#frieren analysis

[graphx]

flamme and serie are the opposites of their own goals

Flamme only succeeded in teaching her apprentice magic fit for revenge

While Serie gave privileges of magic to her apprentices of anything they desired, a kindness that they will remember for the rest of their lives

[nerdy-autistic-things]

I think my favorite thing about the Frieren shadow fight is that it mirrors Eisen, highlighting that teaching an apprentice your trade is also teaching them how to undo you— and this is a good thing. Frieren, Eisen, and even Serie (although she goes about it in a destructive way) yearn for connection under their stoicism, and it necessitates vulnerability. More than that, one always hopes to be surpassed by their apprentice.

Eisen understands it so well he is afraid of his student’s power. Serie wants to find someone perfect I mean like Flamme I mean worthy of her admiration who will never exist, not because there is no one. She proves time and again with each apprentice that despite not matching her own skill, there are great mages still. No, it is because it would threaten her emotionally. She too is afraid, despite having more power than anyone could ever amount to. But Frieren accepts that the greatest achievement of mentorship is to be rendered vulnerable, and that to accomplish something truly great, you have to rely on other people.

Flamme said it herself. Frieren is going to do what nobody else has done, what even she could not do, and defeat the demon king. She had every confidence even before Frieren did, and she died fully believing something she would never witness. And now Frieren is going to teach Fern how to do the impossible too— how to begin a new era.

[anodymalion]

The hero's sword arc of Frieren is only a single chapter but it's probably the chapter I think about the most... You have the classic sword in the stone that can only be pulled by the hero who is destined to save the world. So of course Himmel, the legendary hero, is the one who freed it.

Except: he didn't. He failed. He couldn't pull the sword from the stone. He wasn't the prophesied hero who would save the world.

And he went, okay, well, people really need a hero right now. So I'll just pretend to be one anyway. It doesn't really matter if I'm a fake or not if either way we're helping people.

And he did. He was a pretend hero. And they saved the world.

And now eighty years later there is no one left to remember that he never pulled the sword from the stone at all. It's easier to believe that he did, because he saved the world, so he must have been the destined hero. But he wasn't. The sword saw him and rejected him, and he simply went on anyway, because he wanted to help people, and that's what it takes in the end to be a hero, really. The four of them saved the world, and the true hero's sword sits quietly in a cave somewhere, rusting away, forever, unneeded.

[puppetwoman17]

Started watching Frieren and I’m already very impressed with how they’ve done the character of a mage elf who’s lived for hundreds of years.

When reading or watching a fantasy series, most magical creatures who have long life spans have issues with empathy or emotion. They have a hard time connecting with people. They don’t understand, or even make an effort to understand, why the human characters(or other characters with shorter lifespans) care so much about such a quick life.

And while I can’t lie and say this character archetype isn’t interesting, I’m always welcome to some variety.

Frieren is a welcome change to how the magical creature with a longer lifespan is done. You can tell there’s a couple hitches in her emotional thought process. She questions the choices and attitudes of her human comrades when it comes to life and death.

However, this isn’t the end of her archetype. Frieren cries, and she’s not ashamed of doing so in front of others. She shows a fair amount of emotion in the flashbacks with her comrades. When she doesn’t understand why she, or someone else feels a certain way, she tries to understand why. Why does this make that person happy? Why does that make this person so sad? It’s a huge show of empathy from someone who’s at least 1000 years old.

She’s not embarrassed to show affection. She isn’t afraid to connect with others despite knowing they’ll die quicker than her. The only reason she was hesitant to take Fern is because she thought her life would be too difficult for a child. She knows her habits, she knows her lifestyle, and while she’s perfectly fine with it, she knows Fern deserves something more stable. It’s only after they spend more time together that she changes her mind. And part of that was due to the love she had for Heiter.

So all in all I’m having a great time watching this anime. It’s a breath of fresh air. I hope my analysis isn’t like a copy paste of other observations. I just think this choice they made with Frieren is neat!

