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EP. REVIEW: Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

The problem isn't so much that they lack empathy but that even though they're intelligent beings they persist in warring with humans even though there is no material or ideological benefit for them.

Lugner's portrayal did seem pretty inconsistent with some of the explanations in the show, to me, and I personally don't take Frieren and Flamme's explanations literally because of it.

The depiction makes more sense to me if we only assume it is empathy and maybe other kinds of emotional responses that are missing, not complex inductive or deductive reasoning. i.e., Lugner feels to me like a highly intelligent creature whose had a great deal of time to build a highly accurate scientific model of human emotion, but doesn't really 'get' it in the sense of feeling it himself. Something more like a 'race of sociopaths' or a 'race of psychopaths', as Richard E. put it, rather than a 'race of MurderGPTs' (still a clear step above ChatGPT in depth of cognition).

In general, it feels like some world-building about demons still remains to be revealed.

Makes me think they're magical constructs of some nature. A spell gone wrong.

Long term, the demons will be extinct.

Are they capable of questioning the status quo of how they do things? Observing that, say, Boss Demon A has less magic power than Boss Demon B, but seems to be more effective at leading his subordinates and making use of them?

Like, even if only on the basis of imitation, I would expect demon-kin society to parallel human society in this regard; maybe at the dawn of their species mana/magic might would determine hierarchy, but by the time they've actively begun to utilize technology and form societies complex enough to have something similar to aristocrats, even on a purely calculating level I would expect they'd realize there's a lot more to effective organization than whose mana pool is biggest.

I mean, I'd still expect mana to kind of leak through as a status marker of some kind; like, it's common for humans to compete over who has the biggest muscles, runs the fastest, etc, even though these don't matter for the most important tasks we do anymore. But those have at most modest effects on things like political elections; we don't just pick the biggest body builder and throw them up in the legislature (uh, usually).

Didn't the aristocracy famously prioritize bloodlines (something even less noteworthy than raw mana) over accomplishments? Even in modern day, real life people put emphasis on political dynasties. And assume being wealthy (something that can be earned at birth or by good fortune) makes you a good leader/ decision maker (Flamme compared the value humans put on wealth, to what demons put on mana).

In this context, I also don't consider demons "evil", since evil needs intent, demons just want a lunch.

Have you missed the fact that 80 or so years ago their armies were defeated, some of their top warriors were bound by magic and their king was destroyed? They are now confined for the most part to a small area of the available land. Humanity (with the assistance of elves and dwarves) is very much a threat to the continued existence of demons, especially if you look at the long term as their long lives push them to.

As with most apex predators, individual humans are generally inferior to most demons. Demons are stronger and faster then most humans. Their magic is superior if only because they have longer to practice and a tendency to focus on it. Yet, in common with most of the big predators in our world they are in danger of losing to humanity as a whole. Humans cooperate in building walled cities with magic barriers. They breed faster and produce larger armies and more mages. And they are capable of getting along with other species (elves and dwarves). Long term, the demons will be extinct.

It just seems overly simple for a race of highly intelligent beings faced with a wide variety of complex tradeoffs. A social hierarchy this simple demands a much more effective explanation than "they're strong and they care about mana a lot", IMO.