<p>Setting aside the fact that demons are cunning, ruthless, and cruel, they have waged war against all intelligent beings other than themselves. Frieren is an elf, and the team also includes a dwarf. As non-human races, they can coexist peacefully with humans.</p>
<p>So why do demons initiate war? Because they simply want to kill. They are a race that survives by squeezing out the living space of other races, and such behavior inevitably leads to resistance. Unlike elves and dwarves, who have empathy and emotions as intelligent beings, demons are closer to intelligent machines. Magic, to them, is not something they study out of love or subjective will, but more like an instinct. They were born with it, so they do not use their intelligence to contribute to the world but use their hands and feet to kill. The ones who contribute are those who risk their lives to study demon magic, only to resist the brutal race.</p>
<p>You can revisit the Golden Land Arc of Sousou no Frieren. I won't spoil the details, but this arc explains why demons cannot be reformed.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-07-12T10:11:51.863Z
Since you've mentioned MangaGatto in all your answers so far, and linked to it in at least one, I need to ask you a couple of questions. Firstly, are you affiliated with MangaGatto in any way? We require any such affiliations to be disclosed, otherwise your answers could be considered spam. Secondly, does MangaGatto have licenses for the manga it distributes or is it engaging in piracy? We don't tolerate the promotion of piracy on this site.
F1Krazy
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-07-12T13:28:03.947Z
In addition to the above comment, I removed all references to that site because it's irrelevant to the question anyway.
Aki Tanaka
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-07-12T08:23:48.850Z
2024-07-12T13:25:38.690Z
2024-07-12T13:25:38.690Z
夜凪静
<p>Freiren rejects the rights of the demons to exist on the basis that they are trying to exterminate humanity. Consider that most ethics systems in use are human-centric, or anthropocentric. I personally don't believe in human-centric ethics, but I'm going to be answering from this perspective. We are dealing with a fantasy world, so there are other races like dwarves and elves, but they are similar enough to humans that we can lump them in with humans. The demons on the other hand are vastly different and even have an instinct to kill humans. As a group, their goal is the extermination of humans. Thus, under anthropocentrism, the demons' lives are not only not worth anything, but also a severe threat to humanity, and thus of negative worth. Removing them is thus justified.</p>
<p>Carrying on, the demons do not have actual intelligence and language comprehension. As per the <a href="https://frieren.fandom.com/wiki/Demon" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Fandom Wiki</a>, They are actually just monsters who &quot;only know how to use words without knowing its meaning&quot;. Characters in the series, such as Freiren herself, comment on how the demons only use words to deceive and kill humans. She states accurately that it is foolish to try to make peace with demons, as the anime shows us this twice: once in the form of a flashback where a demon child was forgiven for killing a human child and taken in by a village head, only for the demon to kill the village head later. And next when we see how the demon's peace envoy is merely going along with the peace process as a means of tricking the humans into letting down their barrier, so that the demons can slaughter all the humans.</p>
<p>Like monsters, demons bodies dissolve when they die. This suggests they are not alive and sentient in the same sense as humans.</p>
<p>If you think of Chat AI stuff, it can use it's language model to predict what dialogue should be used next in a conversation, but it doesn't understand the conversation in the same way as a human. The demons might be doing something similar to that in order to converse.</p>
<p>Alternatively, we can examine the depth of their understanding of language. As per the sources below, we can examine two levels of understanding: idea and concept. As per the article, idea is merely a &quot;rough mental impression&quot;. It's possible the demons understand the idea of words like &quot;father&quot; and &quot;son&quot;, and are thus able to use them properly in a sentence, but that they don't actually understand the concept of them, and have no depth of understanding. Thus when asked to explain what a father is, they are unable to.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.trinka.ai/blog/idea-vs-concept-how-are-they-different/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.trinka.ai/blog/idea-vs-concept-how-are-they-different/</a>
<a href="https://www.printmag.com/design-culture/whats-the-difference-between-an-idea-and-a-concept/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.printmag.com/design-culture/whats-the-difference-between-an-idea-and-a-concept/</a>
<a href="https://paperpal.com/blog/academic-writing-guides/language-grammar/idea-vs-concept" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://paperpal.com/blog/academic-writing-guides/language-grammar/idea-vs-concept</a>
<a href="https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/8918/what-is-the-difference-between-an-idea-and-a-concept">https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/8918/what-is-the-difference-between-an-idea-and-a-concept</a></p>
<p>A similar creature to the demons that must be examined is the perfect clones created by the Spiegel. This creature reads the memories of those who enter it's labyrinth and creates clones that perfectly match the targets' mana and magic techniques. In spite of this, we are explicitly informed that these clones do not have minds, as one mage's hypnosis technique is shown to be completely ineffective.</p>
<p>Spiegel was most likely put into the story as a means of foreshadowing something about the demons. The clones and the demons both lack sentience (though to differing degrees). The fact that the clones are all controlled by Spiegel might suggest that the demons were originally created by some singular, unknown, malicious entity. This could potentially be a deity. Deities have been mentioned in <em>Freiren</em>, though as of now, it is not entirely clear if they actually exist. The entity could also be a mage or some such.</p>
<p>But currently it is difficult to say if this will be the case, or if Spiegel is meant to signal something else. Either way, it is difficult to predict how the story will proceed with the demons.</p>
<p>See also:</p>
<p><a href="https://frieren.fandom.com/wiki/Ecology" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://frieren.fandom.com/wiki/Ecology</a></p>
<p><a href="https://frieren.fandom.com/wiki/Demon" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://frieren.fandom.com/wiki/Demon</a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-06-08T10:25:35.570Z
Some demons are capable of studying and using human magic. They can't just be parroting automatons, to me there's intelligence there.
tetris11
CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-06-06T19:30:01.027Z
2024-06-06T19:30:01.027Z
Shaymin Gratitude
<h2>Answer of Why Freiren Rejects Demons</h2>
<p>Why Freiren rejects demons is trivially answered. Her disregard of the demons' lives makes sense given the adverse experiences she's had with them. Additional experiences all have affirmed her beliefs about the demons, as was the case in the flashback with the demon child. And she also studied under a master who similarly hated and wanted to kill demons, due to traumas and transgressions perpetrated against her. Thus, there is nothing inconsistent with Freiren's character with this regard.</p>
<h2>Answer of Why <em>Freiren</em> Rejects Demons</h2>
<p>The question of why <em>Freiren</em> rejects demons' right to exist is more complicated. First we must establish whether or not the story actually does this.</p>
<p>I think it is apparent that the story does reject demons' right to exist. Just from watching the anime, it is apparent that Freiren is made the voice of the story. She delivers exposition about the demons and her viewpoint is justified by flashbacks and events in the story. She states that demons only use words to deceive. The demon peace envoy is only working to deceive the humans so that they can kill them all.</p>
<p>So, yes, the story does reject the demons. As to why, we can only really guess what the author was thinking, and I don't really think it's answerable. This is just my impression and pure speculation, but I got the feeling that the author was rejecting the trend in anime of having demons be portrayed as misunderstood good guys. Demons have typically been used as unapologetic bad guys with no redeeming features, and the author of <em>Freiren</em> wanted to do that.</p>
<h2>Analysis of Logical Inconsistency</h2>
<p>Moving on from the answer, the traits of the demons are portrayed inconsistently, with particular dissonance between what the story <em>tells</em> through exposition dialogue and what it <em>shows</em> through the demons' actions and dialogue. I will expand on this thought later, but it suffices to say that this contradiction makes it difficult to assess the demons.</p>
<p>For now, let's examine how the story attempts to dehumanize the demons. There's no doubt that the demons are in conflict with the humans and that they're a threat to humanity, but I found the dehumanization aspect quite contrived. There is no need to try and insist that the demons don't think or use language. In fact, it's rather contradictory because manipulations such as those the demons perform require both an understanding of words and a high degree of emotional intelligence. But let's consider what the story says.</p>
<p>These are three aspects about the demons we need to consider:</p>
<ol>
<li>The demons have a lack of empathy (and also lack some other emotions humans have).</li>
<li>They don't understand the words they use. They are monsters who use words to deceive. Their minds are vastly different from humans.</li>
<li>They have an instinct to kill humans.</li>
</ol>
<p>Now, moving on, what the story tells about the demons seems to call into question both their cognitive ability and their language processing ability.</p>
<p>But looking at the demons cognitive and language abilities, it's quite obvious that the story is creating a contradiction by what it tells and what it shows. The story tells us that demons don't understand the words they use, and even has the demons themselves tell us this in the cases of the words &quot;mother&quot; and &quot;father&quot;. But what the story shows is that demons use and understand language just the same as humans. Consider these points:</p>
<ol>
<li>The demon child admits she doesn't know what a mother is. But when Freiren asks her why she calls for her mother despite not having one, the demon child uses language to explain why she does this. So the demon child uses language constructs to explain why she uses a language construct she doesn't understand. In other words, she understands language but also doesn't understand language.</li>
<li>In a confrontational scene with the lord of the city Graf Granat, who is angry about his son being killed by demons, the demon Lugner of the peace delegation looks around the room and then complements how clean it is. He connects visual information and translates them into words. He then says that his own father was killed in the conflict, establishing a line of empathy to the man. Before this point, nobody had mentioned fathers, only a son, so this shows Lugner is able to connect related ideas. This manipulation itself indicates a high degree of understanding of the emotions of humans. When asked afterwards by one of his comrades what a father is, Lugner says &quot;Who can say.&quot; This is an idiomatic expression indicating he doesn't know what a father is. Using such an idiomatic expression would be more indicative of an understanding of language.</li>
<li>The magic system in <em>Freiren</em> is based on imagination. The demons hone one magical power through their research. This indicates they have imagination and thus cognitive ability.</li>
<li>The demons have a loose hierarchy and culture based on magical power. We know this is the case because Freiren ruthlessly exploits their respect for magic in order to kill the demons. This happens because demons will always fight fair and square against a mage, due to their respect for magical power. Freiren furthermore gets an edge because the demons' culture means they can't contemplate the idea of someone suppressing their magical power as Frieren does. All this to say, demon culture exists, and this all indicates that the demons have cognitive ability.</li>
