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this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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I like the show and I don't think the demons are problematic
I think people are huge nerds for going "this is a fascism" out of someone making a literal demon actually evil in a setting with dragons, elves and demons and shit
I also keep thinking about how, yeah, chainsawman has better politics overall (death to america), but is it really so much better to have a depiction of a species that's 99.999% evil instead of 100% evil? not really, but I've never heard anybody ever saw Chainsawman is doing a fascism by having inherently evil devils doing evil devil shit
it's very tiring
I think it makes sense that "demons are inherently evil" becomes a loaded idea when you look at who tends to wield the "demon" accusation against whom. A hegemonic Christianity overwhelmingly accuses marginalized groups such as LGBT people, neurodiverse people, feminists, members of minority religions, and communists of being demons or possessed by demons or aligned with demons. That creates a basis for even something as seemingly tautological as "demons are always evil" to be read as right wing-coded.
Yeah, guilty
The demons are fascists
The only good fascist is a dead fascist
How does that in any way address the comment it's replying to?
Including the children of fascists who we must slaughter as well.
Chainsaw Man and JJK are examples of what the writer of Frieren was trying to subvert. i.e. they have demons that are trying to change or it shows change is possible. Frieren wanted to play against the trend by going "Nope! Our demons are just classically evil."
Unfortunately the writer didn't think about the implications or why other stories were trying to move away from the trope to begin with. I don't think they actively sat down and were all "Hehehehehe I'm gonna do a racism!" or are even racist to begin with. They just unintentionally created something racist because they live in a racist world with racist history that's impossible to ignore.
The story would be fine if racism wasn't real, but that's not the world we live in.
Oh so you think making them 99.9999% evil instead of 100.00% evil is a meaningful story distinction huh i see lesson learned you can avoid nerd criticism for having your literally evil evils be evil as long as there's 1 or two of "the good ones," racism defeated
I already find "race essentialism in fantasy media is a 1:1 with real life racism" to be tedious nerd shit when people are talking about orcs and goblins and shit but it's even more tedious when we're talking about devils and demons and things which are conceptually linked with evil and the moment they're not they stop being 'demons' or 'devils'
That's nice, I find fantasies of being able to righteously commit genocide tedious.
Is communism evil?
[CW: Homophobia] Is homosexuality evil?
[CW: Misogyny] Is feminism evil?
It seems to me that a lot of demonic things are, in fact, objectively cool and good
Chainsaw man doesnt do a fascism because the framing of 99.99% evil is not true to the story at all. The premise is that devils are formed from human fears so things like a "coffee devil" wouldn't be as strong as a "spider" one.
The main cast of part 1 includes devil/devil adjacent characters and the main character also has a devil companion within him who saves his life after being treated kindly and with love by the protagonist as a child.
part 1 chainsaw man spoilers
The underlying conflict of part 1 is not that devils will wipe out humanity so we have to genocide them because it's revealed that devils reincarnate even after being killed. You can't kill them you have to either change society to not fear them or use devils like the chainsaw devil to completely eliminate them and the concept they represent from existence. The show asks you to question the devil hunting squads and whether what they're doing is actually helping society or just perpetuating the same trauma that gives rise to more powerful and out of control devils.The main antagonist of part 1 is makima who is the control devil shaped by Japanese ruling class' desire for militarization and complete submission of its society. She is the one that manipulates denji into working for her so she can use the chainsaw devil power to completely eliminate other devils. Its also revealed that the most powerful nations in the world are also keeping gun devil parts for themselves which act as a stand in for nuclear weapons, driving up fear of the gun devil to increase its power. Also from that note, the devils in CSM disobey any sort of human metaphysical logic. They don't follow the "rules of nature" at all (unlike the demons in frieren who share the mana system). Devils can go from being a giant tomato to bending the fabric of reality itself.
The driving conflict of CSM is from its distinctly human characters and human society. There is no "demon army" or demon race whose only deserving response is to be killed and exterminated like pests lest you make the mistake of emapthy.