>anime
>not a single frieren thread could be found
Someone just has to do it, right?
>>22475>Hard to get an idea of what it's about from the clips I've seenAn elf mage goes on a big LOTR type quest to kill their Sauron (the Demon King). The anime opens with the party returning from the quest. Elf then spends the next 80 years wandering around gathering magical knowledge as her friends get old and die, while she stays young due to being immortal. Eventually she takes the adopted daughter of one of her original companions on as a magic apprentice, and they decide to travel to the northern tip of the continent where dead souls gather to say a final goodbye to her deceased friends. Adventures and some hijinks ensue.
Overall I'm really enjoying it so far. It's missing a lot of the retarded anime tropes (fanservice, cutesey UwU bullshit, constant fight scenes) and it's got a really laid back sort of feel. It's kinda slow, but in a pensive, bittersweet sort of way that reminds me of Ghibli. It lets the animation and artwork to a lot of the heavy lifting in the earlier episodes, but the characters are likeable and have good chemistry, it has some interesting concepts (I like their portrayal of demons), and the action scenes are pretty good. So far I'm enjoying it a lot.
>>22510>Consider Aura's subordinate who lied about burying his father to gain sympathy, even though demons don't even have a concept of family.Which just shows how retarded and thoughtless the whole concept is. You can't manipulate people without understanding their relationships. If demon doesn't understand the fuck is family is, how exactly he made a mental connection from seeing duke's son room to mentioning the buried father? It's just a stupid trope about "orcs vs humans" where the opposite side exists as some completely evil inhuman enemy that can be slaughtered without remorse.
It is doubly stupid since the same demons that are supposedly only imitating the human speech without understanding it are using it to communicate with each other even when people are not around. It just doesn't work.
>>22511>If demon doesn't understand the fuck is family is, how exactly he made a mental connection from seeing duke's son room to mentioning the buried father?It could be a kind of cargo cult, ie know what to say to get what you want without necessarily understanding why it works. Or alternatively, they understand the concept in the abstract but don't feel any sense of familial attachment themselves, and thus dont understand it on a visceral level. It reminds me a little bit of Brave New World where concepts like motherhood are understood, but are considered taboo to speak of because of how alien they are to that society.
>the same demons that are supposedly only imitating the human speech without understanding it are using it to communicate with each other even when people are not aroundI was under the impression that they understood speech, just not certain concepts about human relationships and psychology. I've just been watching the dubbed anime though so it may come off differently in the sub or manga.
>>22512>It could be a kind of cargo cult, ie know what to say to get what you want without necessarily understanding why it works.Again, it doesn't work like that. You can't improvise a manipulation in an unexpected situation like that. Or improvise at all. You will sound like an NPC from some old game.
>but don't feel any sense of familial attachment themselves, and thus dont understand it on a visceral levelThat is explicitly not what is happening there. The main character says they are imitating speech basically. The demon himself confirms it when the subordinate asks him what "father" is and he says that he doesn't know. Which makes the whole "asking" thing quite ridiculous too.
>>22465That is so well edited lmao.
I just saw Freiren. I have to say that I did like it.
>>22478Yeah pretty much. It feels more like watching mushi-shi than watching some action anime. It is incredibly laid back and feels more a reflection on the passage of time and all that brings (death, highs, lows, knowledge) than about action or demons or anything else.
>>22533Yeah, the premise is kinda interesting, but the result is mediocre.
>medias with similar concepts that managed to execute it much betterCare to share?
>>22593weebs, bro.
They'll watch anything
>>22474>when anime is "popular" it is, more often than not, because it is not animeMaybe you're right, my favorite anime are FMAB and JoJo. Anime like this tends to leave a mark in my memory. But then again, those series aren't cozy and chill nothingburgers with the plot and drama barely being there if at all or mega-depressing wangstfests with """relatable""" mentally ill protagonists. Somewhere in the middle.
Maybe there are more stories like that in seinen but I dunno. Most of it is in the manga format.
>>23319 (me)
Then again, I actually find anime cliches part of the appeal of the medium. But FMAB and JoJo live in my heart rent-free.
