this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025

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Frieren: Beyond Journey's End Season 2 - PV (January 2026) (www.youtube.com)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (2 children)

I appreciate this anime as it resonated with my sorrows about growing older while also underpinning the value of making the most of the time and people I still have in this world

[–] ImplyingImplications 6 points 15 hours ago

I absolutely loved the Qual scene early on in season 1 as a metaphor for humans eliminating diseases through scientific research.

Scene Spoilers

Frieren tasks her new apprentice Fern with killing the ancient demon Qual. A demon so powerful that even she and the hero party could not defeat him 80 years prior and could only seal him away temporarily. Fern is confused as to how she could take on such a strong opponent but quickly realizes he only knows one basic attack spell.

Frieren explains 80 years ago this spell was the deadliest around and no mage could defend against it. Human mages ended up studying the spell endlessly and eventually figured out how it worked. Their research was so widely adopted that it became the basis of modern day offensive magic only a few decades later. Elves and demons might be powerful mages, but individually they could never match the speed at which humans collectively learn, teach, and innovate magic.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago

Finally someone brings the proper vibes to this coversation. I recently learned there is even a term for this kind of show. "Iyashikei".

[–] [email protected] -1 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

Hehe, exciting, but I wonder if they'll touch any more on the genocide problem.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 18 hours ago

It's not really a problem. Frierens demons are explicitly monsters, not in the typical "different species" sense. They gained human language in order to better kill humans, Himmel tries to give a "child" demon a chance and she kills a family.

I love me my "redeemable monster" types, that's why we have stuff like Tensura and other shows where monsters are not inherently bad. In Frieren they are monsters, they exist to kill people end of story. I rather like the simplicity to be honest, it's boring seeing Demon/Monster redemption arcs all the time.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

If you are asking about the demons attempted genocide of the elves in the past:

light manga spoilers

No, I don't remember any additional info about that from the manga.

If you are referring to Frieren's ongoing attempted genocide of demons:

light manga spoilers

We meet more demons as the story continues and Frieren and co. will confront them. Philosophical discussions about the true nature of demons will be had (are they simply monsters? do they feel emotions?). Those questions might not run through Frieren's head, but the story does a good job of making the reader ask those questions through other characters.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago

I was thinking about Frieren. Thank you :3

I don't really care if Frieren herself thinks about it, I just find it more interesting if the writer has put some thought about it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

What's the genocide problem?

[+] [email protected] -6 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Frieren wants to explicitly kill all demons, ergo a genocide. This is a tricky subject because this is inherently a very evil thing to do. You can make your race evil, but then you need to be really careful.

I would recommend reading about Tolkien's dilemma when it comes to the orcs. It's very similar.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Did I miss something here? The way I understood it was that the demons were inherently evil and antagonistic towards humanity. They were good at playing the humans in that one town but ultimately Frieren did unmask them and the party did stop their plot. Sounds to me like reading some woke BS into a simple "monsters = bad = kill" story.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Did you read about Tolkien's dilemma? When you give your evil race the ability to think and feel you give away the right to call all of them evil. Because they can learn, they can learn to be good.

Yes, it's morally good to kill the evil ones we see in the show, however, when you say you want to kill everyone, you are also roping in innocent lives.

(Also, using "woke" as a pejorative is really cringe.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

It's a fantasy world. If I can accept the concept of magic I can also accept the concept of an entirely evil race. I really don't see the need to overthink it.

(Also, I guess im cringe then. I can live with that.)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago

Then the Frieren writer should make them objectively evil and not contradict themselves. I like it when writers put some thought into their genocides.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Not sure how you got "because they can learn, they can learn to be good" as the source of the dilemma from the article. It says

In Tolkien's Christian framework, [being open to morality, like Men] in turn meant they must have souls, so killing them would be wrong without very good reason.

It's not them thinking and feeling that's the problem, it's that Tolkien believed (as a Catholic) that you shouldn't kill things with souls.

This is a nice contrast to Frieren where demons don't have souls and don't seem to be open to morality, either; they understand it in order to manipulate humans but consider themselves outside its framework.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

This is a nice contrast to Frieren where demons don’t have souls

spoiler

Do they not? Aura's scales of obedience are said to work by "placing her own and the target’s soul onto the scales to weigh their mana".

[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Wut? It's shown in the show that demons are a direct threat to non demon life due to their nature.

I would think of it less like genocide and more like eradication of an existential threat to non demon kind. It fits in the same category for me that killing all mosquitoes does.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah they even showed a flashback to show how little they care about life. They only use speech as a means to an end for killing humans.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The show contradicts your point about speech only being used to lure humans when they speak to each other in private, discussing things such as parents.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

spoiler

The demons came to a town disguised as a peace envoy, a pretend diplomatic mission to disable a magic barrier. This absolutly goes beyond just immitating speech.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 18 hours ago

Exactly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

It all depends on how you define and categorize morality.

The Tolkien dilemma reasoned that since orcs could talk and demonstratively discuss the ideas of right and wrong, then they have some sense of morality. If they have reason and morals, could they at some point decide to stop being evil? And if so, is it moral to eradicate them entirely?

I haven't read the Frieren manga, but the show referred to its world's demons as not actually speaking, but having learned to make human-like noises to elicit desired responses. I'm not sure if I buy that explanation (given how the characters behave and converse) but if you do, it's a functional hedge against feeling bad about our beloved protagonist doing a genocide.

Again, the manga might get into this more. Also this could be a potential character arc for Frieren; whoop lol maybe I shouldn't do a genocide after all. I do hope it goes this way, but I doubt it will.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I haven’t read the Frieren manga, but the show referred to its world’s demons as not actually speaking, but having learned to make human-like noises to elicit desired responses.

I have read ahead quite a bit, but it's actually not relevant, because the show itself (which is pretty much identical to the manga) already debunks that.

Aura and her executioners are clearly very intellegent and even have an inner monologue. (One of the lines I actually dislike is when one demon asks the other "what is a mother?" And he just replies with "who knows?". From what we've seen from the demons so far, they should be more than capable of having figured out how human reproduction works).