It’s just the everyday minutiae of a ridiculous journey.
What They Say:
“Himmel’s Memoirs”
When Frieren’s party cannot afford the fare to cross Lake Korridor, the captain proposes a trade.
Review: (Please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After how phenomenal last week’s episode was, it was pretty much a given that this one would be on the lighter side. For Frieren, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, even if the placement within the season feels slightly anticlimactic in comparison. Interestingly, it peppers in a few teases for what will likely be substantial arcs in the presumed third season, including a cold open with several scenes of our old friend Denken going on some journey of his own. As we roll into the opening and spend the rest of the episode with the normal party, this sequence may dissolve into the subconscious, ready to be capitalized upon when the time is right.
Our party comes across yet another mostly destroyed village, this one by dragons. Frieren’s words are harsh considering her speech to Stark upon arriving at the Northern Plateau about everywhere being someone’s home and fighting to protect it. Fortunately, those words resonated with Stark enough to echo them back in support of this village. Between having his own village destroyed by demons, facing a dragon in defense of the village that treated him like one of their own, and having just experienced the horrors wrought upon Genau’s village by Revolte, Stark has all the context he needs for profound empathy for this village’s struggle. Frieren strongly cautions against it and demands a high price, so of course the opportunity for one of the most useless spells yet is the greatest payment she could imagine. Frieren pulls out her convenient magic GPS to Stark’s amazement, which Fern tries to temper out of fear of an oversized ego harming the development of her impressionable young millennia-old elf master. It’s a wonderfully endearing exchange to showcase the lovable dynamic between these three. A montage of the changing environment with the magic circle as its constant anchor not only creates a visually interesting effect but also subtly references a similar technique used in this season’s opening sequence.
Even a lighter episode can still have our trio taking on an entire flight of dragons. Frieren makes sure to point out that these are much smaller and weaker than the solar dragon Stark fought before joining the party, lest we find ourselves incredulous over the idea of the party slaying the entire flight. As fearsome as that dragon was, ultimately Stark did kill it singlehandedly, and with enough ease that he didn’t even realize the battle was over, but there’s a major factor of quantity over quality here. While Stark accounts for the bulk of the combat, our mages certainly lend a helping hand, and Stark takes some damage in the process. Of course, compared to the multiple successive near-death blows he somehow survived last week, this is all hardly a scratch. The intensity of this battle is certainly nothing like the scale of Revolte or even his minions, and there was no chance the animation was going to be as insane as so many sequences of that episode, but even standard action for Frieren is creative, dynamic, and smooth. We’re swept along with Stark’s battle and feel its weight in a way this series can achieve so casually.
Stark’s endurance, durability, and recovery has become something of a running gag lately, bouncing back from being almost dead disturbingly quickly, able to continue onward like nothing happened, and now similarly shaking off a dragon flight’s worth of injuries that included having his head almost eaten. Having experienced this with both Eisen and Stark, Frieren has a very warped perception of what’s normal for a warrior. In the case of the Revolte battle, it’s absolutely only because Methode was there with her powerful healing magic that Stark survived, but all of these incidents are startling reminders of how reckless it is for Frieren to have no healer in the party. It’s a good thing Stark is so unnaturally hardy, or that omission probably would’ve gotten him killed by now.
Probably the most important piece of this half-episode is the discussion of Frieren always asking for payment and the real motivation behind that. It seemed like it could’ve simply been a quirk of her collector’s mentality and idiosyncratic proclivity for obscure novelty spells, and there is likely some truth to that. However, the revelation that Himmel the Hero also demanded payments for all of their deeds begs further explanation. We see Himmel as the purest hero, so one would think that there could be nothing purer, more heroic, more selfless than helping people for no reward. But Himmel’s innate empathy was so acute that he knew that good people would feel guilty for giving the party of heroes nothing for their thoughtful help, so he goes a step further to ensure the civilians can feel fulfilled in having earned the assistance they received. Just as his egotistical handsome pose collection of statues across the land is actually an effort to inspire future generations long after he’s gone, his demand of payment, however insignificant, is paradoxically more selfless than asking nothing in return, because it gives the beneficiaries of his generosity a sense of reciprocity. In many ways, Frieren can be seen as a subversion of RPG tropes, but it’s probably more frequent that it’s actually an embrace of those tropes offering an uncharacteristically human and nuanced explanation of game mechanics we never think about. Just as Himmel, and by extension Frieren, knows to always take the less important path first to find all the extra items, this scenario offers a justification for NPCs always rewarding completion of a side quest with some item. Even if you’re the hero, that act gives that NPC purpose.