<li>Continuing off the previous idea, the demons feel pride for their magical abilities. To feel pride, one must have thoughts and emotions.</li>
<li>The child manipulates sloppily, mainly through sympathy. Lugner demonstrates much more skill in understanding his target's emotional state. His subordinates, younger than him, are less skilled. This difference in social and emotional intelligence between the different age groups of demons shows that social and language skills probably develop with age, the same as in humans.</li>
<li>The demons communicate with each other through language. If they didn't actually understand words, why would they do this? Neither party would get anything out of talking.</li>
<li>At the end of episode 7, Draht's thoughts are directly shown as he contemplates killing Freiren. The thoughts are expressed in language.</li>
</ol>
<p>In spite of what the story tries to tell us, the demons clearly have cognitive and language processing ability. Every time they speak, they provide more evidence that they can comprehend language. Other media like <em>Made in Abyss</em> and more similarly the &quot;Let the feast begin&quot; cricket guys in the DLC in <em>Dark Souls 3</em> provide monsters that imitate language more like parrots. The demons in <em>Freiren</em> are obviously not like that. The manipulations done by the child demon could perhaps also be performed by an unintelligent animal, but this is not the case for the adult demons.</p>
<p>The skill at which demons like Lugner manipulate humans indicates cognitive and language ability, as well as the ability to understand the culture and emotions of humans, even if he himself does not feel those same emotions. Trying to impose some kind of intellectual and moral superiority through understanding emotions through empathy and feeling rather than intelligence is just nonsensical. So the demons' understanding of emotions is valid even if they don't feel those emotions.</p>
<p>And it is particularly contrived when the demons become a vehicle for dehumanizing themselves, such as when Lugner agrees with Freiren's assessment and says, &quot;Wild beasts who communicate with lies. It's not an inaccurate description.&quot;</p>
<p>Additionally, rationally thinking through what happened with the child demon in the flashback gives us little reason to doubt her explanation for why she does what she does. The mother whose child was killed would obviously never forgive the demon, so the demon's statement with regard to that can only be the truth. It honestly feels like she actually thought that handing over the other child would fix things, which means her main problem is a lack of understanding of human values and culture.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Every day since I came here, I've felt your desire to kill me. But I
just wanted to live in harmony. I figured out a way to make things
right. Here, take this child as a replacement for your offspring. The
one I ate.  [...] Despite my good intentions, unfortunately, it seems
as though I've made another mistake. You've given me no choice. I'm
taking this child hostage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And for posterity, here's the next conversation, between Freiren and the demon child:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Freiren</strong>:  Why call out to a mother? Demons are monsters, and like all monsters, they don't raise their young. Once born, you are
abandoned. You walk this world alone. That makes you ruthless,
solitary creatures. Lone wolves with no concept of what family means.
Explain.</p>
<p><strong>Demon Child</strong>: It's simple. That word stops humans. It keeps them from murdering us. Isn't that magical?</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Untenable Premise</h2>
<p>The premise presented by the story about demons being unable to understand language was unsustainable from the beginning. While it is technically possible to write consistently with regard to it, I would not expect many to be able to do so. Either because the author doesn't know how to be consistent to that (which is hard) or because they don't actually care that much about being consistent to it.</p>
<p>It is much the same as a different premise in <em>Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-Kun</em>. Early on in the work, there is a chapter with his two demon friends where he uses the word &quot;friend&quot; and they don't know what it means, thus establishing that demons don't understand the concept of friendship, and Iruma having to explain it to them. But this premise was unsustainable because of the direction the work wanted to go and what the author wanted to do with the characters and world. Thus, it ends up being contradicted. In fact, it is contradicted in the very chapter in which it appears, because Iruma's grandfather (a demon) uses the word and is thus shown to understand the concept of friendship. And later in the series, the goal of one of Iruma's classmates is to make a lot of friends.</p>
<p>Thus, just like <em>Freiren</em>, the work presents contradictions.</p>
<h2>Theme</h2>
<p>The overall presentation of the demons in this arc raises a particular theme that some might find grating. By insisting that the demons can never be gotten along with, and that anyone who tries to do so is being deceived, the story says something like, &quot;There are just some groups of people that you can't get along with, and one side has to exterminate the other.&quot;</p>
<h2>Online Discussion</h2>
<p>I assume this question was asked with the online discussion around this question in mind. There's condemnation of the usage of the evil race tropes and such. I don't particularly find what the author wrote offensive. Obnoxious, perhaps. But the story of <em>Freiren</em> is good enough in other regards to disregard this. It's really only the fandom's harassment and sophistry towards those who object to the themes raised that I find offensive.</p>
<p>One of the counterpoints I saw raised to the objections was that the demons don't resemble any real groups of people. But this counterpoint is actually not true. They resemble three groups of people.</p>
<ol>
<li>Neurodivergent people. The demons are stated to have minds that are vastly different from humans. Neurodivergence is defined as those <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity#Neurodivergent" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;whose neurocognitive functioning diverges from dominant societal norms in multiple ways&quot;</a>. Neurodivergent individuals includes people with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, etc.</li>
<li>Autistic people. The demons have autistic traits such as social communication difficulties, hyperfocus (in the way they focus on one type of spell), autistic special interests (for example, one of the demons is fascinated by humans and studies them), and stereotypical autistic traits such as a lack of empathy. Note that autistic people do not lack empathy, but this misconception unfortunately persists in popular perception. Look up the double empathy problem for more information on that.</li>
<li>People with antisocial personality disorder. This is probably the closest fit to the demons and the most problematic one. The demons essentially only care about killing and are highly intelligent, which are two stereotypical traits that make individuals with antisocial personality disorder seem scarier than they actually are.</li>
</ol>
<p>Even with all this, I don't think <em>Freiren</em> is particularly egregious or anything. After all, many in the autistic community relate heavily to Freiren. And there is also Übel, who has many antisocial traits.</p>
<p>But on the other hand, I have seen posts online where the <em>Freiren</em> community was being openly dismissive towards the sentiment that Freiren is autistic, and very rude and toxic towards the members of the autistic community that hold this view. This behavior is indeed problematic. If someone relates heavily to a character, we need to be accepting of that.</p>
<p>It's fine to have different interpretations of the story, but try to have meaningful discussions and please remember that you are communicating with fellow human beings. And it is best to listen and learn from others' perspectives rather than gatekeeping and trying to silence their voices.</p>
<h2>Further Considerations</h2>
<p>From <a href="https://www.animefeminist.com/who-is-granted-personhood-frierens-demons-and-the-trouble-with-the-inherently-evil-race-trope/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.animefeminist.com/who-is-granted-personhood-frierens-demons-and-the-trouble-with-the-inherently-evil-race-trope/</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some viewers have used mental health shorthand to describe the demons, calling them “basically sociopaths.” I find this assessment of the demons offensive, and it aligns with some of the issues described above. Sociopathy or Psychopathy—their proper term: Antisocial Personality Disorder—is categorized as a limited capacity for empathy and lacking remorse for hurting others (there’s more to it, but this is the Cliff’s Notes version). This can have degrees of severity and can occur comorbidly with other disorders. But here’s the thing: empathy isn’t morality. It can help guide you to it but it’s not the be all, end all of whether or not someone will be a kind person. Not everyone who hurts you is a sociopath and not all sociopaths are violent. And even a violent sociopath is still a person.</p>
<p>Except, conveniently, a fictional demon is not a person. When traits that exist in real life—be they physical characteristics, cultural practices, behaviors, or mental health conditions—are projected onto fantasy races that are marked as being always and inherently evil, it functions as a way of dehumanizing the very real humans who share those traits. This may not be malicious or even intentional on Frieren’s part, or any other series that does this. Many modern fantasy works inherit the hurtful ideas embedded in these tropes when they borrow and repeatedly use them without examination. However, regardless of intention, this characterization of the demons has a detriment to Frieren’s writing, which otherwise has quite a nuanced and gray morality.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Robot/AI Comparison</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Chinese Room</a> is a thought experiment relevant here, which I learned about through the video game <em>The Turing Test</em>. This might be of interest to people interested in this question, so there's a link to the Wikipedia article. Though as of right now, I don't really see why people think the demons' thought processes are so different from humans' that they're more similar to AI.</p>
<p>A story that raises a similar moral quandary is <em>Bladerunner</em>. I'm not particularly familiar with the story, but I've seen the replicants/androids described as &quot;organic robots&quot; and the only thing seemingly distinguishing them from humans is that they're manufactured and that they have sociopathic tendencies. To me, the fact that they're organic means they've obviously human and I don't get why that's in question. The social quandary of whether people would accept this premise that they're robots or whatever is of more interest to me, because obviously people will accept all sorts of nonsense if it's convenient for themselves and their worldview.</p>
<h2>Further Reading</h2>
<p>I was skimming these, and they didn't particularly seem helpful, but here they are anyway:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.princeton.edu/news/2011/03/11/study-finds-learning-language-goes-beyond-imitation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.princeton.edu/news/2011/03/11/study-finds-learning-language-goes-beyond-imitation</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ohbmbrainmappingblog.com/blog/what-language-does-your-dog-speak-how-dog-brains-process-language" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.ohbmbrainmappingblog.com/blog/what-language-does-your-dog-speak-how-dog-brains-process-language</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381192101082X" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381192101082X</a></p>
<p><a href="https://online.hull.ac.uk/blog/what-is-artificial-intelligence-and-how-is-it-different-from-human-intelligence" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://online.hull.ac.uk/blog/what-is-artificial-intelligence-and-how-is-it-different-from-human-intelligence</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/125969902.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/125969902.pdf</a></p>

