In a venn diagram likely arrogance and ego overlap very well with humans and demons. They understand pride, combativeness, winning and dominating. The good part like love and kindness.... They shown to be unable to recognize what they are.

The tale of the scorpion and the frog comes to mind.

The human race has never had a true apex predator, perfectly adapted to hunt us. That is what the demons in Frieren are; and the fact there are people IRL that fall for their deception just goes to show how terrifyingly effective they are.

In defense of the "redeemable" camp: There are some pretty awful humans who have changed, and most people that seem to be naturally good from the outside are struggling to suppress some pretty awful desires. There is a genuine reason, both rational and emotional, behind constantly seeking redemption in oneself and others. That said, in the context of the setting, uplifting demons (not redeeming, as that implies a fall) would require a techno-magical laboratory that would make Dexter's Lab look unambitious. Probably possible eventually, but not feasible anytime soon.

I think a useful idea is that from the book Blindsight by Peter Watts. In it he explores the idea that there could be beings that are intelligent but not conscious. These beings then might see attempts to communicate as a form of informational warfare, as a way to confuse another’s senses to allow for more freedom of action. I think demons use language similarly (though these appear to be conscious as well, though one might compare them to the non-conscious vampires in Blindsight).

"I am a demon." - "What if you were human?" - "I am a demon." - "But being human can be so much fun!" - " I am a..." - "...demon. *exasperated sigh*..."

Perfect example is el dorado. He tried.

The second season's latter half will drove home about demon's lack of understanding. Macht of Golden Land, like the Demon King tried to understand maloce and guilt, and couldnt.

Reminds me of the vampires from blind sight. Not actually sentient creatures, more like a organic robot. No consciousness just instincts, like a plant.

This reminds me of essay someone from avatar the last air bender fan base made when talking about Ozai the fire lord. There is nothing wrong with having a villian in a show that is just simply a villian, that exists as a threat to everyone around it, and must be eliminated, no deeper explanation is needed. And I feel this goes into the Macro vs the Micro logic in sociology. Where even if the demons are simply prisoners to their instincts and doing what they must to survive. What is needed for them to survive is for everyone else to suffer. Perhaps there is 1 that may not be a beast. But that 1 out of the 1000 just isn't worth the risk of the 10000000 who arent

Denons are prototypical psychopaths. There are people woth those exact charachteristics. And they ARE irredeemable.

The demons are very similar to AI like ChatGPT. They are imitators. They know what to say to get the response they want. You can’t change them because any attempt to give them real intelligence or humanity is just refining The Imitation Game and making them better at working out what they are “supposed” to say.

Here's a take, Frieren's demons are possibly the best modern metaphor for fascists. They use our words, they look like us, but they only want destruction.

No they are not. They are monsters through and through.

Summary: No

After the latest issues of the manga, this video gets sooo m,uch more context in it.

Given the demon child that appeared in the story, I'd say, no they can't. They're just to alien. I mean the demon child even tried to be kind and "repay" it's debts, but killed a lot more people in the process and made everything worse.

Walking talking Mimic, that have magic attacks. Which is why the Mimic scenes are sooo funny!

Demons in Frieren are creatures that, in Kantian terms, have understanding but not reason.

It would be interesting to see a frieren like demon. One that just went hermit and decided to study magic but minus the ethics of it. Just one that doesn't care for power or dominance over others like the demons we've been introduced to. Or maybe they do but through finding the ultimate spell or something intangible as a counterpoint to Frieren's learning spells for Magic's sake. Mostly because I'm curious as to how the party would respond to it. Coming across a demon that hasn't killed anyone, or hasn't for however long. Still sees the other races as resources to be used but is too preoccupied with their study to pursue normal demon goals.

