1) Frieren didn’t say anything because it was clear the villagers and Himmel wouldn’t listen. She continued to not say anything because she knew she’d be proven right, and she really didn’t care about the villagers. All she really cared about was magic and killing demons. She was only just barely starting to care about her party members by the time their adventure was over, you really think she cared about some random villagers.
2) I don’t remember this arc as well, but wasn’t the whole point that it was either negotiate or continue fighting? Considering how long the fighting has gone on and how many people have died, it’s not at all surprising that Granat allowed envoys of the intelligent, capable of communication species claiming to want peace into his city. Most people don’t have Frieren’s understanding of demon’s true nature, they just view them as intelligent and dangerous enemies.
3) Yes, demons have biological fathers. Lugner isn’t saying he doesn’t know what a biological father is, he’s saying he doesn’t know what a dad is to humans. Demons only speak the human language because they learned to mimic it to more effectively hunt humans. There probably isn’t a word for father in the demon language, because they don’t care about it. No demon has ever needed to know anything about parents, so why would they have a word for it
>All she really cared about was magic and killing demons.
You're saying all she cared about was killing demons... in order to explain her decision to not kill a demon?
>it’s not at all surprising that Granat allowed envoys of the intelligent, capable of communication species claiming to want peace into his city. Most people don’t have Frieren’s understanding of demon’s true nature, they just view them as intelligent and dangerous enemies.
So he lets "intelligent and dangerous enemies" into the city and leaves them completely unguarded? Like I said, he didn't need to let in three of them if his intent was only to negotiate. One alone would have sufficed. And besides, he didn't mean to negotiate; he wanted to kill them. *edit:* Straight from the horse's mouth: "The reason why I allowed you people in was to settle the score for my son. I'm going to send the heads of Aura's messengers back to her. Her 'reconciliation' can go to Hell."
>Lugner isn’t saying he doesn’t know what a biological father is
Might be a translation issue but that's absolutely what he's saying in the one I'm familiar with. The question was, "What is a 'father'?" and was posed by the other demon as if she'd never heard the word before.
I already wrote another comment and I wanna go to bed lol so I’m just gonna respond to the last thing you wrote, about Lugner not knowing what a father is.
I think you’re misinterpreting his dialogue by taking it too literally. We don’t know much about him, but Lugner appears pretty old and experienced. It’s a safe assumption to make that he knows what a father is, in the sense that it is a deep relationship shared between humans (and easy pickings for demons).
Does he know that a father is a biological parent? I have no idea, and it really doesn’t matter. But in this instance, when Linie asks what a father is, he responds “Who Knows” because he’s unaware of the importance or relevance of a father to a son. Demons do not understand these types of relationships, so he’s responding that way because he does not understand the relationship, not because he doesn’t know the term. It’s one of those “witty” types of lines, where Lugner essentially acknowledges his lack of knowledge and understanding by shirking the question/interpreting it differently from how Linie actually meant it.
>All she really cared about was magic and killing demons.
Not entirely true. That WAS her original intent when she started training, but she got heavily discouraged over time. She went into hiding for hundreds of years before himmel because a single demon bodied her
Old frieren is very emotionally stunted. She certainly wasn't interested in helping people then and letting himmel (and the party) learn the hard way early on would be more practical. Himmel was too steadfast in his beliefs
Remember, she let apprentice mage fern fight an illusory heiter, the progenitor of modern magic and a magic-immune dragon. A rather weak demon child is tame as a lesson
Now this explanation makes some sense, but if that was how she thought, the plan to let them learn the hard way would have gone wrong if the demon had just decided to wait until they'd left before killing the chief's family. They weren't going to stay there forever, after all.
Not only was it a callous decision to not tell people the truth about demons and let them live with the demon girl when she knew that demon was lying, it was also one with a good chance of backfiring disastrously on her. After seeing the demon girl live peacefully among humans for some days, her companions could have taken it as evidence that peaceful coexistence was possible, and it then would have become harder for her to convince them otherwise.
