Comment on Frieren: Beyond Journey's End Season 2 - PV
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year agoFrieren wants to explicitly kill all demons, ergo a genocide. This is a tricky subject because this is inherently a very evil thing to do. You can make your race evil, but then you need to be really careful.
I would recommend reading about Tolkien’s dilemma when it comes to the orcs. It’s very similar.
Wut? It’s shown in the show that demons are a direct threat to non demon life due to their nature.
I would think of it less like genocide and more like eradication of an existential threat to non demon kind. It fits in the same category for me that killing all mosquitoes does.
Yeah they even showed a flashback to show how little they care about life. They only use speech as a means to an end for killing humans.
The show contradicts your point about speech only being used to lure humans when they speak to each other in private, discussing things such as parents.
The demons came to a town disgused a peace envoy, a pretend diplomatic mission to disable a magic barrier. This absolutly goes beyond just immitating speech.
It all depends on how you define and categorize morality.
The Tolkien dilemma reasoned that since orcs could talk and demonstratively discuss the ideas of right and wrong, then they have some sense of morality. If they have reason and morals, could they at some point decide to stop being evil? And if so, is it moral to eradicate them entirely?
I haven’t read the Frieren manga, but the show referred to its world’s demons as not actually speaking, but having learned to make human-like noises to elicit desired responses. I’m not sure if I buy that explanation (given how the characters behave and converse) but if you do, it’s a functional hedge against feeling bad about our beloved protagonist doing a genocide.
Again, the manga might get into this more. Also this could be a potential character arc for Frieren; whoop lol maybe I shouldn’t do a genocide after all. I do hope it goes this way, but I doubt it will.
I haven’t read the Frieren manga, but the show referred to its world’s demons as not actually speaking, but having learned to make human-like noises to elicit desired responses.
I have read ahead quite a bit, but it’s actually not relevant, because the show itself (which is pretty much identical to the manga) already debunks that.
Aura and her executioners are clearly very intellegent and even have an inner monologue. (One of the lines I actually dislike is when one demon asks the other “what is a mother?” And he just replies with “who knows?”. From what we’ve seen from the demons so far, they should totally be capable of having figured out human reproduction.)
NineSwords@ani.social 1 year ago
Did I miss something here? The way I understood it was that the demons were inherently evil and antagonistic towards humanity. They were good at playing the humans in that one town but ultimately Frieren did unmask them and the party did stop their plot. Sounds to me like reading some woke BS into a simple “monsters = bad = kill” story.
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Did you read about Tolkien’s dilemma? When you give your evil race the ability to think and feel you give away the right to call all of them evil. Because they can learn, they can learn to be good.
Yes, it’s morally good to kill the evil ones we see in the show, however, when you say you want to kill everyone, you are also roping in innocent lives.
(Also, using “woke” as a pejorative is really cringe.)
wzdd@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not sure how you got that from the article. It says
It’s not them thinking and feeling that’s the problem, it’s that Tolkien’s believed that you shouldn’t kill things with souls.
This is a nice contrast to Frieren where demons don’t have souls and don’t seem to be open to morality, either; they understand it in order to manipulate humans but consider themselves outside its framework.
remon@ani.social 1 year ago
spoiler
Do they not? Aura’s scales of obedience are said to work by “placing her own and the target’s soul onto the scales to weigh their mana”.
NineSwords@ani.social 1 year ago
It’s a fantasy world. If I can accept the concept of magic I can also accept the concept of an entirely evil race. I really don’t see the need to overthink it.
(Also, I guess im cringe then. I can live with that.)
HappyFrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
Then the Frieren writer should make them objectively evil and not contradict themselves. I like it when writers put some thought into their genocides.