Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 24 – Their Own Worst Enemies

As Denken confirms in his lovely deadpan, fighting a replica of Frieren is going to be a royal pain in the ass. It’s all he, Laufen and Richter can do to escape her wide-area initial attack, presented with the usual Frieren panache with as the three gracefully twisting and dodging the beams of magic, any one of which would be the end of them, escape golem or not.

We check in on Land and Übel after their initial encounter with a replica of Ubel, which slashed Land in the chest and stole his golem. Übel can tell he’s in a bad way, so offers her own golem, which he refuses. She then correctly surmises that this wounded Land is only clone.

She rushes out and faces off against her replica head-on, even allowing it to restrain her. Such is the trust she had in Land’s distaste for allowing anyone—even her—to die because of him. Sassiness and craftiness … I fail to see how Land hasn’t proposed yet!

Watching Übel take down her replica with an assist from Land was cool as hell, but just as enjoyable is watching Frieren continue to skip around the dungeon like she’s a kid in a candy store. Rarely is she without a big goofy grin on her face as she locates an entrance to a secret passage and reveals the best preserved stone mural of its era Sense has ever seen.

Just as they’re nearing the bottom of the dungeon and Fern is thinking things have gone far too smoothly, they encounter Denken’s team outside the main hall where Frieren’s replica is standing guard. As expected, this only heightens Frieren’s enthusiasm, as this is exactly what conquering a dungeon should be … and she should know!

The standard strategy when dealing with a superior mage is to use restraint or hypnosis magic, but when Methode, who is the best of Denken’s group at both, attempts to cast such magic on the real Frieren, she fails; Fern does not like how she hugged Frieren and pulls her away.

But while Frieren is highly resistant, Methode believes a hypnosis specialist could at least buy them some time in a battle with the replica. That specialist is Edel, who along with her party is being cornered by a replica of Sense, who unlike her template is probably not a pacifist.

Edel, who is voiced by Kurosawa Tomoyo with a slightly haughty playfulness, assesses their very bad situation, and decides to try using her hypnosis against the replica, with her two mates giving her the fifteen or so seconds she needs to capture its mind and force it to kneel.

Unfortunately, the coin toss didn’t favor Edel, as the replicas have no minds to be captured. In her moment of vulnerability Edel is stabbed through the chest by the Sense replica’s hair. Her hypnosis wouldn’t have had an effect on the Frieren replica either, even if she’d ever gotten to where Frieren and the others are. Badly wounded, she accepts defeat and breaks her bottle. The golem immediately shields her from further attacks and whisks her back to the surface.

But her two party-mates are able to fall back, and are thus still in the mix. So too are Lawine and Kanne, Land and Übel, and the loner guy who came in first. We check back in on Wirbel, Ehre, and Scharf, who manage to take out the Ehre replica by collapsing the ceiling above it. Wirbel has them working like a well-oiled machine.

That’s the key to this dungeon: teamwork, along with cool-headed analysis. It’s not impossible to clear, even with Frieren and Sense replicas stalking about. Thus far, no one has been able to defeat a replica without the aid of someone else. But when Frieren decides to correctly assume her replica doesn’t have a mind to hypnotize, brute force is the only option.

To that end, Fern volunteers to provide the brute force needed to defeat the Miss Frieren replica, and Frieren smiles with the obvious pride of a master confident her pretty young student has the strength, imagination, and resolve to prevail.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic – 08 – The Knights of Summer

Rose is at the reins of the wagon bearing the Rescue Team to the battlefield, and Ken is at her side. He asks about the demons they’re about to engage, and Rose describes them as being essentially really strong humans with horns and more mana.

When she asks if he’s afraid, he implies he’s much more afraid of her. He then says that he originally endured her punishing training simply to “get one over on her.” He expects an angry reaction, but doesn’t get one. Instead, Rose raises her hand to her hidden, ruined eye.

We then go back to five years ago, when she was the Knight Commander of an entire battalion, but also of a small and tight-knit group of elite, possibly misfit knights. Her deputy is Aul (Kohara Konomi), a happy-go-lucky young knight with a personality so much like Ken’s it’s no wonder she took a shine to him so quickly.

Her team of seven knights occupied the same barracks now used as the Rescue Team’s headquarters. And we already know that all of them, including Aul, will eventually die. The series could have started with Rose’s past, but presenting it now adds a layer of melancholy and grim inevitability. No matter how silly these knights act, I was already pre-mourning them because I knew their fate.

Of course, they don’t think they’re doomed, nor does Rose. When they enter the Darkness of Llinger and camp for the night, Aul can’t sleep, and instead joins Rose by the fire and asks her why she chose her as her deputy commander. She ends up essentially answering her own question: Because she was what Rose was looking for in a successor.

Aul was a troublemaker, stubbornly refusing orders she didn’t agree with. She was an immovable object everyone else gave up on, but Rose became the unstoppable force she needed to nuture her potential. She never gave up, and Rose never gave up on her, believes she has what it takes to succeed her as unit commander when the time comes, because as she aptly puts it, “everything changes”.

