Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Frieren's Demon Problem
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moony_badger
 Posts: 56 |
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The demon stuff has really been the only sour note in Frieren for me, mostly because I don't think it's particularly useful or interesting to have an entirely evil "race" of creatures. I eventually decided to have a similar stance to Nick in the column, where I think they work best as a dark mirror to Frieren herself; she could easily have also become a long lived person obsessed with magic and unable to form any meaningful connections, but she works hard to make those connections no matter how fleeting they mean seem to her.
I'm also mostly willing to give the demons a pass because they don't seem to be caricaturing any one particular real life group of people, so I don't THINK the author is trying to push an agenda of some sort (I'm still pretty sore over some of the narrative choices in Ranking of Kings, that's probably what got my hackles up over this at all lol; this is pretty mild compared to some of the stuff in that). I almost wish the demons were more animal-like, like the bear monster in Annihilation. |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1169 |
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If well what you suggest is true, the theory goes more in the line with Frieren: some random animal evolved to appear human. Ever seen the movie Mimic? Like that.
I can grant you a narrative reason: In traditional history teling, your hero reflects the teaching you want to give to the world, Frieren's teaching it's: Bonds and how precious they are in our limited time on Earth. Your villain, should go against what the hero stands, thus, demons are also long living beings BUT they don't value the bonds, they live egotistical and don't try to understand others. The problem radicates in the fact that if you make a villain who doesn't believe in bonds, nor friendship nor something like that so end up with a saturday morning cartoon villain with the "I don't need friends" discourse. I think the author thought of this and simply thought that making them glorified monsters solved the problem. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 2003 |
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I swear that scene of Frieren moving her feet only lacked photos sound effects and it was basically Monogatari
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pip25
Posts: 167 |
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The idea of demons being some kind of truly "alien" creatures compared to humanity comes up from time to time in the genre. Slayers, for example, had "mazoku" in the 90s with similar traits, though perhaps their ability to understand humans was left slightly more ambiguous.
Personally, I'm fine with "evil demons" if they're just generic antagonists. But when it comes to actual characters with personalities, "totally alien" unfortunately tends to be the synonym of "totally boring". A large amount of a character's appeal comes from emphasizing them; if they are presented as creatures that take advantage of your empathy, and thus emphasizing with them is a mistake, that kind of defeats the whole point from the literary perspective. |
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Vanadise
 Posts: 516 |
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I do think the justification for demon racism was kinda handled poorly, and IMO that's the weakest arc in Frieren, but it also doesn't bother me that much.
Frieren, like a lot of classic non-isekai fantasy anime, is clearly drawing a lot of inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons -- and it's worth noting that in the "stock" D&D settings, like Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, good and evil are not just philosophical concepts; they are real, fundamental forces in the universe. Creatures like demons and devils are literally the physical incarnation of evil; they may act intelligent and are capable of complex thoughts, but they are created by the universe itself literally taking mortal creatures' concepts of "evil" and giving them physical form. A demon who stopped being evil would also stop being a demon. In a setting where this is a fundamental truth of the universe, having a "kill demons on sight" mentality is much more justifiable, and although Frieren doesn't make clear whether its universe operates in the same way, it's probably drawing from that concept as inspiration. |
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Cryssoberyl
 Posts: 241 |
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It is though. What they did can be a "bad move", which it was because they didn't understand the mindset of demons, still doesn't mean "they're just animals". The way the demon child tried, in what was probably for her "good faith", to replace the daughter, speaks to an entirely different way of viewing reality. What she was trying to do, in her own way, was placate the threat she perceived from the other villagers. I think the show did a good job of making Frieren's predjudices understandable but also not bending itself to try to make her right. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11513 |
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We sure try to, though not always successfully. Grizzly bears in the lower 48 states (except Montana and 2 tiny pockets in ID/WY and WA), Japanese wolves (both Honshuu and Hokkaido subspecies), Tasmanian tiger in Australia, Falkland Islands wolf, Zanzibar leopard (hunted because people thought they were agents of witches), African Atlas bear, and that's just predator species that didn't usually prey on humans. The list of species we've killed to extinction that posed no threat at all is just too long and depressing.
Cro-Magnon = Homo sapiens. Now we call them Early Modern Humans or Anatomically Modern Humans because. |
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light turner
Posts: 166 |
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In regards to your FFXIV example, I think that's a bit of a localization issue. In the Japanese version the word they use to describe the beast tribes is banzoku, which is the same word the Garleans used to describe everyone else. The English version translate it as "savages" when the Garleans use it, but as "beast tribes" when the Eorzeans use it. It literally means "barbarian people" and has it's roots in the way real life groups to classify the Others. i.e. the Romans referring to non-Romans as "uncivilized". Worth noting that banzoku/beast tribes is not an out-of-universe or factual term, it was a term coined by the Eorzeans and Garleans. It's a derogatory term, not a factual classification. I think switching to just "tribal" now for banzoku gets the same point across but sounds more accurate now that we also have "beastial" races like Hrothgar and Viera so it would make no sense to not call them beasts but still do so for things like Ixali or Kobolds beasts. "Tribal" still gets the point of being more uncivilized across without needing to be a beast. tl;dr the way they over-localized something 10 years ago had to be altered. See also: how they translated "Black Auracite Sabik" as "The Heart of Sabik" back then as well and had to throw in a line in the English version that the Heart of Sabik was an Auracite once Auracite became an important plot point in the story. In terms of actual dangerous races and entities, FFXIV still has plenty of those though. Primals (banshin, literally barbarian gods or savage gods) have always been said to be objectively evil and dangerous. Their very existence harms the land and space around them because they drain aether. All of them are sentient. Some of them are even nice (Ramuh) and others are literally people with the ability to transform into them. But no matter which ones the characters encounter they have to be put down because their very existence is a threat, even if they were on the good guys side. There's also other creatures who feed on the land or people's aether and are always considered dangerous, and all the creatures and people the primals corrupt, especially the ones who are beyond saving like the physically mutated people, always have to be put down because they're usually unsaveable outside rare instances of plot MacGuffin. I personally don't really have a problem with evil races. Especially if the author goes into a lot of detail about why they are so like Tolkien or the FFXIV team. |
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Ojamajo LimePie
 Posts: 771 |
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It wouldn't hurt to stop using the term "race" when we mean "species". That doesn't help in every case, I realize, but not every humanoid species has to be a human analog.