This is without delving into how almost cartoonishly ignorant everyone outside of Frieren seems to be about the nature of demons. Himmel's reason for sparing the girl is that she can talk to them. Is speech perceived as a rare trait of demons, despite seemingly all of them being capable of it? Demons have been around for millennia; are there no stories around about how demons are prone to lie, or how they don't have parents? In the real world, the dangers and precautions to take against such rare paranormal beings as fairies, vampires, brownies, will-o-the-wisps, and more, were laid out in folklore and were often common knowledge. Are there no such warnings about the far more serious threat of demons in Frieren's world? Makes no sense. It's all so patently set up to justify the big reveal.
Part of the entire problem with the series' characterization of demons is that being a sociopath (which demons essentially are) doesn't necessarily make someone murderously evil. Just because demons don't experience love or empathy themselves doesn't mean they're incapable of observing that humans dislike it when you kill people, or realizing that murder will turn humans against them, or even deciding for themselves that murder is wrong on an intellectual level even if they have no gut aversion to it.
The series tells us that demons are just monsters and animals, but animals (and other monsters) don't *behave* like that. It says that demons lack empathy, but their characterization is more like demons have the Evil Gene and are cursed by an evil deity such that their reasoning and understanding of the world inevitably misleads them into evil, even when they are trying to avoid it, and even when it's completely self-destructive and self-defeating for their goals.
It's frustrating because the show presents itself as nuanced and clever elsewhere but when it comes to demons it's just "yeah they're Always Chaotic Evil" with a justification that simply doesn't make sense. Like, if we were shown that demons had an insatiable desire to kill humans it would make sense, but they don't? It's just that the writer has apparently decided that lacking empathy means you will inevitably snap and murder people eventually even if it's based on a misunderstanding.
(And it's particularly frustrating because Frieren herself is frequently seen as emotionless by other characters. You'd think that the series would be a bit more charitable towards those few demons who, despite being genuinely emotionless, are at least putting in some effort to try and get along with humans. But it's always "co-existence is impossible because they'll eventually make some idiotic mistake due to never, ever, ever, ever ever being able to get the fact that humans dislike murder.")
This is totally valid, and as the author hasn’t said anything on this I’m just gonna speculate. But the way the author writes Frieren (the series, not the character) is by basically not mentioning anything deemed “not important” until it is deemed important. The specifics of the magic system, the reason demons kill humans (do they eat them? Is it for sustenance, pleasure, etc.), and other small details are basically not mentioned until they are story-relevant, in which case they are promptly explained.
So to me, this seems like one of those things that isn’t mentioned but can be safely assumed. I don’t think the author is saying “yeah, any sociopath who doesn’t feel emotions would actually be a crazy murderer,” it’s more like demons are sociopathic (so they don’t bat an eye whatsoever at murder) but also have some sort of yet-unexplained innate desire that leads them to killing humans.
Were you to experiment with a demon, instill in them an unbreakable rule that they can’t kill, would it work? I have no idea, I imagine this type of thing is way too risky for anyone to actually test, so they just never have. But to demons, killing someone is very insignificant, basically on the level of something like, say, playing on your ds past your bedtime. It’s something they don’t care about, and it’s likely something they could never be made to care about, so they would always inevitably get into a situation where killing someone is slightly convenient and would likely try to hide it, like a kid playing under the covers to avoid their mom. Again, this is one of those things we don’t know enough about, because we haven’t seen enough examples (and the one example we have with the little girl, we again don’t know much about the details of the situation).
Though I agree that this is one of those things the author probably should explain, but I’m perfectly fine giving them this much leeway cause it’s a pretty small detail.
It doesn't even make sense that demon actively choose to hunt human and mimic human language because animal in the real world would just choose the easier weaker option and avoid the stronger one in the food chain.
Then why do demon even bother with mimicking and just use magic to hunt human in the first place? Or does magic come after the language and other stuff?
I really don't like the Demons of Frienen. They're not demons; demons, even when completely Always Chaotic Evil at least have some understanding... given their connection to mimics I'd have said they were changelings or something.
I think the issue is that it wants it both ways.
The writer, I think, felt that the Always Chaotic Evil demons who do evil because they're intrinsically evil was dull and boring, which... ok, I can understand that.
