"I know that demons do not raise their children.  You're born in isolation, and you raise yourself.  So why do you call us mother?"
"....Because it stops you from killing us."

I was reading a vampire webcomic, and at one point one of the vampires said to a vampire hunter “We’re not monsters, we’re just fulfilling our part of the food chain!” Which is true, but I was disappointed that they tried to present it like that made humans the bad guys. Because if vampires are the humans predator species, than humans are justified in fighting back against them. Many prey species in nature are ruthless at defending themselves and their kin

The reason I love demons in Frieren is because the author explicitly made Demons as close to human as possible. I think that the minute differences made between humans and demons help speak to what it means to be human and why I think the overall thesis of Frieren is about learning to be human. The contrasts the author puts against humans is so loud when you think about how close they are to actually being human. Frieren isn't about the long lives or mortality that makes someone human. Its about connection and someone who lives on the border of human and demon.

The demons in Frieren are so freakishly good at tricking humans that even some people in real life fall for it, apparently.

i like how demons are portrayed in freiren, I actually hope they never decide to pursue this "demons can change" trend

Look there’s like 3 ways that I think I commonly see in fiction
1. Evil, they’re the enemies of the main characters usually sadistic and mentally fucked so viewers would never agree with them
2. They’re hot as fuck
3. The word “demon” is used for what is essentially another race of people in a multi-race fantasy world

Oh, how you'll love the next big arc. You'll absolutely adore El Dorado.

There's a manga arc which follows very briefly after the end of the anime material which involves the Demon Macht. It's really an opportunity for Kanehito Yamada to go further in depth with the nature of demons, as the arc is primarily about Macht spending years sincerely attempting to understand humanity through pointed conversations and observation while walking among them pretending to have been made harmless by magic. It really conveys how alien the mindset the demon's is to a human - and vice versa - while displaying the interiority of a demon who isn't actively seeking power or conquest.

I like how demons are just like ChatGPT. They act like us, but they’re something fundamentally different

Here's a pretty big wrench to throw into this theory. The thing is, demons in Frieren don't need to eat humans, they just want to. More so, this desire to kill overpowers logical reasoning to the point of running contrary to self preservation. That is why they are considered monsters.
Monsters as a whole aren't natural creatures, that's why they crumble into dust upon death. In most medieval manga monsters as a trope or not a part of nature but instead a result of magic and thus aren't truly alive, providing protagonists easy targets to kill. Frieren does make it more complicated by making them intelligent with ability to reason, but at the same time it doesn't step away from them being monsters.
Demons just aren't actual people, you can think of them like a artificial intelligence with purpose of killing humans. Their ancestor species where just imitating sounds to lure people, now gaining logic and intelligence after evolving, yet the purpose stays the same. Although, in later chapters we can see that this process is still going, and some demons begin to understand humanity better. Which only makes them more dangerous.

I didn't expect this series to get better and expand to comparing other shows artfully,
but again you continue to impress with having more meaningful things to share about the show we all enjoyed.

This is very interesting to me, because I had the complete opposite reaction of that the demons were finally just evil, they weren’t humans that just had horns and acted bad with strong powers or something. They were actually different and evil. There is no peace treaty to bargain with. I feel like in other media, demons are just what I explained earlier. Different humans. Bad people that just need to be understood to be able to have peace with. I’m not saying I hate that, I’m just tired of seeing it so much and Frieren demons were such a breath of fresh air for me.

And there is a whole arc that will likely be shown in season 2 that explores this beautifully

I dont think the demon arc is really about the question of "what is evil". In the beginning we're led on to believe that the demons are essentially misunderstood humans with horns, but quickly this is shown to be nothing but an illusion. The demons really are "evil", or rather the embodiment of everything humans consider to be evil, as you said, they dont necessarily act straightforwardly out of malice. But i think this is beside the point. The point, I think, that Frieren is trying to illustrate is that in life sometimes there are forces that simply wish for your destruction, they may have more nuanced motivations then simply being evil, like "self preservation" or "survival" but at the end of the day they want to harm you. Frieren also attempts to show the audience that sometimes the best aspects of our nature, our kindness our generosity,  when combined with naivete, act as footholds for those forces to enter our lives, to lead lead us to ruin. And so the best thing to do is to remain vigilant and ready to fight, to not be taken in by our own wishful thinking, to see the threats around us for what they are, regardless of whether or not they are truely "evil". This question of "are the demons evil, or a force of nature" is more a by product of Frieren's attempt to subvert the trope of the "misunderstood bad guys" by reminding the audience that, just because the demons are "wild beasts" acting out their programming, doesnt change the fact that youre survival depends on see thru their tricks, and defeating them.

6:25 I swear I remember Fern commenting on the fact the blond blood magic demon purposely avoided instantly killing her when he could of for the express reason of “regaining” some form of lost pride, which kinda sounds like malice to me.

As a Japanese person I wanted to give insight to Mushoku Tensei title. The actual full title in Japanese is ” Mushoku Tensei: I will seriously try in another world”. I feel like this title is important because it essentially says the entire theme of the story in the title. “TRY” is the big factor that this story always emphasizes.

I believe Mushoku is interested in asking the question "Do you or will you regret it? Than try your best to do something about it." Rudeus regrets not taking action in his previous life but never regrets being a horn dog. That is why Rudeus in this life still has the same tendency but tries his absolute hardest to learn magic.

But I also don't think MT is saying "Just trying will get you results" as there is many time characters who tries their absolute hardest fails. But what that action give is closure. You may have not gotten the result you wanted but at least you tried... I believe that is what MT is trying to convey.

Something to say as I am half way through the video and you mentioned this twice. Demons DO NOT need to eat humans to live. This is specifically stated. And yet they do. I feel like this is heavily important in a discussion on weather these demons are evil and what evil is.

Something I noticed when watching Frieren is how the way they use language is strikingly similar to how certain things use it in real life. I say "things" because they aren't people, but rather "AI", or more accurately Language Models. Modern text-based generative AIs like Chat-GPT often get criticized for giving false information, "hallucinating", or "lying", but the truth is that they don't actually understand what they're saying any more than the demons in Frieren do. They simply say the words that they believe they're expected to say, because that's the behavior that was rewarded during training. It's a different sort of self-preservation, but could still in a sense be boiled to a similar idea.

In case you forgot, the demon king order that the elves be exterminated.  It's nice to think that the demons might not be evil, but it's pretty clear that they are if you take in all of the information the show is giving us.

7:47 The judgement of Humbert is only part of what is going on in Lolita. The other part of it is Nabokov playing with the reader's habit of sympathizing with protagonists and trusting narrators. We know what Humbert is, but as we read his self-justification and self-deception, we tend to forget--and then when Humbert's mask slips again, we are disgusted not only with him but with *ourselves*.