you it's the one thing s of frein really wants you to know is that the elf protagonist frein perceives time differently from humans it's in the synopsis every analysis video I ever try to watch on this thing mentions it and the actual show constantly shuffs it in your face but that observation alone although a concept worth diving into does not make a good story and the First episodes got me worried for a second yes the scene where frean cries at him's funeral is quite good and sad and sets up V
iolet I mean frein's goal of understanding the people around her quite well but she still spends a lot of the show from this point forward disconnected from the human perception of time much to Fern and other characters concerned from a story perspective I get it she is an elf and her perception of time will not change the moment himl dies it's more realistic to have her constantly remind the audience of that but from a storytelling perspective it's weird how this plot point is repeated to us in
pretty much the same way every time with the same observations she spends months in this one place looking for flowers because she doesn't understand time the same way she spends months fixing the beach because she doesn't understand time the same way she spends months looking for a tree because she doesn't understand that and I swear every episode so far I had a time lapse because uh time so time passes very fast for time different get it get it get it this is probably an innocuous Point All T
hings Considered because obviously what the show wants to focus on are the memories of the heroes party free run wants to relive in order to understand them and honor them before time forgets about them hell the prologue ends with are literally retreading the same path the party took in order to talk to him again which frean doesn't even want that much it's just because of the funny dwarf guy but it still bothered me a bit how much the passage of time was brought up but nothing was done with it
until the second half of episode 3 forced me to shamelessly take those words back but before that a bit of context after the Waterworks were dropped by the end of episode 1 frean has shown steady development in actually trying to form meaningful connections with people she found someone to connect to in Fern despite Fern never really understanding why she was able to see through hater's tough front he puts on in his last moments due to coming to intimately know him in the course of I forgot how
many years after the two set out for travel frean cares for Fern and feels guilty when she realized she didn't know enough about her so on and so forth by the way we'll probably learn more about her past later on but I do like that she mentions in passing that she used to be a lot more apathetic really puts you into perspective how significant the growth is for her frein continueed attempt to empathize and understand The Human Experience is then brilliantly built up as a climax of swords in a fi
ght against qua with the Demon King's Mage it was jarring to see a supposedly incredibly powerful character introduced about halfway into the episode frein tells the story of how qua the developer of the first piercing spell was so powerful she couldn't directly beat him and had to resort to sealing him which just raises the question of how exactly they're going to beat him this time the show does a good job of keeping us on our toes and only hints at the answer by making frean say you really ha
ven't read through the history books huh a couple of times all of this contributed to when I finally saw the answer to this puzzle and everything not only this fight just kind of clicked Quire is his signature spell really good looking fight by the way look at those colors and F blocks it with ease which surprises even her as it's just a basic defensive spell she's learned since childhood frean then reveals that in the 80 years call has been sealed away humans have realized the threat of a spell
analyzed it and developed their magic to the point that his piercing spell is become obsolete finally she finishes the monster off with his own spell it might just sound like a cool action scene on the surface but what this moment meant is vitally important and made me finally fully invested in the point of freerun sa of freerun is a story about The Human Experience contrasted with the vastness of time the theme of frein's extrapolated timeline is reinforced constantly to not only show the prot
agonist's unique perspective but also to jxap POS with the human lives other characters live out which the Free Run aka the audience's perspective most of the time seems so weak and insignificant yet the beautiful irony in it all is humans due to their short lives are able to imbue so much meaning into it make so many connections with others so much of the show is just about how himo was loved by everybody even after his death that the likes of frein will never truly understand as frein always i
nsists when the party brought up how much they value their time together it's merely 10 years but through the death of himl and heer freein as discussed earlier starts to appreciate the meaning in such brevity and actively seeks to preserve it in her memory that's why this encounter with qual another being who for the first time in the series shares the same perspective on time as her is so important it shows how far she's come as Freeman uses the knowledge of the weak yet persistent humans to d
efeat him through perhaps the most direct example that being technological advancement frean for the first time in the series shows her understanding of human time and what they can do in spite of a limited lifespan I'm sure this theme will continue to develop as frein keeps developing as a person but this not even really a fight was the moment in show for me that truly put all of what I just said into perspective and made me realize the reason why the passage of time remains important in a stor
y about self-discovery and a lot of other things good story it's the moment that sold me on [Music] frein is this kind of like Humanity jacking themselves off and saying oh we die but it's cool because these the kind of but this show is not that cynical so I'm not going to go there
Comments
One thing I think you may have missed in the first few episodes is that every time skip is shorter than the one before it. Frieren is gradually becoming more connected with the people around her, making it harder to simply lose decades doing nothing like the first two 50 and 20 year timeskips. By the time the fourth episode rolls around the timeskips are down to a couple months instead of years. It's a work in progress for her.