[24-by-7-daydreamer]

thoughts on sein and gorilla warrior

SPOILERS FOR CH. 139 OF THE FRIEREN MANGA. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

something I really appreciate is how characters express different themes through their life stories, and how different characters are linked, creating new themes.

sein and gorilla warrior were childhood friends. inspired by the Himmel the Hero and other heroes of old, gorilla warrior dreamed of going on an adventure with sein.

this is them as kids

in the present, however, when we first see sein, he is mired in regret after he thinks he's lost the only chance he had of adventuring with his best friend, gorilla warrior, and fulfilling their childhood dream.

the moment when gorilla warrior asked sein to join him on a adventure, but sein refused.

sein's arc is realizing that it's never to late to start, and to stop living life with regrets. with frieren's invitation to join their party, sein has a second chance at living the life he wants. after letting go of his inhibition, he decides to take this opportunity, in pursuit of his friend and their dream.

but in the meantime, somewhere along the way of gorilla warrior's journey, he changes his mind. as of now in the manga (ch. 147, it's been on a hiatus for almost 6 mo. now), we've yet to know why. what we do know is that there is a gap between the cheerful, idealistic teenager who left in search of glory, but wanted to share it with sein, and the older, darker, somber kreis, who is a shadow warrior out to assassinate serie. somewhere along the way, this idea that gorilla warrior was supposed to represent, of being bold enough to follow your dreams, became twisted.

kreis n his shadow warrior gear

and this is the gorilla warrior that sein is finally close to reuniting with. a old friend who is aware of the possibility of sein's presence but chooses to ignore it. and when sein sees that kreis is one of the shadow warriors too, he doesn't make a move to seek him out either.

so what does sein's theme become? it used to be realizing it's never to late to follow your dreams and live the life you want. but now, with their positions in the present, that theme is shifting into:

the dream you spent chasing turns out to be vastly different than you thought. in fact, that dream might no longer exist?

and, with kreis's theme, upon realizing that sein, is nearby and looking for him, becomes

what do you do when the dream you left behind reemerges, with an opportunity for you to go back seeking it..

i may have not explained this that well but hopefully my analysis makes sense. i'm really interested in how the manga handles sein and kreis's reunion

[iratempestatis]

Yaksha chatter, Xiao meta. Come hither comrades <33

It's time once again to prattle on and on about the yakshas. And to the two people that may read this: thank you for your patience sjsjsjs

A while ago I made this post (you don't need to read it, I'm just linking it for added context) and it's been in my head far too long, so allow me to finally elaborate on it. The buildup may be a little lengthy but bear with me– I’ll try my best to be as brief as I can whilst still explaining the importance of these characters and the subplot. I promise this is all relevant.

Now to begin, some context– Frieren (STAY WITH ME COMRADES) from Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is an elf, ergo she has an incredibly long lifespan and has trouble grasping the significance of human emotions and the human concept of time. Fern is her human apprentice and was fostered by a man who was Frieren's adventuring companion in his youth. By the time he adopts Fern, he is an elderly man, and passes with age. 

Back to Frieren– one of her companions from her adventuring party was a man named Himmel, who was in love with her. He dies without expressing this and she grieves because she realises she never took the time to understand him the way he did her. 

The Frieren/Himmel dynamic is therefore very different from the Fern/Heiter one (Heiter is the old man) although they do have notable parallels (and this is where it gets fun, pay attention please please.)

So Frieren and Fern are both the less experienced parties in their dynamics for different reasons– Frieren's reason is that she's over a thousand years old and so has difficulty understanding humans (Himmel). Fern's reason is that she was very young when Heiter took her in, so there's two things to consider– one, he is her parental/authority figure and two, she feels as though she owes him for taking her in.

And every single one of these dynamics is applicable to Xiao and his siblings in one way or another (for convenience's sake I'll be using their EN names.) 

