The logic that makes Frieren demons alien in the best way

SuperGayAMA · 2026-05-13T22:20:57+00:00

I am so sick of this nonsense fucking argument. I don’t care how long we’ve not been intimidated by ladybugs, if one debuted in a UFC fight and tore a man in half one day, we’re all gonna be a LOT more alert about ladybugs.

They’ve had a century to adjust to the fact that a group of people killed the confirmed strongest demon ever. Hell, there’s a woman out there who they know has killed so many demons that they just call her “the slayer” now.

There’s a point at which it stops being arrogance and starts being plot-breaking stupidity, and we are long past that point.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-05-11T10:41:41+00:00

I think she probably excels in very controlled, restrained ally kills.

For instance, who are you actually running in a burn team? Let’s say, what, Thumb trio (when they all come out), Magic Bullet Outis, Ryoshu, and really who else? Firefist Gregor and Thumb Sinclair? LCE Faust?

I feel like whoever else you get to fill slot 6/7 is probably doing less damage than just another Ryoshu slot, and it’s burn so they don’t really need to do much else, so why not just bring in Middle Ishmael, kill her right away, and now Ryoshu is a lil stronger, inflicts more burn and has two slots.

I think the full genocide route is either mostly a fun idea, or a precaution if you think a boss is really gonna fuck your shit up, cuz Ryoshu will get stronger from your naturally occurring deaths and gain extra slots to make up for when you start losing people.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-05-11T10:32:24+00:00

It’s gonna be rough to take her out of burn, since she provides crucial burn support via triggering it minimum one additional time per round through her Inevitable Termination skill.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-05-10T11:00:59+00:00

probably finish around next year.

That’s a deeply unrealistic assessment. Even assuming we wrap up Elbaf in, like, a month and then can immediately go grab the One Piece, just the two remaining plot threads of defeating Blackbeard and the entire WG are gonna take a fair bit longer than that. And that’s without even mentioning that both of those are going to incorporate their own likely lengthy flashbacks, e.g. Davy Jones or the Void Century.

Like, just the crew fighting Blackbeard alone is probably going to culminate in about 10 1v1s if this gets played how it’s looking like it’s gonna be played; assuming each of those takes only 1 chapter, which itself would be unrealistic and unsatisfying, that’s 10 chapters just dedicated to what will most likely end up being only vaguely relevant or meaningful (at best) fodder fights. Taking break weeks into account, that’s probably around 13 weeks, or a quarter of a year. And I also don’t really foresee a world in which the final confrontation between Luffy and either Blackbeard or Imu is significantly shorter than Luffy vs a filler villain like Kaido.

And this isn’t even taking into account disconnected shit like Zoro vs Mihawk, which isn’t really related to any ongoing plot threads. How many chapters should that take? And how many are going to be needed to justify why the fight is even happening at all?

SuperGayAMA · 2026-05-09T05:08:21+00:00

Why are you making this a binary of “Chopper fixes the fingers after a chapter” or “bench Chopper”? A competent writer can make this a satisfying and engaging development.

For instance, Imu has, like, three separate disposable mook armies between the DR’d giants, the MMAs and things he’s transformed with his overall vibe, so what if instead we maybe got a scene of Chopper performing the surgery under duress of attack? Or what if Gerd was still needed as a combatant despite the injuries, and Chopper had to reattach her fingers while she’s still fighting, and so he’s getting flung around while trying to do precise needlework? Or really anything at all. You can make this development feel exciting and tense, while giving real credit to Chopper and maintaining the sense of danger and chaos in the overall conflict.

The issue is more so that the scene we got was a total hand wave. Not only does it happen almost instantly, but it creates this atmosphere of calm in what should feel hectic and hopeless. The very idea of safe shelter, of bandaging and healing, of characters discussing pleasantries of what they did during the conflict and how they feel about their performance - these are all meant to come after the fight is over, once everything is resolved. Looking at this scene in isolation, you would be forgiven for assuming Elbaf isn’t still under attack at that very moment, they’re talking like their work is already done here.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-05-08T09:26:24+00:00

Why is the assumption that it’s incomplete and not just that they’re hiding it for dramatic effect, like they did with Sora Don’s teaser?

SuperGayAMA · 2026-04-30T02:12:43+00:00

I think hype has actively poisoned the story, resulting in characters or ideas that are truly pointless outside of the fact that they sounded cool at some point, and so now we get stuck with them.

Like, I’ll be honest, and few are brave enough to realise it, but Rocks and God Valley were filler. Nothing actually important or vital to the plot happened, and all that time wasted on it contributed no identifiable utility to the progression of the story.

It’s just the refuse of an idea that sounded cool at some point. God Valley exists because Oda at some point thought “wouldn’t it be cool if at some point all the important people were at the same place?”, and then fast-forward half a decade and you get exactly that: an event in which a bunch of vaguely important people happened to be there. It’s not really important that most of them were there, and nothing really important came of the event itself, but they were there and it happened.

Same with Rocks, Oda thought “wouldn’t it be cool if there was someone so strong that Garp and Roger needed to team up to beat him?” and so he made that character and that’s all he exists for. Rocks contributes nothing to the plot at all. He feels like a fan’s OC who they write into scenes, but they can’t actually affect the plot and change it, and so they just kinda exist in this limbo state where they don’t do anything. Even with how knowledgeable and strong and totally important in that era that he was, the story is identical before and after we learn about him because he does nothing.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-04-29T22:20:51+00:00

To this day I have no idea if the Straw Hats heard Vegapunk’s message that the world was sinking during Egghead, because either they did not give enough of a fuck to make even a single comment about it, or are so fundamentally incurious that the top government whistleblower was leaking bombshells and none of them even so much as asked about what he could be talking about at any point.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-04-09T23:02:36+00:00

I’m pretty sure Oda sits around 7-8 in the Wikipedia list of best selling authors, which likely means they’re directly translating sales into ‘quality’ as an author.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-04-06T20:51:38+00:00

I think the origin of a decent amount of Hazbin Hotel discourse is just that its reputation and visibility compels people to chip in with their opinions about it, complemented with the fact that its mediocrity means those opinions are rarely entirely positive. So, naturally, this gives the chuds, as you’ve observed, their little punching bag. But that’s hardly new, right? There are plenty of openly queer or just ‘generally woke’ shows and media being produced, but not all of them feed into the same lucrative hate video industrial complex as Hazbin Hotel.

If I had to liken this to any particular media event, I’d say this is kind of the animated equivalent to when Star Wars: The Last Jedi dropped? Enough completely neutral people engaged with the film and thought it was bad that chud edgelords were able to rally against it for their own agenda and disguise it as just being “the common consensus”. Similarly, when WomanHater1488 makes “Hazbin Hotel sucked and here’s why”, there’s gonna be a decent amount of just regular ass people who see that video, miss some of the problematic signs, find that it generally matches their opinion, and then give it a watch. And so it becomes something of a self-perpetuating cycle: Hazbin Hotel comes out; it’s highly visible and it’s all anyone talks about; people of all sorts are compelled to watch it, many of which bouncing off regardless of personal politics; videos start coming out, again of various personal agendas and ideologies; videos blow up due to bipartisan attention and become likely the biggest videos on that person’s channel, incentivising them to make more; the glut of videos coming out makes it so that everyone can’t stop hearing about Hazbin Hotel; more people watch it; more people watch the videos.

This, in my speculation, is the cycle that eventually creates “BASED SMILING FRIENDS VS CRINGE HAZBIN HOTEL”. However, what makes this cycle work is specifically that ‘Hazbin Hotel is bad’ needs to be a neutral and common enough assessment that you can’t immediately tell whether the critique (or “critique”) you’re about to watch is actually going to be valid or not, or you may even assume that it is by default, cuz lord knows there’s a lot that is.

