Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 15 – Trust Her Words | The Substitute Son

This episode is cleanly split between two separate stories that focus on the members of Frieren’s party besides herself. We begin with an idyllic wagon ride as Fern nods off and falls into Frieren. We learn it’s been four years since they started their adventures, and one year since Stark joined them.

At the next village they visit, all of the inhabitants are asleep. It’s a curse, the kind of magic humans have yet to figure out, but those who practice the teachings of the Goddess—priests like Sein—know it all to well. By the time he’s determined that a monster has caused this curse and must be dealt with, Stark is already out.

The difficulty level is further heightened when on their way to the monster Fern succumbs to the curse as well. Frieren puts them in a protective barrier while she and Sein carry on. And yet before they encounter the monster, Frieren also passes out.

She does so knowing Sein can wake her up with his magic, but only for about five seconds. Before losing consciousness, she tells him to wake him up when he finds the monster; she promises she’ll defeat it. Now suddenly Sein is on his own against a subspecies of chaos flower.

Sein is not without battle magic, and attempt to use it against the plant, but it’s not quite quick enough to reach the core, as the plant’s leaves deflect it. While able to dodge the plant’s strikes, he presumably only has so many proverbial bullets in his clip.

While he initially went into battle thinking it would be impossible to get Frieren to understand what to do in the five seconds she’ll be awake, he thinks back to a lesson he got from Heiter. He told Sein that while Frieren lacked trust and mutual understanding, Sein learned to trust in her words.

Taking that lesson to heart, Sein recalls that Frieren said she’d deal with the monster if awakened. Sein chooses to believe her, and casts a reawakening spell on her. Before he can get two words out, she’s already launched a magic attack that counteracts the plant’s deflection ability.

After one-shotting the foe exactly five seconds after her eyes open and coolly declaring “I’ve got it,” the day is won. And while Sein may prefer the pretty older woman who led the village they saved, he also doesn’t mind the head pat Frieren gives him for trusting in her words.

In the second half of the episode, the party reaches the walled city of Vorig, halfway to Ausserst. Fern reports that they’re pretty much broke, and just then a noble-looking fellow inspects Stark, says “he’ll do”, and invites him to his mansion.

Frieren doesn’t recognize this particular Lord Orden, but does recognize he’s from the Orden Family, with whose predecessors she also interacted. The Ordens also happen to trace their lineage to the same village Stark is from (which is now no more), hence both he and the lord having red hair.

Orden gets down to brass tacks: his eldest son and heir Wirt has recently died in battle, and he needs to keep morale high in order to protect the northern lands. Stark, the spitting image of his departed son, is to pose as Wirt for a crucial soiree to take place in three months.

Since the party’s broke, he can’t turn it down, so the etiquette lessons begin. Orden’s butler Gabel administers the lessons, everything from dressing, standing, studying, and dancing. It wears Stark out, but he’s a tough kid, and he absorbs it all like a sponge, as demonstrated when he meets Fern in the hall, goes down to a knee and tenderly yet gallantly takes her hand. Even though Fern thinks this kind of thing doesn’t suit him, you can tell she was charmed.

It’s while learning the Orden style of swordfighting that Stark encounters the lord’s younger son, Mut. Stark naturally feels a connection to him as a fellow younger son, but unlike his father, Lord Orden acknowledges that Mut will probably become a better knight than he, for while he lacks Wirt’s natural talent, he’s a hard worker.

It’s two months in before Fern suddenly learns she’ll be accompanying “Wirt” Stark at the soiree, so she gets a crash course in Bein’ a Proper Lady. That includes getting her hand slapped for trying to snatch donuts during tea, getting subjected to corsets, and tripping and falling in spectacular fashion during dance lessons. But as she undergoes these lessons, Stark is watching.

Like Stark, Fern is incredibly hard-working, so there was never any doubt that when the day of the soiree arrived, they would do the job they’re being handsomely paid to do flawlessly. It just so happens that doing that job also means being getting to dance together, and they are just about the cutest goddamn couple of the entire Fall 2023 season as they perform an achingly gorgeous waltz to perfection.

After the soiree when Stark’s hair is back to its normal unkempt self, Lord Orden admits that he and his son Wirt were at odds when they last spoke. Indeed, he told Wirt he never wanted to see him again; he didn’t mean it, and was devastated to get that wish. He tells Stark that he always has a home in Vorig shouldn he desire it when his adventures are over.

Stark thanks Lord Orden for his kindness, but his goal is to return to Eisen and tell him the tales of those adventures. Besides, Orden still has a son in Mut, who will surely grow up to become fine heir. As Frieren takes an inordinate amount of time looking through the Orden library for a grimoire to take as a sweetener, Stark and Sein notice Orden outside with Mut, personally giving him some swordsmanship pointers.

Frieren takes a beat away from the books and simply watches Fern, Stark, and Sein, and smiles a soft, easy smile. You can tell she’s learning to properly savor the people in the party she’s in, and the vanishingly brief (at least for her) time they have together.

Kimizero – 11 – Foot On the Gas

It’s been two weeks since the festival, and things are going great … for Nicole and Sekiya. Runa and Ryuuto seem cordial, but distant, as if the chill of coming winter has infected their relationship. Their conversation is polite but comes in fits and starts. As they go their separate ways for the day, Runa looks back and sees Ryuuto isn’t smiling, and neither is she. The vibes are bad folks! I’m nervous.

