#frierenposting

[otogariado]

frieren: you won't be able to deny her capabilities

fern: 🧍

[drakonyx121]

[identityarchitect]

elf more like AAA (aro, ace, autistic)

[cafe-con-navi]

I’m sorry everyone i can’t help it i can’t resist the urge to keep frierenposting because RAHHHH THE ANIME ADAPTATION IS SO GOOD IM SO HAPPY

[otogariado]

i love the power of teamwork

[otogariado]

i love how frieren is the main character of the show. she's someone who's not very good with emotions, with expressing them nor with understanding them. she's even called cold multiple times. despite this, frieren is far from who you would call "cold".

[Images ID: Screenshots of a flashback of Fern with long hair sat beside Heiter's bed. He tells her, "Frieren has poor emotion and empathy. I'm sure it will cause you difficulties and agreements. But there is one good thing about her. She'll worry about you and care for you to make up for it." The last screenshot shows Frieren in present time asleep with her back turned to Fern (the point of view). /End Images ID.]

(This scene made me tear up and I was trying hard not to cry not gonna lie.)

Frieren's compassion, coupled with the fact that the show's entire focus and premise is her connecting with others esp humanity makes the message very clear. It's not about what you're inherently good at; Frieren may not be emotionally inclined or empathic but what matters more is her attempt to understand (in Stark's words). And in Frieren's actions, we've never once shown she doesn't care; in fact, it's even the opposite. We're shown multiple times that she cares. Remember from way back when she went back to the village and killed Qual? Nobody was worried—not Himmel nor the villagers, because they all knew Frieren is coming back to fulfill her duties. That's how much her actions speak for her and how much she cares. And there's also a lot of montages in the earlier episodes where Frieren and Fern (and Stark and Sein) are helping out the people they come across on their journeys, even interacting with a whole community they're stopping by at to the point that the locals become well acquainted with them already.

This also ties into my previous post about the demons and the black-and-white take the show has of them, and of Frieren herself. I think it just further drives the point home about how this story's depiction of demons manage to avoid the -ist traps that these "nonhuman, non-feeling" creatures usually fall into (particularly ableist and racist), and even arguably it is the main point of the whole story. Because again, the story and the show so gracefully show Frieren being low-empathy and low-emotion and doesn't paint her as an inherently bad person because of this. That's not what makes the demons inhuman, it's the demons' inability to care for others that make them inhuman. Meanwhile Frieren is actively caring for and doing what she can to help other people, and reaching out to them in her own way. The difference between them is cut and dry.

Frieren isn't even the only person in the story that's like this. Her main party—Fern, Stark, Sein at one point—all kind of suck at communicating in one way or the other. Sometimes the first three especially are awkward as hell. They manage to get into squabbles all the time. But I think the story makes it clear that none of these people are inherently bad because they're bad at emotions/empathy—in fact one of the things I adore about Frieren is the way it depicts its characters' conflict resolutions. You have characters sitting together talking about what bothered them and actively trying to figure out how to resolve a fight they had with each other. Characters are giving each other advice and trying to get each other to see the other's point of view. This isn't even limited to Frieren's party, even with the exam arc people it's like this. And it's great. I don't think the demons in this universe would be able to do the same thing.

[otogariado]

i love the parallelism of these scenes; i noticed it right away. not only in the visual composition, but with its dialogue and themes. at first i was going to rearrange the screenshots to have them completely lined up at the risk of sacrificing chronology; however, i think that actually defeats the purpose.

denken and frieren are both old and wise. they both don't bother to "fight back" when they don't deem it necessary, and i doubt they were offended because they both think there's truth to what the other person is saying to them. denken knows he is old and frieren knows she cannot meet serie's expectations.

however, it's interesting that when frieren gets personally insulted, she doesn't care. but when serie commits the error that most people do, even those who are watching the show—when her party members are discredited and all the credit of defeating the demon lord only goes to her, she won't take that kind of error lightly. she cares about her teammates. it's also nice how this ties into a theme of the episode, that being that even if one person "carried" a team bc her skills were exceptional and beyond them, it does not mean that she was the only one who was able to make them pass. teamwork is still teamwork, and from what we saw in previous episodes everybody took on the responsibility and were trying to make up for each others' weakness and boosting each others' strengths (when delegating who fights which clone).

it's also interesting that denken doesn't get offended because he understands where richter's coming from, and that he turns that insult into a genuine moment of trying to cheer him up. i didn't get mad because i was once like you, and now i'm an imperial mage, so your future is looking bright.