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2024-06-07T20:28:09.050Z
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Dimitri mx
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2024-05-09T16:34:18.353Z
2024-11-30T22:43:26.840Z
2024-11-30T22:43:26.840Z
Shaymin Gratitude
<p>There's definitely an element of 2) in play: demons are repeatedly shown to use concepts they don't actually understand as part of their emotional manipulation tactics.</p>
<ul>
<li>The demon child spared by Himmel earned his mercy by pleading for her mother. Later, while dying, she admits that she doesn't know what a &quot;mother&quot; is, only that saying the word causes humans to spare her.</li>
<li>When Lugner approaches Graf Granat with an offer of peace, he's able to convince Granat that he's genuine by claiming that his father was killed in the war between their armies, just like Granat's son was. After Lugner and his assistants leave the room, Linie asks what a father is and Lugner replies, &quot;Who knows?&quot;</li>
</ul>
<p>However, the main reason for Frieren's crusade against demons has nothing to do with their level of intelligence: it's simply the fact that <strong>demons, being a type of monster, are inherently evil and cannot meaningfully coexist with humanity</strong>. They can <em>pretend</em> to, as Lugner and the demon child do, but it's never anything more than a ruse so they can further their <em>actual</em> goal of spreading death and destruction to anyone and anything that isn't a demon.</p>

