Demonic controversies and other considerations

[This post and its associated comments were originally published on Cohost.]

Recently in an online forum I frequent there was a discussion about the currently-airing anime Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. The gist of the discussion is that some people began watching Frieren intrigued by the first few episodes and their themes of the transience of human lives versus that of the long-lived elf Frieren. In subsequent episodes they were then confronted with, and repulsed by, Frieren’s attitude toward the demons who are positioned as humanity’s enemy.

The essence of their complaint was that Frieren (the character) was advocating that genocide be committed against the demons, that by implication Freiren (the story) was excusing genocide in the real world, and that (again by implication) those who enjoyed watching or reading Frieren risked becoming apologists for such genocide, and potentially complicit in it. One might be tempted to quickly dismiss this argument (“this is fiction, not reality”), but I happen to think their concern is a serious one worth addressing. This post is my attempt to address it.

Note: This post contains spoilers through the most recent episode 26 of Frieren the anime (which corresponds to chapters 54 and 55 of the manga it’s based on), as well as spoilers for the entire run of the webcomic Mage and Demon Queen, a work I contrast with Frieren.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

Frieren the anime (and manga) is set in a typical fantasy world inhabited by humans, elves, dwarves, and demons. Frieren the character was a member of the “heroes’ party” that defeated the Demon King. After a brief introduction, the story proper begins fifty years after that event, as Frieren begins a new journey with a new set of companions. In that journey they encounter more demons. Frieren kills them (sometimes with the aid of her companions) in a business-like manner, shows no remorse whatsoever after the fact, and flatly states her opinion that all demons should be killed likewise.

In the context of the story, demons are characterized as sentient monsters: they can talk like humans, but they have no human-like feelings. They do not have families as humans do, and are portrayed as extreme individualists whose relations with other demons are based solely on power. They show no gratitude to humans who help them, they lie freely, and their word cannot be trusted. They view humans solely as prey.

What is one to say about this? First, demons are clearly based on the common stereotype of a human psychopath: a person who views others solely as objects to be manipulated, tricked, exploited, and (potentially) killed.¹ According to the common stereotype such people cannot in any way be rehabilitated; at best they must be imprisoned for life, at worst they should be executed, judicially or otherwise. Likewise for demons as envisaged in Frieren.

Second, while an individual demon may be plausible (like an individual human psychopath), a whole society of them is much less so. If they know nothing of family and family ties, how could they ever be socialized into such a society? If they are so staunchly individualist, how could they ever organize themselves into a society that could rival and threaten that of humans? Great apes and other animals have dominance hierarchies based on brute strength, and demons could do likewise, but such societies are no match for humans, who are adept at cooperating with each other when they can jointly advance their mutual interests.

That I think is a key theme of Frieren: that the long war with the demons has driven human to band together and find more effective ways to fight them, learning how to use magic and how to turn the demons’ spells against them. And given that the story has “stacked the deck” in the way that it characterizes the demons as implacable and irredeemable antagonists, it implicitly endorses any measures humans (and elves like Frieren) might take in that war, up to and including total extermination of the demon race.

Frieren thus echoes in fiction the grim reality of human history, from prehistoric times onward, as organized societies found cause to attack and conquer other societies, often wiping them out entirely. We ourselves are the descendants of those successful conquerors. (For the most part the conquered left none.) We are heirs to their genetic and cultural legacy, one element of which is the tendency to characterize our enemies (real or imagined) as less than human and undeserving of mercy. Frieren and Frieren are uncomfortable reminders of that.

Lord of the Rings

Is Frieren the only work of fantasy that takes such an uncompromising position toward an entire race of beings? I would say, not at all. In fact, I claim that Lord of the Rings, one of the most important influences on modern fantasy (not excluding Frieren itself), is guilty of this.

Yes, as someone in our discussion pointed out, the wizard Gandalf, portrayed as one of the most wise and noble characters in LOTR, is not a straightforward advocate of genocide. Among other things, he praises Frodo’s decision to not kill Gollum: “Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. . . . I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it.”

It’s a heartfelt speech to be sure, but does Gandalf—or, for that matter, any of the other “good guys” in Lord of the Rings—apply its lesson to the orcs, the closest LOTR equivalent to the demons of Frieren? I don’t recall that being the case. Instead the orcs are portrayed solely as beings hostile to humans, elves, and dwarves, and large sections of LOTR are devoted to fighting them in battle. I don’t remember anyone showing mercy to orcs individually, or attempting to negotiate a peace settlement with them collectively. They are viewed as creatures of Sauron, no more and no less, and the preferred approach to dealing with them is simply to kill them.

