Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Episode 15 - Ai Animes 🤖

Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the open road lies sprawling before us, promising adventures that will undoubtedly call into question our reason for adventuring – what we hope to receive for our struggles, and what we pray not to forget in the years ahead. That’s right, it’s time for Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, that rambling tale of reflection and renewal, which through its focus on impermanence finds both sorrow and hope – the lament that all we love will eventually pass away, and the accompanying prayer that we will take this passing with grace, and embrace the endless possibilities of each new day.

When last we left off, the party were concluding a pair of vignettes regarding the enduring talismans of close bonds, contrasting Stark’s search for a birthday present for Fern with Frieren’s attachment to a ring given by Himmel. The objects are just signifiers, but signifiers are important; just as a key unlocks a door, so does a treasured gift unlock a memory, carrying within it an echo of the emotions it first inspired. With Frieren’s precious token restored, the party continues their journey north, seeking to augment those fond memories with the closure of a last conversation with Himmel. Onward, to the land of souls’ rest!

Episode 15

“Smells Like Trouble”

We settle down in the Laub Hills of the northern lands, where shimmering green fields extend towards gently rolling hillsides, the scenery dappled with fluffy round trees. Most episodes of Frieren immediately instill in me a desire to go for a long, satisfying walk through the woods, which is high praise indeed; the show offers the same detail-rich, all-encompassing portrait of woodland travel as The Fellowship of the Ring’s early segments, when the hobbits are just trundling their way towards the edge of their own known territory. That might actually be my favorite part of those books – Tolkien was also a master of conveying the pleasures of an idle walk

Remarkably fluid character acting as Fern falls asleep on Frieren’s shoulder, with an excellent sense of the weight of Fern attempting to correct herself while mostly unconscious

Sein asks how long they’ve been traveling together, conveniently passing on to us that Fern has been with Frieren for four years now, and Stark for a year himself. And of course, Frieren herself couldn’t really answer this question – in spite of her growth, I’m sure this all still feels like a few weeks’ diversion to her

“There’s something this party lacks.” “We’ve got a front-liner, mages, and a priest.” “A thief, perhaps?” This sort of dialogue demonstrates one of Frieren writer Kanehito Yamada’s biggest weaknesses – their tendency to frame the world of Frieren like a videogame, with self-consciously gamified concepts like the makeup of a proper RPG party. Fantasy literature often features adventuring parties with diverse, balanced skills, but when you start talking about that in class terms as harshly defined as this, you instantly tear at the allegedly authentic fabric of your reality, making it clear you’re just envisioning some variation on Dragon Quest

Unfortunately, this sort of gamified worldbuilding has become part of the background radiation of fantasy anime, particularly when it comes to isekai. This is why it’s so, so, so essential to explore art outside of the realm of your immediate fandom or interests – doing so clues you in to the blind spots or passive assumptions of that fandom, enriching your work with a much broader range of narrative traditions and aesthetic possibilities

The isekai era has really made for a cruel monkey’s paw situation for me personally; I actually love fantasy, but most isekais are predicated on wholly self-sabotaging worldbuilding assumptions, making them entirely uninteresting to me. Granted, there’s also the issue of most of them having terrible writing, but I’d like them to at least start with the potential to be good stories, if not the resources to actually achieve it – and really, the “having terrible writing” issue is also a partial byproduct of their authors only consuming works within their immediate sphere

They reach the next village, where everyone appears to have mysteriously fallen unconscious, like they collapsed in the middle of their daily activities

Sein says the sleeping sickness is a curse, which Frieren describes as “a demon’s spell-affliction that has yet to be unraveled by mankind.” I quite like that definition – that curses are not defined by their inherent nature or category, but by humanity’s inability to counter them. A curse is simply that which is intolerable to us, whatever its nature – a framing that calls into question how stable terms like “demon” are, or if they are simply assigned as a catch-all to that which humanity finds abhorrent

This is the sort of worldbuilding I appreciate – details or assumptions that the characters take for granted, but which nonetheless tell us a great deal about their world relative to our own, whether that revelation be cultural, mechanical, or otherwise

Frieren further explains that while humanity’s own magic has yet to grasp the theory of curses, the magic of the Goddess used by priests is not so limited. The priests are conduits for things they cannot fully understand, not scholars of the arcane

“Like the demons’ magic, we don’t understand much of the principles behind it, so it’s not very interesting.” Frieren has little interest in things she cannot tame and understand for herself; intangibles like faith are just boring to her, an attitude echoed through her inability to recognize and appreciate other intangibles like friendship

