Sousou no Frieren – Episode 13

Episode Synopsis:

Frieren, Stark, and Fern come to a small town for healing and convince one of its priests to join them on their journey.

Episode Review:

Frieren in general is a pretty slow-moving show, and this may be one of its slowest episodes.  It starts off strangely enough, with Frieren slowly watching a man drown in quicksand.

I think the cold open is meant to be funny, as Sein (the man in the swamp who turns out to be a genius priest) has been telling Frieren his life story and how he didn’t follow his friend’s invitation to go adventuring ten years ago… and then we zoom out to see that Frieren is calmly watching as he sinks in further and pleads with him.  It is kind of funny, but also… what the heck Frieren?

Beyond that, the episode is mostly about the party trying to convince Sein to join them on their journey, discovering his reasons for staying in the village ten years ago and now, and then pushing him to overcome those reasons.  It’s nothing amazing, though there is some good introspection…

…and some good comedy.

But rather than get into those, there is one point that interested me about the episode, and that was Frieren’s own history of having the same thing happen – feeling like she couldn’t go out adventuring, that this was an opportunity she didn’t pursue and now had lost the chance at – 80 something years ago.

What’s interesting here is that this is the same scene (Himmel and company come to recruit Frieren while on their journey) that we saw back when we were learning about why Frieren is able to defeat Aura (she’s spent her whole life both suppressing and building up her mana to be the perfect demon-killer).  In the episode with Aura, this long and quiet life of mana buildup had been proscribed by Flamme as a way to be that secret weapon – attain enormous hidden mana and don’t make a name for yourself.  In this episode, instead, that long and quiet life is the reason Frieren feels she is unable to join the party at all.

It’s a little discordant… but I suppose that it’s possible for both to be true at the same time.  Frieren may have been following her teacher’s instructions to build herself up into a secret weapon, but also be unsure of when the time is to use that power, and eventually feel like whenever that time was, it’s behind her now; she missed the chance.  It is nice that Himmel had the conviction to say that now was, indeed, the time, and that now it’s Frieren’s turn to do that for Sein.

Last thoughts before signing off – is that little village going to be OK?  It’s surrounded by poisonous snakes and Sein’s brother (also a priest but way less good at it) is helpless to heal it under the very best possible conditions (i.e. a party of powerful mages flies the victim at high speeds directly to a temple in less than 30 minutes).  I worry what will happen to the ordinary villagers living in this place.