Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to the rambling journey of Frieren and her companions, who just recently recruited the wayward priest Sein into their adventuring party. In spite of his profound magical talents, Sein was initially unwilling to join the party, feeling both a sense of obligation to his brother and a lingering regret regarding his long-gone friend. Having declined ten years ago to leave his village and head off adventuring, he believed his chance at seeing the world had passed, and that to leave now would be to chase after embers that had long since gone cold.
Frieren didn’t much like hearing all of this, mainly because it so clearly paralleled her own situation preceding the arrival of Himmel and his companions. Frieren isn’t particularly emotionally intelligent, but she can at least tell when she’s being used as a thematic punching bag, and thus resolved to ensure Sein made the same brave choice she once did. Thus, through the contrast of Frieren and Sein’s relative periods of hibernation, a comforting message emerged: that it is never too late to live the life you want, and that your grand adventure is not a train you can miss or catch, but an active project you can choose to embark on at any time.
As a viewer who’s lived well beyond conventional anime character senility, it’s nice to be assured there might still be life in these old bones. Let’s see what these old fogeys get up to as we return to Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End!
Episode 14
“Privilege of the Young.” Seems we’ll again be interrogating how certain activities or opportunities are allegedly age-defined. Of course, this can also be taken in an ironic direction; ignorance is also a privilege of the young, for example
We touch down in the Raad region with another lovingly rendered village. I appreciate the intelligence of its layout, how it was built around and in response to the local features – the village follows the river’s curve to provide transport and protection, is tucked against difficult-to-traverse mountains and forests, and possesses a sequence of walls to offer fallback points for invasion. All signs of a bustling, prosperous town that is nonetheless aware of its fraught, demon-adjacent location
“This place seems to have a lot of shops.” The first line from our cast affirms this town as a likely trade hub, presumably owing to its riverside locale
Walking these streets, Frieren is briefly visited by Himmel and the others, reminded of their prior arrival here. That’s how memories go; lodes of charged fragments are lodged in various streets, songs, and objects, waiting to be unlocked by your return and reappraisal
We return post-OP with Stark storming out, having been told off by Fern for not getting her a birthday present
“Men don’t care about little things like birthdays or anniversaries.” Sein’s idle words obviously carry more weight in the context of Frieren; these practices might not seem like much, but the ways we mark and celebrate time have a way of making that time feel more real in retrospect. It is not the gift itself that is important, it is the renewed commitment to being an active presence in each other’s lives, the fond reminder that you have meant something to each other this passing year
“I’m old enough to let most callousness go, but girls can make the emotions of boys his age swing wildly.” Another “privilege” of the young – their wildly tempestuous emotions, of which they are a dubious chaperone at best. Older folks can take some satisfaction in (hopefully) having more command of their emotional reactions, but there is a thrilling vitality in the enormous, uncontrollable scale of youthful emotions
Sein at least offers a tip, saying “I think you should go after him”
A focus on Fern’s hesitant body language as she attempts to reach Stark, reprised as she explains her inability to do so to Sein
“I don’t like how accustomed you are to the company of women.” Sein’s frankly mundane interests are proving how sheltered Fern truly is
“You just don’t know how to interact with boys your age.” Sein divines this immediately, and is not above teasing her about it
“He’s not that conscientious. I doubt he even remembers his own birthday.” Fern is assigning how much significance she placed in Stark’s birthday to him, assuming he’s being inconsiderate when he’s just being himself. Of course, that’s not an unfair assumption to make, and in truth she’s just seeking to sculpt more essential memories with him. The death of her master has given her a sharper impression of time’s passage, while Stark, in spite of his words about his master’s age, still doesn’t see the passage of time as entirely real
“He’s just a kid. He’s slow on the uptake.” Sein makes it even easier, assigning their mutual inability to communicate to Stark specifically, thus giving Fern the opportunity to prove her maturity
“People won’t know how you feel unless you tell them.” The unfortunate, fundamental truth
Stark also clenches his fist at Fern’s approach, echoing her own previous gestures, painting them as alike in their inability to express their true intentions
“I wanted to choose a gift with you, since I don’t know what you like.” And communication reveals they were actually on the same page – Stark hadn’t forgotten, he wanted to celebrate precisely the same memory she did
Frieren, why the heck are you spying on them from a roof
“Those arguments are the privilege of the young.” The very friction of misunderstanding is its own sort of privilege; as we age, we tend to develop the grace and shields to not accidentally hurt each other
“The Mr. Heiter I remember was a kind and dependable old man.” Of course, Heiter’s variability across the ages demonstrates that this sort of reinvention is not exclusive to young adulthood; we may have learned our social graces by then, but we are always capable of being transformed by new experiences
“The truth is, my mind has hardly changed since I was a child. I’ve simply been pretending to be an adult until I could make it as an ideal grown-up. I’ll probably keep pretending until the day I die.” Heiter himself offers a different perspective: maturity is just a practice, not a threshold we naturally reach
“Then who will praise you for pretending until the day you die?” “That’s what the Goddess is for, though I’ll have to wait until I go to heaven to receive my reward.” Heiter finds consolation in the same eternal reward that animated the elf they encountered previously. It is comforting to imagine that someone is ultimately “keeping score,” that our good deeds are not solely their own reward
Frieren is less certain, and thus resolves to praise these wayward priests for their efforts while they’re here on earth
We then journey on into the Bande Woods. As always, the pitchy flutes and slow-plucked strings of the soundtrack do a phenomenal job of maintaining a middle ages-appropriate tone
“I run an accessories shop in the next town.” Always a bit of an awkward contrast between the carefully conceived visual/aural design of this adaptation and the unconsidered JRPG writing of the source material
As Frieren scavenges through her pack for a ring gifted by Himmel, their carriage is swept up by a massive bird monster, horse and all
Another odd quirk reflective of the original author’s limitations: not one person in this carriage has any significant emotional reaction to them being carried away. Frieren being a deadpan character is one thing, but you can’t give the whole cast her personality
The flying magic humanity currently employs was actually adopted from demons about forty years ago, meaning they don’t understand it well enough to modify it. I very much appreciate these little revelations of how much of human magical tech was cribbed from demonic innovation; it really adds some emphasis and validation to the demons’ philosophy of continuous magical training
“What about levitating the carriage just before it hits the ground?” The party considers some classic DnD workarounds
Nice movement-into-depth cut as Frieren leaps out to attempt the midair levitation
With the action swiftly passed, we return to the true substance of life in montage, as the group work to repair their damaged carriage
Meanwhile, Frieren slips out every night to search for the ring Himmel gave her. It is not the flower language significance of these talismans that Sein described which matters; it is that they were chosen specifically by Himmel and Stark
“I intended to give you this scroll for finding lost accessories as a reward for helping me.” Well then, that’s convenient!
And Done
Thus we conclude a brief reflection on gift-giving, a compliment to this episode’s initial question of what it means to be young, and whether misunderstandings are truly the sole province of the youth. As we age, we become better at avoiding friction by clarifying misunderstandings or simply failing to rise to the bait – but at the same time, our understanding of each other, and even the communal gestures we share, is always based in our personal interpretation of the world. Frieren did not know the significance of the ring she received at the time, but that discovery ultimately enriched her memories of Himmel; in contrast, Stark’s misunderstanding of his bracelet’s meaning fitted the gesture with a fond memory, a tiny reflection of Stark’s current feelings captured in its silver whorls. The object is a signpost; the treasure is the memory it contains.
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