For the first time ever the hype didn't disappoint. Honestly a breath of fresh air for anime, my only complaint is I wish it was longer.

  • AlpineSteakHouse [any]
    ·
    10 months ago

    even if it was genuine ignorance, that still would not answer why the demon kid had to be killed rather than merely driven out.

    A creature who murders entire families because it doesn't understand human society is still dangerous even if driven out. Letting it go live in the woods to hunt humans isn't the solution you think it is. If a bear was known to seek out and hunt humans, it should be put down.

    Remember that the demons themselves say that they only learned to speak in order to lie,

    You take what they say at face value when it benefits your point but when it comes to the child explaining their reasoning you dismiss it. You're cherry picking here.

    Humans and demons very obviously can understand each other because demons are excellent at manipulating humans!

    There is literally an entire arc that revolves around demons and humans not being able to understand each other. The anime hasn't reached it yet but the entire impetus is a demon not understanding human emotions and trying to do so. Their understanding of human behavior is "If I claim to have a son who I love, they are more likely to spare me." It is a cold-calculated decision, they do not understand why humans are this way. You are objectively wrong on this.

    I do not recommend citing HP Lovecraft for "obviously unproblematic" counterexamples,

    Ah shit I forgot that since Lovecraft influenced cosmic horror I'm not allowed to use any example from Cosmic horror to prove a point. If Cthulhu is problematic because Lovecraft was, then the Sousou No Frieren is not problematic because the author hasn't been. But using the author as the only metric for determining a media's message is reductive to high hell.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      A creature who murders entire families because it doesn't understand human society is still dangerous even if driven out. Letting it go live in the woods to hunt humans isn't the solution you think it is. If a bear was known to seek out and hunt humans, it should be put down.

      I'm beginning to think you just buy into the logic of punitive bullshit. The kid seemed to not have any magic or anything like that, why not put it in prison? It wouldn't have the ability to hurt people and again is a fucking child, and perhaps then you could educate it. There are real humans with psychopathy who could conceivably make such a mistake, and we shouldn't euthanize them either.

      You take what they say at face value when it benefits your point but when it comes to the child explaining their reasoning you dismiss it. You're cherry picking here.

      I'm weighing something a child demon said versus what an adult demon with some authority as well as what Frieren, with her wealth of experience dealing with demons, said. It's said often enough that it's like a fucking slogan. I'm not cherrypicking, I'm considering what interpretation produces the most consistent answer, and that demons are extremely deceitful is basically the most established fact other than that they prey on humans. Maybe that shit is 4D chess by the author and there's a revelation that this is all just bigotry and cultural differences or something, but the material as-presented in the anime so far is highly fash.

      There is literally an entire arc that revolves around demons and humans not being able to understand each other. The anime hasn't reached it yet but the entire impetus is a demon not understanding human emotions and trying to do so.

      I wonder how this is reconciled with the elaborate deceptions already pulled off, where demons managed to nearly control a town despite the people therein bearing enough suspicion of the demons that they planned to ambush and kill them initially. I can't really comment on what I haven't seen, though.

      Ah shit I forgot that since Lovecraft influenced cosmic horror I'm not allowed to use any example from Cosmic horror to prove a point. If Cthulhu is problematic because Lovecraft was, then the Sousou No Frieren is not problematic because the author hasn't been. But using the author as the only metric for determining a media's message is reductive to high hell.

      Blatant sophistry ignoring what I already said. Lovecraft had an ideological ax to grind (see the Deep Ones being Welsh) and your example wasn't "any example from Cosmic Horror" it was Lovecraft's boi. Of course, in Lovecraft's own writing, there is a similar effect as with Unseelie where he wasn't really looking for an answer to "Is this thing evil to the depths of its soul", his interests were "existential shock" at how it disrupts our understanding of nature and later on imperial conflict (see Mountains of Madness). Oh, and also how insidious it is that is has a multiracial cult of followers that are unconcerned with Lovecraft's white supremacist ideology and therefore d*generate, but I guess we're pretending Cthulhu is apolitical.

      This trend in writing that I have mentioned, to answer critical thought about how we could all get along one day with "Nope, actually this race simply cannot be persuaded by any means to interact in a way that is compatible with human flourishing" is the most reactionary trend in fantasy writing and should be regarded as such instead of being excused on a completely bullshit basis.