Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 25 – The Age of Humanity

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.

Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun 2nd Stage – 02 – This Aggression Will Not Stand

Operation: Get Konno Erika Motivated goes off without a hitch, thanks to Tomozaki experly deploying three agents to fill up her motivation gauge. It starts with Yuzu asking her to help out with the tournament—Konno is always ready to help out her friends. Hinami then plants the seed in another friend that she doubts Konno’s athletic ability. Finally, Mizusawa tells Konno that Nakamura likes sporty girls.

Put it all together and it’s a home run. Tomozaki technically fails his part of the tournament by fouling out before he can score a lay-up to endear himself to the jocks, but the speed with which he fouls out endears him to them anyway. But the good times only last as long as Konno doesn’t know Izumi and Nakamura are an item.

When she finds out she’s pissed, but instead of taking it out on Izumi, she targets Hirabayashi, the most timid girl in class. Konno scoffs off her attacks as accidental—knocking into her desk, paper airplanes to the head, etc.—but pretty soon everyone notices the malicious intent.

Tomozaki wants to do something to help, but Hinami advises a wait-and-see approach, pointing out that Hirabayashi has yet to do anything to stop the abuse. When Konno escalates by sitting on her desk, Tomozaki stands up and is about to speak up, but someone beats him to it: Natsubayashi Hanabi, AKA Tama.

Tama says what everyone is thinking: that this shit is getting old, but Konno plays games, feigning ignorance. When Tama gets in her face, Konno puts her hand on her arm and says Tama is “shaking like a leaf”; when Tama brushes her off, Konno pretends to be injured, and uses that as ammo against her in subsequent interactions.

Tomozaki observes a change in Hinami when Konno’s target changes from Hirabayashi to Tama, one of her friends. Hinami speaks with all of the mid-level girls to get them sympathetic to Tama (and turn them against Konno), while Mimimi stays close to Tama in order to keep things from spiraling out of hand. It’s as if Hinami is exploiting Tama’s pushback as an opportunity to hurt Konno, while Mimimi is strictly looking out for her dear friend.

When the back-and-forth between the girls doesn’t stop and the class mood starts to sour on Tama, Hinami agrees something should be done, but they disagree on what. Tomozaki proposes that Tama takes a step back. Hinami strongly objects to this, since Tama is “in the right” and shouldn’t have to change. Her usual gamer’s pragmatism is being overridden by her apparent desire for revenge against Konno, no matter what happens to Tama. (h/t Vance!)

One day after school, Tomozaki hangs out with Mimimi and Tama. Mimimi is her usual cheerful, bubbly, clingy self with Tama, but once they see Hanabi off at the station, Mimimi’s demeanor changes drastically. On the verge of tears, Mimimi asks if she’s doing a good job keeping Tama in good spirits. It’s something she could only as “Brain.” I love their easy chemistry.

Tomozaki answers that she is, and I agree. Mimimi is doing what she can, and it is helping, but it’s hard for her to feel good about it when things are still so unpleasant in class. Still, seeing how putting up a brave front for Tama’s sake is taking its toll on Mimimi, Tomozaki decides he’s going to try proposing the retreat strategy to Tama.

Meeting one-on-one with Tama, Tomozaki is about to begin his proposal when she points out that the two of them are a lot alike, never afraid to say what’s on their mind whatever the consequences. When he asks if maybe it would be best to withdraw from the hostilities, she politely declines.

Tama admits it sucks, but she knows she’ll be fine because she knows she’s in the right. She doesn’t want to betray “the Hanabi who believes in things.” Tomozaki respects her choice, but is then caught off guard when she goes on complimenting him.

She’s observed that he’s been able to change and improve himself and his ability to read and influence a room and mood. And while Tama knows she’ll be fine, like him she’s far more worried about Mimimi. So she does want to change for her sake, while remaining true to herself. Since she’s watched Tomozaki change, she wants him to teach her how to “fight”.

Firstly, I want to underscore just how awesome Natsubayashi Hanabi is this week, and in general. She had her fill of Konno picking on someone weaker and didn’t hesitate to stand up to her again and again. In a battle of wills, I’ll take her over anyone, even Hinami. At the same time, Konno may be acting like a petty, petulant bitch right now, but that doesn’t make her a bad person.

Konno just isn’t dealing with her frustration over losing the guy she liked to another girl well, like, at all. So I’m looking forward to Tomozaki taking Tama on as his “apprentice”, and the two of them finding a way to cut through Konno’s bullshit, taking the pressure off Mimimi, and resolving the unpleasantness, if they can. If this ends up at odds with Hinami’s plans, but so be it.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic – 01 (First Impressions) – The Right Stuff

Usato Ken considers himself an unremarkable, run-of-the-mill high-schooler. He’s intimidated by the likes of Inukami Suzune and Ryuusen Kazuki, the president and vice president of the student council. But on a rainy evening when he forgets his umbrella, he soon learns they’re nothing to fear.

In fact, they’re friendly and generous. Kazuki lends Ken his spare umbrella, and he and Suzune are happy to walk home with him. He learns they’re much nicer and more down to earth than he thought, and despite rumors, they’re not dating (they also thank him for asking about it directly, unlike others).

These opening minutes aren’t just an opportunity for Ken to meet Kazuki and Suzune, but for us as well. It efficiently introduces all three leads as likeable good kids with distinct personalities—a lot like Reign of the Seven Spellblades. Then a magic circle appears and Suzune reveals her otaku side and is jazzed about it!

We kinda know why, too, thanks to what they spoke of just before. Despite being a third-year and the top student in school, Suzune hasn’t figured out what she’s going to do yet. We know Ken yearns for a more interesting life where he can make a difference. And we can infer that Kazuki has the most planned out future of the three.

They emerge in the throne room of another world and are told by a King Lloyd of Llander that they’ve been summoned as heroes to defeat the armies of the demon lord. That’s a lot to take in, but Suzune at least is loving every minute of it. Ken is a lot more guarded by this situation, while Kazuki is straight-up pissed about this sudden abduction.

He makes a good point: the three of them have families from whom they’ve been torn away. But Ken calms Kazuki down, telling him there’s no point in starting a fight. Kazuki stands down, and the king approaches them, goes down to a knee in apology; the entire court does the same.