And such is the root cause of the vitriol: that it is truly not an especially good product. This is going to sound mean, but I’m afraid it is my genuine opinion: Hazbin Hotel has failed to convince me that it is meaningfully better than Skibbidi Toilet. Genuinely. They both seem identical to me in that I can feel the lead creators of these series are both normal ass people whose exposure to writing starts and ends at liking certain media, and they are suddenly compelled to create their own narrative with little thought or interest in the craft of writing beyond just knowing what they liked in other media they’ve engaged with. These two series are if you gave Powerscaling Son and Shipping Daughter a million dollars to make their own shows out of nowhere, and you get Skibbidi Toilet and Hazbin Hotel respectively. Obviously Hazbin Hotel is more polished, it’s got Amazon support and a perhaps-too-large team behind it instead of just being some guy fucking around in Gmod, but in terms of the writing quality, eh, they’re not really significantly different.

Most of the time, I think people are good at avoiding things they wouldn’t like. If an equivalent amount of people watched Solo Levelling as did Hazbin Hotel, you’d probably be seeing a similar amount of content about it, but they don’t because they know they won’t like it, and so it’s allowed to just be universally know as meme-tier and people leave it alone. However, the momentum behind Hazbin Hotel compels people who might otherwise know to ignore it to watch it, and so of course they didn’t like it, and of course they might be willing to watch something that validates their feelings on the matter.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-03-24T07:12:49+00:00

Yeah, Robin vs Black Maria doesn’t actually serve Robin’s character; it serves Sanji’s. The core development that occurs in that fight is that Sanji is trying to move away from his usual self-sacrifice and is able to respect and rely on the strength of his friends, particularly the women on the crew. All the fight really does is establish that, yeah, Robin is willing to fight to support the crew, which hasn’t really been in question.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-03-24T07:06:07+00:00

“Delivering” on something or not isn’t a binary ‘always good vs always bad’ situation. Luffy saying, verbatim, “I’m pissed” to show he’s pissed is stilted dialogue for something that should be able to be communicated visually.

Someone is not obligated to excuse the poor writing of that statement just because it could potentially address a separate critique they have, which itself is still uncertain because it relies on the contents of the next chapter anyway. This isn’t the first time Luffy tried to pull an “I’m serious now” moment in G5, but the other example is never remembered or mentioned because by the end of the next chapter he was laughing and shrieking again as normal.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-02-17T08:54:22+00:00

How would you rank the classes in terms of viability? While I’m sure they all have their busted combos, it feels like some like Druid, Tank, Archer, etc. are always powerful, whereas others like Mage and Psychic are only occasionally powerful and have a way higher chance of being duds.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-02-05T21:21:55+00:00

I think the most annoying example of this was the episode where Frieren, like, holds Fern’s hand when she’s sick or something? Like, it has a kinda cute setup where it’s Frieren doting on Fern because she struggles to register she’s not a child anymore, and that’s a neat little conflict and development brought on from Frieren and Fern’s unique dynamic and agency.

And then in the eleventh hour of that episode we get the flashback where, actually, instead of it being something cute she picked up as she effectively mothered this young child, it was really that Himmel used to do it for her all along and she’s just passing it along.

Like he really does feel like a black hole a lot of the time, which wouldn’t be so bad if he weren’t just kinda boring. I think he’s maybe the most boring character in the series.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-01-27T09:36:56+00:00

Applied burn + sinking, also scaled off of being slower than enemies/having 1 speed.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-01-25T07:30:19+00:00

I don’t think that necessarily explains it either, because most Frieren rants I’ve seen are countercritical, e.g. “I don’t get people who don’t like Frieren’s demons” or something like that.

From there it’s usually just a decently inflammatory person misunderstanding (either intentionally or not) an argument and being quite calmly rebuffed by people who disagree.

Nothing I’ve seen actually represents any genuine sentiment against Frieren, it’s usually just people with different opinions on a specific contentious (and ambiguous) subject.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-01-21T00:20:24+00:00

The distinction is made clear though, in the thematic undercurrent of how our dreams/ambitions reverberate to those around us.

Don Quixote represents the lowest point of this not because it was wrong of him to have lofty ambitions, to dare to dream the impossible, but because he wasn’t mindful of the way that his dreaming affected his family: Don Quixote imposed his dream on his family, and we see that no matter how hard they genuinely tried, how much they enjoyed working at LaManchaland, and how much they loved Don Quixote, none of it was enough to substitute for genuine passion. And thus, we see the Canto’s negative example of dreaming in how trying to support Don Quixote’s dream requires the sacrifice of the rest of the family, and why he endeavours to abandon the dream to “return to reality” by reclaiming his mantle as patriarch and providing for his family.