[otogariado]

frieren episode 26 thoughts! i haven't done this since the end of the first examination and now we're almost at the end...

firstly: the camera angles in the flashback to fern and frieren talking about their strategy is great — they went for something similar to the handheld camera effect, wherein we follow the perspective of frieren's and then fern's eyes respectively. it's a great choice given that the conversation is so intimate, which only makes it more personal. this is between a mentor and her mentee who she believes has the capacity to rise so far above her. i like how, when we cut to fern's perspective, she's slightly looking up to frieren since she's sitting down whilst frieren is standing—it's a bit on the nose, but i like that metaphorically, fern still looks up to frieren, but frieren is not unreachable to her at all.

secondly: the side characters in this exam arc are so interesting and once again they get highlighted here. i love methode and her "i have many talents, but i'm really great at stopping people". i love wirbel's "i don't trust people easily, but i'm not stupid enough to let a winning horse get away."

but i think the easy highlight of this episode is übel. übel is so fascinating as a character, because she's so scary because of her capabilities. if she wanted to just go rogue and kill everyone, she very much could. so it's been really fun seeing her interact so thoughtfully with other characters, particularly her budding friendship with "glasses boy". i also like that we hardly know anything about her background, but we do get so much info from her brief flashback to her sister watching her sister cut fabric—in that her sister probably has a lot of influence on her and helped shape her character. i haven't sat down and thought about übel enough but i undoubtedly think her sister was a good influence on her.

thirdly: i love the themes of the second exam being about working together and being strong in numbers. if they had done this from the start, they would've done a better job. but i like that they obviously don't lol this is what makes them so believable as characters, after all. still, it shows that despite starting off scattered through the dungeon, it's never too late to try to work together, and make it work they did.

something i also like about this exam is the motif of knowing when to quit. "we can retake the exam in three years" is a sort, but very a heart-wrenching moment.

[otogariado]

i hope it's evident with how much i post about frieren that its story and characters are so worth caring about. it truly is one of the shows of all time. i like how this episode is such a breather from everything that's happened. i've seen people criticize frieren for being too slow and boring and i think it's the stupidest critique you can give because that's the point. the point of frieren is not the action and fights; they're there if the story calls for it, but it was always about people's lives and the minutae of it all and how beautiful human connection is. it started out as a story about grief and finding yourself and realizing how much the people you've spent your life with—for however many years—have impacted you and changed you. if you come to frieren expecting epic fantasy shit that's simply not what it's offering front and center. you're looking for the wrong thing in frieren. i won't even call frieren "slow", it just spends a lot of time with its characters, even in their "blandest" moments, because it's the kind of story that it is. frieren is so clearly a slice of life story first and foremost and people just can't seem to fathom that possibly the best received anime of all time is a slice of life. get slice of life'd, idiot.

[otogariado]

i wanna say though. despite praising frieren for a lot of things it's not perfect. in fact it's a big detriment that the show/story is full of light skinned characters but no darker skinned people. off the top of my head i cannot even remember a single one, even taking into account side or minor characters.

[identityarchitect]

eisen :handshake: jon sims

[identityarchitect]

himmel :handshake: laios

[identityarchitect]

oh man. the parallels between the demon girl and frieren...

[identityarchitect]

i like how even tho the demon king is dead, there are still demons fucking shit up around the place. even though its been years. its great.

[identityarchitect]

stark's kinda confirming my theory that frieren and the others were very powerful, even compared to other adventurers. i didnt see any scars on them, after all.

[identityarchitect]

its so interesting to me how we're following frieren, even though by all accounts, himmel is the main character. it's his party, his statue, the manga itself even recounts the amount of years after his death. it's not meant to be like this. it's meant to be over and it isn't. i love it so much