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.

O Maidens in Your Savage Season – 05 – A Completely Different Creature Entirely

This week picks right up from the last but flips the POV, from Kazusa to Niina and Izumi. I’m not going to say they don’t flirt with each other quite a bit on their train ride, but it’s certainly not the sweaty tryst Kazusa’s out-of-control imagination makes it out to be.

While it isn’t clear whether it’s a coincidence that Niina’s old acting coach Saegusa is on the very same train, she ends up utilizing Izumi in much same way she used Kazusa a few weeks back: as a prop in a fiction. In this case, she makes a big show of being with her “boyfriend” in front of Saegusa, who nods a gentle approval before taking his leave.

As Momoko tries (mostly in vain) to reassure Kazusa that there’s probably a harmless explanation for the two on the train, Hitoha just happens to be ridden past their exact position on the bridge. She’s in Yamagishi’s car, where he continues to make it clear he’s not into high school girls, and causing Hitoha to cry, as she doesn’t know what else to do; having her authorial debut is everything to her.

Meanwhile, we and Izumi learn about Saegusa and what a phenomenally creepy dude he was, singling Niina out when she was 11, rubbing his face on her shoe, and taking her out alone to shows and meals. But Izumi is only grossed out on the most basic level of suspecting Saegusa of being a paedophile. He doesn’t realize how deep and fucked up the bond became between Saegua and Niina.

And yet Niina declares Saegusa never laid a finger on him…even when she was fourteen, starting to get that kind of attention, and the age when she decided to ask why he wouldn’t do it with her. But he told her he could never love her as a woman, only her girlish nature, and to touch her would be to instantly transform her into something else entirely—something he had no interest in.

All I can say is…Damn. Poor Niina. Unfortunately, she’s very far from the only victim of this particular brand of push/pull mind game bullshit. Niina loathes attention because the only person she wanted it from utterly rejected her. But that does make a nice segue to her original subject of conversation with Izumi: his willingness so say something so “cruel and heartless” to Kazusa—the very same thing Saegusa told her.

But the fact is, Izumi didn’t see it as cruel or heartless at the time, because didn’t even know Kazusa had a crush on him until Niina let it slip right then, assuming (reasonably, and at the same time totally unreasonably so) he did. Indeed, Niina is rather shocked (and amused!) by Izumi’s denseness, having pegged him as someone quick on the uptake. Clearly, he has a significant blind spot…which sports a bob cut.

While she keeps up a brave front in front of Momo, when left on her own in her room Kaz’s mind continues to race, as she deliberates over how impossible it would be to compete against a goddess like Niina. Kaz gets so worked up, she doesn’t realize she’s thinking out loud, talking about being way too obsessed with sex just as her mom steps into her room.

Turns out Kazusa’s and Izumi’s families go out for bowling night on occasion. That has to be the most goddamn fun thing I’ve ever heard! Sure, it’s a little awkward for Izumi and Kaz, especially when…Izumi…sticks his fingers…in the three holes of the ball…GAAAH, anyway things calm down when Kazusa goes to grab some refreshments and Izumi follows her, now knowing exactly what’s eating her.

What follows is the second most heartwarming scene of the episode (the first most comes later): the two, knowing each other so well, recall each other’s childish likes (Kaz a bit of milk in her Calpis; Izumi with melon soda). In this moment they remember how close they are and have always been, and that even with their raging hormones, they can find such moments of peace if they try.

Izumi even sets Kazusa’s mind at ease, first by almost reading it (she wants to bring up Niina, but he beats her to it), then by saying Niina is “more weird than pretty.”

Switching to Momoko, now a much more visible and compelling character, she goes on a date with Sugimoto and it’s…fine? Kinda meh? She honestly doesn’t know how to feel or act or speak, and is basically just relieved to be on the train home.

She’s surprised to find “opening up” by saying she has no dad is such a big deal to him. In any case, it’s a clear case of Momo…just not feeling it. Is it just because of the guy, or is she not into guys, or girls, or anyone? Not enough data to know yet, but I’m intrigued.

As stated last week I’m much less enamored of Yamagishi doing anything at all with Hitoha, and predictably, he decides to continue indulging Hitoha by ruling out direct eroticism and settling for indirect methods, such as Hitoha staking out a spot where he and only he can watch her show him her panties.

Hitoha is apparently getting what she wants—personal sexual experiences with which to improve her writing and hasten her debut—but without getting overbearingly paternalistic, I still fear for her. She’s doing this, at least in part, because she feels she has no other way to achieve her dreams.

That desperation, her limited years and Yamagishi’s more numerous ones all conspire to call her ability to consent into serious question. Yamagishi is the adult here. It’s completely on him to stop this, and endure the cascade of hate from Hitoha. She will get over him, in that situation. She may not get over where this is headed.

The first time Kazusa sees Niina at school, Niina calls Izumi “weird” just as Izumi used to describe her, and the wheels in Kazusa’s head start spinning all over again, helped not at all by a reading in club by Rika that describes exactly the means by which two people think and speak alike. If they both think each other are weird, that doesn’t bode well, Kazusa thinks, and she may well be right.

While we leave Kazusa trapped in a typhoon of suspicion, indecision, despair, and longing, the episode thankfully ends on that first-most heartwarming note I mentioned earlier, as Rika meets Amagi on the rooftop to deliver him his report, which she’s marked up in red to correct his errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation…oh, and on the last page where he asked her out, she wrote in tiny letters if you would be so kind. It’s a yes!

Rika had hoped not to be right there when he discovered that note, but when Amagi sees it, he starts leaping around the flying pages of the report in unabashed joy. Rika most certainly is abashed, at first covering her ears on the stairs, then chiding Amagi for being so loud about his happiness.

Rika is happy no doubt; but she’s no doubt scared shitless. The territory couldn’t be more uncharted if she started reading Shounen Jump. Not to mention, what if she ends up becoming a completely different creature entirely? Boy or girl, every single one of these kids is going to eventually become that—whether they like it or not.

Koimonogatari – 05

Hanekawa explains the town’s events to Kaiki, as well as her impression of Sengoku as someone who doesn’t actually love anyone. Kaiki continues to visit Sengoku to curry favor. The day to deceive her arrives, and he and Senjougahara share a bittersweet phone call. Ononoki meets with him to warn him, out her and Gaen’s concern for his well-being, that he will fail, as he failed to resolve the situation with Senjougahara’s mother. At the shrine, Kaiki tells Sengoku wishes spoken out loud can never come true, and she won’t be able to kill Araragi, Senjougahara, or Oshino, because they died in a traffic accident. Sengoku immediately detects deception.

The past four episodes we’ve seen a Kaiki thoroughly throw himself into the role of investigator, carefully collecting information while carefully manipulating Sengoku into liking and trusting him for the big day when he deceives her. He’s been a picture of efficiency and competence. But as he himself admits to Ononoki, he has no more idea of what he’s doing than anyone else in the world. That proves true in the very last scene, when he’s unable to take candy from a baby. For all her childlike dalliance, Sengoku sniffed out his lie immediately. So it sure looks like he’s failed. More to the point, Gaen, who knows everything, said he would fail, so failure was inevitable.

The question is, why? The never knowing exactly what your doing is part of it, but there’s something else too. Regardless of whether he’s merely putting on a tremendous performance deceiving Senjougahara and us, the audience, Kaiki must be defined by his actions and not his words. Again, as he said, the moment thoughts and wishes are given form in words, they become dramatized and lose their power. The words he exchanges with Senjougahara during their long conversations may have been all over the place, but his actions speak for themselves: affection for her plays a role. there’s a sutble paternal concern and disapproval lurking beneath his digs at Senjougahara’s relationship with Araragi.

When answering what she sees in the boy, she says first and foremost: “He’s not you,” something a daughter might say. There’s been a strong familial cordiality to their dealings, and as the mission is about to wrap up, both admit a part of them will miss each other’s company. Kaiki has always marveled at how Senjougahara has survived and endured her life despite seeming so fragile. She is a miracle to him, one he feels compelled to preserve at all costs. This arc hasn’t documented a strictly dispassionate business transaction. It really has been a love story…just not the one we expected.

Rating: 8 (Great)

Stray Observations:

• Interesting name drops this week: the vampire Episode, whom we have only a cursory familiarity with, and Numachi Rouka, who we don’t know at all.
• Kaiki is still keeping secret to everyone what was in the forbidden closet, dismissing its contents as unimportant. Wonder if that will change now that he’s failed to deceive Sengoku…
• Gaen/Ononoki’s attitude towards Kaiki shifts this week their concern he’s meddling in a town where Gaen has plans, to something like genuine concern Kaiki is repeating history, to the detriment of his physical and emotional well-being.
• What’s Kaiki’s next move? Will he be shocked Sengoku didn’t believe his story? Will she add him to her kill list? Or was his lie about the accident merely his first move, with many to come?