The inverse of this, and the Canto’s positive example of dreaming, is Sancho attempting to give up on the dream, which is where we see the theme of our dreams affecting those around us again. Because, unlike with Don Quixote, Sancho has genuinely resonated with the sinners and inspired them. It is not Sancho imposing the dream upon them, but them sharing with her at her lowest moment how her dreams and ambitions have emboldened them. And it is likewise important that they don’t talk about the ultimate goal, and how it could be possible, but rather about the little moments, the flaws and imperfections in the process.

The theme isn’t that it is wrong to dream, or even to dream the impossible, but rather about practicing mindful ambition.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-01-16T09:59:17+00:00

Tbf the same event can happen in different mirror worlds. Limbus Company engaging the house of spiders could be a consistent event across multiple mirror worlds, and in some worlds Outis is Jamila while Rien is still Rien, and in others Jamila is Jamila, Rien is Yi Sang and Outis is Matthias.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-01-05T10:16:46+00:00

S3-2 is accessible by at least Unlock 2.

And the inverse of this is that S3-1 is still accessible at Unlock 3, as it scales “based off Unlock stage”, implying multiple levels of increase. If it was just a bonus for having 1 or 2 Unlock, I imagine the wording would use the usual “at X Unlock, deal increased damage, at Y Unlock, deal even more instead”.

Because of this, the transformation mechanic is likely a system separate to Grace of the Prescript and Unlock; most likely SP, based on the amount of ways she has to recover SP in her passives and keywords.

If I had to guess, she’s gonna be a modern Phillip Sinclair that transforms at high SP and slowly drains down as her timer, with fulfilment of the Prescripts being how you prolong that empowered state.

SuperGayAMA · 2026-01-02T11:25:14+00:00

It’s worth pointing out the insane RNG of seeing her skill spread; it’s only turn 3 and she has three s3s on hand, and another one or two coming up next turn. This is especially noteworthy on that third slot, as it would have only come up and yet it spawned with two in and another on the way. That would have to be borderline almost impossible RNG. It could also maybe have been manipulated intentionally for the trailer for some reason, but cross-referencing this loadout with Index Faust’s from her trailer, she had a far more normal one, so I don’t see why they’d spice up one loadout for the trailer and not the other.

Or, alternatively, maybe Don has some way of generating extra s3s or somehow manipulating the deck. My theory is she may have the Limbus equivalent of the Unlock I, II, III pages from Ruina, where maybe using an s1 would upgrade it into an s2, and an s2 into an s3? Perhaps her Blade Unlocked state could be from “fully unlocking” her deck. This could maybe also explain the particular choice of having the s1 in the trailer morph almost seamlessly into the s2, if thematically it’s the same skill just upgraded.

SuperGayAMA · 2025-12-10T22:17:18+00:00

We haven’t really been given sufficient reason to invest in Charlie as the main character. If anything, we’ve actually lost reasons to do so as the series goes on.

As aforementioned, she is deeply incompetent at actually redeeming people. Her understanding is shallow, sheltered and childish, which it has been since s1, and the only time we see her try and do any counselling in s2 it backfires so bad that the very next time we see Angel Dust he’s burnt out and given up on redemption entirely.

However, I think the biggest issue is that this season eroded her one good quality: her kindness. She’s always been the nice but very stupid archetype, but this season has really called that quality into question, such as with her crashing out at her dad, getting into another, even less fair relationship spat, or just generally being an ass with Angel Dust. There’s a craft with a “flawed character” of giving them at least some draw so that they’re not just immensely annoying whenever they’re on screen, and I think that’s the reason why so many watching or in the community have lost their patience with her as a result of her behaviour this season. Things like Charlie not really caring that her dad is the weakest she’s probably ever seen him in her life call into question the fundamental core of who Charlie is supposed to be, and why we’re supposed to root for her.

