Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Episode 27

Here we are at the true climax of the season. There's no fighting—no magic—just a pair of conversations. But make no mistake, while it's a battle of words, it's a battle nonetheless—and Fern is the battlefield.

Despite their connection with Flamme, Serie, and Frieren couldn't be more different in how they view magic and its place in the world. To Serie, a mage of an endless war, magic is a tool and nothing more. To Frieren, a mage of a peaceful era, magic is something wonderful—not just to have but also to gain.

On the surface, Serie fails Friren because she's not the type of mage that Serie believes Frieren should be. However, there's something much deeper at work here: insecurity. Serie's ego can't accept that Frieren did what she could not—i.e., defeat the Demon King. Objectively, she's superior to Frieren in every way—even mastering the ability to suppress her mana better than Frieren. Yet, despite having thousands of years to do so, Serie was never able to defeat the Demon King. She simply sat eternally alone on her throne of stone.

Meanwhile, Frieren, be it by fate or the simple coincidence of reaching out to a lost boy and showing him her love of magic, gained a group of stalwart friends. Together, they did the impossible.

This shattered Serie's world. This elf who could not imagine a world without the ever-present threat of the Demon King was forced to accept that reality. Her way of doing so? Trying to imitate what Frieren did—but in her own (supposedly superior) way. The magic association is Serie making a group of mages that could have defeated the Demon King.

However, her group is a failure. It is missing the key aspect that led to Frieren and Himmel's victory: the trust, friendship, and cooperation that made them the perfect team. Serie has had scores of supporters who follow her orders but she has no companions—no friends.

Nowhere is the flaw in Serie's philosophy clearer than in her conversation with Fern. Fern is a once-in-a-millennium magical talent. She has the promise to become the next Flamme and alter the world of magic forever. Serie offers Fern all she has to become her apprentice—limitless knowledge and power. And Fern's immediate response? “What? No.”

Promising power unimaginable is simply not enough to break the bond between a socially awkward elf and the human girl she raised. After all, as the first half of the episode shows, Frieren cares deeply for Fern—even when her immortal nature makes it hard for her to understand the mortal girl. Can you even imagine Serie spending a day repairing her apprentice's broken staff? Of course not. Just like magic itself, staffs and even the mortal apprentices who wield them are just tools to Serie—fleeting and easily replaced.

Thus, when faced with the choice between Serie's philosophy and Freiren's, Fern chooses the latter. While Serie's overly pragmatic take on magic may have been necessary in an age of endless war, in this new age of humanity, it's Frieren's more lackadaisical take on magic that speaks to the heart of mankind. And in a thousand years, it may be Freiren who stands as the godmother of magic in Serie's place—due to either Fern passing on her teachings or Frieren herself teaching generation after generation of humans the joy of magic and the power of friendship.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• With the magic association, Serie is also doing what Flamme asked her to do in teaching humanity magic—perhaps out of acknowledgment that everything Flamme predicted has come to pass.

• It makes sense that Frieren is weaker than other elves of the same age. After all, she trained herself for a thousand years to be a weapon with a single purpose—and she did her job well.

• Between what Frieren and Serie have said in this episode and the last, it looks like her mana suppression trick didn't work on the Demon King, so she had to resort to the “The Height of Magic” while the others protected her.

• Food-stuffed Fern is the best Fern.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.