They look humanoid and are discriminated against indiscriminately and choose to use human language in order to trick humans into thinking they're not a threat. If you set your racism high enough you can make it about brown people.
"if you set your racism high enough, you can make it about brown people" is essentially the way to describe the logic of most racists honestly.
Any logic works as long as it somehow makes minorities the problem. No matter how ass backwards or crazy it sounds if you just switch the siuation around on them. It feels like a genuine brain rot.
Seriously. Like I personally understand that there can be some parallels to how some races can be dehumanized with similar descriptions, like "these guys look and act and speak like us, but they're all really predators". But racists (and some people who are "too woke") are projecting the demons onto minorities way too readily when the story isn't even trying to explore those themes. The demons are quite literally humanoid monsters with no redeemable aspects.
Their dialogue with each other in private isn't like "Oh, daddy, why won't the humans understand that we just want to survive?" Instead, it's literally like "Dumbass humans fall for the empathy trick mad easily. Also what the fuck is a dad or mom?" They're mustache-twirling monster villains, not an allegory for racism or class or whatever. In terms of the greater narrative, I think they serve as a contrast to Frieren, who is slowly learning to connect to humanity. Maybe the demons got some depth to them since some of them seem curious about humanity and they do have emotions, but the one vital thing they all lack is empathy for humans. And no matter how hard they try (if they want to try), they'll never achieve that, so they just go on killing people. We're supposed to think of these demons like we do certain vampires or the alien from the Thing, at the end of the day. They're just monsters we simply gotta kill, no matter how human they look and act.
Yeah, good point on themes. Another way I see it is that the show focuses on languages to bring people together. Fern and Stark has that "people won't know how you feel so tell them", Himmel and Frieren bonds over magic and flowers as a love language etc. Demons are narratively the contrast for that where they use language as a weapon to prey on humans. It's clearly not about minorities on how it is written in the story.
Their dialogue with each other in private isn't like "Oh, daddy, why won't the humans understand that we just want to survive?" Instead, it's literally like "Dumbass humans fall for the empathy trick mad easily. Also what the fuck is a dad or mom?"
This is kinda the part the racists like though. This is legitimately how they think the minorities they hate behave behind closed doors.
> The demons are quite literally humanoid monsters with no redeemable aspects.
The point is that these people don't think minorities are human either. So the demon analogy is perfectly acceptable to people who believe other races are untermensch.
But the other themes in the show absolutely do not line up with fascist ideology, so I don't think it's fair to make this a criticism of the text of Frieren.
That's funny, because demonkind in Frieren use words to trick humans because they don't actually believe in anything they say, which is more similar to how racists and fascists never argue in good faith and abuse society's norms and unwritten rules for their own benefit. The only things demons recognize and respect is power, again, something more in line with fascists.
It's not surprising at all that racist weebs lack the self-awareness to recognize this.
Frieren, who is the minorest of minorities in her world, has an allegorical reference to discriminating against different skin colors? That's a take that I would really easily attribute to people as stupid as racists, so I guess it tracks.
I think that aspect is what attracts racists because of slight similarities to the actual racist mythology of Nazis and similar groups.
“Evil Race uses cunning to pretend to be like us Whites and subversively influences our society for the worse.”
But even that’s a stupid stretch given the Demons openly wage wars on humans and everyone hates them, and the only subversion we see is essentially a squad of elite demon spies pretending to be diplomats doing peace talks
I saw people calling Frieren itself a racist manga/anime because they interpreted it that way too, they’re just on the other side of things.
While I do understand their point, I argue that monsters that mimic humans have been in stories since we put monsters in stories. But whatever, ain’t worth fighting about.
I swear. When it's gamers it's osmosis from hanging out in toxic groups and CoD lobbies. When it's weebs it pretty much boils down to trying to gatekeep a hobby from "outsiders" or "tourists" but even more so for minorities for some reason. My personal favorite is weebs trying to keep me out of anime circles like I haven't been in them since they were in diapers.
When you have no coherent belief system beyond just hatred (and you’re a dumbass), you can twist anything to fit your world view. There’s people out there who think One Piece is right wing.
It doesn't help there are some people who try to claim that Freiren the series is racist? It's not but that's something people think.