Then the unthinkable happens: Nicole comes to school with eyes raw from crying all night. She’s been dumped! When asks what the frikkin’ deal is by Ryuuto, Sekiya says he could see that Nicole wanted to go all the way in short order (making up for lost time) but he felt if they did it once they’d be doing it all the time, at the cost of their exam scores and, possibly, their futures.

I know Ryuuto is a mild-mannered fellow, and I typically abhor violence, but goddamn did I want him to punch Sekiya right in his pretty face. All of his concerns could have been discussed with Nicole. She’s reasonable, other than loving only one person ever!

Dumping a girl who was pining for you for three years because you didn’t want her to waste her precious high school life? Dude, taste the knuckles, all of them. When Runa calls Nicole to cheer her up, she ends up talking about her and Ryuuto and how distant he feels.

So what does Nicole do? She runs to Runa’s house to give her a hug they both need. Sekiya: don’t ever darken the frame of this show again unless it’s to apologize like you’ve never apologized before, and take Nicole the fuck back. He certainly doesn’t deserve her, but that doesn’t matter.

When Ryuuto and Maria end up crossing paths at the station again, Ryuuto is direct, saying they shouldn’t be seen alone together from now on. Maria is in full agreement, not the least of which because she doesn’t want to cause trouble for Runa. She may not be over Ryuuto, but the last couple weeks have left her realizing she likes Runa even more. She doesn’t want her and Ryuuto to break up because of her.

Before they part ways, Ryuuto tells her he may not be that experienced, but he has been in love, and the first person he felt it for was Maria. He doesn’t know how happy that makes her as she walks away in tears. Ryuuto then calls Runa, wanting to hear her voice, but they both hear a scream on Ryuuto’s end, then Runa hears him calling out to Maria and then saving her from a mugger.

Ryuuto wanted to explain why he was with Maria yet again, but Runa asks that he wait until next Saturday before his cram school, as there’s “something she needs to say too.” Uh-oh. That Saturday arrives, and Runa tells him she thinks they should break up. Surely he must agree that things aren’t working. This is a first for her, but it doesn’t make her happy.

She thanks him for dating her, as it made her so happy. He thanks her two, and the two sit there, stewing in their broken-up-ness, until they start seeing nothing but couples around them. Each one represents an experience they shared, and then they see a couple with their kid, still being lovey-dovey, representing the future.

And Ryuuto, like a real man … starts to cry. He cries his manly little eyes out. He doesn’t want to break up. Not here, not now, not ever!

Seeing him cry, Runa starts crying too. She doesn’t want to break up either, but she’s come to like him so much, it made her scared he’d start hating her. Ryuuto makes clear he would never ever hate her, and from now on she should feel free to tell him anything and everything she wants, no matter how awful or painful it is, he’ll listen, and won’t hate her.

Ryuuto gathers Runa into a hug and reminds her that they are still in high school, and it’s okay to make mistakes, as both of them have. Runa admits she was wrong, and the breakup is off. The episode title was technically accurate, but they were only broken up for about a minute! It was a minute too long, honestly.

After I breathed a huge sigh of relief, there was still a bit of pent-up tension, which is then released beautifully when Ryuuto is beaned in the back of the head with a toy car (the same Toyota Supra Ryuuto compared Runa to) by the little boy. No Truck-kun incident for Ryuuto! His parents are apologetic, but Ryuuto and Runa simply laugh heartily, tears still streaming down their faces, but now tears of joy.

Ryuuto blows off cram school (good man) and spends the rest of the day hand-in-hand with Runa. As the sun starts to set, they share a kiss to officially mark the resumption of their romance, having gone through their first trial-by-tears. Ryuuto assures Runa that she doesn’t have to worry about slowing down her feelings. To this, she wryly tells him to “buckle up!”

Ryuuto still has to apologize for not being able to help Runa with the Friendship Project anymore, as he’s no longer friends with Maria. She’s okay with that, as she really wanted to be sisters with Maria more than just friends; if only she didn’t hate her.

Ryuuto tells her that Maria doesn’t hate her at all. Maria even transferred to make her happy. When Runa brings up the fact that she gave one of her moon-and-star earrings to Maria, Ryuuto remembers Maria missing it after she was attacked. He returns to where they were, and sure enough finds the matching earring: proof positive for Runa that Maria still cares.

The next day at school, the teacher presents Maria with an English award. The class applauds, but Runa stands up and makes sure everybody knows that they’re twin sisters.

An upset Maria takes Runa by the hand and takes her into the hall to ask her what she’s thinking. Runa produces Maria’s earring, and tells her she’s only doing what she should have done a long time ago: acknowledge her as her sister to their class, give her a hug, and declare that her transferring did make her happy.

So while poor Nicole got hosed, things end well for Maria, Runa, and Ryuuto. The final short scene of the episode has Runa and Ryuuto very close in the dark together, and Runa declaring that she wants him to have her. So let there be no doubt that that one particular experience Ryuuto has yet to have with Runa will at least be addressed in the finale. We’ll see how far they go now that Runa’s taken her foot off the brakes.