The fundamental paradox of criticism is the reason many dislike it on principle. Where does someone like me, who could never create anything as good as Sousou no Frieren in a billion years, come off in pointing out its perceived shortcomings? I’ll leave it to others to debate the validity of that. In essence, the validity of criticism itself, because you either believe in it or you don’t. All I can do is do what I do, which is watch and read things and express my opinion on them (and write the odd piece of fiction for others to do the same).
There were a lot of things I liked about this episode. It returned to the measured pace at which, in my opinion, Frieren works most effectively. But in the end I think this whole arc is riddled with internal illogic and narrative cheats. In short I think this represents the series’ reach exceeding its grasp. This sort of storyline is difficult to pull off in an internally consistent manner and not every writer is capable of doing it. In my opinion this writer isn’t; others surely disagree, looking at the sales numbers and aggregator scores. And the hard truth is, even mediocre Sousou no Frieren is still better than most anime.
One of the issues I have with Shingeki no Kyoujin (which is the God-king of narrative convenience) is that the whole selection process for demon slayers makes no sense. Why would you eliminate the bulk of prospective candidates at the infancy of their development? And I ask here – what was the point of this whole exam? By commandeering the final phase Serie effectively made the first two phases of it irrelevant. All she has to do is use her “intuition” and tell everybody who shows up in magic town to go home except for the few she decides to pass. Nobody needs to die, and the whole exam never needs to happen. But then you wouldn’t have your shounen battle arc, would you?
The icing on the cake is that Serie is peeved that too many candidates are still alive. At best, one could argue she doesn’t care whether more of them died or just dropped out, just as long as they’re out. But she doesn’t even present a valid argument for why Sense screwed up. The fact is Frieren (and Fern) had little to do with so many candidates advancing. Frieren did drag her partners along in the first text, with Fern it’s debatable. But they didn’t help anybody in the second round. All Frieren did was take out her own duplicate – who wouldn’t even have been there if she wasn’t.
I think you could argue, in fact, that Frieren made it harder for the others to pass. The one who pulled more through was Denken, because he organised everyone and forced them to cooperate. Which I suppose bodes ill for his chances of surviving Serie’s capricious final cut. Serie’s whole attitude towards cooperation is inconsistent to begin with, but you get the point. In any case for the main party it’s over and done. Frieren fails and Fern passes and it was a fait accompli, nothing either said or did would have mattered to Serie. And it doesn’t matter to the story either, because Frieren doesn’t give a toss and as long as the party has a class one mage, the narrative can continue.
What this ep does well accentuates what a shame it is that so much of this series’ time was wasted on what it doesn’t. The debate between Fern and Frieren about the core philosophy of magic was genuinely interesting, as was Serie’s interchange with her human student Lernen (Miyauchi Atsushi) – who’s teased as being an extremely powerful mage capable of defeating herself or Frieren. The Fern-Stark stuff was hit and miss as it always is, but Denken making the rounds to try and motivate Richter to keep fighting was reflective of his innately giving nature. And the passage with Fern’s staff was a nice throwback to the pre-exam tone of the series.
In the final analysis this is really about getting a stamp on a piece of paper (or a badge or medal or whatever) so Frieren can go talk to Himmel and they can finally admit the truth to each other, so it’s fitting that this relationship had a role in the denouement here. What Serie considers a useless spell means everything to Frieren, for reasons that mean nothing to Serie. Which of them is blinded by their own prejudices from seeing the truth of it? Frieren may be weak with outward emotional but in truth she’s extremely sentimental, for better or worse, and that’s what Sousou no Frieren is really built around.
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