“It’s difficult to use unless you’re born with the knack for it.” Her frustration calls to mind the lament of another – the demon Lugner’s anger regarding natural geniuses. Long-lived beings understandably chafe at the idea of potential being dictated by birth; both elves and demons are raging against the inevitable primacy of mankind’s rapid self-replacement and continuous evolution

Sein reports he’d need special tools for a banishment, so they’re better off just killing the source of the curse. Then Stark immediately falls under the sleeping curse as well

Always charmed by how unglamorous levitation is in this show, as in this sequence of Stark being floated across a river like a sack of potatoes

Fern is the next to succumb to the curse

Frieren faceplants soon after, leaving Sein alone to fight the demon

The demon is a “chaos flower,” a massive plant-like being somewhere between a marlboro and a venus fly trap. Your classic “distributes poisonous pollen” flower beasty; I’ve probably killed two hundred of them in Elden Ring at this point

If for nothing else, reading broadly will certainly help broaden your bestiary when concocting threats for your protagonists. Though the DnD campaign I run is largely high fantasy, most of its main threats are inspired by Clive Barker and folk horror

“Three Spears of the Goddess!” I appreciate that Sein’s magic and fighting style are all clear reflections of his priestly training

Ooh, impressive panning cut as Sein avoids this flower’s vines. I’m particularly impressed by the attention paid to Sein’s body language – not only does he move with a clear sense of weight, it’s also obvious that he’s not accustomed to physical combat. He comes across as convincingly amateurish in his dodging of these attacks, thus making the threat feel that much more immediate and perilous

Sein also worries that if he were to briefly wake Frieren, her spell might reflect and destroy the village. The sort of thing Frieren herself would never think about, demonstrating his priestly nature in spite of himself

He thinks back to Heiter describing how he “doesn’t believe adventurers require mutual understanding or trust,” using Frieren as an example who was terrible at both

“So I decided to trust her words.” Frieren doesn’t share much, but she does generally speak deliberately, without deception or pretense. That in itself makes her an unusual person, but if you can learn to trust in her words, she’s actually quite easy to work with

Thus he trusts in Frieren, and she spies the reflector trick even before the words are out of his mouth

Our travelers next arrive at the grand fortress city of Vorig, surrounded by both imposing walls and an encircling river

We learn they’re about halfway through their journey, and also nearly out of funds

An eyepatch-bearing noble stops by, scopes out Stark, and invites the crew to his mansion

The noble is Lord Orden, and he’s from the same village as Stark, sharing his red hair. His son Wirt is Stark’s spitting image

Wirt died in battle, and in order to maintain the confidence of the people, Orden requests Stark appear as him at a gala in three months

We’re thus treated to the mopiest montage imaginable, as Stark sad-sacks his way through etiquette training

Stark accuses Orden of being cold, but Orden replies that this was his son’s request. Choosing a false legacy for himself; rather than being remembered as he was, he’s willing to sacrifice even control over his lasting identity for the sake of his people

Orden’s second son Mut is like Stark, lacking a natural aptitude for leadership and combat

“He doesn’t have the skills of his brother. But he’s a hard worker. What he’s worked to build up won’t let him down.” Orden generally comes off as a reasonable man in a situation that can only allow so much sentimentality, much like his first son

We swiftly arrive at the dance, with both Stark and Fern trained for high society. This vignette feels kinda abridged, particularly given the length of time it’s actually taking the characters

Nice progression of expressions between the two of them, as they collectively shift from dancing out of obligation, to realizing with surprise how natural this feels, to actively enjoying the experience of dancing together

“My son and I parted in anger. We fought over something trivial.” Thus through Stark, he sought a chance at redemption. But how they parted will never change, and there is no future in attempting to relitigate the past

I appreciate these implications of the inherent instability of Frieren’s current adventuring party; Stark discussing where he might go when this journey concludes, Sein realizing that Frieren is too different from him to offer what he desires from a journey

And Done

Thus the party journeys onward, having secured funding for their continuing adventures while incidentally snagging three months of courtly etiquette training in the bargain. That second vignette felt kinda rushed to me, but I quite enjoyed its central conversations between Stark and Orden, which saw each of them coming to terms with grief and a lingering absence in their own ways. We rarely get true second chances in this life, but we are often granted the opportunity to move on, to settle our debts with the past and reorient ourselves around the things we still treasure, rather than the things we’ve lost. For Stark and Orden, hope springs anew as their paths continue, whether in the form of Stark’s traveling companions or Orden’s young son. Venerate the past, but keep your eyes forward.

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