Sousou no Frieren – Episode 21

Episode Synopsis:

Lawine and Kanne fight Richter while Frieren fights Denken.  The team defeats Richter and Denken, and take back their Stille before the test ends, though Richter’s team also acquires a Stille in time.  Having passed the first exam, the winners have some downtime before the second exam.

Episode Review:

The blessed end to at least part of this magic battle arc.  Parts of it are interesting, with Richter giving a lecture on why attacks that use physical objects can overwhelm the default defense spell.

As always, the battles look pretty and are very well animated, with some particularly complex rotating camera work done really well.  I was still ready for it to be over, though. 

At least we got some more information on Serie, the elf that is overseeing the competition.  It turns out that Frieren has met her, long ago when she traveled with Flamme.  Flamme had a particularly interesting line that I’m hoping will be expanded on in later episodes.

Flamme continues, explaining that only Frieren, who knows a peaceful era, can defeat the Demon King and bring about another peaceful era.  It’s an odd explanation for someone that Flamme met just after she’d killed a demon that had wiped out her entire village, but hey, I’m not humanity’s most storied mage, so what do I know.

In summary, there were some tasty bits of backstory and foreshadowing between the less interesting mage exam parts, but at least it’s still looking great and maintains my interest.

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