Okay some more Frieren (please don't smack me, I promise we're getting to Xiao). To put it very briefly, in an episode, Frieren and Fern are travelling through the woods. There is a monster in the woods called the Einsam. It kills people by mimicking their dead loved ones and it does this by using the memories and perceptions of the people whose loved ones it mimics. This is relevant. (To explain a little better: if Xiao died and the Einsam was trying to kill you by taking on his appearance, it would use two things– one, your memories of him and two, what you thought of him as/how you perceived him. It will do the same things that you think Xiao would do. To trick you, it would act the way YOU think Xiao would act.)

When Himmel's mimic confronts Frieren, instead of tricking her, it tells her to strike him down. This is because Frieren knows Himmel well enough (without realising that she does) that: if Himmel's dead and an Einsam is using her memories -> the Himmel she knew would not want to see her come to harm (although she still does not process that he was in love with her. This is also relevant. She remembers him clearly but often does not understand the deeper implications behind his actions. You can compare this to memorizing a poem but not understanding the metaphor.) -> the Einsam will tell her to kill it because that is what the real, living Himmel would do. She knows him without realising she does.

When the Einsam turns into Heiter and comes after Fern though, it picks up the Heiter from her memories– and her memories are full of yearning. She wishes he were alive. She wishes she could have expressed her love and gratitude for him better. She wishes he could tell her again and again that he was proud of her. And so when 'he' appears before her, 'he' reminisces with her and tells her things she wishes she could hear him say.

This is because Fern does not know Heiter as objectively and fully as Frieren knew Himmel, because Frieren and Himmel were more or less equals. Heiter was however a parent to Fern, and so she respected him greatly -> and so this skews her perception of him -> and so he doesn't do what the actual, living Heiter would have done, which is ask her to kill him.

Enter Xiao, because now you have to wonder– if it was Xiao travelling through the woods, and Einsams in the forms of his siblings were to ambush him, what would he have done? (STAY WITH ME)

I would love to discuss each Yaksha at length, but we unfortunately know little about them, and only really enough about Bosacius. But we know enough about Xiao to contemplate, thankfully.

I personally think Xiao would get tricked, but I'll argue for both sides so you can tell me what you think.

Xiao’s life prior to Zhongli finding him was real, actual hell, with an explicit focus on the loss of his autonomy, as someone servile and we see this everywhere in this character (especially in him denying himself personhood and making himself into a weapon for slaughter.) He was the slave of a cruel god, he was not allowed to love, he wasn't allowed to think or make decisions of his own, find his own morality or personhood because she pulled the strings on all fronts. He was taught that only power is strength, that it is what makes up the stuff of dreams. We can make a few more inferences with this– Xiao eats snow, which alludes to him being so hungry he filled his belly with whatever he could. That combined with the fact that the cruel god used him to swallow the dreams of the innocent for her means she had complete control over even what he ate. I need to emphasise this because we see that Xiao was not allowed to be a person– he was not allowed to learn from life, he knew only what his master taught him. This is why he is so incredibly loyal to Zhongli, because Zhongli set him free and implicitly yet firmly (and sometimes even explicitly) emphasizes to Xiao every chance he gets that he was always free to make his own decisions, that they are equals now, that Xiao owes him nothing anymore. 

This is important because in the flashbacks we see of Xiao with his siblings, he is visibly comfortable, and in matters where his siblings are concerned he gives himself autonomy, even when it goes against Zhongli’s initial decisions (which is MONUMENTAL.) Look at the Perilous Trail cutscene for (our only) example–

“This trip may be dangerous… yet you insist on going.”

And instead of refuting his accomplishments and making himself into a weapon as he always does, he insists on going to look for his brother, which is huge. And for once, he uses his own achievements to respectfully argue with Zhongli and give himself leverage and autonomy in their disagreement. This is despite the fact that he warns even the Traveller to never, ever even speak ill of him.

