ideas
- humans v elves
- Fern constantly rushing Frieren + always getting mad at her for sleeping in
- serie vs frieren: fear vs anticipation of human era
- serie wants to keep things how they are
- frieren even excited to “kill herself”
- probably why flamme called frieren a “peace-time mage” after she refused to pick a spell
- “the joy of magic lies in discovering it”---of course she wants more humans to pick it up
- magic as art + art becoming more accessible
- flamme: able to accomplish so much in a short period, despite not being as powerful
- flamme and fern are somewhat parallel
- both keep frieren moving
- flamme to serie/fern to frieren, except fern and frieren understand each other more
- callback “i remember when she was shorter than me”
- without humans, elves pretty much remain static
- flamme, himmel, fern
- like momentum: frieren will continue in the same direction until prodded in a new one
- himmel is frieren’s primary motivation for collecting new spells
- but she also says that the joy in magic is discovery, so maybe it’s a compounded thing?
- although, she didn’t seem to be very mobile before himmel showed up, and started traveling again afterward
- kraft’s partner was also a human I think?
- flamme, himmel, fern
- also frieren’s maturity is definitely not proportional to her age
- frieren also doesn’t understand at first that her party members have kept in contact with each other
- humans like the intersection of dwarves and elves
- dwarves are very hard-working, industrious, but not as interesting (“artful”) as elves
- magic matches its wielder
- wirbel: binding spell allows him to delay the act of killing
- frieren/fern: not flashy but very powerful
- land: identity issues?
- ubel: surprisingly sympathetic (not totally sure why, need to know more backstory)
- richter: tough, unrelenting
- kanne: generally scared, but can lock in
- lawine: already powerful, but made even better through collaboration
- interspersed visual metaphors
- carcass/snow on the fox in kraft episode
- Land sees cat + its mom for some reason? he’s also surprised to see the mom, maybe this refers to his own backstory
- frieren shows denken again that magic can be fun
- frieren recognizes emotion, but struggles to understand it
- sees that fern is unhappy about her staff, but may not really understand her attachment
- although, she was also very attached to her ring from Himmel
- doesn’t understand her effect on others, such as leaving her party
- doesn’t understand why humans are so rushed and can’t afford to waste time
- also doesn’t really understand helping people because for her, whatever is incoveniencing her will eventually go away, and she has all the time in the world
- so this really arises again from her temporal disconnect
- at the end, her just thinking abt helping the person is already big character development
- sees that fern is unhappy about her staff, but may not really understand her attachment
Remembrance + Praise + Religion
Ideas about remembrance, praise, and religion lie at the core of Frieren. We see a variety of perspectives on these topics throughout the show:
- Himmel epitomizes a pursuit of remembrance. Everything he does, he does so he will be remembered: helping others, building statues of himself, setting out to defeat the Demon King in the first place, etc.
- Frieren and Himmel:
- “why do you help other people?”
- “maybe I do it for myself, so that I’ll be remembered”
- “what do you need to do?”
- “change their lives, even if just a little bit”
- but why didn’t frieren help more people earlier then? doesn’t really care about being remembered?
- Frieren and Himmel:
- Kraft acts as a foil for Himmel. In the past, he likely also shared a burning desire for remembrance, but unlike Himmel, Kraft has lived long enough to also see himself forgotten. He comes to recognize the futility of placing value in human memory and decides to turn to the Goddess instead.
- Heiter is a mix of both of these characters. Because of his belief in the Goddess, he comes to prioritize self-improvement over external approval. However, as a human, he still values the praise of others (elaborate more on this point later).
- frieren clearly values himmel’s praise
- maybe because he praises her for more mundane things (doesn’t need to be impressive for him?)
- humans like himmel make other humans (the collective) their gods, turn to them for praise
- but elves don’t have that luxury because they can’t live that long, hence the goddess
- at the start, Frieren says she doesn’t want to take an apprentice because they’ll die
- Eisen says “that’s not how it works”
- paralleled by the fact that although Himmel died, he meant a lot to Frieren (she seems to realize this later, which is why she’s more willing to get to know people)
Questions
- will we see sein/kraft again?
- why has fern become so calculating? didn’t hesitate to say she killed ehre, nor when killing Frieren clone
- yet still so sensitive and easy upset?
- why does frieren find so much joy in magic? would she not have really negative memories associated with her entire village being wiped out?