Lord of the Rings also prejudices the reader against orcs in a way that is very similar to the way Frieren treats demons. We are not shown any elements of orc society apart from their armies: no orc couples or families, no innocent orc children, no orcs peacefully farming or following a trade, no orcs mourning the death of their friends and comrades. Indeed, orcs are depicted as being just as individualistic and untrustworthy as the demons of Frieren: in one of the few scenes where individual orcs are portrayed, when Frodo is held captive in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, they quarrel amongst themselves and ultimately kill each other in their zeal to take Frodo’s shirt of mithril mail.

The ultimate resolution of the story of Lord of the Rings also resembles that of Frieren: the leader of malign forces is overthrown, his armies are defeated, and eventually humans come to rule the world in the Fourth Age, with elves, hobbits, and dwarves having faded away, and the race of orcs presumably having been completely exterminated.

Yet Lord of the Rings is not typically seen simply as a tale of genocide, and its fans are not typically accused of being advocates and apologists for genocide. Why does it for the most part escape the criticisms being leveled at Frieren? I don’t have a completely satisfying answer to this, but I offer a tentative one below.

Mage and Demon Queen

But before I do that, I thought it would be interesting to consider the webcomic Mage and Demon Queen, a work that is a polar opposite of Frieren in its attitude toward demons, and indeed can be seen as going out of its way to cater to present-day sensibilities. Mage and Demon Queen is a relatively light-hearted romantic comedy, which helps account for some of that, but I think not all.

First, the demons of Mage and Demon Queen are not depicted as inherently and irredeemably evil. Velverosa, the demon queen herself, is imperious and hostile to humans, including the adventurer Malori who’s infatuated with her, but she is shown to have good reason for that hostility. And over the course of the series she softens that attitude, to the point of eventually succumbing to Malori’s charms and becoming her lover.²

This is a particular example of a general trend in modern fantasy, in which beings traditionally viewed as unrelievedly evil—demons, vampires, servants of Satan, etc. — are “de-fanged,” as it were. For example, contrast C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape, who is entirely sincere in his desire to tempt humans into sin and condemn them to eternal torment, with Crowley of the novel and TV series Good Omens or Dewiela of the manga Eniale and Dewiela. The latter demonic minions are portrayed as much more benign than Screwtape, even to the point of causing fans to ship them with their angelic counterparts.³

Mage and Demon Queen also continues the trend toward the “gamification” of modern fantasy, that is, carrying over tropes from video games into other works. Mage and Demon Queen does not go so far as to put stat screens above the characters’ heads, but it does feature the common trope that one can escape death simply by respawning in a different location. Others may differ, but I think one effect of this is to trivialize death and the suffering that accompanies it; in the opening chapters of Mage and Demon Queen Malori dies multiple times in her quest to get Velverosa’s attention, but is never shown to be traumatized by the experience.

Another gaming-related issue is not present in Mage and Demon Queen, but arose in our discussion: one person opined that Frieren disturbed them because the killing of demons was featured so prominently, and that they were more comfortable with games in which killing orcs and demons was much more of a background element, just another task needing to be completed in order to win the game.

Here I have to ask: assuming that art can influence life at all, what sort of work might be more likely to make someone indifferent to genocide: a work like Frieren in which the protagonists know the names of their enemies and kill them face to face in single combat, or a work in which nameless NPCs are summarily dispatched at the roll of a die, or in a frenzy of button mashing?

In the final arc of Mage and Demon Queen the bodies do in fact pile up by the scores—but, again, no worries, since the people they belong to will all be soon resurrected. In the meantime we’ve had the satisfaction of seeing the demons fight back against humans in a worthy cause: the demons are ultimately shown to be an oppressed and marginalized minority, who wish only to live in peace (and in fact do live in peace with one group of humans). But unfortunately they’ve been attacked by humans eager to displace them from their land, of which they now occupy only a tiny fragment.

Thus Mage and Demon Queen completely upends the traditional place of demonic beings in fiction: it purges itself of the racial essentialism that many find so distasteful in traditional fantasy works, and in the process turns demons into (or reduces demons to, some might say) humans who just happen to have horns and other unusual physical characteristics, who are more oppressed than oppressors, and whom one can find fulfillment in both saving and romancing. A far cry from Frieren.