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2024-05-07T11:47:05.173Z
2024-07-13T09:26:11.720Z
2024-07-13T09:26:11.720Z
F1Krazy
<p>Frieren normally has a detached demeanour when it comes to the lives of others, with the sole exception of Demons to whom she sees their total annihilation as a just goal.</p>
<p>The reason she often cites is that Demons are beasts that merely mimic human intelligence to increase their survival. Her point is made all the more clear in the context of the Demon child that was spared by Himmel and others, and was raised alongside a human, to devastating results.</p>
<p>At the same time, humans have learned and reverse-engineered much of their magic from Demons. So Demons clearly have some useful knowledge of their own to give to the world, which was not borne out of mere mimicry.</p>
<p>How can she then not see them as intelligent beings?</p>
<p><strong>Potential Reason 1: They are powerful forces of Nature, but do not understand their own power</strong></p>
<p>One could make an analog comparison to forces of nature in our own world that we as humans seek to understand but ultimately wish to repel: e.g. volcanoes, tornadoes, mosquitos, etc.</p>
<p>Us humans cannot reason with Volcanoes, but we do seek to understand their mechanisms.</p>
<p>However this analog falls apart when we consider that in Frieren's world, Demons can directly communicate with their prey. They are also able to recognize when their spells have been replicated or surpassed by humans. There is no such analog in our natural world for that level of information exchange between Humans and Nature.</p>
<p><strong>Potential Reason 2: Mimicking intelligence is not the same as intelligence</strong></p>
<p>This brings us to the topic of AI. We have these beings that are able to impart knowledge on to us, are able to explain their mechanisms to us, are able to imagine/hallucinate topics, and do it all through some form of mimicry and inference.</p>
<p>Is this not what Demons do, albeit trained by dark forces of nature, and not by humans/elves/dwarves?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-05-08T07:01:26.950Z
Are you sure actually "she sees their total annihilation as a just goal."? Do you remember episode number or volume? As far as I remember, she mentions only that  demons and humans won't coexist (from which it follows annihilating demons is the only way to follow assuming survival of humans).
sundowner
<frieren-beyond-journeys-end>
On what basis does Frieren (Sousou no Frieren) reject the rights of Demons to exist?
# On what basis does Frieren (Sousou no Frieren) reject the rights of Demons to exist?
Posted by: username_0 on 2024-05-07
Frieren normally has a detached demeanour when it comes to the lives of others, with the sole exception of Demons to whom she sees their total annihilation as a just goal.