A flight of angry dragons might cause a few scratches, but stormy weather has been known to leave our party stranded for extended periods of time. When they have to cross a body of water big enough that even their magic isn’t quite sufficient, they have no choice but to hunker down until a more manual method of traversal can be achieved. In the meantime, Frieren recalls similar situations with her previous party, as she often does. Stark may be the second coming of Himmel in some ways, but he’s also very much his adoptive father’s son, not just in terms of shaking off having his head in a dragon’s mouth but in habits as silly as performing impossibly impressive handstands when stuck inside with nothing to do. These moments offer some of those delightful little character quirks that have a little less opportunity to shine when the party is fighting for their lives. This episode has no shortage of montages, and cutting between the two parties as Stark mirrors his master’s actions and Frieren finds the most absurd ways to sleep reminds us of how much we love just spending time with these three. On that note, Fern muffling Frieren’s sentences as she wipes her face is the kind of little touch that makes an adaptation so meaningful.
After all that discussion about accepting payment they don’t need for acts of kindness they didn’t have to do, the party finds themselves in the position of needing a favor and having to offer their services in lieu of proper payment. It just so happens that Himmel’s memoirs that he lost during the journey to defeat the Demon King are being stored at the village’s monastery, which is surrounded by a barrier that a mage would have to disable. There’s literally nobody in the world better suited for this task than Frieren. As they approach, another tease of darker times ahead flashes in a striking image of an old enemy Frieren had faced. As with the Denken scenes, I suspect a future season may deliver upon these hints with much greater intensity.
Given how much time Frieren spends reminiscing on her time with Himmel, reading his actual diary from those days is a torrent of nostalgia so profound you can feel it in your soul. No actual words are read, but the emotion behind them is implicitly conveyed via gorgeously poignant visions of the party’s adventure from Himmel’s immersive point of view. Ever since Himmel died, Frieren has been trying to understand him, to empathize with him, to imagine what he might’ve thought. Now she finally gets some small taste of it in his own words, bittersweet as it ends with the camera finally shifting to Himmel himself as Frieren comes to blank pages that could’ve been filled with so many more priceless memories. Despite her emotional awakening, Frieren has maintained her stoic posture, but she can’t help but break into a smile as she connects with her beloved teammate on a more personal level than has been possible for at least 30 years. She dismisses the writings as meaningless and trivial, but the firsthand memories of those times they spent together mean more than anything to her. That’s such a core theme of the series in general, that the mundane human connections are so much more powerful than the epic battles to save the world. The captain recognizes Frieren’s melancholy yearning and continues to give her a taste of her own selflessness not only by accepting her effortless service instead of payment but also gifting her the very item he enlisted her to retrieve. It would be valuable to the locals for historical significance and respect for their hero, but there’s nobody alive for whom it could be as priceless as it is to Frieren.
In Summary:
Even with a brief ten episodes, this season of Frieren finds itself in a somewhat awkward position of having to follow an exceptional conclusion to an arc with two more episodes of relatively little consequence. But Frieren is all about the ostensibly insignificant affecting its characters just as profoundly as any fight to the death. Even in a quieter episode, there can still be action that takes no shortcuts even after the exhausting showcase of sakuga in the previous episode. The connection to Himmel and the party of heroes is always at the forefront, and nothing expresses that more explicitly than experiencing Himmel’s perspective on the legendary journey in his own words. The depth of meaning packed within his superficially meaningless writing is as paradoxically emblematic of the series as learning that even taking from others was for the sake of giving them peace. It’s an emotional but subtle catharsis for Frieren, who can finally see through those eyes she thinks about so often.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
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