Manga Spoilers: I think this new arc is really pushing on the narrative on Frieren and Serie, we saw a glimpse of Serie's affection towards Frieren when offering to tying her hair even tho she acted bratty at the start and we saw a more emotional side when she was tying Sense's hair, saying that even tho she live by her ideals and she judges people on that, she gets that progress and change is made with people who goes against what she wants. And all started with Flamme's dream

Is a dictator or warlord redeemable? Could a serial killer be raised to appreciate human life and suppress their psychopathic urges? Frieren's story is an exploration of empathy from the perspective of a person who doesn't outright lack it, but struggles with its interpretation and their own emotions. Demons represent the most extreme form of this, in that they, as a race, appear to fundamentally lack empathy and the ability to form close personal bonds, and this is important for Frieren's own journey of self discovery, this realizations that she does form these bonds, that she cares about the well being of others, that there's more separating her from her foes than her morals and preferences; Frieren is not a monster despite her difficulties with emotional reciprocation, not to mention her terrifying abilities. I think Übel is also pretty important to this discussion, as she shows that even humans, the race of people who have the greatest affinity for empathy in Frieren's experience, have members with significant deficits in this area - if it's possible for a human to come so close to demonhood, is it really not possible for a demon to exist with the capacity for humanity?

I think creating a race of evil people is justified in two contexts: when its just a foil for a story at large to happen, like in Tolkien books, or when said race is not really "evil", but is just so alien to us we cant understand it. Demons in frieren are not that. They have their inner world, they have emotions (i struggle to justify many scenes if it were no the case, and just another action to confuse humans or smth), they are conscious. For all intents and purposes they are people. And they are INHERENTLY evil, yes, they are evil. I disagree strongly with the notion of them just "being predators, doing what they do because its their nature, like wolf hunts rabbits". They enjoy dominating people, they enjoy killing, they enjoy suffering. It all inherently lies in the realm of humanity, not natural relationship between prey and predators. Animals hunt to eat, the suffering is just a byproduct of them not even having capacity to recognise suffering of ones they kill. Demons in frieren clearly recognise it and they take pleasure in it - and this pleasure is their inherent property. I really dont like this biological essentialism here. Like, you really have to wonder what gone wrong when you can replace "demons" to "jews" or "blacks" or "roma" or whoever and get fucking nazi rhetoric, its just disgusting. If you want to have evil race in your story, either dont try to explore them further than bare minimum of "they are evil, and thats the end of the story", have them be just an element of plot, or make them so inhuman and alien you cant possibly associate them with humans

They're not redeemable. They don't need to be redeemed. The message is clear. They're unrepentant violent sociopaths. They're a warning against manipulators.

People need to stop confusing "the ability to reason" with "the ability to be reasoned with" there is a huge difference between the to. The Frieren demons are literally incapable of seeing you as anything more then a amusing toy at best or just a meal at worst. Hell, they can't even see each other as friends, they're best setting for relationship status with each other is "useful to have around." You know that whole theory about how we have the uncanny valley effect because there was once a predator that looked just human enough to use it as an ambush tactic? The demons are what happened when that predator evolves a little further. It's the same thing as beetles that looks like wasps or ants so they can sneak into colonies to eat their babies.

Good video, but it also talks a lot around the main point. Feels like buffer. Making something inherently evil is looked down upon, because it is something we tried to move away from in the real world. Instead focusing on a narrative of perspectives and how we can navigate morality there. Now, making something elementarily bad has its advantages, but you always run into the problem, that you guve characters the moral okay to go all out exterminationist onto something that they don't understand. This video talks for a quarter hour about deamons, yet has no idea how they work, think, prioeitise etc. Abd that's where the problem lies. It sits in deep contrast to our real world values, and yet bribgs very little new or insightfull to the table, as the "its just evil, kill it on sight" thought is really not something new.

Demons are basically just mimics, but instead of mimicking treasure chests they mimic humans.

All these people saying they want to redeem these demons would get ate up.

Leaning into the whole "morally gray" theme with no truly evil characters is so common today that it's geniuenly super refreshing to get a story where there IS such a thing as absolute and irredeemable evil. It's especially refreshing because I gully believe that such entities actually do exist.

DMC4 said it perfectly way back when: "Humans have something that demons don't"

I find the idea non-human sapiene very interesting,both in the animal kingdom and in fiction,and I'd say Frieren's demons are an example of that,they are sapient,but their minds are fundamentally different from humans,that's what makes them interesting to me.