He knows it isn’t fair what they did to them, but the hour is late, and his kingdom is desperate, as the demon lord’s forces continue to expand. He promises that they’ll find a way to send them back as soon as possible, but for now he humbly asks if they’ll be the heroes they need. Mind you, they only intended to summon two exemplary people from the other world, making Ken’s presence confusing.

Intended heroes like Suzune and Kazuki heard bells before they were summoned, but Ken didn’t. It appears that he was simply caught in the proverbial transporter beam. Nevertheless, he is treated the same as the other two, and evaluated for magic affinity. Suzune learns lightning is her element, while Kazuki’s is light—as in the opposite of dark, perfect against demons.

But when the crystal ball used to evaulate their magic turns green when Ken touches it, the royal mage Welcie suddenly freaks out, grabs Ken, and runs back to the throne room. She informs King Lloyd, who also freaks out. Up until this point, everyone in this show has acted reasonably and amicably.

The minute Rescue Team Captain Rose stomps into the room, we suddenly see everyone’s panicky side. They try to keep Ken’s magical ability secret, but then he blurts out that his light was green, and within thirty seconds Welcie the mage has gathered him up in a bubble and shot him out of the castle, and Rose brandishes a devlish smirk and gives chase.

She catches him with ease, and carries him to Rescue Team HQ. Green means healing, an extraordinarily rare type of magic. Rose introduces some other Rescue Team members, books Ken judges by their covers because they resemble a wrestling stable more than anything else! Not only that, none of them have healing magic!

Captain Rose intends to whip Ken into shape as a healing magic user, in effect bestowing upon him the significant purpose he desired in his original world. But it’s clear from the fear Rose instills in everyone he’s seen that it may be tough sledding. He’s going to have to step up his game: run-of-the-mill ain’t gonna cut it here!

And there you have it: one minute Ken is befriending the two most popular students at his school as they walk home, and that night he’s in a strange bed sharing a room with a snoring hulk in another world, his old dull life path replaced with a one filled with far more danger and promise.

What Wrong Way lacks in original ideas it more than makes up for with its execution. Its characters are instantly charming and rootable, the dialogue pops, and the production values are solid. This has the look and feel of a show made with care and thought, and I’m excited to see how Ken, Suzune, and Kazuki fare in their fantastic new circumstances.

Spy x Family – 36 – Chefs! Chefs! Chefs!

While sometimes Becky Blackbell seems precocious to the point of acting like she’s six going on twenty-six, at the end of the day, she is every bit six, which means she considers the soap operas on TV to be what real courtship and romance is like. Determined to win the heart of her “Precious Loid”, she invites herself over to Anya’s with a full head of steam that turns into so much blushing and tripping over words.

It only takes an easy smile from Loid for Becky to imagine becoming Anya’s stepmother, complete with new family portrait. Poor Anya is an audience to Becky’s over-the-top delusions, and decides to kick Yor aside and root for Becky to become her new Mama for one primary reason: meals prepared by world-class chefs. Alas, once Yor returns home and Becky tries removing her scrunchies and whips her hair about, she gets zero reaction from Loid.

If Anya had normal adults as a mother and father, one of them would probably be able to see a childish crush when they see it. Instead, Becky and her hair is twisting in the proverbial wind, and all Anya can do is twist along with her.

When Becky decides to go full bore and “collapse” into Loid from being too “drunk”, Yor takes her deadly seriously, picks her up, and rushes to the nearest hospital. Before a car hits her (the car loses), Yor tosses Becky into the air, only to catch her perfectly after absorbing the impact of the accident with nothing but a bloody nose.

It’s after this act of selfless and completely unnecessary bodily sacrifice that Becky finally comes clean: she was only lying because she wanted to court her precious Loid. To her surprise, Yor isn’t upset, but happy that Loid is so loved. Becky, moved by her massive heart, asks her how she won Loid over, and Yor recalls him saying she’s strong.

Becky tries to demonstrate that she’s strong too by trying her hand at the bell-and-hammer game in he park, but the weight of the hammer bowls her over backwards. Yor, believing Becky wants the top prize to give to Loid, picks up the hammer with one hand and obliterates the entire device.

Becky, who is after all the heiress to an arms empire, is suddenly smitten with Yor as well. She now realizes she’s simply not strong enough to steal Loid from her, so she’ll become her apprentice instead. When her maid arrives to pick her up, Yor is giving her some martial arts pointers.

Another woman who loves Loid deeply but knows she isn’t strong enough to defeat Yor is Fiona Frost AKA Nightfall. During Loid’s cruise vacation, she not only completes all of her missions, but all of Twilight’s as well, overworking herself despite Sylvia telling her not to. She even trains herself in the mountains by pulling grizzly bears, riding goats and standing atop alligators.

Fiona doesn’t become a blushing, blubbering mess when she’s in Loid’s presence like Becky; in addition to being an adult, she’s also a spy, and very good at concealing her true feelings. She has almost no reaction to Loid presenting her with a souvenir from his trip, but once she’s alone in the hall she’s skipping along like she’s on cloud nine more in “wuv” with him than ever.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 10 – Just a Feeling

“They don’t play fair, so we must be even more unfair.” Such are Flamme’s words about demons to a younger Frieren, asking her what Demon General Basalt’s last words were. Frieren didn’t bother hearing them, because demons only use words to deceive.

Lugner can’t figure out how Fern, someone with so much less mana than he has, managed to overwhelm him with an unceasing steam of rapid-fire spells. Then it dawns on him: she wasn’t fighting fair. His last words are “You’re a disgrace to all mages.” Fern already knows that, as does her master. It’s why she beat him, and it’s why Frieren will beat Aura.

Many hundreds of years ago, Flamme came upon a ruined, burning elf village with only one survivor: a young Frieren, who managed to defeat Demon General Basalt, but couldn’t save anyone. Compared to Flamme’s narrow band of mana surrounding her, Frieren’s is much wider, and yet Frieren is certain this woman is far more powerful than she is…it’s just a feeling.

Flamme decides to take Frieren in and make her her apprentice. Her first lesson to her is to never directly engage the enemy, especially when it comes to demons. Run, hide, take them by surprise; use anything and everything at your disposal to maintain an advantage.

When three demon mages, each of them more powerful than Basalt, confront Flamme with Frieren on her back, Flamme notes how supremely confident they are in their magical skill to engage her so directly. But in the blink of an eye Flamme lobs a spell at them so powerful it incinerates them instantly and carves a large hole in the earth.

Flamme then reveals her true mana, not the one she let the demons see. It’s so large it takes up the entire frame. What she will teach Frieren in the years and decades to come is how best to deceive and kill her enemies by ensuring they miscalculate her strength. Essentially, by being cowardly and unfair and mocking magic itself.

At first, it takes great effort for Frieren to suppress her mana, but Flamme tells her she’ll need to suppress it for her entire life, spending that whole life fooling demons as she does. Like Gandalf, she is the wielder of a secret fire, the magnitude of which is only exceeded by the scale of the concealment of it.

In the present day, Frieren stands on the battlefield face-to-face with Aura, and Aura is certain she has this thing in the bag. After all, her mana is several times wider than Frieren’s. And Frieren admits, as a 500-year-old demon who has trained her entire life, Aura is indeed a great demon, but can also tell she’s probably never been challenged.

She knows this because Flamme told her demons don’t conceal their mana, nor can they. Demon culture, importance is determined by mana the way wealth and status are to humans, and just as humans are bound to those things, demons are bound to mana. It is their pride and their dignity, their identity. To see a demon’s mana is to see their whole, unguarded selves—as well as their limits.

Fifty years pass (or as Frieren calls it, “only” fifty years), and as Flamme grows old and infirm, she laments only teaching Frieren how to fight and use magic for revenge. That said, she believes Frieren will one day become strong enough to defeat the Demon King, protending her actual future.

The last spell she teaches Frieren is one she learned as a small child: how to create a field of flowers. She asks Frieren to do so around her grave when she passes, and Frieren does so. She also tells Frieren to live in obscurity and not seek to leave her name in history…at least not until the Demon King is gone.

After a deeply engrossing montage of Frieren living that solitary, unassuming life for centuries, one day her gardening in her forest is interrupted by the arrival of Himmel, Eisen, and Heiter. She asks what they want with a “mediocre mage”, but Himmel has the same feeling she had about her master when she first met her: the feeling that he is standing before the most powerful mage he’s ever encountered.

And he would be right. Frieren may have lived a simple, hermitic life after Flamme’s death, she also spent all of those centuries training and continuing to suppress her mana. A human hero like Himmel could see past that ruse almost immediately, but back in the present, Aura has no frikkin’ idea what’s comin’ down the pike. Not until she already has her and Frieren’s souls on her scales.

Seeing that her soul outweighs Frieren’s, Aura takes a broadsword from one of her headless minions and draws closer in preparation to take her head as well. She believes she’s won, because she can see Frieren’s mana isn’t that impressive. But as she gets closer, the scales start to tip more in Freiren’s favor.

When Frieren finally lets on that she’s been suppressing, Aura is skeptical; there’s been no instability or variation in mana output—the telltale sign of suppression. But that’s simply because she’s been suppressing her mana for most of her over thousand years of life, more than double that of Aura’s.

When Frieren stops suppressing, the scale is yanked down on her side, and her mana envelops Aura in a vast fifty foot-plus column. Aura can no longer scoff and claim to be the stronger of them. Nor can she control herself any longer, as the scales she deployed have turned against her.

Frieren turns her back on Aura and orders her to kill herself, and Aura, unable to resist, puts the blade to her neck, lopping off her ornate braids one by one, and then beheads herself. Taketatsu Ayana effortlessly switches Aura’s voice from haughty confidence to pure fear and panic. Just as demons deceive with their words, Frieren, like her master, deceives with her mana. Lugner and Aura can call it unfair all they like…because life ain’t frikkin’ fair.

RABUJOI WORLD HERITAGE LIST

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 09 – Get Up

Granat thanks Fern and Stark for saving him, and vows to pardon Frieren, now that he knows she’s the mage whose party saved the town back when his gramps ran it. As for the main threat, Aura has been that for five centuries thanks to a pair of scales that weigh her mana against her opponents.

The one with less mana falls under her control, hence her large army. Frieren the Slayer will admit it is bigger than the last time they met eighty years ago, but she finds Aura’s magic “disgusting.” If a demon is going to insist on talking to her, she has no reason to be nice. I for one am glad Aura talks, because she’s voiced by Taketatsu Ayana.

Frieren dispels the magic Aura is using on the soldiers surrounding her, but Aura assumes she lacks the mana to dispel all of them. She also asks why Frieren isn’t just coming in blasting all kinds of flashy attacks. Frieren says Himmel scolded her, but when Aura tells him Himmel’s gone, she agrees: why not go all out and waste no time?

The church where Granat, Fern, and Stark are located has a barrier, but Stark knows they can’t hide there forever. He gets up as if to confront Lugner and Linie, but he’s actually going to find Frieren and beg her to come back and deal with them. It’s less heroic, but Fern can’t deny it’s realistic.

It isn’t until they’re outside that Fern realizes Luger’s blood is still on her and Stark’s clothes, too late for a healed Luger to pin her to the wall by the shoulder. At the same time, Linie rolls in like a little ball of lightning, conjures an axe just like Stark’s, and delivers a blow that sends him off the battlements to the ground below.

Frieren can’t help Fern and Stark; they have to trust that she left them there because she knew they’d be alright. Lugner and Linie are terrifyingly powerful opponents. Even so, Fern’s calm expression endures even when she shatters the blood vine that snagged her, then unleashes a dizzying barrage of magical attacks at Lugner.

He may have a lot more years under his belt, a lot better mastery of magic, and larger stores of the stuff, but Fern has one thing he doesn’t: speed. She’s even faster on the draw than Frieren, and uses that to great effect. Linie smashes Stark into the ground and prepares to join Lugner, but Stark gets back up, so their fight continues.

While Draht had his wires and Lugner has his blood, Linie has the ability to assess and copy the exact fighting style and weapon of whatever warrior she fights. She first demonstrated it by fighting Stark with the same axe he has, in Eisen’s style, then switches between different weapons and styles in the middle of combat, which combined with her dancerly acrobatics makes for a tremendous spectacle.

When Stark falls again, it’s with the belief he can’t beat Linie, who is fighting like his master. He initially assumes he’s lost, but then remembers a lesson during which Eisen told him the most important thing is for a warrrior to get back up. As long as you’re standing, you haven’t lost. So he gets back up, and realizes Linie’s blows aren’t as powerful as Eisen’s were. Linie is just pissed off she can’t join Lugner.

