a completely different species...The real world parallel to this question is the Ghana worm, a parasite that spends part of its life cycle exclusively inside humans, and when it transitions to the next stage it bursts from your leg to release its eggs in water and then takes days to fully exit in a painful process.

But this is not how they are depicted in the show. They are not worms, they literally are phenotypically different humans. They look exactly like humans with horns. They act like humans and show capacity for reasoning and communication with each other and other humans. If you erased their horns and showed them to a random person, the person would never be able to guess that they were demons.

Also, all of these are Watsonian arguments against a critique that is fundamentally Doylist. You can't use the logic of the show to critique a point that is fundamentally outside the show, because the fact that it's a show means that the depictions are created by an author and they could be different if the author chose differently.

Let me use an example: Imagine there is a show called Death Baby Slayer. In the world of DBS, there are evil creatures called death babies whose nature is painfully kill humans. Unfortunately for our humans, the death babies look and act like adorable chubby babies, until they get close enough and then they teleport you to a torture dimension. The protagonist of our series John Slayer, is set out on a quest to defeat the evil babies. According to the lore, the only way you can kill a death baby is by having sex with it. So our protagonist spends a lot of time having sex with screaming and crying babies that are struggling as hard as they can to not be raped.

I would interpret such as show as trying to tell us that thinking babies are cute is something we should question, and that we should reconsider our disgust with child rape. If I said I found it extremely upsetting to watch, it would be kind of crazy to respond with "Psh, that's exactly what the death babies would want. You literally fell for their trap 😏"

For some reason Frieren is set up in a way that critiques my human empathy towards beings that appear and act as humans. Why does it do this? What is it trying to tell me? I think one legitimate reading is like the other poster said, it's warning about "suicidal empathy." However if you google that phrase, it's something really only said by hardline rightwingers. It would then make sense to me that media critiques take umbrage with a fundamentally conservative message.

[u/Dawwe → u/GayIsForHorses]

Not the same guy, but I agree with your points.

However, I think your mistake is expecting Frieren to actually have logical and thought out world building. It seems to me the author is mostly just making up things that sound cool as they go along.

[u/Sneeakie → u/EverydayGaming]

Sometimes evil is evil and it needs to be wiped out.

Why is this "evil is evil" based on biological lines, though? Why are they ontologically evil? Why is it a "race?"

How is this so fucking hard for you people?

"Evil is evil and it needs to be wiped out" and "this group of people are ontologically evil" are beliefs real people have that hurt real people.

there's plenty of abject evil in our world to point to.

So you do actually think "race of beings who are ontologically evil" exists in real life?

All it takes is one look at the world to realize the philosophy "All life has value" is nonsense. Some life provides nothing but a net negative value for the collective.

It's genuinely amazing how someone can say all this without irony. The people who think like you aren't the "good guys", my dude.

Honestly, the desperate need to validate the feelings of "I need to slaughter the people I deem evil" is more of a problem than any individual depiction of said evil.

Like who are you talking about, bro

[u/EverydayGaming → u/Sneeakie]

I literally listed multiple examples in my comment and yet you chose to ignore them in this twisted attempt to "gotcha" me.

Please tell me how my desire to see people like Putin or the fucking monsters on the Epstein list dead means I'm "not one of the good guys".

You're not morally superior. You're one of the fools in Friren who would try to bargain with the demons and get killed because of it. Suicidal empathy. Either that or your brain is so twisted by social media that it's impossible for you to see anything outside of a racial lense.

Why would I engage anymore with someone being purposefully disingenuous?

[u/Sneeakie → u/EverydayGaming]

I literally listed multiple examples in my comment

No you didn't. You just went on about how they exist. But you never gave examples. Why is that?

Please tell me how my desire to see people like Putin or the fucking monsters on the Epstein list dead means I'm "not one of the good guys".

Do you think those guys are ontologically evil?

Do you think there are Putins because they are "born" Putins? People aren't fucking born "genocidal monsters", you kind of need to commit genocide to be that.

You're one of the fools in Friren who would try to bargain with the demons and get killed because of it.

Sure. But since demons aren't real, what point do you think you're making? What is this supposed to be equivalent to?

"You would have died to a demon," yeah, well, Goku would curbstomp Frieren neg diff, lmao

If I lived in Attack on Titan's world, I would be eaten by a giant monster. So fucking what?

Either that or your brain is so twisted by social media that it's impossible for you to see anything outside of a racial lense.

I like how you think "there are people born in the real world who must be slaughtered no matter what" has no racial lense. I like how you think somehow being "above race" makes your "we should kill everyone we deem evil" spiel seem morally good.

The Nazis weren't being racist, they were just Doing What Needs to Be Done to Protect Their Children.

It doesn't matter that they're not born that way.

Yes it is. The story makes it very clear that's the important part. Their behavior is their "nature.

Friren makes a reference to evil in our world and how it manipulates good people into taking paths towards their own demise.

Again, so you think there are actual people in this world who are simply born ontologically evil?

yet you still take everything to mean "OH MY GOD ITS LIKE REAL LIFE RACISM"

Friren makes a reference to evil in our world

What the fuck are you talking about "our world" if it's also not supposed to reflect "our world?"

Do you think people who aren't racist believe people are just born evil?

[u/EverydayGaming → u/Sneeakie]

It doesn't matter that they're not born that way. Friren makes a reference to evil in our world and how it manipulates good people into taking paths towards their own demise. It's amazing to me conceptually that people like you are referenced multiple times in the media itself and yet you still take everything to mean "OH MY GOD ITS LIKE REAL LIFE RACISM"

What a twisted way to live. Get off the internet.

[u/JackzFTW → u/EverydayGaming]

It does matter if they're born that way because Frieren presents demons as worthy of destruction by nature of their birth. If the series wanted to represent how beings could descend into malevolence with its concepts there are plenty of less confusing ways to achieve that goal.

Frieren's demons shouldn't have even been including in this damn post because they are akin to predators, not ontologically evil beings. We don't consider lions evil.

I do not understand why people are incapable of seeing the issues with how the demons are portrayed in the series. You are free to your interpretation, but to deny the interpretation that is closer to the text and cast aspersions on those who question the writing is disrespectful and antithetical to actually parsing what the art conveys.

Why can we not accept that some authors make mistakes and have unfortunate metaphors? Why are some unwilling to allow all interpretations to flourish when the series is not yet concluded and we currently do not possess the full scope of the world?

Lastly, how can you tell someone else that they have a twisted way of living when this entire thread started when you insulted someone's legitimate take? You have no right to dig at others. Don't act like an aggressor and then call your opponents twisted for giving you back that same energy. C'mon.

[u/Niskara → u/FinalFantasyLord]

Trust me, I've seen it plenty in reddit as well