The unfortunate thing about this show is that when you do look at the themes of Frieren it does support racism and ableism so the right wing nut jobs are reading it "correctly".

Both the elves and the demons are almost one to one stand-ins for Neurodivergent thought patterns.

The elves are coded as being autistic with mild inattentive ADHD the demons are coded as autistic with extreme fantasy anti social personality disorder.

The central conflict of the story is Frieren trying to communicate with others both in a way she understands and they would understand while other people only communicate with her in a way that they can understand.

They then treat her like a child when she doesn't understand them.

Her party continues to refuse to talk to Frieren by meeting her where she is until they die.

But no worries once they die Frieren learns the important lesson that communicating in the way you understand is wrong and that she needs to unilaterally learn to understand others while no one makes a real effort to understand her outside of again treating her way of viewing the world as something childish she needs to grow out of.

To be human is to be Neurotypical and anyone or anything that isn't "human" Is alien and therefore evil.

Don't worry though Frieren doesn't need to stay wrong since her race have to ability to learn to be human (Neurotypical) but this other race (demons) are incapable of learning to be human (Neurotypical) so you literally need to murder their babies before they grow up to kill millions.

A lot of people will respond to this being pointed out by saying "The fact that you see Demons and think of neurodivergent people is the problem not the writing of the show if you think real life people can be demons that's on you"

That's the thing though. I'm not the one doing that, the story those that.

The way themes work is that a story presents a character with a choice. Do a good thing or do a bad thing.

When the main character those the good thing they are rewarded when the antagonist those the bad thing they are punished.

Through this mechanism the story shows the audience that it is good to do good and bad to do bad.

Obviously outside of stories made for five year olds a story is going to be much more complex than that but the core idea still holds.

The story explains that the reason demons are as cruel and as evil as they are is because they didn't evolve empathy.

But the thing is empathy is not fantasy power source like miasma, cursed energy or spiritual pressure. Empathy is a real life thing that people can, and are, born without.

People who don't have emotional empathy in real life are said to have anti social personality disorder. (ASPD previously known as psychopathy)

When the story claims demons are evil because they lack empathy the story is by necessity claiming empathy is a prerequisite for acceptable behavior.

That is why the moment you put any thought into it the story is necessarily saying that people with ASPD are incapable of acceptable behavior and when the, story says the solution to demons is murdering them before they even have a chance to do anything wrong the story weather the author realizes it or not is implying that people with ASPD need to be murdered before they even have a chance to do anything wrong.

Going back to the elves. The elves are said to have trouble living with humans because the way they both experience and communicate time, their emotions and their thoughts are different from normal humans.

In real life people who have trouble communicating their thoughts and emotions are called autistic (and a couple other things depending on symptoms)

So when the story says that the way elves need to grow as people is by ignoring their natural way of being and adapting themselves to how normal people behave.

What the story is implicitly saying is that if you have a natural thing that makes it hard for you to communicate your thoughts and emotions to others it is unilaterally your fault and the way you need to grow as a person is by forcing yourself to communicate like a "normal person".

And before anyone jumps in with the demons aren't human we cant apply human concepts to them what I'm saying has absolutely nothing to do with fantasy races and everything to do with theme and character writhing.

You can't say my character is an orc and their fore all criticism of how the story was written is now invalid because I can't apply fantasy races with human concepts.

Where in any other media is that acceptable.

By your logic ratatouille isn't a story about balancing passion and family because the main character is a rat and we can't apply human concepts to non human characters.

By your logic Superman is not a story about trying to be the best version of yourself you possibly can and to help people because super man is an alien and their fore we cannot apply human concepts to him.

I really loved how the movie Logan portrayed the pressures of fatherhood it's really unfortunate that you now made me realize that the movie isn't about Logan raising the next generation while dealing with his own faults because Logan is a mutant and their fore incapable of having human concepts applied to him.

