Sousou no Frieren – Episode 05

Episode Synopsis:

Freiren and Fern begin their adventure, retracing the steps of the hero’s party.  In a mountain pass, they encounter a creature that can create illusions of loved ones, and both mages deal with what they are shown before defeating it.  While passing through a forest, Frieren finds a dragon guarding a treasure horde that includes a grimoire she wants.  After an ineffective magical attack, they retreat to the nearest town to seek Stark, Eisen’s apprentice, a front-line warrior, and a hero of the town after he apparently stared down the same dragon years ago and it left.  While strong and skilled, he is also terrified of fighting monsters, and his confrontation with the dragon was entirely luck. Now he must decide whether to join the mages.  

Episode Review:

Frieren is continuing to do a good job of balancing how it tells its story to get the feel it wants (a slow-paced and methodical journey).  The “main quest,” of retracing the party’s steps and ending up at the Demon Lord’s castle, is touched on lightly at the start of the episode.

Because it will be such a long journey (by human standards anyway), this driving force mostly recedes into the background as smaller vignettes take center stage.  This episode has two such stories (the confrontation with the illusion creature and the meeting with Stark), and they do a good job of keeping things interesting and changing up the pace.

That pace is set by showing the traveling that occurs between these interesting events.  Sometimes it is overlaid with character dialogue, sometimes it is silent, but they are in general much longer interstitials than is common.

It’s these sections that really establish the almost sleepy feel of the show, that make it feel like a long journey on which interesting things happen occasionally.  So far I’m very much enjoying the pacing and the show at large, and it will be interesting to see how the (presumed) addition of Stark to the group changes the dynamic.

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