Demons in Frieren are explicitly stated to be a different species than humans entirely and are explicitly stated to utilize human speech for the sole purpose of getting humans to lower their guard in order to devour them. They are explicitly shown to be exclusively murderous and cunning.
There is an entire arc where a demon lives around humans, pretending to be their friend and mentor, for decades and decades. At the last moment, he betrays everyone so that he can better understand betrayal and malice (or something, been a while since I read it). At the conclusion of this arc that spans numerous characters over something like fifty years, they ask the demon if he ever learned anything. The demon says he didn't, because demons can't ever understand human emotion.
The projection is on full display.
E: to add, yes, Frieren is racist towards demons. She is so because she is an elven immortal who has lived for millennia and has been victim and witness to innumerable atrocities committed by demons that humans forget because these things happened to their ancestors and not them. Really gets the noggin joggin
If I remember right, that demon—who turned everyone into statues as you said—is probably the closest thing to “friendly” that we’ve seen from demons in the series. At least there’s some sort of mutual curiosity/respect going on there, on some level. The other demons think he’s weird for even thinking about trying to learn anything from humans at all. So even the guy who’s a massive exception by demon standards will still betray you in the end.
Right, but he's a great example of demonic thinking. He fools you into thinking he's an ally, then does what he was planning on the entire time. Everyone comes to think of him as a friend, confidante, and mentor, but that was all projection on behalf of the people he was kind to. He only ever had one goal and he decided that being fake friends with humans for 50+ years was the way to accomplish it, and it almost worked (but demons are not humans and have no emotions). You're right that he is the massive exception, but he's only really a massive exception from our point of view. The other demons just think he's a bit weird for playing with his food, essentially.
This is almost literally 1:1 analogous for how women see "refugees," or even more blatantly, how women fall in love with murderers in prison. It's also completely typical Pitmom behavior. Lefties are right to be wary of Frieren because it praises actual virtuous acts and condemns evil wholeheartedly.
I think that really, the whole arc is masterfully written because it's almost sympathetic. Weaved into the flashbacks to his own thinking, and his conversations with other demons (and that plot setup with the Hero of the South) you get an interesting picture of demonkind that shows that they aren't exactly uniformly monstrous sadists, and that by and large they, like humans are also just trying to survive... but as things stand, human survival and demon survival is almost certainly incompatible and you can't let the surface sympathy distract you from the fact that they are utterly alien.
Demons in Frieren are explicitly stated to be a different species than humans entirely and are explicitly stated to utilize human speech for the sole purpose of getting humans to lower their guard in order to devour them. They are explicitly shown to be exclusively murderous and cunning.
There is an entire arc where a demon lives around humans, pretending to be their friend and mentor, for decades and decades. At the last moment, he betrays everyone so that he can better understand betrayal and malice (or something, been a while since I read it). At the conclusion of this arc that spans numerous characters over something like fifty years, they ask the demon if he ever learned anything. The demon says he didn't, because demons can't ever understand human emotion.
The projection is on full display.
E: to add, yes, Frieren is racist towards demons. She is so because she is an elven immortal who has lived for millennia and has been victim and witness to innumerable atrocities committed by demons that humans forget because these things happened to their ancestors and not them. Really gets the noggin joggin
If I remember right, that demon—who turned everyone into statues as you said—is probably the closest thing to “friendly” that we’ve seen from demons in the series. At least there’s some sort of mutual curiosity/respect going on there, on some level. The other demons think he’s weird for even thinking about trying to learn anything from humans at all. So even the guy who’s a massive exception by demon standards will still betray you in the end.
Right, but he's a great example of demonic thinking. He fools you into thinking he's an ally, then does what he was planning on the entire time. Everyone comes to think of him as a friend, confidante, and mentor, but that was all projection on behalf of the people he was kind to. He only ever had one goal and he decided that being fake friends with humans for 50+ years was the way to accomplish it, and it almost worked (but demons are not humans and have no emotions). You're right that he is the massive exception, but he's only really a massive exception from our point of view. The other demons just think he's a bit weird for playing with his food, essentially.
This is almost literally 1:1 analogous for how women see "refugees," or even more blatantly, how women fall in love with murderers in prison. It's also completely typical Pitmom behavior. Lefties are right to be wary of Frieren because it praises actual virtuous acts and condemns evil wholeheartedly.
I think that really, the whole arc is masterfully written because it's almost sympathetic. Weaved into the flashbacks to his own thinking, and his conversations with other demons (and that plot setup with the Hero of the South) you get an interesting picture of demonkind that shows that they aren't exactly uniformly monstrous sadists, and that by and large they, like humans are also just trying to survive... but as things stand, human survival and demon survival is almost certainly incompatible and you can't let the surface sympathy distract you from the fact that they are utterly alien.