Ultimately, her arrogance is her undoing, as she sees Stark wide open with his all-or-nothing attack and heaves her axe into his side. But rather than cutting him in two it barely digs in an inch. Stark wears a wry grin as he’s confirmed this girl is no Eisen, then initiates a Lightning Bolt attack that carves her clean in two. I have to admit: I stood up and cheered.

Linie meeting her end distracts Lugner for a split second, which is all the opening Fern needs to send a fatal Zoltraak through his heart. And so Frieren was right: her apprentice and her frontline warrior could handle themselves just fine against Aura’s lieutenants in her absence. I just hope she’s right about still being stronger than Aura!

What a couple of breathtaking, outstanding battles these were. I’m still all jacked up after watching them. Needless to say the storyboarding, animation, direction, lighting, sound effects, and Evan Call score all conspired to create a sublime viewing experience I won’t soon forget, and that left me craving for the next battle.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 08 – The Beauty of Accumulated Effort

Whelp, Draht can’t say Frieren didn’t warn him! After suspending her from the ceiling with magical wire, which she keeps from beheading her with her mana, he believes he’s won. Frieren doesn’t let him believe it for long.

In the space of five seconds, spread out longer so we’re able to follow, she liberates one of hands and then the other and plants him face down on the ground. Before he can plead for his life, Frieren takes it, lamenting the young demons’ lack of battle experience.

Eisen told Stark that good food is the sign of a peaceful town. After scarfing down a tasty burger, Fern decides to petition Graf Granat to release her master, for she senses the peace of the town is about to be threatened. Stark feels the same way, but he’s much more of a scaredy-cat than Fern.

Granat discovers Frieren has escaped, his dead guard, and the fact that Draht is missing, and asks Lugner and Linie where he is at swordpoint. Lugner assumes the time for violence has come, and he uses his blood like Draht used his wire: to decapitate all of the knights. He then wounds Granat and takes him prisoner.

On their way to the graf’s mansion, Fern notices a cloaked figure and recognizes her as Frieren. In a quiet alley, Frieren explains how she came to be free and why she’s decided this place is boring and it’s time to go. But Fern wants to protect the town from the demons.

Frieren tells her and Stark to deal with them on their own. Knowing an enemy like Lugner is strong isn’t cause not to fight them, and in her opinion (not to be undervalued considering her prestige) she doesn’t believe Fern or Stark to be any weaker than Lugner or Linie.

The real reason Frieren is leaving the remaining two “envoys” to them is that she has bigger fish to fry. Aura the Guillotine is only 10 clicks outside the city with her army, waiting for the envoys to lower the magical barrier. Frieren admits she doesn’t particularly like fighting strong foes, so she intends to end things quickly.

Under cover of darkness, Stark and Fern infiltrate the manor. I love how Stark tries to be chivalrous by lending Fern a hand, knowing full well she can fly. Lugner keeps blabbing to a tied up and bloodied Granat how he and other demons like him are the products of tireless hard work and practice, and how he loathes geniuses such as Flamme, the one who developed the anti-demon barrier.

He gives Granat some more alone time to think about telling him how to lower that barrier, and that’s when Stark enters. Granat initially thinks his son has arrived, and he recognizes Stark’s trembling hands, because his son’s hands did the same thing when he left for war. Far from calling him a coward, he considers it most valorous.

Lugner and Linie return before Stark can smash the chair with his axe, so he demonstrates his speed and instincts by scoring a hit on Lugner, then protecting his vitals from his blood magic. Stark isn’t there to fight Lugner and Linie two-on-one, but only to give an opening to Fern, who blasts the shit out of Lugner as she floats outside the window.

Linie prepares to fight Fern, who is All Business, but Lugner warns against rash action, and even allows Fern and Stark to leave with the injured Granat. As Frieren thought, Fern and Stark can handle themselves against this level of demon. I only wish we’d been able to see Fern vs. Linie.

Lugner tells Linie he can track them with his blood on their clothing, and also that Linie would have died if she’d been hit with the Zoltraak attack Fern used, which has apparently been upgraded into a demon-killing spell. He then recalls whom the young mage reminded him of: Frieren the Slayer, another genius who used the attack on him long ago.

The episode closes with Frieren floating just as her student did, backlit by the full moon, in no mood to talk and ready to take care of business as she faces down a smirking Aura and her army. We’ll have to wait until next week to learn if Frieren was right about being stronger than the little purple-haired terror, but unlike the late foolish Draht, I’ll believe she is until proven otherwise!

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 06 – Fun and Ridiculous

When Fern visits Stark as he trains through the night, she can the sense fear and doubt in him. After all, he believes the dragon is only staying away because it doesn’t feel like it. The scar on his head is from a strike from Eisen, not a monster. But when Fern takes his weathered, calloused hands in hers, she can also sense that when the time comes, he won’t run.

She remembers her first monster battle, when her knees went weak and her hands trembled. But once she ran for her life a bit and gainer her resolve, she was able to do what had to be done. She believes Stark has that same kind of resolve to protect the villagers. He’s lived there three years—a long time for both him and Fern, even if it’s the blink of an eye for Frieren.

There’s a fun little moment when it appears Stark fled the next morning. Frieren is about to make Fern join her in a game of tag with the dragon, something Fern does not want to do, but then Stark appears, late, but ready to help out. I loved Fern’s little smile: not only is she happy she doesn’t have to run, but she’s glad she was right about Stark.

While I’m not sure if Frieren meant for this to happen, when she sees Stark’s arms tremble as he regards the dragon in the canyon below, she tells him that Eisen’s arms used to tremble the exact same way. Eisen wasn’t shy about the reason: he was afraid. Fear isn’t a bad thing; it’s why he was there on that journey. Hearing this helps firm up Stark’s resolve.

As Stark closes to fighting range with the giant dragon, Frieren wears a look of supreme confidence. Stark may not have much faith in his skills, but he fundamentally misunderstood his master striking him that one and only time. Eisen would later tell her that he hit him reflexively, because in that moment, he feared him.

Eisen knew after his time training Stark that he would one day become a magnificent warrior. And while he may not quite be there, he’s powerful enough to completely overpower and defeat the dragon, killing it without even knowing he killed it. It’s a beautifully animated and orchestrated battle, but it’s a quick one.

