When a villain breaks ALL the rules... of being a villain

Comments · 76

• 1S

  @1Sunny1_ · 5 months ago

  I think my favorite part of Macht&apos;s character is his relationship with the demon king because we are almost never given information about him but Macht&apos;s opinion of the demon king seems to fit what we imagine of him: a callous, monstrous creature that wants to destroy humans. Someone that Macht holds nothing but contempt for because it obviously opposes his obsession.<br><br>And then Frieren flips that concept on its head by revealing that Macht and the Demon King were the most similar on that front.

  221

• ED

  @edi9892 · 5 months ago

  He is in many ways a great representation of psychopathy: no malice, or desire to be evil, but a total lack of compassion, but not a total lack of empathy and respect...<br>I&apos;ve met people like Macht IRL, and they were uncanny to say the least...<br>Both were very likeable. One had not only killed before, but been convicted of war crimes, yet he scared me less than the other, who never showed any signs of aggression... She was a master manipulator, and I could warn others about her, but none would believe me... That was creepy in its own right...

  24

• ZA

  @zaphael7238 · 5 months ago

  I think this is so very well done, malice does not need to exist for an action to be evil.<br>Wanton destruction, death and suffering do not need an emotion such as malice or hatred to be set in motion, some war criminals wept as they did their horrible deeds yet felt compelled by country, duty and fear to commit atrocity. They are not given lighter sentences or judged less harshly for their softer more acceptable emotions.

  116

• CO

  @coltonwilliams4153 · 5 months ago

  Macht’s failing was that he attempted to reach understanding of humans like a scientist. He thought that through clinical observation and dissection, he could understand what sets humans apart from demons, never realizing that the decision to approach the topic that way seals him from his goal of coexistence.

  48

• TH

  @themagikarp9676 · 5 months ago

  Macht will to cohexist was genuine because he let them place a spell which would instantly kill him if he felt any sort of Malice or Grief. Meaning that Macht was ready to die in order to understand humans.

  60

• EX

  @exist8294 · 4 months ago

  Demons in frieren are so interesting because despite being in the shape of humans and talking and reasoning, their role is more akin to that of a natural disaster<br>you cannot reason with natural disasters<br>they do not feel, and cannot change

  12

• SU

  @SuperFatR · 5 months ago (edited)

  Great editing. Anyway, if Macht never changed, why the death wish? Like, his final internal monologue leaves no doubt whatsoever about that: he accepted the bracer not because he knew it would not work, but because he hoped it would. (I mean, his actions and words after petrifying Weisse already indicate that, but this is a direct confirmation.) That would be absolutely impossible for the creature who gets shocked upon seeing anyone valuing anything more than continued existence.<br><br>Also, in my opinion, a lot of Macht&apos;s words, especially outside of his thoughts and memories, are written in a way to be intentionally misleading. Not because he lies, but to illustrate the huge blind spot in his rationality. He talks about his desire to gain understanding of humanity, but he has that understanding (in the practical terms of &quot;why they want to kill me&quot;) from the first pages of his flashback, and after Weisse he can predict human behavior better than humans themselves. What he really seeks to understand is the root of his own compulsion to kill them. Why his brain literally throws an exception whenever he tries to think about not killing them. He attributes it to natural emotional deficiency of demons, and so he believes that if he obtain emotions he never knew that will bridge the gap between the species, and from there his chain of thought goes.<br><br>As the later chapters in the manga, which demonstrate frighteningly similar near-irresistible murder compulsion in perfectly biologically human characters, Macht searched in the wrong place from very beginning.

  30

• MA

  @MaddiEdJS · 5 months ago (edited)

  A Demon feeling emotions, is like a human trying to imagine the colore a Mantis shrimp can see

  29

• DE

  @deathshop2144 · 5 months ago

  Macht portrays perfectly the tragedy of being a demon. <br><br>Made all the more bitter by the fact that if he was ever to truly escape those chains, he would immediately be crushed by the guilt he longed to understand so deeply.

  115

• GI

  @Gideon1031 · 5 months ago

  Imagine if demons occasionally had the defect of empathy the same way humans occasionally have the defect of a lack of it. I feel they&apos;d be killed way easier leading for the gene mutation to be rarer

  70

• MU

  @mura6097 · 5 months ago

  I think what I love most about his his character is how it’s almost like a perfect circle, both in his lines of thoughts and actions. He wants to Coexist with Humans (which implies peace/not killing them.) but in order to Coexist one must understand and on his quest of understanding he commits some of the evil deeds possible in the effort of eventual peace. This only hammered home by the fact he and the demon king are the most alike but he never realizes this because although the reason is different, the end is the same, Humans suffer for their goals.

  18

• AR

  @arcanistthesonofianite249 · 5 months ago

  God he&apos;s gonna be so good in season 3-

  24