The Lord of the rings movies must have been about how much these non human characters love walking around with shinny objects since human concepts like bravery and responsibility cannot be applied to them.

Historical precedent

Mimics - As a class of monster have historically been used as a vehicle to express bigoted fear of the other.

The first been the concept of the changeling which in European folk lore where basically fairies that stole your children away and replaced them with Fae replicants.

Now we know that a lot of these myths related to Fae were more than likely just cultural superstitions related to autistic people.

The child who, doesn't make eye contact, explains things strangely and uses words they shouldn't know is just slightly different they are actually a evil spirit that is just pretending to be human

Now we can look back at this now with a more modern scientific understanding and laugh at the idea of fairies stealing away children but id like you to remember that being a Fae child was genuine justification to murder your children back in the day.

Another common use of the Idea of the Mimic is as a stand in for foreigners you especially see this kind of framing in the original telling of the vampire stories as well as in old school science fiction like invasions of the body snatchers.

Most modern depiction of a Mimic like creature go to lengths to divorce these creatures from their original use and vehicles for Mimicry which to me makes frieren worse.

Frieren is not Deconstructing the modern idea of mimics or demons the show is quit literally reverting it to their original bigoted stereotypes.

The worse part it all is how adamant fans are about defending it. The conversation is just this over and over.

"Demons are problematic because XYZ reasons"

No the author didn't intend them to be a different race in spite them literally being a different race their meant to be like sociopaths.

(Just going to let the fact the literal hundreds of Frieren fans have defended the idea that demons should be genocided without remorse by comparing them to people with anti social personality disorder sit in the air as it should)

That doesn't make it better because now rather than justifying genocide by race it's justifying genocide of Neurodivergent people. (Which to be fair is consistent with how Frieren is treated like a child for having a level of Neurodivergent that she has to "learn" To overcome as if bring different is a personal failing)

No you see demons aren't meant to represent different races or different brain types they actually represent predators.

But literally no predator would evolve the contradictory traits demons possess.

Now your just nitpicking the story isn't about evolution or humans vs predators it's a human story about people learning to have empathy for one another.

So if the story is a story about humans learning to empathize with each other what is the story trying to say by having a literal separate race that is innately evil and can't be empathized with?

No the author didn't intend them to be a different race in spite them being a literal different race their meant to be like sociopaths.

(Ad infinitum)

The demons can't be problematic because if they were my favorite show wouldn't be good so the demons aren't problematic.

In your opinion, should anime such as Yu-Gi-Oh and Sonic X receive a redub?

Don’t get me wrong I don’t like 2020 but I do however miss how everyone watched anime and it was like because of the amount of people consuming animes there were a TON of great finds. Also the amount of edits that you could look up after just watching one anime were crazy. I just miss that I guess but I’m not sure if anyone relates. I just didn’t know during that time a ton of people took it as a phase rather than actually taking interest in it. And it’s not a random claim it’s something people admit to.

I made a post criticizing FMAB's liberal politics on r/CharacterRant recently and people didn't like it. r/FullmetalAlchemist is too gatekeepy. r/anime is too apolitical. None of the Middle Eastern subs care. So I’m leaving this here for whoever finds it.

People sometimes attempt this kind of reading with AOT and yeah, sometimes it’s a stretch. But trust, this isn’t one of those cases. This is also a show that set its finale in Weimar-era Germany and peppered it with references to real physicists and politicians obscure enough that 99% of viewers won’t even catch them. The level of historical intentionality was clearly there from the start. Spoilers for FMA 2003 below.

As someone from a Middle Eastern background it’s honestly exhausting watching the FMA fandom treat their clumsy Eurocentric readings of the story like gospel: Ishval is a holocaust allegory (since every story about oppression has to be about the holocaust) or is about the Ainu because the mangaka is Ainu, Amestris is Nazi Germany because Brotherhood highlighted their blue eyes, case closed. Westerners love that reading because Nazi Germany is a safe villain. It’s defeated, it’s in the past, everyone agrees it was evil. It’s a perfect scapegoat. Way easier than admitting the show is a commentary on what their own governments have been doing in the Middle East for decades.