Anyway, back to the Perilous Trail cutscene-

(Looking straight at Zhongli.) “I have guarded this place for several hundred years.” (Glances lower.) “Only to seek the nameless yaksha do I request your approval.”

This one moment is so important because it also illustrates that although Xiao always, as a rule, leaps at the worst possible scenario to contend with and refuses to hope for anything (the conversation he has with Traveller at the end of Perilous Trail, by Pervases’ temple, confirms this in a very obvious Paimon-spoonfeeding-you type of way), he still he chooses to dare to hope that his brother is alive, and breaks his own heart all over again. For a chance at meeting his corrupted brother. We find out midway through the quest that Bosacius is dead, but you have to stop to wonder– what did Xiao even plan on doing in the hypothetical scenario that he did find his deranged, traumatized brother? Bring him back to the Inn? Make him stay at Jueyun Karst? Bosacius was the marshall of the generals– if he decided to cause ruin and destruction Xiao wouldn’t be able to do much to stop him– and even as he’s fighting the Chasm’s illusion of Bosacius, he’s on the defensive and begs ‘Bosacius’ to come to his senses, to remember that it’s him, Alatus.

Yet he still goes, and despite his thousands of years of experience, the Chasm tricks him into believing that it is in fact his brother.

And Xiao believes it. 

With his siblings, we see Xiao sit with a relaxed posture, although he’s shown to be seated a little apart at times. Even then, they surround him with laughter and mischief as he looks on. He does not leave.

Despite being enslaved and tortured by presumably a sleep god/dream god, we see him be lulled into a deep sleep– so deep that he does not awaken as Bonanus and Menogias laugh, and Indarius cries out in protest as Bosacius draws all over Xiao's face in wet, cold ink.

When the subject of his siblings crops up in conversation at the end of Perilous Trail (by Pervases’ temple), he remembers what his siblings said with startling clarity, and quotes them verbatim. He remembers their personalities and desires clearly and is full of praise for them (despite most of them dying over a thousand years ago– Bosacius shows up 500 years ago after a long time, after he had run away due to his Karmic Debts years prior. We know this because no one has celebrated his birthday in a thousand years, according to his 2020 birthday message.)

The CN version of this especially makes me a little weepy because of the way the VA says their names, with such tenderness– “Fana, Minu, Yingda…” but I digress.

What I’m trying to say is– he loved them so much. They did more for him than can fully be articulated. Stealing what @hhhecates said sometime back because they’ve said it so well–

And so, after their loss you’re left a Xiao that has only memories to console him, memories that he keeps close to his heart and reminisces over frequently, if his recollections being so precise is any indication. So here’s what I think.

Time makes fools out of everyone– the nature of grief is to think back on what you’ve lost, and in its absence, your mind makes the subject of your losses even sweeter. We already know a few things about Xiao that align him nicely with the Fern route– A, he remembers his siblings with crystal clarity. B, the things they did for him CANNOT ever be overstated– they quite literally helped them find his personhood and helped them feel safe with himself. They modeled stability for him. This is why he feels as though he owes them a great deal– in his mind, he puts them on a pedestal, and we’ve seen this attitude directed largely at Bosacius, since he was Xiao’s superior as well as his older brother. C, this combined with him continuously minimizing his achievements and kindness in the name of duty results in Xiao having a functional dynamic with his siblings in reality, whilst simultaneously having an unequal dynamic in his own mind– we never see Xiao credit himself with something he may have done for them, we only see his thanks directed towards them. And D, they’re dead. He grieves them. He misses them desperately and feels immense guilt for being the only one that lived.

So in the unfortunate, completely hypothetical scenario that he comes across an Einsam, I think he’d make them a laughably easy meal.