Last edited by Ojamajo LimePie on Tue Dec 05, 2023 10:31 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Feng Lengshun
 Posts: 50 Location: Indonesia |
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I utterly love Frieren's depiction of the demons. It's probably one of the most fantasy thing it's done. It is so jarring - we usually land on the either ends of "they're just like humans but with different culture" or "they're literally a physical form of evil that's just a pure antagonistic force for the heroes."
The demons feels alien. It so much felt like the former, but it's also quite the latter as well. It's evil, but it feels nature-like in its pure predation as well. Even after seeing what they've done over the course of that arc, you still have that moment of doubt that maybe they're NOT all evil, and you can't fully convince yourself of that... but they really would kill you just as surely as a wild lion would eat a baby. I love it, it's jarring and it feels so foreign despite being just a blend of the two cliches we're too used to. |
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quoss
Posts: 44 |
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I totally bought the demons as they were sold. They're not a species that needs preserving, genocide is a-okay because their whole thing is killing. All the language, the appearance of being close to humanity, is just an appearance, a contrivance for the sake of contrivance, to fool humans so they can kill them. That there's a debate over this surprises me, it seemed very cut and dry.
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Rogueywon
Posts: 262 |
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I'd point out here that while anime in recent decades has often made demons more sympathetic figures and used them as proxies for human groups, western fiction often takes a more Manichean view, probably because of our closer ties to the cosmology of the Abrahamic religions.
One of the biggest current fictional franchises around - Warhammer (fantasy and 40K versions) takes a biblical approach to demons. They're evil. End of. They can be seductive and persuasive, but they are malignant through and through. They look a bit more like traditional depictions of demons in Christian artwork than Frieren's more human-like designs (though some can take human form), but it's basically the exact same thing. They aren't a stand in for any particular group of humanity, but rather they represent more theological concepts of evil. |
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 533 Location: Poland |
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Fiction avoiding situations where our worst desires are justified is far worse, and many of the best works of fiction forces us to confront the justifications for our morality - it's one of the things fiction does best. Frieren is one of those works that does it in great way, not being lazy enough to make demons just evil caricatures, but making them utterly alien in morality, just like in sci-fi greats like Solaris or Blindsight. Moreover, in my opinion it does imply that demons aren't mere animals, like Frieren claims. Not only does the demon kid attempt to coexist with humans, but we later have demons that do try spoiler[ to understand humans and demons relations with them, or role of demons as species in the world, or possibilities of coexistence with humans even if - just like from human side- those attempts are often doomed due to inability to understand one another.] As for Time Paradox, this just undermines your argument. The reaction of "no, you can't make a situation where plagiarism okay" is just small-minded stupidity that doomed interesting story to getting axed. Heavens forbid someone would write a manga where someone smokes marihuana for medicinal reason! |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5909 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Nowadays in anime, what is a Demon is all over the place.
- For some demons hang out with devils in Hell, Hel, the Nine Circles of Hell, dimensions of evil, and the underworld. They can be summoned into our world, travel via gates, or even fall through fault lines in reality. - For some demons are a race that live on the same world, usually evil or up to no good, but in some cases equals to humans and/or victims of human supremacy. - In others, demons are lords of power, neither evil or good. Khubey's race of cuddly fake rabbits, could be a nice example of this. Whether science fiction or fantasy, stories need an adversary. Demons and Devils make for great adversaries, because they are not human and see humanity as prey. Whether classically for souls, torment or as for food. And for writers and creators who are really concerned what readers and watchers will think of their villains, demons are a much safer option, than many other intelligent fantasy races typically used. But things are changing all over now. We have stories of good goblins and good orcs. Like the ones from our favorite Slime franchise. |
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Megumi Chisato
 Posts: 40 |
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For what it's worth, I think the demons are brilliant. They take the classic trope of the kindhearted monster being persecuted by humans and flip it on its head. However, at its heart, the lesson is still the same. At the end of the day, humans can only judge based on outward appearances. The fact we're even having this discussion lends credence to this point. As long as something has a human face and is able to speak our language, there will be people who cannot help but empathize with it despite all evidence to the contrary. Perhaps it is within our evolutionary nature as a social species to do so, but these demons are creatures that exist purely to take advantage of and exploit that weakness.
Frieren makes us uncomfortable, but by doing so, it causes us to reexamine our own preconceptions of what makes something truly human. |
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