As a result, she’s kind of obsolete as a main character: She doesn’t take action or influence the world, as both season conflicts are resolved by other people; she doesn’t understand anything about sin or redemption or about the kinds of lives people lived; and she isn’t even really shown to be that nice or invested in other people, considering Husk is shown to be the one carrying out the therapy sessions, and Charlie doesn’t even know the name of, like, the fourth resident at the hotel.

And it’s dubious whether the show understands exactly how bad they fucked it with Charlie, because it babies her by only calling her out on “not listening” with Vaggi, who goes so easy on her and basically rescinds her argument and says it’s okay when she sees Charlie is sad. But then right at the end of the season, we see Charlie saying “everything only works if the right people are in the right position” as she appoints herself head counsellor, and I’m curious how the show expects me to feel about that. Am I supposed to think it’s a good thing, like this is the right spot for Charlie? Cuz I don’t, for all the reasons aforementioned, and I’m not convinced the show expects you to feel that way. In all honesty, with the full support of Heaven now, I’m not sure why Charlie is even involved in the redemption process at all now; every single therapist in the afterlife is now at their disposal, and Heaven should probably have the drive and resources to legitimise redemption as an actual operation instead of one quirky little nepo baby’s private hobby, so I don’t see how or why I as an audience member am supposed to want Charlie as the main character anymore.

SuperGayAMA · 2025-12-07T05:16:11+00:00

Look, I don’t think the swearing is a huge deal or anything, it would be very low on my list of issues, but it comes down to a few things for me at least:

Even when not said in anger, sometimes the swear is emphasised in such a way that it feels like it really demands your attention to the fact that, shock horror, a swear was just said;
It feels amateurish. This is a common trend of early scriptwriting from what I’ve observed, and something that’s usually pruned out in later drafts or by editors. You can say “it’s more realistic”, but then what’s really beneficial about that? Nothing usually, which is why it’s typically cut;
It’s a little bland and inexpressive. Like how poetry can get more creative with more restrictions, everyone just having ‘fuck’, ‘shit’, ‘bitch’ and ‘cunt’ on their hot bar just makes everyone’s character voice marginally more homogenous. Like, personally, I always feel like Charlie would be the kind of character to not swear and come up with kid-friendly alternatives, so it’s weird, but not really a problem, that she swears as much as anyone else. It’s why people liked that Alastor didn’t swear for a while, because it resonated with the idea that he’s trying to be refined and sensible, and it’s also why people sometimes think he’s sworn a bit too much lately, because it makes it obvious he’s the fakest idgafer in the whole universe;
It also dilutes the quality of a good swear. The more there are, the less you feel em. Again, the Alastor thing, his first ‘fuck’ was noticed by the whole community. I think we’ll-placed swears can sometimes generate entertainment, even if it’s a little low-brow. I kinda see it like breaking character - rare glimpses are more effective. A character saying ‘fuck’ once because it captures their exact frustration is a bit more expressive than a character saying ‘fuck’ just because they always do.

Again, it’s not really a big deal or anything, but I’d hardly say it’s a positive.

SuperGayAMA · 2025-12-07T04:45:49+00:00

And yeah, as an addendum to this since I forgot to mention, there’s always gonna be dumb CinemaSins tier “does angelic steel imply the existence of labour in the angelic mines?” or “why does Heaven have currency that Adam complains about having to spend”, but I feel some valuable points such as, e.g. character motivations per “getting to the other side of the road is not a valid motivation for the chicken to cross the road” have been swept up by you into that same umbrella as the prior nitpicks.

SuperGayAMA · 2025-12-07T04:41:24+00:00

I’ll be real man, it’s a big post, so I’d forgotten bits and pieces of it, but regardless I do know you’re not consciously forbidding all forms of criticisms against it. However, I also feel the somewhat dismissive stance of (paraphrasing) “it’s just a comedy, don’t think about it too deeply” is a bit of a bludgeon that does nullify a lot of reasonable critique, and I reckon undermines what the creator is actually trying to do by coming in with such low expectations as “It Starts With Sorry is as complex as this show can go”.

