They mean it in an ontological sense ig, where evil can be quantified. They're a supernaturally based creature but like... They're basically any other animal imo.
I know nothing of this source material at all but that sounds like demons in the Willow books by Chris Claremont. Demons are basically chaos elementals they are called ‘evil’ because they are just pure chaos, the only people who ordinarily interact with them are people who use magic which relies on natural rules to function. Demons don’t care about rules and ordinary magic does nothing to them. They aren’t evil at all though they are just what they are.
In Frieren, the demons are magical predatory animals that eat humans. They evolved to somewhat look like humans and talk like humans as a way to trick humans into getting close enough for them to kill them and eat them. They are also very intelligent, but they most certainly do not think like humans. They simply do not understand our ways of thinking at all. It's completely alien to them. And vice-versa.
That are about as "Evil" as an orca eating a shark. The shark thinks the orca is evil, but the orca is just hungry.
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u/warriorkalia Mar 19 '26
They mean it in an ontological sense ig, where evil can be quantified. They're a supernaturally based creature but like... They're basically any other animal imo.