>>22593yes, it's incredible how bland it is and how unlikeable the MC is, yet the series got 9+ on MAL and dethroned clumsy but well-written FMA:B
average anime watcher has close to none media literacy, so they get wojackfaced from basic "life is fleeting" messaging
>>25395to extend on that: one of my pet peeves with media is low WIS stat of every writer out there, they can't properly write an Outworldly / Godly / Immortal being for their life
Hollywood is especially bad at it, but anime isn't that far: most godlike/alien creatures are just some kind of smug tech bros who are only interested in talking tech shit and forget that others need to check prices in grocery stores
take classic sci-fi, like Lem's Solaris, where the Other is indeed an Other, because of their whole experience of not being human or another kind of short-lived fleshy being
take Tolkien where elves kinda exist on a parallel plane to relation to humans/hobbits/dwarves, but yet understand them excellently
even Adventure Time occasionally write excellent Others, albeit almost every single one of them talks like a US millenial in their late 20s
so, how can an ancient being like Friren NOT understand lifespans after living with humans for so long? even kids understand that their pets don't live forever and kids are famously stupid in many aspects
the whole premise is so retarded, it makes the weebeest stuff like OG Madoka look brilliant in comparison because it actually can handle the existential themes without shitting itself
>>25395Do you mean Frieren? She's meant to be bland because she
has autism is an elf.
>>25398say what
also Laios is autistic af and he's one of the best ND-coded characters ever: even when he misses social clues and has poor cognitive empathy, he's strong on emotional empathy
>>25399again, humans somehow have compassion to cats and butterflies, and since they're themselves mortal and can feel pain, they can understand that others too fear death and suffering
Frieren is the most overrated shit lately and I'm annoyed how low the weeb standards are because now studios will try to copy this particular kind of im14andthisisdeep
>>25397>take Tolkien where elves kinda exist on a parallel plane to relation to humans/hobbits/dwarves, but yet understand them excellentlytbf Tolkien's elves were made by
Yahweh Eru Illuvitar to be that way. Humans are his special OC that are supposed to be the bestest and so the elves have to have some understanding of them in order to achieve their purpose of developing human progress or whatever.
>>27000>I think you don't understand you're trying to justify straight up dehumanization here. Dehumanization is only a problem if the demons are meant to represent humans. What I'm saying is that we shouldn't assume that.
>which would still be eerily close to something like the Goblin Slayer settingFunny you should mention that because I've also heard leftist readings of Goblin Slayer where the goblins are a stand in for all the daily, relatively minor shit that quietly eats away at people and makes their lives hell. The elitist protagonists are all worried about big bads like a Demon King when the relatively unimpressive goblins are objectively a bigger threat to most people. Sort of how libs will tell us that Putin is the worst thing in the world as we struggle to pay rent and afford groceries. Again this is a way that you can take a left wing reading of something like the demons in Frieren, not as an allegory for race but for monstrous and inhuman social forces.
>>27003>If you wanted to portray demons as monstrous, why not make them look the part Because monstrous things can often be pretty to look at. Don't you want the pretty commodity prole? Look how cool and nice it is, it will make you happy and everybody will love you if you buy it. Aren't billionaires cool and awesome? They're going to space and drive fancy cars and fuck supermodels. etc.
Also I'd add that in actual explicit racist propaganda the targeted group is usually portrayed as being horrible to look at and disgusting in every way. No Nazi has ever portrayed Jews or Blacks as charming attractive people who will trick you with their beautiful looks.
>>27005>in actual explicit racist propaganda the targeted group is usually portrayed as being horrible to look atThe thing is this portrayal creates a greater distance making dehumanization easier. Not doing it just makes it all the more uncomfortable, because demons have a racial component while still looking almost exactly human (almost like those targeted groups in real life).
>Because monstrous things can often be pretty to look at.I maintain writing fiction about extensively about such a scenario is misanthropic in itself.
>>27144She has friendships with them but not romantic relationships. A plot point that comes up later is that one of her previous friends who has long since died was in love with her and she was oblivious to it (because of elf autism).
>>27140It's comfy in a way that reminds me of Ghibli.
>>27190Germans who happened to be Nazis had fairly common German names? Shocker. This must be bait but I will continue. There isnt even well known Nazis by names like Himmel, Heiter, Fern, only one I can find is a few with the family name Stark. Many names for characters are just German words that aren't names. Their names are given for their character attributes.
Frieren = to be cold
Himmel = heaven
Heiter = cheerful
Eisen = iron
Fern = distant
Stark = strong
Sein = Be (I suppose this just means his way of living and attitude?)
Kraut = power
I can keep going through every character but the same obvious intention appears for nearly every character name it seems which indicates no intention than the meaning of names and words in German.
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