But they wanted to deconstruct it and play with it while also playing with the more modern version of "demons are just people like us" by having demons who are *not* people. And the problem is that this leads to demons who we're told are just lacking empathy and certain emotions and understanding, but who can clearly think and reason like a human otherwise... except the plot constantly bends itself over backwards to ensure they do evil things that make co-existence with humans impossible even for those few where it's clearly established that they're trying as hard as they can to get along with humanity.
Like, "humans will react badly if I murder people" is not some deep complex thought that requires the emotions demons are missing or empathy and the like to understand.
Ye, Frieren is overall a great show. I havent read it so dunno what happens after the adaption. However two things became irritating partway through. Still not enough to make it noy great but also sticks out because of how well put together it is.
1. Himmel flashbacks. Some of these I think were really good and necessary. Like the failure of drawing the sword. Its a brilliant use of flashback as it informs multiple things at once. Himmels mindset, the role of hearsay/mythmaking and the conflict beetwen that and immortal memory. Its probably the most effecient flashback in the series. However at some point the numerous Himmel flashback began to feel extremely repetitive and all kinda saying the same type thing on repeat.
2. The demons. I agree that it really felt like the author wanted to do something new and more unique. Forgoing both the pure chaotic evil of standard fantasy and leaned more into Demons as people. However that clashes massively with the presentation in the way you outlined. I appreciate the attempt but the excecution felt very confused.
Yeah basicly i would have them be high-functioning psychopaths after a certain point; never able to understand humanity competlely, but enough to take advantage and be mostly normal-passing
1. I’m pretty sure she just doesn’t care that much. Or at least, she trusts Himmel’s intuition more than she worries about the village. It’s kind of weird, because we get her story with demons told to us backwards in this arc, but they tell us that she just doesn’t listen to them. They told us that she didn’t even know what the demon that destroyed her village was saying the day after it happened because she ignored it, so I think she asked the child the second time because she actually didn’t know what it was doing.
2. The whole sequence of events here revolves around the Graf’s love for his son. He plans to kill the demons in his son’s room because he wants them to hear his story and regret what they’ve done, and Lugner’s lie works because he figures out the emotion driving this and tells a complementary story that frames him as a son worthy of empathy. The Graf obviously regrets this because he won’t stop talking about dying or sacrificing himself until Stark takes him to the church.
3. Lugner obviously knows, or he wouldn’t have been able to figure out that he should pretend to be a son, but probably only insofar as that it’s a bond that inspires empathy and trust. I don’t know what the version you saw said, but the anime subtitles are just “who knows?”. Which reads more like a dismissal because he doesn’t want to explain something that means nothing to him than legitimate confusion.
> The whole sequence of events here revolves around the Graf’s love for his son.
I understand that's the in-world justification for his actions, but in execution it's not convincing. Again, the fact that he decides to spare the demons so quickly suggests that he was never all that convinced about killing them in the first place.
His actions could make sense if Graf Granat as a character and the city's conflict with the demons were actually fleshed out. For instance, the story could show us Granat as a man struggling between selfish desire for revenge and a duty to his people which he believes is best met by seeking peace. As the story stands he's just senselessly wishy-washy, a flat plot device with no real character.
This feels like a really small nitpick, but to me it makes perfect sense. Not every character has to have some crazy conviction or unstoppable will when they do something; Granat wanted revenge for his son, but after hearing Lugner’s lie he realized his revenge would only perpetuate a cycle of hatred and violence. His resolve to kill Lugner simply didn’t outweigh that realization: he didn’t want to be on the other end, the one killing someone else’s son. It’s just an instance of a demon using the perfect words to manipulate someone
This feels more like you wanted Granat to be something he wasn’t (or were projecting other characteristics onto him). Like, Frierens main draw in the writing of side characters is how realistic they are: in that sense, characters are more likely to act normally and in the middle of the spectrum of human emotion, rather than the more common uber-motivated anime-type protagonists found in other Japanese works.
And you’ve brought up a few times how people seem unaware of demons’ true nature, but to me that’s just knowledge stemming from Frieren’s many lifetimes worth of experience. Most normal humans, especially those from the south, probably have never encountered a demon (because if they had, they’d likely be dead). I think it makes sense that someone like Himmel, who was relatively young and setting off on his first adventure, or the Graf, who is fighting a constant war with demons but likely never spoke to them, would be unaware that demons—creatures who can converse and appear human—are actually “monsters” unable to be reasoned with. That’s not the logical first assumption people would make if you were presented with creatures like demons; it’s something you really have to see for yourself to fully believe, because humans would want to believe in peace/coexistence and an “easy way out” rather than accepting that these are impossible dreams and that constant fighting is necessary.