The reason she often cites is that Demons are beasts that merely mimic human intelligence to increase their survival. Her point is made all the more clear in the context of the Demon child that was spared by Himmel and others, and was raised alongside a human, to devastating results.

At the same time, humans have learned and reverse-engineered much of their magic from Demons. So Demons clearly have some useful knowledge of their own to give to the world, which was not borne out of mere mimicry.

How can she then not see them as intelligent beings?

**Potential Reason 1: They are powerful forces of Nature, but do not understand their own power**

One could make an analog comparison to forces of nature in our own world that we as humans seek to understand but ultimately wish to repel: e.g. volcanoes, tornadoes, mosquitos, etc.

Us humans cannot reason with Volcanoes, but we do seek to understand their mechanisms.

However this analog falls apart when we consider that in Frieren's world, Demons can directly communicate with their prey. They are also able to recognize when their spells have been replicated or surpassed by humans. There is no such analog in our natural world for that level of information exchange between Humans and Nature.

**Potential Reason 2: Mimicking intelligence is not the same as intelligence**

This brings us to the topic of AI. We have these beings that are able to impart knowledge on to us, are able to explain their mechanisms to us, are able to imagine/hallucinate topics, and do it all through some form of mimicry and inference.

Is this not what Demons do, albeit trained by dark forces of nature, and not by humans/elves/dwarves?
**Tags:** frieren-beyond-journeys-end
> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Are you sure actually "she sees their total annihilation as a just goal."? Do you remember episode number or volume? As far as I remember, she mentions only that  demons and humans won't coexist (from which it follows annihilating demons is the only way to follow assuming survival of humans).  
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## 4 answers
### Answer by username_3 on 2024-05-07. Score: 9 | Accepted answer
There's definitely an element of 2) in play: demons are repeatedly shown to use concepts they don't actually understand as part of their emotional manipulation tactics.

* The demon child spared by Himmel earned his mercy by pleading for her mother. Later, while dying, she admits that she doesn't know what a "mother" is, only that saying the word causes humans to spare her.
* When Lugner approaches Graf Granat with an offer of peace, he's able to convince Granat that he's genuine by claiming that his father was killed in the war between their armies, just like Granat's son was. After Lugner and his assistants leave the room, Linie asks what a father is and Lugner replies, "Who knows?"

However, the main reason for Frieren's crusade against demons has nothing to do with their level of intelligence: it's simply the fact that **demons, being a type of monster, are inherently evil and cannot meaningfully coexist with humanity**. They can *pretend* to, as Lugner and the demon child do, but it's never anything more than a ruse so they can further their *actual* goal of spreading death and destruction to anyone and anything that isn't a demon.
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### Answer by username_2 on 2024-07-12. Score: 3
Setting aside the fact that demons are cunning, ruthless, and cruel, they have waged war against all intelligent beings other than themselves. Frieren is an elf, and the team also includes a dwarf. As non-human races, they can coexist peacefully with humans.

So why do demons initiate war? Because they simply want to kill. They are a race that survives by squeezing out the living space of other races, and such behavior inevitably leads to resistance. Unlike elves and dwarves, who have empathy and emotions as intelligent beings, demons are closer to intelligent machines. Magic, to them, is not something they study out of love or subjective will, but more like an instinct. They were born with it, so they do not use their intelligence to contribute to the world but use their hands and feet to kill. The ones who contribute are those who risk their lives to study demon magic, only to resist the brutal race.