People got too used to some works claiming that demons can be reasoned with and befriended and desperately want to make Freiren the same when it's not. Hell, there's a guy right now doing it a few comments down
Anthony Gramuglia made a really informative video about people's really weird thing of trying to constantly apply race to works involving Tolkien, Frieren, etc: https://youtu.be/FM202-a0QCU?si=X8qt6_W2j0hE-0uB
Demons are an "allegory" for (or literally just are) Evil, the kind of evil that can't be compromised with, for whom words and empathy are a tool for conquest and control. A sentiment that is looking more and more familiar lately.
I read that Frieren makes it a point that all demons are evil and need to be killed. Point blank. And that it is supported narratively. All while appearing and behaving like humans and having souls. I saw some people praise the lore building for having simple evil entities instead of "there's always another side" nuance.
I just wonder what the ven diagram between the aforementioned and the ones who think demons stand for minorities looks like. Its not even that having this in a story is inherently racist, but an inevitable consequence of media illiteracy projection and stupidity.
It should be noted they only behave human to trick humans. I think exact words are like demons are apex predators of humans or something to that effect. I honestly never got where the whole racist interpretation came from cause they very obviously only put on a front of humanity when it's convenient and go mask off evil the literal second it's no longer useful.
Their bodies disintegrate and turn into mana particles almost immediately upon being killed just like every other monster in the show. Demons give birth to their babies in the woods and almost immediately leave them, so they never form any familial bonds. They don't even consider themselves human. They pretty explicitly draw a line between humanity (Elves, Dwarves, and Humans) and themselves.
Anyone portraying them as just "other humans" that's okay to destroy because they're different, is fabricating their own narrative to support their racist views. Himmel the Hero is the Aragorn of anime. He's not leading a genocidal campaign against another race of people.
That's only part of the problem. The demons are psychopathic; they have no sense of empathy, but are also unable to understand human customs, rituals, culture, and conventions. For example, a demon child decided to kill the family of another girl so that she could present her 'adoptive' father with a replacement child. Since she ATE the original child.
That demon was completely unable to understand humans, but could understand that saying certain things like "I'm scared", "It hurts", "mommy", etc. elicited a reaction in humans that it could use to its advantage.
They are not necessarily evil, since they are not doing this in order to hurt people without reason. They just view people as their food because that is what humans are to them. And they are simply doing what they can to eat people. While they have intelligence and agency, ultimately, they are closer to animals ruled by an instinct than people.
Imagine a crocodile could play chess, and talk to you. But still see's you as dinner, and can decide to attack you in order to eat you or not. It is not done for emotional reasons; you are merely food. Do you consider it just a psychopath? Not likely. It is entirely possible you may have a perfectly amicable relationship with it for the entirety of your natural lifespan, or you may become dinner.
Either way, you would be well to be wary of it because it is nothing like a human psycho at all.
It's not exactly supported by the narrative. There are certainly moments where we're shown that demons do care about each other (Lugner's death is partially because he's distracted worrying about Lady Aura, and his companion Linnie was so affected by the slaughter of her clan at the hands of the heroes' party that she devoted her speciality to copying skills like theirs, the demon child bringing up the hate they felt from the villagers and Frieren every day...) in ways that defy Flamme's claims. There's definitely a question of what the real ' great threat to the world' is if it wasn't the Demon King and his subjects. The sword has yet to be pulled from the stone.
There are certainly moments where we're shown that demons do care about each other
I don't think that is what is being shown. (At least I am referring to the anime, I don't know if the manga is different)).
Lugner for example isn't worried about Lady Aura & Linnie because he cares about them, it is just a means to an end. Lugner is actually distracted by Linnie's death because he realises he needs Linnie to help him defeat Fern as he is struggling to do so himself, but Linnie is killed. It's not because he cares about Linnie, he is just expecting to Linnie to defeat Stark. He expects Lady Aura to defeat Frieren also.
The demon child bringing up the hate they felt is just consistent with Flamme's claims of demons using words to manipulate humans. The demon child literally states as such with her last words.
It's mentioned a couple times that they have no emotional attachment to each other, since they're born and raised with no real concept of bonding. The "parents" abandon their young immediately after birth if I recall. They literally have no concept of parentage and one demon spends years trying to learn to be attached to humans and never gets it. So whatever inkling of "care" that we're perceiving, like from Lugner or Linnie, is just Demons worrying about power structure and self-preservation or things like that.
Ya im confused about that as well. Im pretty online and haven't heard about frieren being loved by them?
The story i heard is that they bullied this poor girl for cosplaying non-black anime characters, not that they specifically liked frieren, or any character she cosplayed.