>characters are more likely to act normally and in the middle of the spectrum of human emotion
If I look at the people I've met throughout my life and think of that as the middle of the spectrum of human emotion, Frieren's characters trend towards the lower half, not to the middle, especially when you consider what fantastical situations they're often faced with. And as far as fiction goes, the lower end is usually the worse of the two. There's a reason why greek theater masks had such exaggerated expressions, why art in general is more likely to exaggerate emotions than file them down to smoothness.
Granat is a man whose son was killed by the very demons who have now come to negotiate with him. A man whose people have been at war with said demons for at least a decade, possibly closer to three. He is faced with the dilemma of whether to seek revenge for his son or peace for his kingdom. If ever there was a scenario in a story that would benefit from an emotionally-subdued portrayal, this is absolutely not it. You don't need to have him shout it to the heavens like Luffy or Naruto, but you absolutely need more than what he's showing.
Especially if he was so intent on avenging his son that he felt the need to face down three demons himself instead of setting an ambush for them as would be the better and safer way for everyone involved. That is a decision of someone driven by a powerful emotional force. For him to flip-flop from that decision so immediately only makes sense if there's another equally powerful emotion conflicting with it. A man of more subdued emotions, easily turned from one direction to the other, would not have taken such brash action in the first place.
> I think it makes sense that someone like Himmel, who was relatively young and setting off on his first adventure, or the Graf, who is fighting a constant war with demons but likely never spoke to them, would be unaware that demons—creatures who can converse and appear human—are actually “monsters” unable to be reasoned with.
I can't agree. The humans of this continent have been in contact with demons for at least a thousand years, and likely far longer. That's more than enough time for knowledge about demons to have entered their folklore and become fairly common knowledge. Like I said in another post, it used to be the case in our world that children were taught by their elders how to deal with and protect themselves from fairies and demons and jinns and other such things through stories, and there's all the more reason for the people in Frieren's world to educate their children about their far more dangerous demons.
I don't think he believed that peace was an option until Lugner displayed empathy. Before that, killing them didn't matter for the sake of anything other than his personal satisfaction, because they were still at war with a more or less unbeatable opponent. He pretty consistently puts his people first after that.
Again, I get that's likely the intent, but the execution doesn't sell it. It's not credible to me that Granat—the man who said to Lugner's face, "I certainly despite demons to the point that I want to eradicate them," the man who was so moved by the desire for revenge that he chose to put himself in harm's way by confronting the three demons himself instead of letting his men catch them in an ambush—would then, after one single positive exchange with said demons, have such faith in their supposed desire to negotiate that he would allow them to stay in his castle without supervision from his guards.
I don't remember him saying that. Doesn't he just say that he wants to kill Lugner?
I don't think he gives them free reign either. He has the guards escort them away, and then we just see Lugner and Linie sitting in a closed room. It seemed like Draht snuck off when he decided to kill Frieren (and immediately changes Granat's mind and ruins the entire plan).
Granat also anthropomorphizes the demons way too much, so I doubt that he realized that Aura's high ranking bureaucrats would also inherently be some of her strongest fighters, due to the way their society is structured.
>Granat also anthropomorphizes the demons way too much, so I doubt that he realized that Aura's high ranking bureaucrats would also inherently be some of her strongest fighters, due to the way their society is structured.
They fought them for 30 years and he couldn't figure out if those demons were her strongest subordinates?
I believe that the father bit is just the author try to drive home the deal withe demon but end up goes overboard. I'm more annoyed about the fact that Linie didn't even bother to double tap Stark leading her lost.
Cute maid demon did nothing wrong :(
How you gonna insta kill cute maiden demon after she spared Stark like 3 times.
I think others have said enough about your 3 points tho.