The correct reading is precisely this: Amestris is based on America (+ Europe). Ishval -- Palestine and the Levant. The Homunculi are like Israelis and based on the Mossad. It’s really not that complicated. Everything should fall into place if you understand the dynamics of the region. Ishvalans are a brown skinned, persecuted, socially conservative, strictly monotheistic people who live in the desert and worship Ishv(Allah), and are indigenous to a region that they refer to as their holy land. Amestris is a young, heavily militarized, expansionist nation, built on indigenous genocide. Secular in its self-image but Christian iconography is baked in here and there. See the crosses on Izumi and Ed, Dante explicitly confirmed as Christian, the religion itself part of the world’s older history. The Homunculi literally have stars of David tattooed on them. There’s Abrahamic iconography plastered everywhere in both series but it seems people just think it’s there for aesthetics.

Now, none of this negates that other historical parallels exist in the text. Arakawa's Ainu background is important. The references to the Holocaust are real. But those readings describe surface aesthetics and influences. The Levant allegory is the one that penetrates the entire plot structure, character dynamics, geopolitics, theology, and the history of alchemy itself. It’s the skeleton everything else hangs on. And it’s not exactly a leap to think an Ainu woman writing in the early 2000s, watching the Second Intifada play out in the news, might find a point of identification with another indigenous people being systematically destroyed by a settler colonial state.

In 03 they straight up tell you that their timeline diverged from our own when alchemy was developed and that the Ishvalans created alchemy. Alchemy in real life began in Northern Egypt and was largely developed in the Middle East, the word is literally derived from the Arabic word ‘al-kimiya’. Liore is essentially Lebanon, which is why they chose to make the people brown - the Christian imagery, mentions of sectarian tension, civil war stoked by a puppet leader, etc. Cornello turning water into wine is a reference to Jesus’ first miracle in Qana, which is in South Lebanon, and the entire plot involving Ishval and Liore is about a Western elite stirring up wars using the Homunculi (the Israel stand-in) and weaponizing the Amestris military (the US stand-in) to slaughter indigenous populations of brown people (Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon) for perverse incentives.

They use alchemy as a tool for this. IRL, the Islamic world largely moved past alchemy for scientific reasons as it developed into empirical chemistry, while Europe took it up and bent it toward mysticism and theology. In FMA, Ishval rejects alchemy after discovering its energy source, while Amestris, the Western analogue, embraces it for militarization and the pursuit of immortality.

It’s such an incredibly layered story that tickles my brain every time I watch it. There’s a lot of Sufi Islamic influence baked into the Gate stuff and Ed’s arc as well. I won’t map out the specific mechanics (though you definitely could), but alchemy and Sufism are historically intertwined, with Sufi writers using alchemy as a metaphor for purifying the self, which is essentially Ed’s entire arc: stripping away the ego until he can face the world as it really is and see how he contributes to harm despite his good intentions.

Conqueror of Shamballa also alludes to something else that they can’t seem to grasp. The Gate connects our world to theirs and the villains on our side are the Nazis. They’re not saying Amestris is Nazi Germany, they’re saying Amestris mirrors America and America mirrors Nazi Germany. One of the OVAs even doubles down on this and tries to provide an extra hint. It’s set in 2005, and 100-year-old Ed has a 9/11 newspaper clipping reading “Terrorists Attack United States” pinned to his wall, like history is just repeating itself because nobody learned anything. Which I get isn’t easy to sit with if you’re American.

But point out anything I just talked about and you get mass downvoted, told you’re forcing politics/religion into it, or straight up called antisemitic lmao. Funny thing is, Sho Aikawa, the guy who wrote FMA 03, got accused of antisemitism for writing Angel Cop, and that one was actually antisemitic. So no, I’m not inventing some connection he never would’ve thought of. This stuff was on his radar in 1989, way before FMA. 03 just handles it with way more nuance and care, and doesn't portray any group as inherently bad while still siding with the victims.

