I read the manga and I have to say, I'm insulted by how casually the demons are dismissed. I understand it's basically a crash course in European history, but the demons are basically a big fat nothing used only to scare and control people. They aren't legitimate characters, let alone adversaries. I mean, come on, a maid is their lead general. S'pathetic.
Steak said: I read the manga and I have to say, I'm insulted by how casually the demons are dismissed. I understand it's basically a crash course in European history, but the demons are basically a big fat nothing used only to scare and control people. They aren't legitimate characters, let alone adversaries. I mean, come on, a maid is their lead general. S'pathetic.
This is also anime, where all the worlds dictators were rendered as little girls. A maid as the lead general for the forces of damnation seems par for the course.
Anelaid said: This is also anime, where all the worlds dictators were rendered as little girls. A maid as the lead general for the forces of damnation seems par for the course.
Also, as their narrative role is very, very loosely equivalent to the Muslim world, being fairly accurate to and impressive with them would would by necessity either waste vast amounts of time or become half (or more) the manga (for instance, the relations between the Caliphates and Persia, or the Mamluk system).
You want to focus on not-medieval-europe, you gotta paint not-medieval-Middle East with a much broader stroke (to the point of only being recognizable via relationship with not-medieval-europe) to avoid distracting attention.
Not entirely what I was getting at. They've brushed aside the conflict between demons and humans entirely. The demon side isn't developing. They aren't getting anything out of the exchange, they aren't being forced to change their ways, even though there's plenty screwed up about them.
All the "hero" does is run around thrashing them with complete immpunity. Meanwhile, all of humanity's sacrifices to win the war against them are swept aside completely. At one point, the "hero" even leads the human forces into a death trap! And for what? So the demons can keep their stupid honor?
Hero lead those forces out of totally-not-Constantinople so that the few humans willing to live harmoniously with demons could take that choice. And that human force he lead into a death trap? Totally deserved it, since they were gonna backstab their allies.
They were not betraying anyone. At worst, there was mistreatment of some demons who for whatever reason were left in the city. They were doing their job, until Hero spent a few months playing tricks on them and giving them all nightmares, effectively wearing down their morale.
And his reason for doing it? Because he didn't want to dirty his hands killing the demon lords. He killed THOUSANDS of human soldiers in order to spare a bunch of demons who refused to stop attacking those soldiers.
Well, for starters, the whole point of the worldview the Maou impresses upon the hero is that trying to reduce everything down to black-and-white morality where you just measure all morality by the number of human lives that die by violence is cripplingly short-sighted...
While there's plenty of room to argue with the morality of the choices made, part of what they are doing is taking a (perhaps sociopathically) detached view from the immediate harm their actions cause to focus on the long-term sustainability of the societies in play. As long as the economy runs on war and agricultural development is insufficient for the current population levels, you're killing the same number of people whether you have peace or bloodshed.
Basically, the same moral choice system that makes someone say that it's ultimately in the best interest of the world to seal off a village with a supervirus and guarantee the death of those inside in quarantine rather than risk spreading the supervirus to the rest of the world where it may kill far more people, ultimately.
Keep in mind that most of these types of "heroic maou" stories, (which are a particular favorite genre of mine... even if people get so distracted by the tits,) are basically just giant deconstructions of or outright refutations of the moral systems used in the epic storytelling of generations past.