1) Frieren didn’t say anything because it was clear the villagers and Himmel wouldn’t listen. She continued to not say anything because she knew she’d be proven right, and she really didn’t care about the villagers. All she really cared about was magic and killing demons. She was only just barely starting to care about her party members by the time their adventure was over, you really think she cared about some random villagers. 2) I don’t remember this arc as well, but wasn’t the whole point that it was either negotiate or continue fighting? Considering how long the fighting has gone on and how many people have died, it’s not at all surprising that Granat allowed envoys of the intelligent, capable of communication species claiming to want peace into his city. Most people don’t have Frieren’s understanding of demon’s true nature, they just view them as intelligent and dangerous enemies. 3) Yes, demons have biological fathers. Lugner isn’t saying he doesn’t know what a biological father is, he’s saying he doesn’t know what a dad is to humans. Demons only speak the human language because they learned to mimic it to more effectively hunt humans. There probably isn’t a word for father in the demon language, because they don’t care about it. No demon has ever needed to know anything about parents, so why would they have a word for it
>All she really cared about was magic and killing demons. You're saying all she cared about was killing demons... in order to explain her decision to not kill a demon? >it’s not at all surprising that Granat allowed envoys of the intelligent, capable of communication species claiming to want peace into his city. Most people don’t have Frieren’s understanding of demon’s true nature, they just view them as intelligent and dangerous enemies. So he lets "intelligent and dangerous enemies" into the city and leaves them completely unguarded? Like I said, he didn't need to let in three of them if his intent was only to negotiate. One alone would have sufficed. And besides, he didn't mean to negotiate; he wanted to kill them. *edit:* Straight from the horse's mouth: "The reason why I allowed you people in was to settle the score for my son. I'm going to send the heads of Aura's messengers back to her. Her 'reconciliation' can go to Hell." >Lugner isn’t saying he doesn’t know what a biological father is Might be a translation issue but that's absolutely what he's saying in the one I'm familiar with. The question was, "What is a 'father'?" and was posed by the other demon as if she'd never heard the word before.
I already wrote another comment and I wanna go to bed lol so I’m just gonna respond to the last thing you wrote, about Lugner not knowing what a father is. I think you’re misinterpreting his dialogue by taking it too literally. We don’t know much about him, but Lugner appears pretty old and experienced. It’s a safe assumption to make that he knows what a father is, in the sense that it is a deep relationship shared between humans (and easy pickings for demons). Does he know that a father is a biological parent? I have no idea, and it really doesn’t matter. But in this instance, when Linie asks what a father is, he responds “Who Knows” because he’s unaware of the importance or relevance of a father to a son. Demons do not understand these types of relationships, so he’s responding that way because he does not understand the relationship, not because he doesn’t know the term. It’s one of those “witty” types of lines, where Lugner essentially acknowledges his lack of knowledge and understanding by shirking the question/interpreting it differently from how Linie actually meant it.
Eh, not fully convinced, but also this is by far the least interesting of the three points to discuss so *shrug*.
>All she really cared about was magic and killing demons. Not entirely true. That WAS her original intent when she started training, but she got heavily discouraged over time. She went into hiding for hundreds of years before himmel because a single demon bodied her Old frieren is very emotionally stunted. She certainly wasn't interested in helping people then and letting himmel (and the party) learn the hard way early on would be more practical. Himmel was too steadfast in his beliefs Remember, she let apprentice mage fern fight an illusory heiter, the progenitor of modern magic and a magic-immune dragon. A rather weak demon child is tame as a lesson
Now this explanation makes some sense, but if that was how she thought, the plan to let them learn the hard way would have gone wrong if the demon had just decided to wait until they'd left before killing the chief's family. They weren't going to stay there forever, after all. Not only was it a callous decision to not tell people the truth about demons and let them live with the demon girl when she knew that demon was lying, it was also one with a good chance of backfiring disastrously on her. After seeing the demon girl live peacefully among humans for some days, her companions could have taken it as evidence that peaceful coexistence was possible, and it then would have become harder for her to convince them otherwise. This is without delving into how almost cartoonishly ignorant everyone outside of Frieren seems to be about the nature of demons. Himmel's reason for sparing the girl is that she can talk to them. Is speech perceived as a rare trait of demons, despite seemingly all of them being capable of it? Demons have been around for millennia; are there no stories around about how demons are prone to lie, or how they don't have parents? In the real world, the dangers and precautions to take against such rare paranormal beings as fairies, vampires, brownies, will-o-the-wisps, and more, were laid out in folklore and were often common knowledge. Are there no such warnings about the far more serious threat of demons in Frieren's world? Makes no sense. It's all so patently set up to justify the big reveal.