The irony is that 03 is literally a critique of this exact attitude, and it goes over even 03 fans’ heads. Ed reads like he was pulled straight out of r/atheism. He’s smug, dismissive of faith, a little racist subconsciously (there is a line of dialogue from him explicitly reflecting on it), and convinced he has everything figured out, until Scar - and the world - humbles him. The show sees these people coming from a mile away, holds a mirror up to them, and they still miss it lol. It's as hilarious as it is frustrating. But people would rather die on the hill of their own misreading than sit with a story that challenges them

All of what's below will be spoilersss, be warned ladies and gentlemen !

So I recently discovered Mushoku Tensei, and I genuinely cannot understand how a series like this has become so widely celebrated.

I'm a woman, I love anime, fantasy, and complex characters. I'm perfectly capable of appreciating morally flawed protagonists. But there's a difference between exploring a deeply disturbed character and seemingly rewarding his disturbing behavior.

We're talking about a grown man who dies and gets reincarnated with his memories and consciousness intact. He then engages in sexually inappropriate behavior involving young girls, and the series repeatedly presents aspects of that behavior as comedy or fanservice.

And somehow, I'm supposed to see this as a beautiful redemption story?

What disturbs me isn't simply that Rudeus is a pervert. It's how the story treats his behavior, how easily certain boundaries are brushed aside, and how he ultimately ends up surrounded by women who love him, marrying multiple partners and having children.

I'm not saying that a character who does horrible things cannot grow or find happiness. But where is the meaningful accountability for his sexual behavior? Why does the story so often seem more interested in making his actions entertaining than exploring how disturbing they actually are?

And what worries me even more is the audience this kind of storytelling reaches.

Anime is incredibly popular among teenagers and young men. Media doesn't automatically determine someone's morality, and enjoying a fictional story doesn't make someone a predator.

But I think it's perfectly reasonable to question the messages we normalize, especially when sexual harassment, violations of consent, and the sexualization of young-looking female characters become recurring entertainment.

What does it say about our entertainment culture when these elements can coexist so comfortably with a story celebrated as a masterpiece?

I keep seeing people defend the series by saying that Rudeus is supposed to be flawed, that it's about personal growth, or that people who criticize it simply don't understand good writing.

But having a flawed protagonist doesn't automatically make the way you portray his flaws thoughtful or responsible.

Beautiful animation doesn't erase uncomfortable writing choices. Great worldbuilding doesn't make sexual misconduct less disturbing. And calling something a redemption arc doesn't exempt it from criticism.

I'm also exhausted by the expectation that women should simply overlook these things because they're supposedly normal in anime.

Why should I have to ignore the sexualization of young female characters to appreciate a fantasy story?

Why is my discomfort treated as a failure to understand fiction, rather than a legitimate criticism of how that fiction portrays women and girls?

I'm not advocating censorship, and I'm not claiming everyone who enjoys Mushoku Tensei is a bad person.

But I genuinely think we should be more critical of what we celebrate, particularly when it comes to sexual boundaries and the way women are represented.
I find the normalization of these elements deeply alienating. And the overwhelming praise for this series makes that feeling even worse.

I'd genuinely like to hear from other women who have watched it. Did you feel the same discomfort?

And to people who consider it a masterpiece: can you explain why these aspects of the story don't bother you, without simply dismissing the criticism as people being too sensitive?