You can revisit the Golden Land Arc of Sousou no Frieren. I won't spoil the details, but this arc explains why demons cannot be reformed.
> **Comments:**
> **username_3** (2024-07-12): Since you've mentioned MangaGatto in all your answers so far, and linked to it in at least one, I need to ask you a couple of questions. Firstly, are you affiliated with MangaGatto in any way? We require any such affiliations to be disclosed, otherwise your answers could be considered spam. Secondly, does MangaGatto have licenses for the manga it distributes or is it engaging in piracy? We don't tolerate the promotion of piracy on this site.  
> **username_4** (2024-07-12): In addition to the above comment, I removed all references to that site because it's irrelevant to the question anyway.  
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### Answer by username_5 on 2024-06-06. Score: 1
Freiren rejects the rights of the demons to exist on the basis that they are trying to exterminate humanity. Consider that most ethics systems in use are human-centric, or anthropocentric. I personally don't believe in human-centric ethics, but I'm going to be answering from this perspective. We are dealing with a fantasy world, so there are other races like dwarves and elves, but they are similar enough to humans that we can lump them in with humans. The demons on the other hand are vastly different and even have an instinct to kill humans. As a group, their goal is the extermination of humans. Thus, under anthropocentrism, the demons' lives are not only not worth anything, but also a severe threat to humanity, and thus of negative worth. Removing them is thus justified.

Carrying on, the demons do not have actual intelligence and language comprehension. As per the [Fandom Wiki](https://frieren.fandom.com/wiki/Demon), They are actually just monsters who "only know how to use words without knowing its meaning". Characters in the series, such as Freiren herself, comment on how the demons only use words to deceive and kill humans. She states accurately that it is foolish to try to make peace with demons, as the anime shows us this twice: once in the form of a flashback where a demon child was forgiven for killing a human child and taken in by a village head, only for the demon to kill the village head later. And next when we see how the demon's peace envoy is merely going along with the peace process as a means of tricking the humans into letting down their barrier, so that the demons can slaughter all the humans.

Like monsters, demons bodies dissolve when they die. This suggests they are not alive and sentient in the same sense as humans.

If you think of Chat AI stuff, it can use it's language model to predict what dialogue should be used next in a conversation, but it doesn't understand the conversation in the same way as a human. The demons might be doing something similar to that in order to converse.

Alternatively, we can examine the depth of their understanding of language. As per the sources below, we can examine two levels of understanding: idea and concept. As per the article, idea is merely a "rough mental impression". It's possible the demons understand the idea of words like "father" and "son", and are thus able to use them properly in a sentence, but that they don't actually understand the concept of them, and have no depth of understanding. Thus when asked to explain what a father is, they are unable to.

<https://www.trinka.ai/blog/idea-vs-concept-how-are-they-different/>
<https://www.printmag.com/design-culture/whats-the-difference-between-an-idea-and-a-concept/>
<https://paperpal.com/blog/academic-writing-guides/language-grammar/idea-vs-concept>
<https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/8918/what-is-the-difference-between-an-idea-and-a-concept>

A similar creature to the demons that must be examined is the perfect clones created by the Spiegel. This creature reads the memories of those who enter it's labyrinth and creates clones that perfectly match the targets' mana and magic techniques. In spite of this, we are explicitly informed that these clones do not have minds, as one mage's hypnosis technique is shown to be completely ineffective.

Spiegel was most likely put into the story as a means of foreshadowing something about the demons. The clones and the demons both lack sentience (though to differing degrees). The fact that the clones are all controlled by Spiegel might suggest that the demons were originally created by some singular, unknown, malicious entity. This could potentially be a deity. Deities have been mentioned in *Freiren*, though as of now, it is not entirely clear if they actually exist. The entity could also be a mage or some such.

But currently it is difficult to say if this will be the case, or if Spiegel is meant to signal something else. Either way, it is difficult to predict how the story will proceed with the demons.

See also:

<https://frieren.fandom.com/wiki/Ecology>

<https://frieren.fandom.com/wiki/Demon>
> **Comments:**
> **username_0** (2024-06-08): Some demons are capable of studying and using human magic. They can't just be parroting automatons, to me there's intelligence there.  
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### Answer by username_5 on 2024-05-09. Score: -3
## Answer of Why Freiren Rejects Demons

Why Freiren rejects demons is trivially answered. Her disregard of the demons' lives makes sense given the adverse experiences she's had with them. Additional experiences all have affirmed her beliefs about the demons, as was the case in the flashback with the demon child. And she also studied under a master who similarly hated and wanted to kill demons, due to traumas and transgressions perpetrated against her. Thus, there is nothing inconsistent with Freiren's character with this regard.

## Answer of Why *Freiren* Rejects Demons

The question of why *Freiren* rejects demons' right to exist is more complicated. First we must establish whether or not the story actually does this.

I think it is apparent that the story does reject demons' right to exist. Just from watching the anime, it is apparent that Freiren is made the voice of the story. She delivers exposition about the demons and her viewpoint is justified by flashbacks and events in the story. She states that demons only use words to deceive. The demon peace envoy is only working to deceive the humans so that they can kill them all.

So, yes, the story does reject the demons. As to why, we can only really guess what the author was thinking, and I don't really think it's answerable. This is just my impression and pure speculation, but I got the feeling that the author was rejecting the trend in anime of having demons be portrayed as misunderstood good guys. Demons have typically been used as unapologetic bad guys with no redeeming features, and the author of *Freiren* wanted to do that.

## Analysis of Logical Inconsistency

Moving on from the answer, the traits of the demons are portrayed inconsistently, with particular dissonance between what the story *tells* through exposition dialogue and what it *shows* through the demons' actions and dialogue. I will expand on this thought later, but it suffices to say that this contradiction makes it difficult to assess the demons.

For now, let's examine how the story attempts to dehumanize the demons. There's no doubt that the demons are in conflict with the humans and that they're a threat to humanity, but I found the dehumanization aspect quite contrived. There is no need to try and insist that the demons don't think or use language. In fact, it's rather contradictory because manipulations such as those the demons perform require both an understanding of words and a high degree of emotional intelligence. But let's consider what the story says.