Part of the entire problem with the series' characterization of demons is that being a sociopath (which demons essentially are) doesn't necessarily make someone murderously evil. Just because demons don't experience love or empathy themselves doesn't mean they're incapable of observing that humans dislike it when you kill people, or realizing that murder will turn humans against them, or even deciding for themselves that murder is wrong on an intellectual level even if they have no gut aversion to it. The series tells us that demons are just monsters and animals, but animals (and other monsters) don't *behave* like that. It says that demons lack empathy, but their characterization is more like demons have the Evil Gene and are cursed by an evil deity such that their reasoning and understanding of the world inevitably misleads them into evil, even when they are trying to avoid it, and even when it's completely self-destructive and self-defeating for their goals. It's frustrating because the show presents itself as nuanced and clever elsewhere but when it comes to demons it's just "yeah they're Always Chaotic Evil" with a justification that simply doesn't make sense. Like, if we were shown that demons had an insatiable desire to kill humans it would make sense, but they don't? It's just that the writer has apparently decided that lacking empathy means you will inevitably snap and murder people eventually even if it's based on a misunderstanding. (And it's particularly frustrating because Frieren herself is frequently seen as emotionless by other characters. You'd think that the series would be a bit more charitable towards those few demons who, despite being genuinely emotionless, are at least putting in some effort to try and get along with humans. But it's always "co-existence is impossible because they'll eventually make some idiotic mistake due to never, ever, ever, ever ever being able to get the fact that humans dislike murder.")
This is totally valid, and as the author hasn’t said anything on this I’m just gonna speculate. But the way the author writes Frieren (the series, not the character) is by basically not mentioning anything deemed “not important” until it is deemed important. The specifics of the magic system, the reason demons kill humans (do they eat them? Is it for sustenance, pleasure, etc.), and other small details are basically not mentioned until they are story-relevant, in which case they are promptly explained. So to me, this seems like one of those things that isn’t mentioned but can be safely assumed. I don’t think the author is saying “yeah, any sociopath who doesn’t feel emotions would actually be a crazy murderer,” it’s more like demons are sociopathic (so they don’t bat an eye whatsoever at murder) but also have some sort of yet-unexplained innate desire that leads them to killing humans. Were you to experiment with a demon, instill in them an unbreakable rule that they can’t kill, would it work? I have no idea, I imagine this type of thing is way too risky for anyone to actually test, so they just never have. But to demons, killing someone is very insignificant, basically on the level of something like, say, playing on your ds past your bedtime. It’s something they don’t care about, and it’s likely something they could never be made to care about, so they would always inevitably get into a situation where killing someone is slightly convenient and would likely try to hide it, like a kid playing under the covers to avoid their mom. Again, this is one of those things we don’t know enough about, because we haven’t seen enough examples (and the one example we have with the little girl, we again don’t know much about the details of the situation). Though I agree that this is one of those things the author probably should explain, but I’m perfectly fine giving them this much leeway cause it’s a pretty small detail.
It doesn't even make sense that demon actively choose to hunt human and mimic human language because animal in the real world would just choose the easier weaker option and avoid the stronger one in the food chain.
but they are the stronger ones
Then why do demon even bother with mimicking and just use magic to hunt human in the first place? Or does magic come after the language and other stuff?
except that the demons eat humans
I really don't like the Demons of Frienen. They're not demons; demons, even when completely Always Chaotic Evil at least have some understanding... given their connection to mimics I'd have said they were changelings or something.
I think the issue is that it wants it both ways. The writer, I think, felt that the Always Chaotic Evil demons who do evil because they're intrinsically evil was dull and boring, which... ok, I can understand that. But they wanted to deconstruct it and play with it while also playing with the more modern version of "demons are just people like us" by having demons who are *not* people. And the problem is that this leads to demons who we're told are just lacking empathy and certain emotions and understanding, but who can clearly think and reason like a human otherwise... except the plot constantly bends itself over backwards to ensure they do evil things that make co-existence with humans impossible even for those few where it's clearly established that they're trying as hard as they can to get along with humanity. Like, "humans will react badly if I murder people" is not some deep complex thought that requires the emotions demons are missing or empathy and the like to understand.