When Frieren and Fern come down to the canyon floor and Frieren pats him on the back and praises him, Stark can’t help but crack a smile too. And with the threat of the dragon eliminated, he’s able to leave the village secure in the knowledge it’s safe, so he can join their party as their front-liner.

As for the dragon loot, the book Frieren obtains does indeed allow people to see through clothing, but Fern doesn’t find it that “interesting”, nor is she particularly impressed with what Stark has under his britches. That said, if Stark is to be believed, she could well just be messing with him!

The new three-person party arrives in the fortress city of Waal, where the guard is keeping the checkpoint to the war-torn Northern Lands closed until further notice. Frieren decides to go shopping on her own, leaving Stark and Fern alone once again. When she appears to reject his offer to grab a bite, he goes off on his own.

Stark buys himself the same sundae he’d get when traveling with Eisen, but notes that it’s a lot smaller than he remembers. The bartender notes that Stark was much smaller then, but it could also be sundae budget cuts at the tavern! Fern ends up following him there after overhearing that the gate could be closed for two years.

Now I’m certain Fern is glad to have Stark around, because it means she’ll be traveling with someone with a human sense of time. She knows her master will all too happily study magic in Waal for two years or more, because two years is nothing to an elf. But Stark? He understands that two years in this place is far too long.

Stark agrees to use his “face of a scoundrel” to help try to find a way through the gates, first through legitimate businesses, then through the black market. Stark and Fern have a wonderful chemistry, and I found every interaction between them quietly captivating.

Take when they’re atop the city walls looking to the north their masters once braved. Eisen didn’t talk about himself a lot, but on their travels was always ready to tell Stark about his travels with Himmel, Heiter, and Frieren. Frieren in particular made the journey “ridiculous and fun” rather than sad and painful, and thus made those ten years the best of Eisen’s long life.

Stark doesn’t just want to hurry up because he’s a human and human lives are fleeting. He wants to get back from the journey when Eisen is still alive, so hat he can repay him by telling him stories about his fun, ridiculous journey. Thankfully for them, the obstacle to that journey continuing is removed once the castellan of the city learns that Frieren is in town.

He assumes she’s going up north again to aid the fight against the remnants of Demon Lord’s army, and grants her passage without delay, complete with a ticker-tape laden hero’s sendoff. This makes Frieren mopey, as she wanted to hang around Waal and do more magical studying, and isn’t a fan of pomp. But like Fern and Stark, I’m glad they’re getting right back on the road. Danger certainly awaits, but so too does more fun and ridiculousness.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 05 – The Front-Liner

One of Fern’s favorite memories is of Heiter telling him she’d better do as Frieren says, because if she’s bad, he’ll haunt her after he dies. She takes that to mean she’ll just get to see him, so he flips it around: if she’s a good girl, he may just come and visit her.

She wakes up leaning against Frieren as their wagon arrives at the next village on their journey. There, they hear reports of the villagers seeing the ghosts of loved ones, appearing as they did in life. While that rules out the undead, it doesn’t rule out the threat to the villagers.

While Frieren is fine moving on in the morning, Fern insists they help, as “unlike” her master, she’s a good girl. So they head into the forest to investigate, and find evidence of magical use; specifically illusion magic. Frieren IDs the one behind the “ghosts” as an Einsam.

An Einsam uses the loved ones of its victims as bait, though she assures Fern that the illusions don’t affect mages. And yet when the forest suddenly grows misty and a ghostly Heiter appears before Fern, she freezes. Even knowing it’s an illusion, the Einsam also uses her memories and his past words against her, which Fern notes is pretty damn cruel.

Frieren, who has so many centuries under her belt, is less taken in by her ghost, but she is surprised and a little bemused that it’s Himmel now instead of her old master Flamme. For an unchanging immortal elf, something like this suggests she’s changed after all.

When she uses her magic (which really packs a punch, both visually and aurally), it also snaps Fern out of it. When she sees the true form of the Einsam, she follows her master’s attack with one of her own. The monster is defeated, and the village is safe.

Frieren and Fern have both lost people dear to them, and there are times when they want nothing more than to be reunited, even if they know that’s impossible (at least until they reach Aureole).

Their encounter with the Einsam (German for lonely) tugged at that longing, weaponizing it against them. But while they must be vigilant, they can’t close themselves off from the love they still harbor for the departed.

When their travels take them to the Rigel Canyon in the Central Lands, they encounter a red solar dragon sleeping beside its nest. Frieren notices a grimoire in the nest that she wants, so she has Fern fire an attack at the dragon, only for it to have absolutely no effect.

Frieren’s reaction to this is basically “Huh, they really are tough” and indicates that the proper course now is to run. The resulting chase scares the living daylights out of Fern, and when Frieren says if they repeat the cycle enough they’ll eventually prevail, Fern isn’t having it.

The solution to their problems is to add a party member: specifically, front-liner; a warrior. Eisen told Frieren that a town in Riegel Canyon is where she can find one: Stark, his former apprentice. They’re approached by tiny old lady, who for once doesn’t want them to clean a statue of Himmel.

She leads them to Stark, who is playing with some kids. Stark is the hero of the town for standing his ground against the dragon, so surely he’s front-liner material. But while he’s warm to the kids and their grandma, he’s cool to Frieren, who after all riled up the dragon.

He’s also unimpressed with her reason for retrieving the grimoire from its nest—for no particular reason, but simply because it’s a hobby. We catch a glimpse of a memory in which Himmel praised her for her weird spells, and she says that’s the reason if he needs one, but he’s still dubious.

That’s when we learn why Stark hasn’t defeated the dragon he stood up against: he’s not the fearless hero the townsfolk believe him to be. He only “stood his ground” because he was too terrified to move, and the dragon departed on its own and has stayed away on its own.

As Stark cries and tugs at Frieren’s hem, a disgusted Fern says he’s “no good” and they should find another warrior. But Frieren still gives Stark the night to think over joining them. She’s convinced he’s the man for the job.

That night, after dinner (and we get some pretty delicious food sakuga), Frieren heads off to bed, but suggests Fern go check out what Stark’s up to. There are loud thunderous booms coming from the canyon, and when she reaches the location where they met, Fern sees that the sheer gap between the cliffs was caused by him, rending the cliff asunder with his axe.

