The danger of recognizing evil where it doesn't exist is that you will commit an atrocity. The danger of not recognizing evil where it does exist is that it will commit an atrocity.
These 2 series have been an eye-opener for me as far as storytelling. Sure, you can make all kinds of inference about what the goblins and demons represent, but the whole story revolves around the idea that evil is just evil. Modern retellings (minus these exceptions) are always trying to make the viewer think "Well, evil's not _all_ bad..." and that's by design.
Demons aren't evil though they're just operating on orange and blue mortality like the Fae. This will become apparent in the Golden City arc where it will get much more interesting and the demons a bit more sympathetic without making them any less dangerous or incompatible with humanity.
Demons aren't evil in the same way a man eating lion isn't evil, it's just doing what it does. They lack hate and malice, a geas to prevent demons from acting with malice toward humans won't work because they can't even experience malice (this is actually in the series later on). The Macht arc really makes things a lot more grey than just "demons are pure evil and that's that".
I've only watched the anime, but in there, demons are _not_ inherently evil by your definition; they don't revel in the harm/evil they do etc. They are antagonistic to humans because they see humans as food, but they don't particularly care for human suffering either way. (In fact, from the demon perspective, what "humans" like Flamme, Frieren and Fern do is pure evil. And _they_ actually revel in the way they go against basic moral principles.) Sure, genociding demons is a good call from the human side, not because demons are evil, but because human and demon existence is incompatible.
Pure evil villains can certainly work but too many writers only go half way with it. One of the most egregious examples of this is Caesar's Legion from Fallout: New Vegas. The Legion is by every conceivable measure irredeemably evil, commiting unspeakable atrocities against every tribe they encounter. And yet, their leader is portrayed as a misguided man who sincerely believes that he is creating a new Rome when anyone with a basic understanding of history can see that the Legion has as much in common with the actual Romans as a wolf has in common with a pitbull.
"Caesar" (Ed Sallo) Reminds me of Nicholas Kerensky, cherry-picking bits of history that suit his warped understanding, stagnating his own creation's growth out of ego and then setting it up to fail (Remember Tukkayid, you Clan Bastards. Pay Your Bills, Fuckos)
First of all, i have to thank you, i just finished goblin slayer last night, and i would never have picked it up without your recommendation. I think there's an important distinction between real world pure evil and fictional pure evil. IRL pure evil exists by people who have been given countless chances, and chose evil. In Fiction , we can see species that never had that choice. The demon child in Firen was a excellent example of this. Taken away from danger and loved, she still does evil, because she doesn't even grasp that what she's doing is evil. A human in the same situation would have to choose. She doesn't, as she had no choice, she just followed her nature. Sorry if this is a little rambling, im half asleep.
Thing is, you have to choose one an stick with it very early on. Otherwise you get the very pertinent question of "What if all the other enemies we gleefully murdered also had the potential to turn good" Unfortunately too many stories go that route and just act like it's not a problem. I'm not the biggest fan of Frieren but I'll always give it praise for not taking the easy "If we kill them we'll be no different" route.
the "slayer" genre anime: (NOT ranked, just listed) 01. Berserk 02. Claymore 03. Attack On Titan 04. Blood+ ("Blood Plus") 05. Goblin Slayer 06. Demon Slayer 07. Blood C 08. RWBY 09. Hundred 10. Hellsing Ultimate 11. Hellsing 12. Trinity Blood 13. Soul Eater 14. Full Metal Alchemist 15. Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood 16. Evangelion 17. Ga-Rei: Zero 18. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (or just "Madoka" for short) (and probably some/many more) ---------- highly recommend: Claymore (26 episodes) // especially the manga (~150 chapters), which is absolutely epic, as it's the finished/completed/entire work/story, whereas the anime is not (manga: 2001-2014 vs anime: 2007) Claymore is the female version of Berserk (and Goblin Slayer and Demon Slayer) and has similar character design to that of the Witcher series (as they all came out around the same time, more or less, likely all influencing each other). Clare truly is Guts’ long lost sister of the sword. While having nearly an entire female cast, this is no "girly anime", there's no/zero fanservice, and even their chest sizes are realistic, as these girls are all business, and that business is killing yoma The girls are known as "Silver-Eyed Witches", as they're half-human and half-yoma, giving them their superhuman and inhuman power and abilities. They also are known as "Claymores", due to wielding 6 ft long claymore swords, and with only 1 hand, and they know how to use them. You don't f'k these girls, they f'k you. Everyone LOVES Claymore, I've yet to meet a single person who doesn't love it, and also girls too love Claymore surprisingly, despite that Claymore is more of a guy's anime (action, violence, etc). Also, Claymore is the most similar anime to Attack On Titan, even spoiling some major concepts in Attack On Titan. But, it's also completely different from Attack On Titan, of course. So, if you like Attack On Titan, you'll definitely love Claymore as well! If you think Mikasa is sexy and badass... wait until you see Clare (and someone else too)... grins (japanese/raw or english dub, both are very good, you can see which you like better) ----------- first and foremost, one needs to establish.... WHAT EXACTLY IS, AND ISN'T, ... EVIL, what is, and isn't, truly and purely, EVIL??? this quickly become clear (as you try to establish/list/etc such evils) that it's not so easy to do/answer so... the usual method used is to instead, establish what is GOOD (as usually this is easier to do so), and then, the opposite of it, is by definition, EVIL, though even this method is not a sure-fire way, as it too will run into issues, as well... most people really have absolutely no idea of what evil is (and isn't), despite everyone thinking that they do and not realizing that they actually don't have any idea of it obviously this philosophical question/concept of EVIL (and GOOD, aka "good vs evil") is one of the greatest of philosophical questions/concepts that exists, and it's way too massive to try to explore it "fully" (haha, right), here, laughs and, then there's also a whole 'nother can of worms: is there actually such a thing as evil (and good), in the first place... do the concepts of evil (and good) only exist fictionally within our own human minds and/or out of necessity/success as/for a hyper-social species? is the entire concept of evil (and good), entirely fictional, and/or, is there only just necessity, over-riding whatever possibility of the concepts of evil (and good) existing
I think one of the better examples of purely evil races are the Lord of the Rings Orcs and Belrogs. the Orcs are wholly evil serve evil and they have nothing redeeming about them (minus the occasional funny line said), you can't negotiate with them, they won't take you prisoner except to torture you till you die and the only good ones are the dead ones, in fact depending on the origin story killing the Orcs might be something of a Mercy. As for the Belrogs they were made by an evil god to be his loyal servants and were literally made to burn the world down and kill everyone along the way, they have two states of being killing everyone who stands before them or sleeping till its time to kill everything.
I personally think that the demons in Firen are the solution Tolkien never found to why his orcs were always irredeemably evil. That said, there are some hints in Tolkiens work that some orcs have fought on the side of the free peoples, mostly with elrond stating that "some of every kind, save elves only" had fought for the free peoples before the black gates in the second age.
You could also look at the Legion in the anime 86 (Good Anime defo recoomend it), they are just uncaring machines that wish to kill all humans, never tiring or stopping unless you put an anti-tank round through them and if your really unlucky they will pull a persons brain from their head and then use it to power more advanced models meaning they will make you fight your former friends.
The difference though is that they aren't really sly or trying to trick you into thinking they're protentially not as hostile they seem. The crux of this kind of storytelling is present the possiblity of a grey area before utterly crushing it before your eyes
I'm guessing you haven't read the second season of Frieren where the entire point is that the demons can't feel malice or guilt. This makes them akin more to animals than evil. The goblins on the other hand seem to have the capability to understand or emphasize in their more intelligent versions which aligns more with your argument. Overall I think your discussion could be enriched with an emphasis on the benality of evil and a greater focus on intentionality as a lens to analyze how evil functions in stories. Also please no disclaimers in a video of only 10 minutes, it's unnecessary. If people want to have that conversation then let them do it, it's basically off topic.
Let me throw up a quote on how to deal with Evil when you see it from Grand Admiral Thrawn "There are things in the universe that are simply and purely evil. A Warrior does not see to understand them or compromise with them. He seeks only to obliterate them."
When people realizes that a Very different Species is not the same Races as Mortals... starts to eat the Mortals and use Mortals as food and their source of livelihood. Yep, SO different, the Demons and Goblins are different than Mortals and Feys.
My issue with the demons and their tactics (or the humans really) is that they've been doing this for YEARS, and humans are still falling for it. Like dude, they aint changing, it needs to be on-site with those things.
They humans know... but it also the same situation as demon always get tricked by someone hiding their mana and ended up being bitter about it. Human, due to their sympathetic nature (want to help and being helped), will always giving demon a second chance. Chance for reconciliation. And adding the fact human life is very short, new generation will never actually feeling the betrayal of their grandfathers. Hence, more receptive to giving another demon a chance of talking through this. That is the beautiful part of this show.