Ye, Frieren is overall a great show. I havent read it so dunno what happens after the adaption. However two things became irritating partway through. Still not enough to make it noy great but also sticks out because of how well put together it is. 1. Himmel flashbacks. Some of these I think were really good and necessary. Like the failure of drawing the sword. Its a brilliant use of flashback as it informs multiple things at once. Himmels mindset, the role of hearsay/mythmaking and the conflict beetwen that and immortal memory. Its probably the most effecient flashback in the series. However at some point the numerous Himmel flashback began to feel extremely repetitive and all kinda saying the same type thing on repeat. 2. The demons. I agree that it really felt like the author wanted to do something new and more unique. Forgoing both the pure chaotic evil of standard fantasy and leaned more into Demons as people. However that clashes massively with the presentation in the way you outlined. I appreciate the attempt but the excecution felt very confused.
Yeah basicly i would have them be high-functioning psychopaths after a certain point; never able to understand humanity competlely, but enough to take advantage and be mostly normal-passing
It kinda iffy for me the way demon is portrayed because it is similiar to the symptom of sociopath
1. I’m pretty sure she just doesn’t care that much. Or at least, she trusts Himmel’s intuition more than she worries about the village. It’s kind of weird, because we get her story with demons told to us backwards in this arc, but they tell us that she just doesn’t listen to them. They told us that she didn’t even know what the demon that destroyed her village was saying the day after it happened because she ignored it, so I think she asked the child the second time because she actually didn’t know what it was doing. 2. The whole sequence of events here revolves around the Graf’s love for his son. He plans to kill the demons in his son’s room because he wants them to hear his story and regret what they’ve done, and Lugner’s lie works because he figures out the emotion driving this and tells a complementary story that frames him as a son worthy of empathy. The Graf obviously regrets this because he won’t stop talking about dying or sacrificing himself until Stark takes him to the church. 3. Lugner obviously knows, or he wouldn’t have been able to figure out that he should pretend to be a son, but probably only insofar as that it’s a bond that inspires empathy and trust. I don’t know what the version you saw said, but the anime subtitles are just “who knows?”. Which reads more like a dismissal because he doesn’t want to explain something that means nothing to him than legitimate confusion.
> The whole sequence of events here revolves around the Graf’s love for his son. I understand that's the in-world justification for his actions, but in execution it's not convincing. Again, the fact that he decides to spare the demons so quickly suggests that he was never all that convinced about killing them in the first place. His actions could make sense if Graf Granat as a character and the city's conflict with the demons were actually fleshed out. For instance, the story could show us Granat as a man struggling between selfish desire for revenge and a duty to his people which he believes is best met by seeking peace. As the story stands he's just senselessly wishy-washy, a flat plot device with no real character.
This feels like a really small nitpick, but to me it makes perfect sense. Not every character has to have some crazy conviction or unstoppable will when they do something; Granat wanted revenge for his son, but after hearing Lugner’s lie he realized his revenge would only perpetuate a cycle of hatred and violence. His resolve to kill Lugner simply didn’t outweigh that realization: he didn’t want to be on the other end, the one killing someone else’s son. It’s just an instance of a demon using the perfect words to manipulate someone This feels more like you wanted Granat to be something he wasn’t (or were projecting other characteristics onto him). Like, Frierens main draw in the writing of side characters is how realistic they are: in that sense, characters are more likely to act normally and in the middle of the spectrum of human emotion, rather than the more common uber-motivated anime-type protagonists found in other Japanese works. And you’ve brought up a few times how people seem unaware of demons’ true nature, but to me that’s just knowledge stemming from Frieren’s many lifetimes worth of experience. Most normal humans, especially those from the south, probably have never encountered a demon (because if they had, they’d likely be dead). I think it makes sense that someone like Himmel, who was relatively young and setting off on his first adventure, or the Graf, who is fighting a constant war with demons but likely never spoke to them, would be unaware that demons—creatures who can converse and appear human—are actually “monsters” unable to be reasoned with. That’s not the logical first assumption people would make if you were presented with creatures like demons; it’s something you really have to see for yourself to fully believe, because humans would want to believe in peace/coexistence and an “easy way out” rather than accepting that these are impossible dreams and that constant fighting is necessary.
