The assembled mages are pondering how to proceed with so little information, but as others arrive, they gain more intel on the replicas, and with it the confidence to take on the Fake Frieren, who is terrifying in its stillness and patience. Dunste confirms it has no mind, while Lawine learned from her brother’s adventuring that the creature making the replicas is called a Spiegel, and is extremely weak once the replicas are defeated.
The third and most crucial piece of information is not only revealed, but demonstrated by Fern: whenever Frieren casts a spell, she ever so briefly stops detecting mana. I love how sheepish she is about it, as after all it’s a common mistake made by baby mages. But all her other strengths mean only a select few can exploit this weakness.
With sufficient intel to proceed, the group forms a strategy. Fern can tell from her smiles that Frieren is enjoying this, and she confirms that, as it reminds her of when she, Himmel, Eisen, and Heiter (if he wasn’t hung over) coming up with a plan to defeat a dungeon boss. Denken and the others are concerned that Frieren and Fern will be facing off against the replica by themselves, but Frieren has the confidence of someone from the party that conquered the most dungeons in history.
It’s rare for a show to come along that wields such mastery of restraint and elegance in the execution of its battle scenes. Frieren’s battles never last long, but they’re never too short. Instead, they are as long as they need to be. In the battles, Evan Call’s score rings out and time is compressed. So much action and invention and mayhem is conveyed in just a few brief seconds. It can jump from Slow Life to Turbo Chaos in the literal blink of an eye.
It can also make expert use of delayed gratification to lend its battles even more weight. Just as Repli-Frieren is about to zap Real-Frieren in the face with a spell, we cut to however many centuries ago when Flamme passed away and Frieren paid a visit to Serie to present her with her apprentice’s will. Now that the emperor has approved it, any human can now study magic, and Flamme wanted Serie to take over the training of imperial mages once she died.
Serie has no intention of doing so, and is angered by Flamme’s “greed”, but Frieren notes that Flamme predicted her master’s reaction with perfect accuracy. Before Frieren leaves, Serie asks her to take a walk with her. While she does, we have a glimpse of Serie’s headspace. She speaks rather coldly about Flamme, having trained her “on a mere whim”, but her attitude makes sense when you consider that the way Serie perceives time, Flamme’s entire life was equivalent to only a few days, or even hours.
I love how when they walk through a very elvish-looking forest, the spirit of a young Flamme follows Serie along, smiling, holding her master’s hand, showing her her favorite spell: creating a field of flowers. Considering how relatively briefly Flamme was alive, Serie was amazed she was able to bring magic to humanity. She warns Frieren not to neglect her training, as the “era of humans” will be upon them before they know it, and if Frieren is going to be killed, it will either be by the Demon King … or a human.
Knowing all of this entering the battle, Frieren keeps her replica focused on her as they fight to a draw. Fern conceals her mana and stays hidden until Frieren creates an opening. Replica Frieren, who has the same vulnerability as her real counterpart, cannot detect Fern’s mana until it’s too late. All Real Frieren has to do is move out of the way of Fern’s Zoltraak, which she can do because she knows it’s coming. Replica Frieren doesn’t, so it’s game over in a flash.
Elves like her predate Zoltraak, they’re unable to react to it as instinctively as a human like Fern, for whom Zoltraak is just a basic attack spell that existed long before she was born. But at the end of the day the replica lost because Real Frieren is a relic from an ancient time living in the middle of the Age of Humanity, and Fern is her adorable human apprentice who was able to best her.
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