These are three aspects about the demons we need to consider:

1. The demons have a lack of empathy (and also lack some other emotions humans have).
2. They don't understand the words they use. They are monsters who use words to deceive. Their minds are vastly different from humans.
3. They have an instinct to kill humans.

Now, moving on, what the story tells about the demons seems to call into question both their cognitive ability and their language processing ability.

But looking at the demons cognitive and language abilities, it's quite obvious that the story is creating a contradiction by what it tells and what it shows. The story tells us that demons don't understand the words they use, and even has the demons themselves tell us this in the cases of the words "mother" and "father". But what the story shows is that demons use and understand language just the same as humans. Consider these points:

1. The demon child admits she doesn't know what a mother is. But when Freiren asks her why she calls for her mother despite not having one, the demon child uses language to explain why she does this. So the demon child uses language constructs to explain why she uses a language construct she doesn't understand. In other words, she understands language but also doesn't understand language.
2. In a confrontational scene with the lord of the city Graf Granat, who is angry about his son being killed by demons, the demon Lugner of the peace delegation looks around the room and then complements how clean it is. He connects visual information and translates them into words. He then says that his own father was killed in the conflict, establishing a line of empathy to the man. Before this point, nobody had mentioned fathers, only a son, so this shows Lugner is able to connect related ideas. This manipulation itself indicates a high degree of understanding of the emotions of humans. When asked afterwards by one of his comrades what a father is, Lugner says "Who can say." This is an idiomatic expression indicating he doesn't know what a father is. Using such an idiomatic expression would be more indicative of an understanding of language.
3. The magic system in *Freiren* is based on imagination. The demons hone one magical power through their research. This indicates they have imagination and thus cognitive ability.
4. The demons have a loose hierarchy and culture based on magical power. We know this is the case because Freiren ruthlessly exploits their respect for magic in order to kill the demons. This happens because demons will always fight fair and square against a mage, due to their respect for magical power. Freiren furthermore gets an edge because the demons' culture means they can't contemplate the idea of someone suppressing their magical power as Frieren does. All this to say, demon culture exists, and this all indicates that the demons have cognitive ability.
5. Continuing off the previous idea, the demons feel pride for their magical abilities. To feel pride, one must have thoughts and emotions.
6. The child manipulates sloppily, mainly through sympathy. Lugner demonstrates much more skill in understanding his target's emotional state. His subordinates, younger than him, are less skilled. This difference in social and emotional intelligence between the different age groups of demons shows that social and language skills probably develop with age, the same as in humans.
7. The demons communicate with each other through language. If they didn't actually understand words, why would they do this? Neither party would get anything out of talking.
8. At the end of episode 7, Draht's thoughts are directly shown as he contemplates killing Freiren. The thoughts are expressed in language.

In spite of what the story tries to tell us, the demons clearly have cognitive and language processing ability. Every time they speak, they provide more evidence that they can comprehend language. Other media like *Made in Abyss* and more similarly the "Let the feast begin" cricket guys in the DLC in *Dark Souls 3* provide monsters that imitate language more like parrots. The demons in *Freiren* are obviously not like that. The manipulations done by the child demon could perhaps also be performed by an unintelligent animal, but this is not the case for the adult demons.

The skill at which demons like Lugner manipulate humans indicates cognitive and language ability, as well as the ability to understand the culture and emotions of humans, even if he himself does not feel those same emotions. Trying to impose some kind of intellectual and moral superiority through understanding emotions through empathy and feeling rather than intelligence is just nonsensical. So the demons' understanding of emotions is valid even if they don't feel those emotions.

And it is particularly contrived when the demons become a vehicle for dehumanizing themselves, such as when Lugner agrees with Freiren's assessment and says, "Wild beasts who communicate with lies. It's not an inaccurate description."

Additionally, rationally thinking through what happened with the child demon in the flashback gives us little reason to doubt her explanation for why she does what she does. The mother whose child was killed would obviously never forgive the demon, so the demon's statement with regard to that can only be the truth. It honestly feels like she actually thought that handing over the other child would fix things, which means her main problem is a lack of understanding of human values and culture.

> Every day since I came here, I've felt your desire to kill me. But I
> just wanted to live in harmony. I figured out a way to make things
> right. Here, take this child as a replacement for your offspring. The
> one I ate. [...] Despite my good intentions, unfortunately, it seems
> as though I've made another mistake. You've given me no choice. I'm
> taking this child hostage.

And for posterity, here's the next conversation, between Freiren and the demon child:

> **Freiren**: Why call out to a mother? Demons are monsters, and like all monsters, they don't raise their young. Once born, you are
> abandoned. You walk this world alone. That makes you ruthless,
> solitary creatures. Lone wolves with no concept of what family means.
> Explain.
>
> **Demon Child**: It's simple. That word stops humans. It keeps them from murdering us. Isn't that magical?

## Untenable Premise

The premise presented by the story about demons being unable to understand language was unsustainable from the beginning. While it is technically possible to write consistently with regard to it, I would not expect many to be able to do so. Either because the author doesn't know how to be consistent to that (which is hard) or because they don't actually care that much about being consistent to it.

It is much the same as a different premise in *Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-Kun*. Early on in the work, there is a chapter with his two demon friends where he uses the word "friend" and they don't know what it means, thus establishing that demons don't understand the concept of friendship, and Iruma having to explain it to them. But this premise was unsustainable because of the direction the work wanted to go and what the author wanted to do with the characters and world. Thus, it ends up being contradicted. In fact, it is contradicted in the very chapter in which it appears, because Iruma's grandfather (a demon) uses the word and is thus shown to understand the concept of friendship. And later in the series, the goal of one of Iruma's classmates is to make a lot of friends.