It would not be difficult at all– he’d provide them with easily found, very clear memories. The monsters would instantly tap into his yearning, would instantly assume the glorified versions of his siblings in his mind’s eye. I think if Xiao went in knowing what was coming, he’d be heartbroken but have the mental fortitude to fight it. If he goes into the situation unknowingly and sees them all of a sudden, I think he would instantly make himself vulnerable, because that is what grief does to you. (Nearly all my sources are Perilous Trail, sob.)

What I wonder about is also– what would 'his siblings' say to him? I personally don’t think Xiao ever doubted their love for him– the way he speaks to ‘Bosacius’ reeks of dogged determination and confusion– why is his brother attacking him?

I do think they’d tell him it’s alright to be alive though, and to have fun without them. Something about them always being with him and finding peace in knowing he is well and then– chomp chomp, I guess.

The counterargument is that time may sweeten his memories in a different direction– he may instead glamorize them into being more selfless than they actually were -> so his memories would make his siblings saintlike to the Einsams -> and the Einsams would ask Xiao to kill them, because it is the Right Thing To Do.

Then there’s arguments to be made for whether or not he follows through with it too. Would he fall prey to the Einsam’s deceit or would he kill them in a fury because they blasphemously desecrated his siblings’ memory?

[anodymalion]

I love how much payoff there is in this end-of-season Frieren vs replica fight because up until now Frieren has been restrained in her use of offensive magic.

Like - until this point, Frieren and Fern have pretty much exclusively used Zoltraak (the most basic of modern offensive spells) when they need to fight, even when they’re facing the other first-class-examinees who are using much flashier magic. Frieren even tells Fern not to bother with other types of offensive magic, that Zoltraak is “enough to defeat mages of this era”. Frieren is only ever shown to be interested in assorted folk magic with no fighting utility: growing flowers, making tea, cleaning statues. Even her confrontation against Aura - the biggest show of her power up until now - is just about displaying how much mana she has rather than her actually using it.

Sure, logically you know Frieren is powerful, but it’s easy to get lulled into this sense that she’s just somewhat more powerful than everyone else. Even her Zoltraak casts up to this point seem to be more in the realm of slightly-stronger-than-average than anything truly mind-blowing. Hell, I can understand why Denken saw her and thought he had a chance at taking her on one on one if conditions were right.

And then. Oh my god.

Zoltraak is enough to defeat mages of this era. But Frieren is not a mage of this era.

Just like. Holy crap. The payoff of a full season emphasizing that Frieren never bothers using anything but the most basic offensive spells because nothing in the world is dangerous enough for her to need it -> her facing her replica and them both immediately launching into NIGHTMARE LIGHTNING HELL FIRE REALITY SHATTERING BLACK HOLE. Frieren herself is the only thing we've seen so far that is dangerous enough to require this kind of attack. She is terrifying. Ms Frieren I will never doubt you again.

[24-by-7-daydreamer]

thoughts on fern growing older as time goes on

somebody might have mentioned this already but can we just appreciate how fern visibly looks older as the series progresses?

normally in most shows it doesn't really feel like time passes because the main cast usually looks the exact same in their everyday wear 24/7 365. people have gone over how in frieren the clothing changes according to the seasons, so i'm not going to regurgitate that.

what I am going to say is that fern's hair does change as time progresses, from when she begins her journey with frieren to where we are in the anime now, season 2 ep 7.

at the beginning of the journey, fern is at least 13. i got this age from the wiki, where at least halfway through season 1 ep 2 she's supposed to be that age.

as you can see here, fern's bang-sideparts? are a bit shorter here, not below her chest.

now compare that to season 1 ep 15 of frieren. according to the wiki, by ch. 29 of the manga, which corresponds to ep 14 of the anime, fern is 18. since there is no big time gap between ep 14-15 we can assume she's still 18 here too.

clearly, you can see that fern's side parts are now past her chest.

i'm interpreting these hair details as an intentional choice by the animators, and I appreciate these little signs that although fern's everyday appearance doesn't undergo any major changes (the most being the seasonal outfit change), she's still growing.