Well, humans are rather short-lived and most of them never met a single demon in their life. "Well, but this boomer wrote that demons are evil monsters who only imitate human speech so we should kill any demon on sight!" will be met with skepticism but most humans without a constant, oppressive propaganda effort to keep human attitudes properly aligned. The in-universe church/religion really fucked this up for humans. They had one job ...
I don't see an issue with this because if you were deceived before you're probably too dead to pass on your wisdom to the next generation. Similarly, demons Frieren or her master tricked are also too dead to tell the other demons about the trick they used, so it keeps working on new demons. There are exceptions, for example, Frieren has clearly learned from past experience the sorts of deceit and word games demons will use, so she could teach the next generation to not fall for it. But we've also seen Frieren, even by a party that trusts her like her original hero party, may not be listened to. There's also no established formal method of education by which her lessons and wisdom is being passed on and instead she seems to have a single apprentice she's taken in the last 80 years and Eisen also has only a single apprentice.
I still don't understand why people sympathize with the demons in frieren. The show literally shows us the morally gray area everyone says exists using the demon girl in the village with Himmel, and then crushed it right before our eyes.
to me and i tried, pure evil just belong to the past as a trope and is just the result of misunderstanding/simplify the world in the past. luckily nowadays we know enough about the word and psychology of life to know that pure evil doesnt exist and is just a non real concept. In real world pure evil doesnt exist in humans or animals. what does exist is needs and survival
They make it more grey with the Macht arc while not sacrificing that humans and demons have fundamentally different psychology. Macht actually wants to learn about humans and find a way to coexist, but he fails because ultimately he's not able to understand humans. Also interestingly he seems to dislike fighting and killing but simply as an activity not because he has any moral aversion to it.
"The only good goblin is a dead goblin. SO LET'S MAKE THESE GOBLINS GOOD!" Gawblin slayer
The danger of recognizing evil where it doesn't exist is that you will commit an atrocity.
The danger of not recognizing evil where it does exist is that it will commit an atrocity.
Evil is a fictional concept, chill out there Guts.
These 2 series have been an eye-opener for me as far as storytelling. Sure, you can make all kinds of inference about what the goblins and demons represent, but the whole story revolves around the idea that evil is just evil. Modern retellings (minus these exceptions) are always trying to make the viewer think "Well, evil's not _all_ bad..." and that's by design.
Demons aren't evil though they're just operating on orange and blue mortality like the Fae. This will become apparent in the Golden City arc where it will get much more interesting and the demons a bit more sympathetic without making them any less dangerous or incompatible with humanity.
Demons aren't evil in the same way a man eating lion isn't evil, it's just doing what it does. They lack hate and malice, a geas to prevent demons from acting with malice toward humans won't work because they can't even experience malice (this is actually in the series later on). The Macht arc really makes things a lot more grey than just "demons are pure evil and that's that".
I've only watched the anime, but in there, demons are _not_ inherently evil by your definition; they don't revel in the harm/evil they do etc. They are antagonistic to humans because they see humans as food, but they don't particularly care for human suffering either way. (In fact, from the demon perspective, what "humans" like Flamme, Frieren and Fern do is pure evil. And _they_ actually revel in the way they go against basic moral principles.) Sure, genociding demons is a good call from the human side, not because demons are evil, but because human and demon existence is incompatible.
I love how demons are only mimicking human emotion but don’t understand it.
Pure evil villains can certainly work but too many writers only go half way with it. One of the most egregious examples of this is Caesar's Legion from Fallout: New Vegas. The Legion is by every conceivable measure irredeemably evil, commiting unspeakable atrocities against every tribe they encounter. And yet, their leader is portrayed as a misguided man who sincerely believes that he is creating a new Rome when anyone with a basic understanding of history can see that the Legion has as much in common with the actual Romans as a wolf has in common with a pitbull.
"Caesar" (Ed Sallo) Reminds me of Nicholas Kerensky, cherry-picking bits of history that suit his warped understanding, stagnating his own creation's growth out of ego and then setting it up to fail (Remember Tukkayid, you Clan Bastards. Pay Your Bills, Fuckos)
First of all, i have to thank you, i just finished goblin slayer last night, and i would never have picked it up without your recommendation.
I think there's an important distinction between real world pure evil and fictional pure evil. IRL pure evil exists by people who have been given countless chances, and chose evil. In Fiction , we can see species that never had that choice.