Thus, just like *Freiren*, the work presents contradictions.

## Theme

The overall presentation of the demons in this arc raises a particular theme that some might find grating. By insisting that the demons can never be gotten along with, and that anyone who tries to do so is being deceived, the story says something like, "There are just some groups of people that you can't get along with, and one side has to exterminate the other."

## Online Discussion

I assume this question was asked with the online discussion around this question in mind. There's condemnation of the usage of the evil race tropes and such. I don't particularly find what the author wrote offensive. Obnoxious, perhaps. But the story of *Freiren* is good enough in other regards to disregard this. It's really only the fandom's harassment and sophistry towards those who object to the themes raised that I find offensive.

One of the counterpoints I saw raised to the objections was that the demons don't resemble any real groups of people. But this counterpoint is actually not true. They resemble three groups of people.

1. Neurodivergent people. The demons are stated to have minds that are vastly different from humans. Neurodivergence is defined as those ["whose neurocognitive functioning diverges from dominant societal norms in multiple ways"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurodiversity#Neurodivergent). Neurodivergent individuals includes people with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, etc.
2. Autistic people. The demons have autistic traits such as social communication difficulties, hyperfocus (in the way they focus on one type of spell), autistic special interests (for example, one of the demons is fascinated by humans and studies them), and stereotypical autistic traits such as a lack of empathy. Note that autistic people do not lack empathy, but this misconception unfortunately persists in popular perception. Look up the double empathy problem for more information on that.
3. People with antisocial personality disorder. This is probably the closest fit to the demons and the most problematic one. The demons essentially only care about killing and are highly intelligent, which are two stereotypical traits that make individuals with antisocial personality disorder seem scarier than they actually are.

Even with all this, I don't think *Freiren* is particularly egregious or anything. After all, many in the autistic community relate heavily to Freiren. And there is also Übel, who has many antisocial traits.

But on the other hand, I have seen posts online where the *Freiren* community was being openly dismissive towards the sentiment that Freiren is autistic, and very rude and toxic towards the members of the autistic community that hold this view. This behavior is indeed problematic. If someone relates heavily to a character, we need to be accepting of that.

It's fine to have different interpretations of the story, but try to have meaningful discussions and please remember that you are communicating with fellow human beings. And it is best to listen and learn from others' perspectives rather than gatekeeping and trying to silence their voices.

## Further Considerations

From <https://www.animefeminist.com/who-is-granted-personhood-frierens-demons-and-the-trouble-with-the-inherently-evil-race-trope/>:

> Some viewers have used mental health shorthand to describe the demons, calling them “basically sociopaths.” I find this assessment of the demons offensive, and it aligns with some of the issues described above. Sociopathy or Psychopathy—their proper term: Antisocial Personality Disorder—is categorized as a limited capacity for empathy and lacking remorse for hurting others (there’s more to it, but this is the Cliff’s Notes version). This can have degrees of severity and can occur comorbidly with other disorders. But here’s the thing: empathy isn’t morality. It can help guide you to it but it’s not the be all, end all of whether or not someone will be a kind person. Not everyone who hurts you is a sociopath and not all sociopaths are violent. And even a violent sociopath is still a person.
>
> Except, conveniently, a fictional demon is not a person. When traits that exist in real life—be they physical characteristics, cultural practices, behaviors, or mental health conditions—are projected onto fantasy races that are marked as being always and inherently evil, it functions as a way of dehumanizing the very real humans who share those traits. This may not be malicious or even intentional on Frieren’s part, or any other series that does this. Many modern fantasy works inherit the hurtful ideas embedded in these tropes when they borrow and repeatedly use them without examination. However, regardless of intention, this characterization of the demons has a detriment to Frieren’s writing, which otherwise has quite a nuanced and gray morality.

## Robot/AI Comparison

The [Chinese Room](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room) is a thought experiment relevant here, which I learned about through the video game *The Turing Test*. This might be of interest to people interested in this question, so there's a link to the Wikipedia article. Though as of right now, I don't really see why people think the demons' thought processes are so different from humans' that they're more similar to AI.

A story that raises a similar moral quandary is *Bladerunner*. I'm not particularly familiar with the story, but I've seen the replicants/androids described as "organic robots" and the only thing seemingly distinguishing them from humans is that they're manufactured and that they have sociopathic tendencies. To me, the fact that they're organic means they've obviously human and I don't get why that's in question. The social quandary of whether people would accept this premise that they're robots or whatever is of more interest to me, because obviously people will accept all sorts of nonsense if it's convenient for themselves and their worldview.

## Further Reading

I was skimming these, and they didn't particularly seem helpful, but here they are anyway:

<https://www.princeton.edu/news/2011/03/11/study-finds-learning-language-goes-beyond-imitation>

<https://www.ohbmbrainmappingblog.com/blog/what-language-does-your-dog-speak-how-dog-brains-process-language>

<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381192101082X>

<https://online.hull.ac.uk/blog/what-is-artificial-intelligence-and-how-is-it-different-from-human-intelligence>

<https://www.atlantis-press.com/article/125969902.pdf>
> **Comments:**
> **username_6** (2024-06-07): **Comments have been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/153550/discussion-on-answer-by-shaymin-gratitude-on-what-basis-does-frieren-sousou-no); please do not continue the discussion here.** Before posting a comment below this one, please review the [purposes of comments](/help/privileges/comment). Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an [answer](/help/how-to-answer), on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed.  
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