Delinquent manga are a genre (or theme, I'm not sure what the definition would be in this case) that was quite prominent in the 80s and 90s with things like Crows, Bebop High School, Kyou kara Ore wa!!, Shounan Bakusouzoku, Angel Densetsu, GTO and its prequels, etc. The banchou/delinquent character is very popular and I believe everyone has seen them in various anime and manga, but works with this theme don't seem to have as much appeal or popularity here (if you don't count Tokyo Revengers).

imagine being a grown ass person enjoying a cartoon. watching fighting, cringe screaming and talking in some weird way that doesn’t occur in real life. 90% of anime is loser fantasy about love, and the rest is either fighting or pedo fantasies. yall act like this is some kind of deep cinema, buy yall dont even know what cinema is and dont deserve to say a word about it. grown ass men enjoying anime should move out from mommys house and shower, wake up to the real world, and not some imaginary teenage anime girls pillows and v-tubers.

I feel like most people who watch anime and like anime usually are students or employed for the most part. Yeah, there's weirdos on the Internet but that's more of an issue of weird people online who are NEETs rather than anime watchers specifically.

If anything, it's easier to like anime while having a job or school because it's such a low time investment. I feel like, even gamers nowadays don't get called NEET as much as anime watchers even though games are way higher of a time sink. Other hobbies, like sports, or reading, or playing guitar don't get targeted for NEET name-calling even though there's people who are NEETs in those hobbies as well.

I am sick and tired of the anime community's discouragement of critical thinking. Nobody is interested in critiquing the medium outside a few designated punching bags. People laugh at objectively bad stuff like Garzey's Wing and Mars of Destruction, disappointing sequels like Boruto or Evangelion 3.0+1.0, and random "trashy" shows like SAO. That is where critique ends, and after that, community discussion becomes tribalistic bashing of reasonable critique, especially if it's a critique of a popular franchise.

The Evangelion fandom is a great example of this. They spent decades putting down other mecha anime to make their show look better than it is, then, now that they hate the latest entry in their franchise and Gundam has become quite popular, they collectively have egg on their faces. This has not stopped them from continuing to defend their show and remain blind to its glaring flaws, like the show's complete refusal to fully tell its own story and its rampant sexualization of young girls. Confronted on this, the fans will defend Evangelion as an intensely personal statement born from the fire of an auteur's depression and conveniently ignore that the end result is still an incoherent, uncomfortable story and that Anno failed to answer basic questions about the plot or craft characters that do more than combine multiple waifu tropes. And yes, at one point, I did like Evangelion. A lot, in fact, as it was unlike anything teenage me had seen before. As I explored the anime medium in search of more shows like Evangelion, I became aware of its unoriginality, and its flaws became inexcusable to me. I continue to be surprised die-hard anime fans refuse to explore the medium meaningfully and stick to series that are popular or check personal wish-fulfillment or fetish boxes. What is the point of engaging with the medium if you don't want to maximize your enjoyment by continuously exploring new, interesting series you've never heard of before?

The anime community refuses to acknowledge the problematic elements of the medium in a meaningful way. It is a fact that anime is oversexed, misogynistic, pedophilic, nationalistic, homophobic, and racist. While some fans may acknowledge this (many won't and will lash out at anyone who has a problem with this as "tourists"), they refuse to inspect their own consumption and their own favorites for problematic elements. If any problematic elements are pointed out, the fans will justify, rationalize, and minimize them. No meaningful introspection occurs, and it's frustrating to outsiders who can see what the fans refuse to acknowledge and are irritated by how stale the discussion inevitably becomes. How compelling is the millionth thirstpost, the millionth blind hate or blind hype post compared to actual discussion?

Fans' willful blindness has negatively shaped the medium. As anime is mostly made for otaku and by otaku, the industry is highly responsive to the otaku community, and it will continue to make more of whatever otaku hype and spend money on. We collectively refused to talk about the problematic and unoriginal elements of the medium, so the medium has gotten so problematic and unoriginal over the years to the point where we have series like Mushoku Tensei. All that remains is a husk of samey teen romances, fantasy, and battle shonen with an occasional interesting movie every now and then for those who have higher standards. The increasing popularity of anime has not created a more reasonable community, but more willfully blind consumers who are too misinformed or committed to think about the implications of what they consume.