Isn't this the question the episode with the small demon girl answered? They are incapable of understanding compassion or empathy. They are just imitating emotions to stay alive, not really feeling them. Some comments mentioned that demons are just "amoral", which is wrong. They have morality. They are morally correct in the demon perspective, which is to "be the strongest and do anything to stay alive." The problem is that the human perspective doesn't accept that kind of morality. We shouldn't ask questions like "Are they redeemable" in the first place since there is nothing to be redeemed from. This would be like asking a snake not to eat a mouse and finding the snake to be at fault.

A great parallel to the Demons of Frieren is the AI. The AI can use language that make it sound as if it wants to help you and aid you. But in actuality, it doesn't give a fuck. There is no human feeling or emotion behinds its words. It uses the words it does to incite certain emotions in the listeners.

Demons are not an inherently evil "race", demons are an inherently evil "species"

for my perspective at least, the fantasy genre has had a long, long history of “biologically evil/sociopathic races”, mostly with extremely unfortunate implications. so that may be where some of the reticence to accept the demons as purely predatory, purely incapable of humanity

Weird to think about how to demons, someone with the same ideals, and mind as a human would be an actual fucking psychopath to them.

Of course the demons are redeemable, if it’s even just barely intelligent it can be redeemed.

I've always regarded the demons in Frieren as psychopaths. Self centred, ambitious, with a weird and cruel sense of fun.

I totally agree about the thing that demons are not fundamentally human and thus do not actually represent anything. However I find the discussion about demons interesting as I can see some people finding dehumanization if they have autism or similar neurodivergencies that make connection difficult, given that is the fundamental seperation of demons. However I think my counterpoint is seeing that in Freiren instead. She may not fundamentally understand humans either, however she is capable of learning and growing in a way that does fundamentally change her being. She can also be a character who can represent autism and difficulties in connection and I feel people may overlook that.

I think the biggest thing to understand is that Demons are Demons, not Tieflings. In D&D, Tieflings are essentially what happens when a humanoid deals with fiends (Like devils, demons, or a middle between the two called Yugoloths). Now importantly, a Tiefling is not the one who dealt with these beings but rather the descendant of the one who did. This results in them having fiendish appearances which often results in them being hated and treated like fiends, such as demons and devils, but they are in fact, just normal people on the inside. In this way, they're a fantasy race the represents the concept of "sins of the father". They did nothing wrong but are treated as if they are inherently wrong. Demons on the other hand are manifestations of evil, they exist to do evil and even the most "good" thing to them would be an abomination or manipulation to us. Demons are not representations of humanity outside of the evil that humanity can bring about. They are not misunderstood, and they are not redeemable as there is nothing within them to redeem. I think people forget this because more often nowadays, fiction and especially anime/manga portray demons as if they were either Tieflings or Orcs with horns, so when Frieren portrays demons how they should be, people freak out.

U repeated urself so damn much its hard to watch, consider working on that next vdeo

Demons r hot af

Bro linie was so bad, like she making me act up

Demons are like AI. It might behave human, but it's just an imitation. (I haven;t finished the video, just didn't want to lose the thought :D)

It's funny that the same people who argue on behalf of the demons are also the people that would be eaten in Freren.

They kill and eat people lmao how on earth are they redeemable XP

The best point is later in the story, when they encounter the demon Macht. He tried for decades to understand and coexist with humans, and the whole story arc (which is rather long, btw) ends with him failing to do so and then dying.

Ok so the fact that people are trying to slander this series because of the evil demons mean the demons are in fact misunderstood. The fact we're having this conversation is because we as real life people always try to humanize things, it's why we assign human personalities to animals and the single bananas sell...

The people who simp for Frieren demons are the same people who think "AI" is becoming sentient. They don't understand what's happening under the surface so they just project their humanity onto it, call it oppressed, and that's the end of the discussion for them.

Honestly I'm glad the demons are just evil. Not even for any huge metaphorical reason, I'm just tired of misunderstood villains. Not every evil needs to be someone who's just misunderstood, some evil just needs to be evil. Because some people are just evil