A tentative conclusion

So to return to the question I asked above: why does Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End offend people in ways that other works like Lord of the Rings apparently do not? And what should our attitude be toward it?

Perhaps it’s because Frieren the work is so upfront and unequivocal about the stance Frieren and other characters take toward demons. Unlike Lord of the Rings, readers and viewers cannot point to fine speeches advocating mercy within the work, or to material outside the work in which the author in effect says, “no, mass murder even of orcs is not okay.”

The choice in Frieren is stark: though demons may be a minority, as in Mage and Demon Queen, they are shown to be aggressors against humankind, aggressors whom it’s impossible to make peace with. The real choice presented in Frieren is not between making war and making peace. It is between finding meaning and fulfillment in the continued fight against demons (the elf Serie appears to be in this camp) and wishing to conclude it as soon as possible in complete and total victory (as Frieren does), even if that means killing the enemy to the last being.

That’s an unpopular position to take in the present day, even in fiction, given how much it reminds people of real-world events. I can understand why some people might be repulsed by it, and I do not think less of them for that. Nevertheless I do not share that feeling. The author of Frieren has indeed manipulated its audience into applauding the extermination of sentient beings (just as the author of Mage and Demon Queen has manipulated its audience to different ends). But I’m under no compulsion to do the same in real life.

And in fact I think Frieren may subvert its own message, whether it knows it or not. As I noted above, the world of Frieren echoes in many respects human history and prehistory, an endless cycle of conquest and genocide, driven by innovation in ways to organize societies to better attack and defend. Would killing off all demons really bring lasting peace to Frieden’s world? Far more likely, I think, is that having gained the power of magic and successfully used it against demons, humans would then turn it against each other, seeing their enemies (real or imagined) in the same way they once saw demons, as wholly evil and deserving of death.

Thus to me Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End has an inevitable air of tragedy about it, beyond the themes of transience, remembrance, and building connections that first attracted people like me to it. To my mind that adds to, rather than detracting from, its appeal as a work of art.

maddie (@ninecoffees) - 2024-03-09 19:10

A good read, also Mage and Demon Queen is a good recommend if anyone’s looking for some more light-hearted yuri

hecker

Frank Hecker (@hecker) - 2024-03-09 19:55

I second the recommendation for Mage and Demon Queen. I was somewhat unfair in positioning it against Frieren, but it was relevant to the point I was making: that Frieren is in many ways a throwback to traditional fantasy works in its treatment of demons, while Mage and Demon Queen is a more acceptable modern version.

WallaceCrow (@WallaceCrow) - 2024-03-10 11:56

I find it interesting how Frieren interrogates the the idea of humanoid creatures that are fundamentally different from humans. Many Lord of the Rings inspired fantasy works inherited the concept of humanoid creatures that are “evil” and therefore fine to kill without interrogating the concept. Identifying that this parallels the dehumanization of groups of people in real life, many modern fantasy works will depict humanoid creatures as similar to humans but with different socialization. This makes humanoid creatures less of a monolith (“evil” creatures can be raised in a “good” society) and reframes “good” vs “evil” as a clash between societies.

Spoiler for Frieren chapters 77+:

The El Dorado arc keeps the idea that demons are fundamentally different from humans, but explores how the demons’ experience differs from humans. The demon Macht recognizes that “guilt” and “malice” are emotions that humans feel. However he does not experience those emotions, despite active attempts to do so, and thus cannot comprehend their meaning.

Rather than viewing humans as objects, Macht recognizes humans as sentient and seeks coexistence. Despite these intentions, the conflict in how demons and humans experience the world results in a lack of understanding of violence. He cannot understand how coexistince and killing are mutually exclusive ideas.

This approach feels more like Le Guin than Tolkien to me. The reader empathizes with the other despite our fundamental differences. The El Dorado arc is a tragedy, not a story of “good” overcoming “evil.”

Frank Hecker (@hecker) - 2024-03-10 16:11

Thanks for stopping by to comment! I haven’t read the manga past where the anime is now, but I’m sorely tempted (and I didn’t mind being spoiled in this case). Based on your description I’m looking forward to this arc. (However, I suspect it will have come too late for the folks who already noped out of the anime.)