The demon child in Firen was a excellent example of this. Taken away from danger and loved, she still does evil, because she doesn't even grasp that what she's doing is evil. A human in the same situation would have to choose. She doesn't, as she had no choice, she just followed her nature.
Sorry if this is a little rambling, im half asleep.
Thing is, you have to choose one an stick with it very early on. Otherwise you get the very pertinent question of "What if all the other enemies we gleefully murdered also had the potential to turn good" Unfortunately too many stories go that route and just act like it's not a problem. I'm not the biggest fan of Frieren but I'll always give it praise for not taking the easy "If we kill them we'll be no different" route.
Thumbnail made me think of Garithos from WC3 lmao
"The only good non-human is a dead non-human."
the "slayer" genre anime:
(NOT ranked, just listed)
01. Berserk
02. Claymore
03. Attack On Titan
04. Blood+ ("Blood Plus")
05. Goblin Slayer
06. Demon Slayer
07. Blood C
08. RWBY
09. Hundred
10. Hellsing Ultimate
11. Hellsing
12. Trinity Blood
13. Soul Eater
14. Full Metal Alchemist
15. Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
16. Evangelion
17. Ga-Rei: Zero
18. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (or just "Madoka" for short)
(and probably some/many more)
----------
highly recommend:
Claymore (26 episodes) // especially the manga (~150 chapters), which is absolutely epic, as it's the finished/completed/entire work/story, whereas the anime is not (manga: 2001-2014 vs anime: 2007)
Claymore is the female version of Berserk (and Goblin Slayer and Demon Slayer) and has similar character design to that of the Witcher series (as they all came out around the same time, more or less, likely all influencing each other). Clare truly is Guts’ long lost sister of the sword.
While having nearly an entire female cast, this is no "girly anime", there's no/zero fanservice, and even their chest sizes are realistic, as these girls are all business, and that business is killing yoma
The girls are known as "Silver-Eyed Witches", as they're half-human and half-yoma, giving them their superhuman and inhuman power and abilities. They also are known as "Claymores", due to wielding 6 ft long claymore swords, and with only 1 hand, and they know how to use them. You don't f'k these girls, they f'k you.
Everyone LOVES Claymore, I've yet to meet a single person who doesn't love it, and also girls too love Claymore surprisingly, despite that Claymore is more of a guy's anime (action, violence, etc).
Also, Claymore is the most similar anime to Attack On Titan, even spoiling some major concepts in Attack On Titan. But, it's also completely different from Attack On Titan, of course. So, if you like Attack On Titan, you'll definitely love Claymore as well! If you think Mikasa is sexy and badass... wait until you see Clare (and someone else too)... grins
(japanese/raw or english dub, both are very good, you can see which you like better)
-----------
first and foremost, one needs to establish....
WHAT EXACTLY IS, AND ISN'T, ... EVIL, what is, and isn't, truly and purely, EVIL???
this quickly become clear (as you try to establish/list/etc such evils) that it's not so easy to do/answer so...
the usual method used is to instead, establish what is GOOD (as usually this is easier to do so), and then, the opposite of it, is by definition, EVIL, though even this method is not a sure-fire way, as it too will run into issues, as well...
most people really have absolutely no idea of what evil is (and isn't), despite everyone thinking that they do and not realizing that they actually don't have any idea of it
obviously this philosophical question/concept of EVIL (and GOOD, aka "good vs evil") is one of the greatest of philosophical questions/concepts that exists, and it's way too massive to try to explore it "fully" (haha, right), here, laughs
and, then there's also a whole 'nother can of worms: is there actually such a thing as evil (and good), in the first place... do the concepts of evil (and good) only exist fictionally within our own human minds and/or out of necessity/success as/for a hyper-social species? is the entire concept of evil (and good), entirely fictional, and/or, is there only just necessity, over-riding whatever possibility of the concepts of evil (and good) existing
I think one of the better examples of purely evil races are the Lord of the Rings Orcs and Belrogs. the Orcs are wholly evil serve evil and they have nothing redeeming about them (minus the occasional funny line said), you can't negotiate with them, they won't take you prisoner except to torture you till you die and the only good ones are the dead ones, in fact depending on the origin story killing the Orcs might be something of a Mercy.
As for the Belrogs they were made by an evil god to be his loyal servants and were literally made to burn the world down and kill everyone along the way, they have two states of being killing everyone who stands before them or sleeping till its time to kill everything.