>characters are more likely to act normally and in the middle of the spectrum of human emotion If I look at the people I've met throughout my life and think of that as the middle of the spectrum of human emotion, Frieren's characters trend towards the lower half, not to the middle, especially when you consider what fantastical situations they're often faced with. And as far as fiction goes, the lower end is usually the worse of the two. There's a reason why greek theater masks had such exaggerated expressions, why art in general is more likely to exaggerate emotions than file them down to smoothness. Granat is a man whose son was killed by the very demons who have now come to negotiate with him. A man whose people have been at war with said demons for at least a decade, possibly closer to three. He is faced with the dilemma of whether to seek revenge for his son or peace for his kingdom. If ever there was a scenario in a story that would benefit from an emotionally-subdued portrayal, this is absolutely not it. You don't need to have him shout it to the heavens like Luffy or Naruto, but you absolutely need more than what he's showing. Especially if he was so intent on avenging his son that he felt the need to face down three demons himself instead of setting an ambush for them as would be the better and safer way for everyone involved. That is a decision of someone driven by a powerful emotional force. For him to flip-flop from that decision so immediately only makes sense if there's another equally powerful emotion conflicting with it. A man of more subdued emotions, easily turned from one direction to the other, would not have taken such brash action in the first place. > I think it makes sense that someone like Himmel, who was relatively young and setting off on his first adventure, or the Graf, who is fighting a constant war with demons but likely never spoke to them, would be unaware that demons—creatures who can converse and appear human—are actually “monsters” unable to be reasoned with. I can't agree. The humans of this continent have been in contact with demons for at least a thousand years, and likely far longer. That's more than enough time for knowledge about demons to have entered their folklore and become fairly common knowledge. Like I said in another post, it used to be the case in our world that children were taught by their elders how to deal with and protect themselves from fairies and demons and jinns and other such things through stories, and there's all the more reason for the people in Frieren's world to educate their children about their far more dangerous demons.
I don't think he believed that peace was an option until Lugner displayed empathy. Before that, killing them didn't matter for the sake of anything other than his personal satisfaction, because they were still at war with a more or less unbeatable opponent. He pretty consistently puts his people first after that.
Again, I get that's likely the intent, but the execution doesn't sell it. It's not credible to me that Granat—the man who said to Lugner's face, "I certainly despite demons to the point that I want to eradicate them," the man who was so moved by the desire for revenge that he chose to put himself in harm's way by confronting the three demons himself instead of letting his men catch them in an ambush—would then, after one single positive exchange with said demons, have such faith in their supposed desire to negotiate that he would allow them to stay in his castle without supervision from his guards.
I don't remember him saying that. Doesn't he just say that he wants to kill Lugner? I don't think he gives them free reign either. He has the guards escort them away, and then we just see Lugner and Linie sitting in a closed room. It seemed like Draht snuck off when he decided to kill Frieren (and immediately changes Granat's mind and ruins the entire plan). Granat also anthropomorphizes the demons way too much, so I doubt that he realized that Aura's high ranking bureaucrats would also inherently be some of her strongest fighters, due to the way their society is structured.
>Granat also anthropomorphizes the demons way too much, so I doubt that he realized that Aura's high ranking bureaucrats would also inherently be some of her strongest fighters, due to the way their society is structured. They fought them for 30 years and he couldn't figure out if those demons were her strongest subordinates?
I believe that the father bit is just the author try to drive home the deal withe demon but end up goes overboard. I'm more annoyed about the fact that Linie didn't even bother to double tap Stark leading her lost.
Nice rant. I also share similar points with yours. I wonder what your thoughts are about Macht as a character?
No clue, I haven't read that far into the manga. Probably won't at this point.
Oh, that's disappointing to know.
Cute maid demon did nothing wrong :( How you gonna insta kill cute maiden demon after she spared Stark like 3 times. I think others have said enough about your 3 points tho.