This is a very moving, intimate scene between Rose and Aul that really does a lot of legwork in terms of making Aul a compelling tragic figure. Kohara Konomi also really gives the role the gravitas it needs while still being silly and hyper when called for. Knowing that night by the fire will probably be the last for everyone but Rose adds to the somber, wistful vibes.

The next day they come across the Demon unit stunning and capturing shock wolves, likely so the mad scientist demon guy can develop stronger monsters. Rose is the first to emerge from the trees and give the Demons a chance to withdraw and avoid conflict. It’s a deal the Demons’ commander won’t take, because now that humans have seen them, they must die.

As soon as Rose puts Aul in charge of leading the other six knights against the rank-and-file demons so she could focus on the leader, my heart sank in my chest, because I knew this was the beginning of the end of her unit.

For those eager to see this series actually give us some action, we finally get some here the end of the episode, as Rose throws everything she’s got at the Demon, who is impressed by her speed and strength. The battle music comes correct here, and there are some flashes of decent combat animation.

He’s so impressed with her tree-hucking ability that he deigns to give her his name—Nero Argence—and deigns to ask for hers. He summons a nasty-looking demon sword and announces that he’ll be killing her now, but Rose nonchalantly cracks her knuckles and tells him she’ll beat the crap out of him before he can.

I certainly didn’t expect the show to suddenly go back in time just when it looked like we’d finally see her, Ken, Suzune and Kazuki in their first real battle. But having watched this flashback unfold, I’m not mad about it, nor am I even mad that it won’t conclude until next week.

Such is the nature of the show’s careful and subtle character work and writing, as well as the fact that Rose is Just the Coolest no matter what timeline we’re in. There will be time to watch Ken, Suzune, and Kazuki do their thing. For now, it’s important to watch Rose’s history unfold, and hope that it won’t be repeated.

Urusei Yatsura – 30 – What Dreams May Come

Ataru and Ten come across a strange vendor selling earmuffs for 150 yen a pop. Ataru plays hardball and manages to snag two sets for 200 yen, of which he expects Ten to pay back half. But when they put the earmuffs on, they swap bodies. Thus, the question is answered, “What would Ataru do if he had Ten’s body?” He seeks out cuties, of course, who are all to willing to give him a squeeze because he’s a cute-ass flying baby!

Ataru-as-Ten also ensures Ten-as-Ataru is kept at bay by Lum, who initially thinks Ataru hit his head so hard he thinks he’s Ten. When Ten encounters Sakura, her sixth sense doesn’t let her down, but her instinct to attack him causes Lum to castigate her for being so harsh to a child. Of course, Sakura’s instincts are accurate, as the Ten who wants to suckle her bosom is actually Ataru.

Cherry also buys a set of earmuffs, causing him and Ten to swap bodies while Ataru returns to his own. It’s a fun body-swap segment, though I wish it had gone farther. As it is, Kamiya Hiroshi and Yuuki Aoi do a great job imitating Ten and Ataru’s voice patterns.

The second half involves Ataru being on a late-for-school streak due to him trying not to rely on Lum to wake him up (often with electricity). She offers a shortcut using her alien technology to create a portal straight to school, which they travel through together. They arrive at school with five minutes to spare, but then we cut to his classroom as the morning bell rings, and neither he nor Lum are there.

That is because the portal didn’t just traverse space, but time as well. When Ataru enters his classroom, it’s on a Sunday afternoon ten years into the future, where his classmates are having a reunion. The future him happens to be out of the classroom when he arrives, but his older friends note that he looks just like Ataru, while his wife is also out looking for their son.

Ataru ends up unknowingly encountering his future son by chance, and he’s a little shit just like his old man. Lum is quick to embrace and comfort the child, but when he sees a very familiar lascivious look, she gets suspicious. When the little scamp finally says his name: Moroboshi Kokeru. Lum feels around on his head, doesn’t find any horns, and is immediately distraught.

And of course she’s distraught: if this was her son, he’d have horns, no matter how small. She concludes that in this future, she and Ataru don’t have a kid together. It begs the question of who exactly Ataru’s wife is in this future, but more than anything, Lum is devastated by the fact that it’s not her.

When Ataru prods Kokeru to go through the school gates, he calls the first woman he sees his mom, and it’s some unattractive old maid. This makes Ataru as depressed as Lum, and when she catches up to him, they both agree that it’s time to return to their time. But both Kokeru and Ataru are mistaken: the older lady isn’t his mother.

His real mother, and Ataru’s wife, is none other than his childhood friend Miyake Shinobu, lovely and resplendent in her striped suit. Ataru returns to his time with Lum not knowing that, while Lum refuses to accept that this future they experienced was the actual future, only a possible one.

Thus we end on an uncharacteristically somber note. I don’t doubt if Ataru stuck around long enough to discover Shinbou was his future wife, he’d be pretty happy. But Lum would probably feel even worse if she knew that. Will the fact they’re equally miserable at the end bring them closer together?

As for the Alice in Wonderland-style White Rabbit (previously teased in the OP) running through a galaxy of time doors … I assume that will be explained at some point, because it’s pretty random! It also hints that Lum is right: they only witnessed one future out of countless possible futures.