Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Episodes 7-8

This pair of episodes is meant to introduce us to the series' main antagonists: the demons. Demons in anime have done a bit of a 180 over the years. In the past, they were simply bad guys to be defeated—creatures of pure evil to be slaughtered by the heroes to save the world. In more recent times, we've seen many stories that put them in, if not a heroic light, then at least a sympathetic one. Sometimes they're a people simply forced into war by their ever more inhospitable environment. Other times, they're simply victims of prejudice—a handy scapegoat for the humans of the fantasy world.

So often have demons been seen as complex and nuanced that Frieren herself comes off as incredibly racist at first—I mean, she tries to kill a demon in the street with no warning and calls them monsters, not people. The trick is that, in the world of Frieren, demons have evolved to play on the better nature of humans. After all, we're all taught as children to “use our words” and that “fighting is bad.” The logical idea is that, if we can communicate, we can understand each other—and if we can understand each other, we can make peace.

However, demons cannot come to understand humans—nor do they even wish to. To a demon, words are not for communication but rather deception. Both the demons' humanoid shape and use of language are simple tools of evolution—tools to make it easier for them to hunt their primary food source: people.

When it comes down to it, the issue here is that demons lack empathy—and not just towards humans, dwarves, and elves. They have no emotional connection to others whatsoever. They have no friends or family and are solitary beings by nature. Simply put, they are an entire race of psychopaths. Everything they say or do is simply to elicit a response that furthers their goal of ultimately feasting on human flesh. But just because they have learned that, for example, crying “mother” when they're about to be killed, may cause their enemy to pause in their attack, they are incapable of understanding the emotional impetus for why this is—and that is their weakness.

On the surface, Frieren herself appears to be closer to the demons in personality than Fern or Stark. She is often cold and logical—to the point that she muses about leaving the town to its fate and escaping in the chaos of the impending demon attack. Her warped sense of time makes it hard for her to care about people who will be dead in a few years whether it be by demon hands or old age—especially when said death occurs due to what she sees as an act of stupidity.

However, the difference between Frieren and the demons is that, while it is hard for her to make emotional connections with mortals, she is capable of doing so. She cares about Fern, Stark, and her former companions (far more than she ever realized). Even if she didn't have a personal stake in the fight, we've seen time and again in the series so far that she has a new moral compass that helps her in her interactions with the mortal races: “What would Himmel do?”

Even if that weren't the case, there is another emotional drive behind her actions: a cold, infinite rage. After all, it takes some serious drive to be the individual who has killed more demons than anyone else in recorded history—to the point that demons themselves remember her in hushed tones as “Frieren the Slayer.”

Episode 7 Rating:

Episode 8 Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• Moment that made me tear up? That Himmel had so many statutes made not just due to his own vanity but so that Frieren would never be alone—that there was proof that her history, her life, was more than a series of half-believed stories from ages past.

• How about those action scenes? They are brutal and violent to the point that you can't help but see Frieren in an entirely new light.

• The demon girl's “logical” thought process: I killed a family's child. They want to kill me. If I give them a new child, they won't want to kill me. The mayor has a child. If I kill the mayor and give them the mayor's child, I will be safe.

• I love the idea that the barrier that has defended the town for a thousand years was simply put there because Flamme saw a seedling struggling against a blizzard and decided to give it a helping hand.

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