I personally think that the demons in Firen are the solution Tolkien never found to why his orcs were always irredeemably evil.
That said, there are some hints in Tolkiens work that some orcs have fought on the side of the free peoples, mostly with elrond stating that "some of every kind, save elves only" had fought for the free peoples before the black gates in the second age.
You could also look at the Legion in the anime 86 (Good Anime defo recoomend it), they are just uncaring machines that wish to kill all humans, never tiring or stopping unless you put an anti-tank round through them and if your really unlucky they will pull a persons brain from their head and then use it to power more advanced models meaning they will make you fight your former friends.
The difference though is that they aren't really sly or trying to trick you into thinking they're protentially not as hostile they seem. The crux of this kind of storytelling is present the possiblity of a grey area before utterly crushing it before your eyes
I'm guessing you haven't read the second season of Frieren where the entire point is that the demons can't feel malice or guilt.
This makes them akin more to animals than evil. The goblins on the other hand seem to have the capability to understand or emphasize in their more intelligent versions which aligns more with your argument.
Overall I think your discussion could be enriched with an emphasis on the benality of evil and a greater focus on intentionality as a lens to analyze how evil functions in stories.
Also please no disclaimers in a video of only 10 minutes, it's unnecessary. If people want to have that conversation then let them do it, it's basically off topic.
Let me throw up a quote on how to deal with Evil when you see it from Grand Admiral Thrawn
"There are things in the universe that are simply and purely evil. A Warrior does not see to understand them or compromise with them. He seeks only to obliterate them."
When people realizes that a Very different Species is not the same Races as Mortals... starts to eat the Mortals and use Mortals as food and their source of livelihood.
Yep, SO different, the Demons and Goblins are different than Mortals and Feys.
My issue with the demons and their tactics (or the humans really) is that they've been doing this for YEARS, and humans are still falling for it. Like dude, they aint changing, it needs to be on-site with those things.
They humans know... but it also the same situation as demon always get tricked by someone hiding their mana and ended up being bitter about it.
Human, due to their sympathetic nature (want to help and being helped), will always giving demon a second chance. Chance for reconciliation.
And adding the fact human life is very short, new generation will never actually feeling the betrayal of their grandfathers. Hence, more receptive to giving another demon a chance of talking through this.
That is the beautiful part of this show.
Well, humans are rather short-lived and most of them never met a single demon in their life. "Well, but this boomer wrote that demons are evil monsters who only imitate human speech so we should kill any demon on sight!" will be met with skepticism but most humans without a constant, oppressive propaganda effort to keep human attitudes properly aligned.
The in-universe church/religion really fucked this up for humans. They had one job ...
I don't see an issue with this because if you were deceived before you're probably too dead to pass on your wisdom to the next generation. Similarly, demons Frieren or her master tricked are also too dead to tell the other demons about the trick they used, so it keeps working on new demons.
There are exceptions, for example, Frieren has clearly learned from past experience the sorts of deceit and word games demons will use, so she could teach the next generation to not fall for it.
But we've also seen Frieren, even by a party that trusts her like her original hero party, may not be listened to. There's also no established formal method of education by which her lessons and wisdom is being passed on and instead she seems to have a single apprentice she's taken in the last 80 years and Eisen also has only a single apprentice.
Eta 320 released a GuP video!
I still don't understand why people sympathize with the demons in frieren. The show literally shows us the morally gray area everyone says exists using the demon girl in the village with Himmel, and then crushed it right before our eyes.
I can fix Aura and Linie!
to me and i tried, pure evil just belong to the past as a trope and is just the result of misunderstanding/simplify the world in the past. luckily nowadays we know enough about the word and psychology of life to know that pure evil doesnt exist and is just a non real concept. In real world pure evil doesnt exist in humans or animals. what does exist is needs and survival
Only atheists leftists think that there's no such thing as pure evil lol.
Dude, ever heard of a decongestant?
And if you're sick, take a break. Clout isn't worth much when you're dead.
I'm so sick of stories where ai, animals, demons, monsters develop real human empathy for very vague reasons, Frieren is different.... for now.
Sousou no Frieren's demons are very much a case of Blue and Orange morality compared to humans and demi-humans Black and White.
They make it more grey with the Macht arc while not sacrificing that humans and demons have fundamentally different psychology. Macht actually wants to learn about humans and find a way to coexist, but he fails because ultimately he's not able to understand humans. Also interestingly he seems to dislike fighting and killing but simply as an activity not because he has any moral aversion to it.