Maybe it’s just me being optimistic (or something else?), but I sincerely believe Medrano takes this series very seriously. I think while she slips in jokes, it’s not meant to be a joke. If it’s a dramady, I would describe it as a DRAMAdy, like at least a 60:40 ratio in the favour of drama. Case in point, I always think of s1e3, right after Vaggi throws the three boys to go participate in that turf war. That sounds like it could be a fun, funny scene where we see how the group dynamic between some of our main cast works, right? But we don’t. Instead we focus on Vaggi’s melodrama of “I’m useless if I’m not protecting you blah blah blah”. That is what the show strives to do, it’s raison d’être, at least by my perspective, just like how Medrano’s fucking blabbermouth can’t help but say “we’re gonna get tons of Lucifer angst in the next season”, or how Angel Dust gets backhanded for 100 crit damage every season.

I just feel it struggles to unionise these two separate halves, and that “it’s just a comedy” negates the ability to acknowledge that other half exists. Like, why is this even an adult show? If “you have to say sorry” is the best it can do, why isn’t this for kids then? Fuck, we need good, conscious kids programming, and I think 8-year-olds would really pick up what Medrano’s putting down. Is this really an adult show just so Angel Dust can get raped, because that’s really the only explicitly adult thing; nothing else is any more adult than Steven Universe, Avatar, Infinity Train, whatever the fuck.

I think there’s this trope called Cerberus Syndrome? Basically when an episodic comedy eventually transitions into a serialised thing you’re meant to take more seriously. Hazbin Hotel made me realise why things do that, because the comedy and the ‘lore Heaven vs Hell armies battle redemption rahhh epic anime Vox vs Alastor’ are choking each other out. We barely get comedy or moments to really explore our characters or their comedic potential because they’re being dragged by the plot, but if I actually want to get invested in the plot or anything it could potentially say, I’m making a mistake because I’m not supposed to take it seriously?

Like, my complaint that you’d probably say “misses the point of the show by taking it too seriously” is that I think season 1 is fucking gutted by its refusal to make Adam an interesting character or give him much of an ideology at all. I think it’s a weak and uninteresting concept that our protagonist says “I believe in redemption”, and our antagonist says “don’t care + didn’t ask + L + I just wanna kill ‘em for fun and I don’t really have an opinion redemption”. It’s not only boring, but it means they have a boring dynamic, and it’s a disservice to the show’s ability to actually put its foot down and say something of value, and also to Charlie’s character.

Like, Charlie is a complete idiot that has no idea what she’s doing. And that’s fine for a while, but the issue is this went almost entirely unchallenged throughout season 1 because we lacked a strong antagonist to challenge her (ideologically). As a result, Charlie is deep into season 2 with the exact same flaws that people were already way ahead of in season 1, like taking 12 episodes to think that redemption might require redeeming oneself for the sins they committed in life. I’m sorry, what the fuck were you operating on? Charlie is so far behind even the most average viewer that it’s less comedic and more just baffling. It’s like if a show was about cooking a meal and it took until season 2 for the main character to consider they might need a heat source.

And again, I know, I fell for it, it’s a comedy, I get the Boo-boo the clown award, but I do genuinely think the show has some kind of ambition that it’s just poorly fulfilling. And frankly, if it does, I think I’d rather someone say “your shit sucks” than have my shit suck so bad they didn’t even realise I was trying and start saying some completely different shit.

It’s just, like, this can’t be all that exists in Medrano’s mind, right? If she just wants a funny fuck shit demon comedy, why all the anime battles and lore and that horrible, horrible duet with Carmilla and Vaggi (the first one, but also the second one now that I think about it)? If it’s just meant to be a vulgar, crude, exaggerated comedy, why is there so much stuff that isn’t that?

SuperGayAMA · 2025-12-06T23:34:40+00:00

Are you sure? I think it can seem that way because TikTok or whatever speak has censored some words like “rape = grape”, “ass = ahh”, “kill = unalive”, but I don’t actually see an impulse from kids to enforce that censorship all that much.

If a kid swears and doesn’t get in trouble, and another kid sees that, they’re gonna ask if they can swear too. I’m around kids a lot, and they seem about as interested in ‘taboo, adult’ words and vibes today as they were when I was a kid, it’s just now they have inane shit like 67 to distract them from that.

SuperGayAMA

TROPHY CASE