Back before they left Eisen’s Frieren got the skinny on Stark: he was the only one to flee when his village was attacked, which made him a coward, but also kept him alive. Eisen, who saw that coward in himself (he apparently wasn’t around when his loved ones were killed) decided to teach him everything he knew.

Stark may well still be a coward, but he now possesses the skills and tools to protect others, should he wish to. He certainly wanted to defeat the dragon, but wasn’t strong enough alone. With Frieren and Fern backing him up, perhaps he can prevail, both in becoming the hero the town believes him to be, and gaining a little courage and confidence.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 04 – Not Just a Sunrise

Now 28 A.H. (After Himmel), Frieren and Fern find themselves in the a town by the Grantz Channel. An old man, who was only a little boy when Frieren was last there, tells them the townsfolk can’t keep up with the debris and wrecks along the beach, so in exchange for a grimoire of the legendary mage Flamme, Frieren agrees to clean it up.

Fern is well-studied enough to know that virtually all books purported to be written by Flamme are fakes, so she wonders why Frieren took the job. She replies “to help someone in need”, and while she admits she may really only doing it for herself, who’s to say she isn’t in need?

Since taking on Fern as an apprentice, Fern has obseved that Frieren is a bit of a mess. She has to be woken up every morning, bathed, clothed, and fed. Fern is always cleaning up messes she makes in their room. There are times she feels more like a mother and a maid than an apprentice.

After three months of cleanup in the winter cold, Frieren and Fern complete the cleanup, just one day before the town’s anuual New Year’s sunrise viewing. The old man hopes Frieren can experience it “this time”; the last time she was here, she missed out on it because she slept in.

This time, Frieren is determined to be awake for it, so she stays up all night, only to fall asleep and dream of those days. While she knows Heiter was “bedridden” due to overdrinking, Himmel still would have liked to watch the sunrise with her, and believes she’ll know why when she sees it.

Despite nearly missing out again, her trusty apprentice pulls her out of bed, bundles her up, and takes her by the hand to the beach, just in time for a gorgeous sunset. And while Frieren admits to herself it’s pretty, she doesn’t think it’s any different form any other sunrise.

That is, until she sees Fern’s sunlit smile, and hearing her say how beautiful it is. It isn’t that Himmel didn’t understand Frieren, he did. This is what he wanted her to see and to know: a sunset is more beautiful when there are others beside you to see it. And if she didn’t have Fern, she wouldn’t have been able to see it at all.

During their travels, Frieren’s party found themselves at Eisen’s home, where he pays his respects to the graves of his long-departed family. He always believed the dead become nothingness, but Heiter believes there is a heaven. Even if it wasn’t so, and unlike most priests he considered that possibility, it was simply more “convenient” to believe somewhere better than nothingness awaited them.

It’s with that in mind that Frieren and Fern pay Eisen a visit at that same place in the Bredt region. His armor and cape are a littl dingier and his face and hands are a little more weathered, but unlike Heiter he’s far from his deathbed. He asks Frieren for help searching for Flamme’s notes…the real ones, not the fakes. A lovely search montage ensues.

As for the why, both Heiter and Eisen, who wrote to each other regularly, wanted to do something for her after seeing how sad she was not to have known Himmel better. Since it is storied that among Flamme’s notes there is a method of conversing with the dead, he seeks the means for Frieren to right a mistake.

It’s Fern who spots the biggest tree in the basin, one that is over a thousand years old. Frieren recognizes this tree and this spot. She was there when it was a mere sapling planet by her master, Flamme. Even though Flamme would pass away in the intervening thousand years, she also knew Frieren would still be around, and the notes the tree would grow to protect would be there too, if Frieren wanted to speak to the dead, as she does now.

While remarking how her old master, an “unpleasant” and “irresponsible” woman, had predicted this would be how things would go down with Frieren, upon opening the entrance to the ruins and reading the grimoire (a sequence elevated by crescendos in Evan Call’s sublime score), she learns that on her travels long, long ago, Flamme found heaven on earth.

The land where souls rest, called Aureole, is located on the northernmost tip of the northern continent, in a land now appropriately known as Ende. That also happens to be the current location of the Demon King’s sprawling castle. No doubt he built it there to establish his dominion over heaven and the dead.

The Demon King may be gone, but the caslte in Ende remains, and that is where Frieren will be able to speak to Himmel (and possibly Heiter too). The catch? It’s a long, long way to Ende. On her original journey with Himmel, Eisen and Heiter, it took a decade. There’s no getting around it; Fern will be pushing 30 by the time they arrive.

Eisen isn’t accompany them as he says he’ll only slow them down (a shame, as I really like Eisen), but as they’re on a wagon to take him back to his hovel and Frieren is asleep in Fern’s lap, he asks Fern if Frieren is a good master. She finds it hard to give a simple answer, for there are times it feels like she only took her on as an apprentice because she promised Heiter.

Frieren’s often single-minded search for both new spells and remnants of her past travels with her comrades makes it feel to Fern like she’s not interested in her. And yet, she also gives her birthday presents, so clearly there’s a part of her that appreciates she’s by her side.

In this, Eisen knows that Frieren, despite looking unchanging, actually has changed since Himmel’s death and gaining Fern as a companion. Now Frieren knows that while being alone was “nice and easy”, sharing her adventures with another, no matter how fleeting a time as it may seem, is its own reward. She didn’t take full advantage when Himmel was alive, but perhaps that too can change when she and Fern reach Aureole.

We’re now four episodes into Frieren’s story, and now the titular elven mage and her cute apprentice have a fixed destination. Its distance away suggests their journey will be chronicled in the weeks to come, and will likely be as important than their final goal. Needless to say, I’m incredibly eager for the next episode.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 03 – The Best Defense

Now that I’m accustomed to Frieren’s tendencies, I appreciate them all the more when certain things occur. The cutaways, for instance. A show like Family Guy will run them into the ground, but Frieren employs them judiciously. We’ve seen Frieren’s quirker, sillier side expressed in this way, whether she’s hopelessly stuck head-first in a chest, or describing weird spells she’s collected.

This time, in the trade town of Warm, Frieren says she and Fern will split up the shopping, but when she asks what Frieren will actually be buying, Frieren makes a certain face. Fern’s been with her long enough to know that face can’t mean anything good. It means she’s about to waste their traveling funds on something weird, like a giant skull or a potion that dissolves clothing.