I love how she searched for years for a spell to turn grapes sour just for Eisen to enjoy a full basket of 'em and the show doesn't even pause on it. if you blink you miss it. Goddess this writing is fabulous.
I really loved that fight against the sealed Demon, it was such a clever little twist on things. I honestly felt bad for that guy, sealed away and never knowing how obsolete he had become
This fight scene was the first 'hype' scene that we got in frieren and it was absolutely amazing But what really hit me like my mom used to, was the end of episode 4 At the start of that episode we had a flashback of frieren saying to the party that the ten years she spent with them was not even 1% of her life, and was therefore insignificant. And she thought eizen would understand that sentiment since he also has a long life. At the end of the episode, when frieren departs to go to heaven, eizen says the absolute golden line: 'that one one-hundredth changed you' This hit me like a freaking wreaking ball. This line is trying to say that its not about the quantity of time spent, its about the quality. And that even a small fraction of your life could end up changing your life completely. This single line is my absolute favorite line in this show and possibly in all of anime
One of the parts that got me, was when Frieren said she has a spell to turn grapes sour. Which we all read as pretty useless. Then we learn later that sour grapes are Eisen's favorite. So Frieren learned a spell for her friend. It was her way of connecting with them. And hamburger steak.
My favourite paet is realising that the reason Himnel built so many statues everywhere is because Frieren was sad she's the only one who actually remembers Flamme. So he plsced his own sratues on every minor settlement he could and statues of the whole party in all major ones, msking sure she can see him wherever she goes and a lot of people also remember her, the only gero they will actually have a chance to meet in the future.
Frieren telling Heiter it's too late to put on a good act for the goddess is also... really, an attempt at a jab or a joke, right? Even if she's not very emotive, the fact that we get that line after she's been out and about for twenty years, making an effort to connect more with the people she meets along the way, makes it easy for me to assume she's become more sociable in the time since Himmel's passing.
"A mere eighty years, huh?" "For us, anyway."
Oh, but Zoltrak itself didn't take 80 years - Frieren beought it to humanity after returning from her journey, already adjusted for use on demons. She's really good at spell analysis, in no small part thanks to her magic collection hobby. It's the shield thst took a lot of time
I think the show is a sort of retort to nihilism. Why are the flowers important? Cause Himmel likes em. Why are spells important to Frieren? cause her teacher liked them. Why should you give a shit about anything at all? do you like things in your life like flowers or hobbies? Then thats good enough.
Qual wasn't undone by the shortness of human lives, or even by the intensity with which they live. He was undone by 80 years of progress, progress which Fern takes for granted because most of it had occurred before she was even born.
I dont think people really notice this but fern actually ages every few episodes but its barely noticable unless you go back a couple of episodes
Her goofy facial expression when she makes from time to time is really precious, and yeah her character development really speaks out that "She is Frieren". [Spoiler] As I get deeper into the series, I started to understand why the hero party have some awkward moments since Frieren doesn't have the same common sense even compared to Dwarf races and the reason why they don't force Frieren to understand was because time is the best teacher for her, even Flammel understood predicted it from a long time ago.
Another quick couple lines that establish time advancing was when Frieren flies up to take her shot at him and he remarks "you can fly now". Many episodes later Frieren has another one of line explaining why they can't get out of a difficult situation by mentioning that they've only had the ability to fly for 40 years. Neither line was necessary, and both can be easily missed, but together they reinforce each other's point.
What you said about the human experience vs the vastness of time really made the gears in my head turn a bit. I've said somewhere before that time itself is a character in this show. The passage of time and how things develop will be a constant theme. Frieren is not only on a journey of self actualization and gettin in touch with her emotions and appreciating shorter lifespanned beings whatnot. Frieren herself is an achor to the past, a measure and reference point by which the story and world almost revoles around. Her almost perfect memory of past events, scenes and even food make it much more apparent how much things can change even in short timespans.
Freiren is basically when you finish your main and on the way to clearng your remaining subs. Which is where you actually get into the lore.
I already read most of the manga and knew what would happen, and I STILL fell RIGHT BACK IN LOVE WITH FRIEREN after the anime came out. Literally couldn’t have asked for a better adaptation.
The tiny detail I like about the anti-Qual development is how they layered a bunch of rocks together with a hole going through and it mimics EXACTLY what raillgun experiments look like when they place steel plates together to measure how far the bullet goes.
Also, in later episodes it was explained that Freiren herself was a major contributor to the research of countering Zoltraak. It was mentioned by the messenger demon of Aura the guillotine.
What's even crazier is that the Zoltraak episode takes on new meaning episodes later. Minor spoiler, when Lügner is struck by the same spell he quickly realizes that the spell is demon killing magic, so Zoltraak's last words 'My spell' was not only a statment on how Frieren used his own spell against him, but the very spell he spend his lifetime cultivating had been destorted into a spell specialised in killing Demons.