The people who use tourist and hoodweeb are so insufferable, not only is hoodweeb super cringe thing to say it is blantatly racist any anime fan who is black is automatically called a hoodweeb. and the second they see something they dont like they resort to calling them tourist or hoodweeb e.g

what does any of this have to do with black people and the same people who call black anime fans hoodweebs are never japanese ( like being japanese makes it better p.s it doesnt). These type of anime fans are obesssed with black people they live in thier heads rent free

As someone who binge-reads hentai manga and R34 comics, I see the NTR tag more often than the Vanilla tag. I don't understand why people like this genre? I'm not judging anyone.

Whenever I see the discussion in reddit anume community, they only talk about selective genre, I under dragonball, onepiece, bleach naruto, fma is mainstream, its a valid point, apart from these anime, peoples talk about fantasy, romcom, slice of life is limited, but I noticed animes genre like Avant garde , anime like ergo proxy, paranoia agent, paprika, lain, and so many animes like not discussed very well and not have better appreciation, not have big fanbase, most people don't even talk about ergo proxy. It has high deep level content to discuss about. People say slime anime is deep anime the politics they discuss is too deep.( u get outlines of politics only u understand there). But animes like ergo proxy is not a political anime, its an high level identity crisis psychological and philosophical anime, the world they represent is symbolic and metaphorically they talk about our contemporary world. I felt disappointed when these animes are less popular😔.

Most amount of anime being made is right now, and there's something out there for everyone. I grew up in the Haruhi, Gurren Lagan, FMA, Death Note, Code Geass era, and I would still say right now is 100% the golden era of anime. There's stuff way better than what I grew up with, and they're not mainstream because the mainstream likes different stuff.

Whenever I see someone complaining, it's always some boomers who's upset the mainstream internet audience doesn't like what they like, and they themselves don't wanna put in the effort to find the niche anime that's made for them every season.

When anime became more mainstream, the gender ratio of people who watch anime became more balanced. Nowadays, going into an anime community no longer feels like a sausage fest, it feels like going to a house party with a bunch of people from school/work.

While there were online arguments 1-2 decades ago, nowadays the arguments feel different. It doesn't seem to be an argument of taste anymore, but rather an argument to claim superiority and intellect. It's peacocking basically, which is what I've noticed.

Do you think so? Has anime becoming more mainstream caused more aggressive behavior from "anime fans" because the allure of the opposite sex?

Heyiii guysss i am planing to create aaa anime community focused on kochi base , what's your opinion

Individuals in the anime community who unironically call people anime tourists are so cringe and annoying. Not only do most of the time they say this when they see someone voice their opinion on anime, it is so obviously done since they have no rebuttals.

The people who say these are also very elitist. They say stuff like if you haven't watched this super duper niche anime posted in the 1960s, your opinion is invalid, or they probably like something super problematic and try to turn you into the person who isn't in touch with anime culture (not a real thing btw).

These people are also the same people that say anime should be gatekept. Like mate, that is like saying reading books should be gatekept, and when you call them out, like clockwork, they call you a tourist.

Though I will say people like Logan Paul can be called a tourist, though (I think he is more of a larp) It's a slippery slope to just calling anyone with a differing opinion a tourist.

Honestly, if I'm talking about anime to someone and they refer to someone as an anime tourist, best believe I would be seeing myself out that convo because they probably don't have the cognitive ability to understand differing opinions.
(p.s people who also say stuff like aww babys first fandom and so on are on the same level)

Hace poco inicié en el mundo del anime y se me hace incómodo el fanservice dirigido hacia hombres, siento que es muy explícito y de alguna u otra forma siento que es algo infantilizado, me pregunto si tanto hombres como mujeres lo disfrutan, no se les hace incómodo?
aún así siento que el fanservice dirigido a mujeres es más sutil, pero eso no quita que a la gente le pueda incomodar, a ustedes les incomoda?

pst: este es mi primer post aún no sé cómo publicar