So Fern does what she believes she must: she delays her own shopping to shadow Frieren. She’s surprised to find her making very pained looks of indecision as she inspects accessories in the market. Then she watches Frieren go into the basement of a tavern where some very unsavory-looking adventuerers offer their genuine recommendations for…desserts.

Fern may later call Frieren dense about how humans feel, but she herself is dense in this instance, since it’s clear to anyone that Frieren was being coy about what she was doing because she wanted it to be a surprise. It’s Fern’s sixteenth birthday, and to celebrate, Frieren takes her to the most picturesque spot to be at sundown, and treats her to some sumptuous pancakes.

She also presents her gift to her—a gorgeous metal hair ornament with butterfly motif—but was worried it wouldn’t be the right one. Fern makes it clear to Frieren that she’s overjoyed not just that she did all this for her, but that she’s happy they’re together as well.

27 years after Himmel’s death, Fern has now grown taller than Frieren. That’s another bittersweet moment when Frieren compares their heights (and chests), because depending on how long this show goes on, barring her untimely demise, Fern will have to watch Fern grow old and die, just like everyone else in her life.

Frieren clarifies to Fern that their journey isn’t entirely aimless; she intends to retrace the adventures she had with Himmel, Heiter, and Eisen. This is her way of not only honoring their memory, but interacting with those who have memories of those adventures, before they all fade away into time.

Their journey takes them into the Grosse forest, where Frieren stops to show Fern that while her defensive magic is powerful, it is not invincible. Watching her offensive magic bend around Fern’s shield and fire off in all directions, it’s clear Fern needs to have more finesse: a large sphere of protection around her at all times will sap her mana too quickly and doom her in a real battle.

There’s a reason Frieren is reviewing Fern’s defensive bonafides: their next destination is a village in the forest where Qual, one of the Demon King’s most powerful mages, was battled and sealed by Frieren’s party eight decades ago. The oldest man in the village knows Frieren’s name and face, because Himmel visited every year until he died to inspect the seal, promising that one day before it failed, Frieren would arrive to defeat Qual for good.

Frieren may see it as simply taking care of unfinished business, but Himmel clearly knew her enough to know she wouldn’t let a loose end like Qual linger. Fern also learns that despite the seeming innocuousness of most of their journey thus far, this is not one of those times. She and Frieren are there to save the village from death and destruction, should an unchecked Qual awaken.

That said, Fern has been procrastinating about reading the magical tome Frieren bought her—one of the few non-weird impulse purchases. Rather than read it that night, Frieren tells Fern to get a good night’s sleep, because the next morning, she unseals Qual, and after a few pleasantries, the battle begins.

Fern is shocked to find that “Zoltraak”, the defense and equipment-piercing magic Qual is known for inventing, is nothing but an ordinary offensive spell she can defend with relative ease. Had she read the tome Frieren bought her, she’d know that in the 80 years since Qual was sealed, humans’ magic technology has improved to render Zoltraak run-of-the-mill. It’s another clever demonstration of how time has passed in this world.

I never knew at time when motor vehicles were a rarity, but my grandparents did. At the same time, I remember when computers were dumb, slow, and monochromatic in a way my nieces and nephews never will. 80 years may only be a drop in the bucket for Frieren and a good night’s sleep for Qual, but for humans, it’s the difference between him being a fearsome foe and No Big Deal.

Frieren also knows that Fern has progressed enough as a mage to successfully defend Qual’s attacks, giving her the opening to fly up above him and deliver a blast of killing magic so powerful it not only atomizes Qual, but exposes an aquifer a few feet below ground level. I love how it reflects the sky, appearing almost like a hole in the earth.

With Qual dealt with, Frieren and Fern prepare to move on to their next destination. Before they do, the village elder thanks them, and Frieren recognizes his hat from eighty years ago. This old man was the same little brat who flipped her skirt! I love those little details, like the old lady’s twin braids in the previous episode. The hat may be old and frayed, but still keeps the sun out.

The former brat has grown up and grown old, and is glad to have lived to see Frieren return, just as Himmel promised. He believed in Himmel, and Himmel believed in Frieren. While she may worry about losing all memory of her comrades, and has trouble with human feelings in general, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them.

As they ride a cart out of the village, Fern is studying her magic tome hard, and Frieren pats her head…just because. Part teacher, part friend, part big sister…and part mother. Frieren is all of these things to Fern, and she’s happy to have them all. And so the 5-star ratings will continue until quality declines!

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 02 – Rhapsody in Blue

Frieren doesn’t mince words when it comes to Fern’s development: she has control over mana, which is the hardest of three things a mage needs. Unfortunately, Fern lacks sufficient mana itself, and the necessary strength to use it. She can gain both, but it will take years.

We watch those years—four of them, to be exact—unfold in a sequence of beautiful little slice-of-life scenes. Meals are shared, different seasons are enjoyed, magic training and long hours of study in the library take place.

After four years, Heiter has a fall, and is no longer able to walk. Fern has improved, but still can’t hit the rock across the gorge. She’s been patient with herself as Frieren advised, but “eventually” being able to blast the rock isn’t good enough for her; not when Heiter has so little time left. She wants him to be glad he saved her, and to know she’ll be alright without him.

While sitting by Heiter’s bedside, Frieren asks why the “Corrupt Priest”, as is her nickname for him, chose to take Fern in. Turns out he happened to be having a drink atop a high cliff when a lil’ Fern, who had lost her family, was considering jumping. He convinced her not to because it’s what his good friend Himmel the Hero would have done, were he still alive.

He told Fern it would be a shame to die, because all of her precious memories of those she loved would vanish from the world. But once the grimoire is deciphered and Frieren reports that it contained no immortality or resurrection spells, he says that’s fine. What matters is that Fern is now a true mage, and thus won’t be in Frieren’s way.

Heiter wants to spare Fern the pain of watching someone else taken from her, so he wants Frieren to take her and leave before he dies. This makes Frieren (and me) tear up (for the second episode in a row). Heiter’s heart is in the right place, but he’s wrong: Fern wants to say goodbye to him properly. Before that, she makes sure Fern has some time with Heiter to make a few more little memories before the end.

Frieren then take Fern with her on her aimless journey through the world in search of spells. Fern learns these spells are very specialized and random, but it’s Frieren’s hobby, so that’s what they do. Frieren also makes clear that the bulk of “adventuring” is doing odd jobs for people who can’t do them easily themselves.

