Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d check back in with Frieren and the gang, as they continue their journey north to the land of souls’ rest. When last we met with our adventurers, they were making an impromptu goodbye to Sein, the priest who’d been accompanying them ever since they convinced him to pursue his old friend. Discovering his objective had wandered in a different direction, he parted with a simple wave, content in the time he had shared with our crew.
His departure served as a play on expectations that ultimately reinforced Frieren’s melancholy themes; though we often think of parties in stories like this as natural, unbreakable units, every journey shared is in truth a happy accident. Frieren has explored the tragedy of taking others’ presence for granted through its reflections on the original hero’s party, but Sein’s brief presence put that discussion in immediate terms, as we in the audience were given barely enough time to get to know him before he was already gone.
But that’s enough melancholy and nostalgia for now. With the first class mage exams presumably ahead of us, I’m guessing we’re moving into some crunchy action territory for the moment, and am eager to see these animators flex a bit. Let’s get to it!
Episode 18
I hate to burden you all with this, but the melody of this OP aligns perfectly with the initial vocal melody of the “Sugar We’re Goin’ Down” verse, and my brain can’t help but sing along for the first verse every time. Still a very nice song, and a huge improvement over the first OP, but I do wish that wasn’t where my head went
Love this guitar’s tone in particular – it reminds me of that ‘00s J-rock tone that will forever be associated with my first brushes with anime
Our view of this new city is a treat as always; the exam site lies on a walled island, bridges and towers of regular white stone speaking to the apparent wealth and power of this stronghold. When your architectural designs are created with intent, they can speak much more clearly than generic CG buildings – here, the very fact that our previous locales have been so sprawling and irregularly constructed implies a very different culture for this place, a hierarchical order with a strong central government and bounteous economy
The one point of discord here is the smallness of the island itself, especially since there are apparently no supplementary communities lining the near banks of the lake. The buildings that exist don’t seem sufficient to house the citizens of a city like this – a complaint I usually wouldn’t bother leveling (most fantasy anime do not care about the logistics of their cities), but which here slightly mars one of the show’s distinct advantages
Frieren is still grumbling that there’s no point in her getting a magical certification, since they’ll undoubtedly change the method of certification itself within a hundred years or so. A playful, relatable expression of her experience of time: even in a human lifespan, the ever-shifting requirements of bureaucracy speak to a system not designed with humans in mind
“Only a handful of mages across history have acquired a first-class mage certification.” I’m not a fan of this itemizing of something that should be as majestic and inexplicable as magic, but I realize I’ve largely lost that battle in terms of anime storytelling. Magic is a videogame resource in modern anime, and can largely be categorized and quantified down to mundanity. I personally think that’s a tremendous squandering of a concept that should inspire curiosity and wonder, but I suppose it at least makes sense for stories as inherently gamified as shonens – though it smarts here, in a story that’s allegedly about embracing the mystery and discovery of lived experience. As ever, Frieren’s worldbuilding tends to be one of its weaknesses
Frieren mentions a combat test. A little strange to me that this author is prioritizing action here, since they don’t actually seem interested in the back-and-forth of combat
Excellent pouts from Frieren as she grumbles about being called old
Frieren says she’s lost eleven times to mages with less mana than her. Again, interested to see if this author can actually express “cunning” in combat, as it’s all been pretty One Punch Man so far
We jump to one of the other presumed mages taking the exam, a green-haired woman with perpetually mocking eyes
She mentions how the defeat of Aura has emboldened more bandits to stalk the roads. A welcome flourish of continuity, making this feel a touch more like a living world
Our elven monk Kraft wallops some bandits before they can attack
The mage’s name is Ubel
Kraft says she has the eyes of a killer. He wasn’t rescuing her – he was saving the bandits from the bloody fate suffered by the previous thieves who crossed her
A clerk informs our team that the exam will take place in two months. It’s always a bit of a shock to return to the timescale of this show, which very appropriately does not line up events such that our heroes are perpetually arriving just in time for whatever they have to do next. That’s an unrealistic flourish we have learned to accept as a necessary mechanic of fiction (like how “turn on the TV” always leads to a news report about the current relevant topic), but it obviously makes sense for Frieren specifically to emphasize that the world does not work according to our own personal schedule
Lit street lanterns and uniform stone buildings with numerous glass windows speak to the impressive wealth of this city. Again, the more care you take in designing your world’s architecture, the more the audience can reasonably infer from that architecture. With most isekai, the design of architecture is so thoughtless that it only really says the author didn’t care about that aspect of their world; Frieren itself can fall into this territory in other respects, like the prominence of hamburgers in this fantasy world
Even Frieren’s previous party didn’t recognize her holy symbol of magedom
The parallel gives her a chance to redo a previous failure; rather than just casting her allies’ praise aside as too fleeting to be meaningful, she takes comfort in Fern’s words
“A person becomes a proper mage only once they’ve gained a fifth-level certification.” Having grown up on Tolkien and Diana Wynn Jones and C.S. Lewis, this unconsidered demystification of magic makes my spine itch
Nonetheless, Frieren’s reflections in the dwindling number of mages speaks to a common concern across classic fantasy, the fall of wonder and rise of man
And as ever, the pace of life is realized as montage, the shining moments we remember from our endless procession of days
The introduction of our field of rivals is a fun sequence, prompting natural speculation as to how they’ll all fare against Frieren and each other. A tournament is never more alluring and full of potential than in this moment; many of these characters will undoubtedly fall without fanfare, but in this moment they are all mysterious titans
Ubel apparently failed her last certification by killing the first-class proctor. So she has the strength, just not the temperament; the Hisoka of the field, apparently
The scouts do not recognize Frieren, which frankly seems a little surprising, given her victory over the tyrant who threatened all of humanity is still within human living memory
They’ll first be split into teams of three, a good way to give us more personal attachment to a few of these contestants
Frieren’s with two girls who are already fighting. Fern’s with Ubel and a blonde-haired guy
Their first test is to capture a bird known as a Stille
Frieren’s companions are Lawine and Kanne, both third-class mages. I appreciate that there does seem to be a certain order to these rankings – third-class mages are basically seasoned adventurers, while second-class mages are local legends, and first-class mages even higher than that
Frieren gauges Lawine’s perception of her strength, asking if she’s stronger than Frieren herself. Lawine’s “I wouldn’t want to fight you” is a good response – she knows when she’s beat, and will thus retreat intelligently
In contrast, Kanne goes out alone at night, and is almost killed by a gryphon before Frieren rescues her. As she ultimately confesses, she tends to choke in the critical moment – it’s Lawine who pushes her forward
And Done
Thus our grand tournament begins, opening with a clear demonstration of why group projects are always bullshit. Contests of strength and skill aren’t exactly Frieren’s general wheelhouse, but it’s hard to say no to a tournament arc, and I’m interested to see how the styles of all these other mages compare to Freiren’s no-nonsense approach. The show certainly agrees that magical expertise lends itself to an eccentric sort of community, and given how generously the show has realized sequences like Stark’s fight against the dragon, I expect we’ve got some generous cuts coming up. Fuck ‘em up, Frieren!
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