Anime: Frieren, Beyond the Journey
The story focuses on Frieren, a thousand-year-old Elf at the end of a big adventure and on the verge of the party splitting up.
So many high fantasy stories have elves as sidekick character so it doesn't really engage in how time passes. But in Frieren the show actively engages in the question, how does an immortal who goes the Slow Way (Doctor Who TM) perceive time?
Frieren starts where most story ends, after the party defeats the Demon King and the party splits up. They're celebrated for defeating the Demon King and his armies, ushering an era of peace but before the Hero party split up they watch a meteor shower. Frieren promised the party that she will show them a better place to watch when the next meteor shower occurs, which is 50 years after.
Frieren, Himmel, Heiten, Eisen spent a decade together on a quest to defeat the Demon King but for Frieren it's just a fraction of her life. 1/100th of her life, as she would tell Eisen, the dwarf vanguard of the party.
(Himmel, Heiten and Eisen watch as Frieren go off her adventure).
And then she disappeared from their life for 50 years, while she goes around the central lands collecting spells and going on solitary adventures. She returns a week before the meteor shower and is surprised how much Himmel has aged.
The party reunites to travel to the location where Frieren said had was the best place to watch the meteor shower. Himmel thanks Frieren because he had his last adventure as a retired hero.
The next scene is Himmel's funeral. And some people in the crowd note how Frieren seems emotionless and is heartless. I absolutely love when both Eisen and Heiten take the heat off of Frieren.
But its when Himmel's coffin is getting buried that it all hits Frieren and she begins to realize she would never see Himmel again, nor does she know about him as much as she wished.
Frieren know wishes to get to know Humanity. We find out later in the series that Frieren was more or less a shut-in before the Hero party recruited her.
One of the reasons why I love the show is how big a part regret plays in the show and how we get to experience the world as Freiren experienced it, letting decades slip by like its mere minutes. How the contributions of her master, Flamme and her hero party group influenced progress and history. Especially, how mythologizing a person she once knew into a legend washed who they really were as a person.
Freiren decides to retrace her steps and goes on another adventure, to go to Ende and speak to people she lost again. She starts this new adventure with Fern, Heiten's ward whom he saved and Stark, Eisen's warrior apprentice.
And that's just the beginning of the journey.
The big part why I love this show is how it's very character-centric and prioritizes relationships between the main characters. The show and manga could go 2-3 episodes on them just going on a journey, take the time to fix a broken horse cart and the story is still compelling.
I love how the mangaka and the anime director recognizes that we enjoy watching characters just hang out.
But, also, it's not just about characters because Frieren's worldbuilding is fascinating. Frieren gets to live in the world she and her friends create but also, experience the consequences of Himmel's death in the larger world, because Himmel apparently served as a deterrent for other demons to cause mayhem.
After he died a lot of demons started causing trouble again, seemingly forgetting or not realizing Frieren is still around. Frieren is the BIGGEST hater of demons.
She is savage. She open sourced Zoltrakk, a killing spell a demon created to Humanity and then modified it to specifically brutally destroy demons.
And then brought back Qual, the demon who created it from the sealing spell only to inform him she made it possible that Zoltrakk was now just 'an ordinary offensive' spell that can be defended against.
Immediately after, Friened exterminated Qual with his own spell. The DISRESPECT.
As we find out later in the series, this is actually the mildest savagery Frieren accords the demons.
Another reason why I love Freiren the show and character is she's badass but also that's not all Freiren is or the othe women in the show.
I love Demon Slayer but one of the things I found frustrating is how Nezuko barely has an internal life and I get it, I guess because she became a demon. It was still frustrating but this is why Freiren stood out.
It's such a rich world, with a richer cast of characters who had fantastic character development.
I highly recommend this show!