This brings them to a small village where an old lady shows them a tarnished and weathered statue of Himmel the Hero. In a stirring, emotional flashback that lasts only a few moments, we travel all the way back to when this grizzled woman was just a frightened little flower girl in the path of a demon…until Himmel saved her.

The statue got the way it was in part because no one in the village other than her even remembers Himmel. It’s now been 76 years since Frieren’s party saved the world (50 years between meteor showers, plus 26 years since Himmel’s death). The world is now short on humans who were even alive when the Demon King was around.

When the statue is repaired and cleaned, the old woman mentions that she’d like to give it some more color, perhaps by planting some flowers around it. When Fern notes that Frieren has a spell to conjure flowers, Frieren says the only flowers that will do are Blue Moon Weed flowers, which grew in Himmel’s hometown.

The only problem is, the old lady, an herbalist, says the weed has all but died out where they are. Nevertheless, Frieren is determined to find it so she can analyze it and make a spell to conjure it. Six months of searching pass without any progress. Fern grows concerned Frieren’s obsession will go on indefinitely owing to her elven perception of time.

She shares her concerns with the herbalist, who gives Fern some seeds from a very similar blue flower and urges her to tell Frieren how she feels. Frieren is receptive, and doesn’t want to take up too much more of Fern’s comparatively short life on the search, so she’ll end it “soon,” whatever that means!

Fern then asks Frieren why she loves collecting spells so much. Frieren insists it’s just a hobby, but also notes that she once lived a much more “apathetic” existence before she met and joined Himmel. Like Heiter, being with Himmel changed her. We flash back to the days of yore when Frieren filled a field with flowers, Himmel made her a pretty crown to wear, and told her his wish to one day show her the Blue Moon blooms of his home.

During their conversation, Fern’s seeds were stolen away by a seed rat. The two follow its tracks (another spell), which lead to an old abandoned stone tower. A single blue petal falls, and leads Frieren to magically launch herself up to the top of the tower, which is absolutely covered in the blue flowers she’s been looking for.

Frieren smiles, because she was finally able to see the flowers Himmel wanted to show her. Later than she’d like, but still. She whips up a conjuring spell, surrounds Himmel’s statue with them, and even makes a crown of them for him, just as he once made one for her. His little gesture, and many others like it on their travels, awakened a joie de vivre Frieren didn’t have before.

By the same token, Frieren takes exception to Fern saying the two of them are far apart when it comes to being passionate about magic. Yes, Fern may have been able to choose something other than magic in order to show Heiter (and herself) that she could support herself later in life.

But, and this is the important part: she did choose magic. And in one of the most heart-swelling cutaways of the episode, we see that she did it for largely the same reason as Frieren: because there’s great beauty in magic, and beauty in the faces of those watching you use it, especially if they’re people you care about.

I’m only halfway through the four-episode opening salvo of Frieren, but I’m already pretty confident this is a top contender for Anime of the Season, if not the year. It’s just so well made, so bittersweet and nostalgic. It’s like wearing a warm blanket and holding a mug of cocoa by the fire. It’s the kind of show that reminds me why I keep watching anime.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 01 (First Impressions) – The Unchanging One

As the title indicates, Beyond Journey’s End isn’t about how a party consisting of the hero Himmel, the warrior Eisen, the priest Heiter, and the mage Frieren defeat the Demon King. We only see them returning from their ten-year adventure after they’ve successfully defeated said king. This is the story of what happens after the foe is slain.

Of the four in the party, Himmel and Heiter are mere humans, while Frieren is an elf and Eisen a dwarf. As such, they perceive time differently. The party is welcomed to the great capital to jubilant celebration, yet they seem content to enjoy a quiet moment together witnessing a once-in-50-years meteor shower.

Frieren parts ways with her party-mates, embarking on a journey of her own to find new spells. When fifty years pass, she returns to the city to find the hero Himmel has aged, well, fifty years. As an elf, she hasn’t aged at all. Her appearance is identical to the statue of her erected half a century ago.

This is the simple, quiet magic of Beyond Journey’s End. So much goddamn time passes in so little runtime, and yet I felt every bit of that time pass, even as I acknowledged that it didn’t feel like so much time at all to an elf like Frieren.

There’s also a profound sense of happiness that accompanies Frieren taking her party-mates to a spot where she had promised to take them fifty years ago, to watch that same meteor shower. You can see that happiness, that contentment, in Frieren’s face.

That happiness dissipates when Himmel passes away. And while I’d only known him for around five minutes, I actually started tearing up before Frieren did. She cries not just because a friend has passed, but because it feels so unfair to her that he passed so quickly by her reckoning—before she believed she’d even gotten to know him.

The party that defeated the Demon King traveled together for “only” ten years, but that decade feels like a drop in the bucket to Frieren. Still twenty years after Himmel’s death, she visits the holy city where the priest Heiter is still kickin’.

She’s guided to Heiter by a little girl named Fern, an war orphan Heiter took in. Heiter also has a grimoire for Frieren to examine said to contain lost spells of resurrection an immortality. He also admits to fearing death more than when they last saw each other two decades ago.

In addition to asking her to decipher the grimoire to give him a bit more time, he asks Frieren to take little Fern on as an apprentice, as she shows great potential as a mage. Frieren tells him she can’t in good conscience do so, noting the mortality rate of mage apprentices.

But when Frieren witnesses a demonstration of Fern’s power, then asks her if she likes magic, Fern answers “somewhat”, mirroring Frieren’s own position. So it looks like she’ll take her under her wing after all.

Beyond Journey’s End starts strong with an epic, sprawling tour-de-force of quiet, teeming grandeur. We’re dropped in Frieren’s shoes as someone detached from time as humans know it; I grieved the passing of Himmel as she did, and was shocked by how much had changed as she went off on what she perceived to be a brief jaunt.

She is the unchanging one, who with her party-mates helped save the world. Now she lingers on, wandering the earth searching for the next great truths, but with the arrival of Fern in her life, she appears destined to not wander alone for long.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Elrond’s haunting prophecy to Arwen in The Two Towers. But like Arwen, Frieren’s future need not be marked with darkness, doubt, longing and despair. For while human lives may only be fleeting, they live on in their progeny. When Heiter passes, a part of him will live on in Fern.

This was the first of four episodes of Frieren released all at once…I’ll be getting to the other three soon!