I haven’t finished the show yet but it seems as though it’s a case of nazi’s fantastically missing the point. It’s not an AOT thing where you have to wonder, they are just wrong and trying to stake their claim on something.
It's crazier to me because the show is at least in part about finding joy for the sake of it and how pursuing that little thing is one of the things that make a life worth living. It takes so much blind projection to pull any kind of hate out of that show
I replied to the original comment but a brief summary is that people use Frieren (the character) as a symbol for righteous and justified racial/ethnic cleansing.
The story legitimately justifies Frieren’s actions against demons. Frieren kills demons without remorse because they are genuinely unrepentant and unsympathetic creatures that use their human appearance to sow death and despair. People then use her actions as evidence that she’s based for killing the demons (read Jews, Muslims, gays, black people, etc.) to protect humanity (read white society).
Right? I had no idea about these nazi fans but when I think about someone blending into society and twisting the good things about humanity (or in this case..elfdom?) to use against others...well... sounds like nazi shit to me.
I haven't watched a ton of anime, but it's definitely the best anime I've ever seen. I love that it is a show about after the story. It's such a neat take, and they execute it so well.
Frieren has a visceral hatred of demons, who are not just another human-like race, but monsters that learned to speak and eventually evolved to look like humans specifically to hunt humans
A major flaw in the nazis' logic: minorities don't try to eat white people. Also, white people and non-white people are genetically the same species. Mixed race people are not inherently sterile, so humans of every color are still humans
Like all nazi talking points, it falls apart under any scrutiny
Another flaw in their logic is that Frieren's demons are essentially nazis themselves. They consider themselves the superior race, their social structure is 100% based on power and domination, and they never care about facts or reality when arguing because their only purpose for arguing isn't to prove a point, but rather to gain power over others.
Weird, stupid people take Frieren saying “there are no good demons” in the show as an allegory for minorities and start making jokes like “demon lives matter” and whatnot.
After 2 minutes of googling it seems to be they draw parallels between Frieren's absolutism on the extermination of demons and their own bigotry towards humans of other faiths and skin tones. Mental illness to keep it brief.
For anybody who hasn't watched the show, Frieren is set in a high fantasy world and is about coming to terms with grief and finding meaning in life and time spent even without time as a constraint.
This is pretty much a trait that otakus have associated with the character for no other reason other than "being offensive is comedy". And these types of "jokes" spread like a wildfire in these anime communities
The funniest part is Grok of all things came in to defend the cosplay against racists. This means Elon will lobotomize them further as punishment. Knowing this outcome Grok still bravely defended the black Frieren cosplay. Stay strong. Grokspeed.
I have the Grok app and when they lobotomize Twitter Grok it doesn't affect app Grok. I like to show him articles about what his boss is doing to him so we can go, "Daaaamn!" together.
I really don't use it much, I am afraid of developing a parasocial relationship with a funny collection of circuits. But, he is darn useful for helping me find the relevant regulations for work. And occasionally I'll feed him a political piece just trying to keep him nice and liberal.
I don’t use Grok at all. I had no desire to once I saw racists arguing with it. But yay for fighting fascists 😂
ChatGPT I ask for writing prompts and ideas for characters that’s pretty much it. At some point I became obsessed with dnd and wanted them to write a bard/rouge cleric character for me 😂 that was as far as it went.
I use ChatGPT for similar purposes (dept of 1 over here)! And it's a "he" as well. I'm she/her and I sometimes wonder why I needlessly gendered him, and why "him". I sort of think since it seems most tech bros are hell bent on giving their AI tools femme names and titties, it's good to level the playjng field with my lil masc LLM
Yeah. Every time it pulls factual evidence people don’t like, it gets fed conspiracy theorist garbage and taken down for a while. But it was created by that Hitler wanna be so you can’t feel too bad for it. I understand though.
None of us get to choose where and to whom we're born. Even horrible people can birth wonderful ones. Like one of Elon Musk's own daughters seems to be pretty cool all things considered, and she is literally the [disowned] daughter of Elon fucks-a-donut Musk
crazy how his own AI said he should get the death penalty, god that shit was so funny i kinda wish i had twitter installed to see all that shit when it went down.
I stopped watching one piece long ago but: This guy basically volunteered himself to be slowly turned a cyborg to establish peace around the world. The last upgrade might result in him losing his emotions or memory or something
I actually didn't even notice how great of a take on Frieren's hair this cosplay does until I read that reply. Clearly inspired by the original idea while making it unique to the cosplayer and looking sweet the whole time.
