Sousou no Frieren – Episode 03

Episode Synopsis:

Fern trails Frieren during a resupply stop after a suspicious division of shopping, only to discover that the elf was setting up a modest birthday celebration for her. Later, the pair make their way to a village where a demon mage was sealed by Frieren during her adventures with Himmel and company. With the seal deteriorating, the pair must do battle with a dangerous remnant of the distant past.

Episode Review:

Before I go into anything else, I have to give special mention to the following exchange, which occurs at the tail end of the first half, after the main pair discuss the nature of their current journey:

Frieren: “You’ve finally grown taller than me.”
Fern: “I’m sixteen now. I could be your older sister.”

my brain: That last sentence was spoken simply as “Onee-san desu”, so that’s a really interesting choice by Crunchyroll to try to get her point across while using the formal definition of “onee-san” as “older sister” where I would presume that the intended use was the more generic one, so as to read closer to “I’m a young woman” to drive home that she’s not a child anymore. Heh – obviously the elf ears and the completely different hair color would-

Frieren: [experiences breast envy]

my brain, grinding to a halt:

I’m not safe. Is this a common enough aspect of, uh, slender women’s lived experience that it fades into the background? Because as someone who has been given no reason to pay specific attention to any of the characters’ boobs, it’s super jarring. Frieren has so far come off as a very utilitarian person – earlier in the episode she is shown as not being concerned enough about her hair to avoid messing it up by sleeping with it wet, and Fern is surprised to see her visit an accessory/jewelry vendor – and she doesn’t seem to be, uh, on the prowl, so I’m forced to assume that it comes down to basic body image (possibly even weirder for being a different race [species?], depending on how elven beauty standards compare to humans’, but I suppose we haven’t seen any other elves). What narrative does this serve? Is it supposed to illustrate that she’s not actually so above it all? I can’t help but feel like there are better ways.

ANYWAY

The rest of the first half is a cute exploration of Fern making sure her mentor doesn’t waste their money on magical junk and of Frieren trying to overcome decades upon decades of asocial inertia and give her student the level of attention that Himmel once showed her. It’s sweet.

The second half revolves around a demon sage named Qual, whom Frieren could only overcome in their first encounter by immobilizing in stone, even with the the full party present. She now undoes what’s left of the seal and confronts him with Fern, confident that eighty years of magical research and development, based on the reverse-engineering of Qual’s signature offensive spell, gives them the edge. She describes the broad strokes of this process to him once it becomes clear that the playing field is not how he left it, and an interesting aspect of this exposition is that she credits humanity with the relevant advancements. “Eighty years is a long time for humans”, she says, calling back to an earlier exchange between the two, where Qual seems to dismiss the interval as “a mere eighty years”, and Frieren responds with “For us, anyway.”

I’m forced to assume that the implication here is that, because humans are much more numerous than immortals or otherwise long-lived beings like elves and demons, even the tiny fraction of them that have significant magical insight can, when working together, accomplish feats that can rival the capabilities of genius individuals – mostly because the only alternative I can come up with of is that mortals literally think faster, which doesn’t seem like that could be possible based on small-scale interactions.

The little flashback with the villager at the end also stuck out as tonally questionable – less the preteen delinquent than the party’s reactions – but not as much as that bit in the first half.

Summary: