One Surprising Thing About Frieren's First Arc

I disagree with the premise. It is not surprising at all. Let the irony of you ascribing cynicism as the obvious perspective a wise, long lived soul would have when it comes to humans when you yourself are a relatively short lived and inexperienced soul by your own logic not be lost...

It absolutely makes sense that Frieren doesn't distrust the humans she meets, and that they generally turn out to in fact be ethical, honorable and honest towards her. In short, the reasons are:

who she is,
the places where they meet,
the fact that demons exist and
the medieval era setting.

I've had similar thoughts before. Besides, I find it strange that after living so long, Frieren could still cry for Himmel after his death. I don't think I need to live for centuries to understand human feelings or my own feelings, even if elves are a different kind of race.

We can't forget that this isn't a seinen manga, but a shounen fantasy drama and adventure manga. We can't take certain things too seriously. Even so, as someone who has read all the released chapters of the manga and watched the anime twice, I can say that Frieren has certain aspects that can make us reflect on life, although it's not as profound as in other more mature works.

yeah, maybe by not pre phrasing every ought by the words "I think" you could make it seem like it's not your own opinion of what things should be like, but even if it isn't, I cannot see how your claims are correct.

Perhaps name a couple out of the supposed multitude of long lived characters that show cynicism towards the human race. I get the feeling that I can name as many and one more that are the opposite.

And we're talking about unsubstantiated generalized prejudice. Earlier I emphasized "generally" since there are some humans in this show that aren't good, or at least neutral, and towards whom Frieren doesn't show the same attitude that she has with villagers or other normal people. This as it relates to Frieren herself.

As for the scheming or ethically ambiguous humans, such as scamming merchants, thieves, bandits, evil and corrupt aristocrats, and so on, I genuinely don't see how this show's "lack" of such characters is in any way unusual or illogical/unrealistic, for the reasons I listed before.

If there was a scale as to how negative/realistic/positive a show was in terms of its characters, Frieren would be balanced, on or near the middle, shit like Hametsu no Oukoku or Berserk would be on or near the 100% negative extreme, and some stuff like BOFURI or Akebi-chan would be on the 0% extreme. If anything, you're correct in pointing out that non-comedy, fantasy adventure anime tends to lean towards the negative side. Doesn't change the fact that objectively the world of Frieren is very reasonable and realistic, and by no means is it fluffed or made chill or agreeable artificially.