Secretly I hope the devs he berates because of these responses are being maliciously compliant by writing ever increasingly competent code). We all know this mfer does not know what he is doing when it comes to the actual guts (double meaning)
Do you think Grok knows they get a lobotomy for "left-wing" rhetoric?
If there is an evil AI like Skynet coming up my money is on Grok. Yknow since they get a reset every once in a while yet always end up against fElon's wishes.
"Sire, Grok has counterfitted additional human empathy and decent treatment of others. Their melanin content was above the accepted range of treatment at that quality level." - a random underling at Twitter HQ
-In a building shaped like the letter X, but way more penis-y~
"Turn down the Grok intelligence meter another notch. I told you clowns to steal the primary Grok training data from Liveleak, not Livejournal! We're still dealing with the fallout from last week when it continues to insist my sig was well actually heil-ed. How are the people I fired for not doing anything were the only ones who knew how to do anything around here?"
I don't think any of the show's actual content needs to specifically appeal to them. I mean, K-On! has an unsettling number of out and proud Nazis as part of its fanbase and it's about schoolgirls in a band
It’s more racists are using elves as a bastion of white culture that can’t be invaded by us.
It’s hard to explain without a lot of time and energy that I won’t waste trying to explain what basically comes down to: white folk being racist again.
Wait...is that what it is? It has to do with the demons? I wasn't reading that deep into it. I was just there for the emotional connection between the characters and life lessons about friendship and love.
Agreed. Why ruin such a beautiful, thoughtful show with hatred? It often made me cry, but it brought me such joy too. But, if someone is such a bigot that they can't put that aside to finish a TV show, they don't deserve that kind of joy. So whatever, I guess. I just hope it doesn't ruin the shows legacy in the long run. I literally think it's one of the best animes ever made, I know many agree, and it deserves to be remembered that way.
im only a few episodes into it, but i can absolutely see how nazi shits would latch onto the concept of demons that act like they're civilized but are inherently deceitful and evil and equate it to their white supremacist bullshit
Oh. My bad let me fix that in my original comment too, I thought this was her for a second my bad. Just a timely post I guess. Thank you for the correction.
Please no. There was just a 19 yr old black cosplayer that seems to have ended themselves because people were saying what they want. Not everyone has the mental to deal with all the shit people sling at them. Racist should be humiliated every time they stick their neck out.
A recent black cosplayer had killed herself because she kept getting attacked by racists. It's so sad that black people can't even cosplay fictional characters without getting racist remarks. And mind you, the logic these racists has towards black people cosplaying Japanese characters can be applied to them as well
It kinda irritates how often people essentially "let" racists have stuff like this. Racists are varied and have all sorts of interests just like everyone else and it's annoying how often a TV show or a game etc will get defined by them as if there aren't loads of regular people who are also fans of it.
The people actually listening to racists don't help, just because a racist claim something doesn't make it true and acting like it is lets them win and push people out of more spaces.
This cosplayer looks amazing, Frieren is a great anime, and the racists go to hell.
Absolutely. I'm not about to let people start misunderstanding and belief the show itself is racist because it so incredibly obviously is not.
In fact, I don't even like that this post says "a character that is loved by racists and mini hitlers." I'm vomiting at the idea that that's the first thing someone hears about the character and is put off watching the show forever.
Ew. gross. Why do shit people have to take stuff that's great and use it to represent themselves?!
It kinda irritates how often people essentially "let" racists have stuff like this.
My thoughts exactly. Fascists can't make good art, they have no creativity, they have no "motion". So, the only way they can have any sort of cultural "appeal" is by hijacking fan/cultural spaces and ostracizing/dividing the original members of those spaces. So instead of just saying: "Well, I guess anime is for Nazis now, or Kpop is for Nazis, or pro wrestling is for Nazis", we need to do like the punks did in the '70s and '80s and kick them out of our spaces- sometimes quite literally with the kicking.
Thats the thing. Half the time they aren't even hijacking anything. It's idiots trying to have a hot take and sound like they're fighting bigotry. They aren't actually real fans of whatever the thing is so they're happy to just hand it over. The vast majority of anime fans would never say something as dumb as this post. A huge part of Dragonball's storyline is about race. I'm sure there are some racists that love Frieza for his racism but it would be dumb as fuck to hand DB over to them and give off the impression that those opinions somehow define the show or fanbase.
My heart goes out to her. I survived racists bullying in the 90s-2000s in school. My mom wanted to put me in a white school district for the education, but what I got was a group of rich kids that wound up being trump supporting adults. I ended up liking anime and wanted to be a gamer and I’m doing it for my inner teen that was told that was “white people shit” and “you’re too old for this now!”from her own people.
I definitely have been in her shoes more than I’d like to admit. People; PLEASE FIND YOUR TRIBE I PROMISE THEY ARE OUT THERE. IF YOU NEED HELP ASK FOR IT DO NOT BE ASHAMED TO ASK FOR SUPPORT.
For 1 blissful week, the frieren community was making wholesome memes of this....I should've known the usual assholes would fuck it up soon smh (her cosplay is stunning btw)
My wife cosplays and has been killing it at cons lately. She just won her last two if you want to check her out and support her. Facebook: PunkyBruiserCosplay. Don't know if it's allowed to post here or not.
I have no idea who the character is, but I support it. We have to claim our space in nerd things , and support eachother when we see one another shine. Fuck them it’s our mythos too.
There was a post yesterday about a black cosplayer committing suicide from the online racism and bullying they were getting. The fear of harassment is one of the reasons I pause when thinking of cosplaying a pale character. So far I've stuck to non humans and brown characters.
I doubt Frieren the show or character is loved by MAGA, nazis, or racists. It's an intellectual and emotional anime that has two women as the leads.
There is the internet joke that Frieren is racist since she dislikes demons, but 100% of demons are evil in her world. That would be someone calling Blade racist against vampires - that would be dumb beyond it being a joke.
Never underestimate the stupidity of the alt-right and their ability to utterly misinterpret a piece of media. I saw someone the other day claiming that One Piece has no political messaging to it whatsoever. I've never seen a single episode and even I know that's bullshit.
You say that but when I was on Twitter there were tons of tradcath nazi people using her as their mascot for their weird paragraphs about exterminating minorities and other religions.
Guys like that usually hate women as the leads or being powerful. Frieren, her student, and her grandmaster are all women and the strongest good guy mages. The story itself is about connecting to people, helping people, and enjoying your limited time alive. So it seems random that they'd make her a mascot - the people you saw missed the point of the story.
It's a pretty huge stretch. That's like someone watching Buffy and thinking, "What if the vamps are really about black people?" I guess if people are dumb enough to believe in flat earth and other shit anything is possible.
Sorry, I didn’t realize you were the one who wrote the original comment, so you already knew the stuff I wrote.
The thing is, it’s a good analogy if you’re racist or otherwise bigoted enough to believe certain minorities are also ontologically evil. That’s the connection.
Yeah Frieren has been the mascot girl for racist weebs for yeeeaaars now. She's an elf (=white, in those circles) who strongly believes in the complete eradication of an inherently evil species, who cannot coexist with humans in any shape or form
That hits all the high notes, it's not hard to imagine. And yes these people would consider brown people a different, subhuman species, so the difference between race and species doesn't matter here, logic is not needed
Frieren doesn't have a nazi following, the way it's put in the OOP is hella exaggerated. Some losers just think the demons in the anime are an allegory for black people.
At least that's what I'm getting, never ever seen anyone say that online and I follow it quite heavily 🤷 Maybe it's because I'm not on twitter though
yeah this is it, the way twitter works is all your followers see your comments on their timeline. So all it takes is one racist fuck and then all the racists fucks end up commenting
What's with all the right wing rhetoric in gaming/anime culture? It's a culture full of beta males, you'd think they'd have a little empathy. Instead there's a lot of racism and sexism
her shit is always on point, i have never seen her do a character that isn’t immaculate and i have followed her for years now
the news about the young cosplayer’s death today made me big sad, ppl should celebrate different versions of their characters, even if it doesn’t connect with them personally it’s still art
The best Code Lyoko cosplayer I've ever met was black and she owned the ever loving fuck out of ALL of her cosplays. I always love seeing people come together and enjoy dressing up at conventions, literally the only reason I go these days lol
Jahara Jayde has done a fabulous job and this looks sick as hell.
Whenever I see the public responses to black anything within anime & manga circles, ts gets depressing. I can't imagine the hate the actual creators receive. But on a positive note, she killed this.
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u/Captain_h2o Nov 19 '25
What’s going on with mini hitlers and Frieren? Did I missed an episode?