Frieren's Flashbacks
to hone in on the greatest contemporary fantasy anime so far
Frieren may be a tale of fantasy, but it’s about reality.
Sure, it revels in the sprawling world - the rolling hills, rickety villages, soft landscapes and abrasive winters - but first and foremost, it is about people. The show cold opens with the end of the hero’s journey, as the party that saved the world from the clutches of the evil relaxes after years of work. Frieren, the party’s mage, is an ageless elf thousands of years in the making, so this trip was little more than an excursion. She departs from the party wordlessly and the party does nothing but shake their heads with a smile and a shrug and a “oh well”, realizing that she sees the world very different than them. For the rest of the party, this was their entire life’s work. For Frieren, this was just a few decades. However, years later, many years later, one of the party members, Himmel the Hero, calls Frieren over for a last conversation before he passes on. After a few blunt exchanges, laughs weakly and comments, “You’ve always been so cold, Frieren.” All this comes together and clicks in her mind. You can see it reflect in her eyes. She realizes she’ll outlive everyone. She realizes how short their lives are. She realizes they’re not coming back. And so, Frieren breaks down, wishing she could’ve spent another sliver of time with him.
The entire show builds its back off the crux of these principles, and does so with great tact, as we flash back and forth between the days of old, when Frieren was journeying with this party, and the present time, wherein Frieren takes on apprentice Fern to do it all over again. There’s lots of similarities between the times, and it seems the more things change the more they stay the same, however…The real adventure is seeing how Frieren matures as a person. You see her cold demeanor slowly soften into an icy heat as she recalls moments with her previous companions in similar moments to theirs. One of my favorites is the simple present of a birthday gift, and how, upon being presented with hers, Frieren emotionlessly accepts, but puts much more care into her modern counterparts with her selections, going so far as to give later party member Stark a potion that melts away clothes and only clothes, because “Heiter told me boys like this pervy stuff.”
She’s got this edge to her when interacting with people, and it can be taken as bluntness, and often is, but is often just plain ol’ ignorance. Frieren’s apprentice, Fern, is the perfect foil to her, really, providing this straight-laced goody-two-shoes demeanor that keeps her lackadaisical master in check. At points, she seems more mature than the thousands-year-old elf, and it’s a fun dynamic, to be sure. One that builds character, both literally and metaphorically.
“I might spend a few decades here,” Frieren says.
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” Fern responds.
And Frieren needs this, too. Having Fern around isn’t only a responsibility, but a reminder, as she’s now the new companion, reflecting ideals of her old connections. Especially early on, Frieren looks on Fern and sees her guardian, Heiter, and the similarities they hold. To her, it’s shocking. Frieren uses these back-and-forth flashbacks to show us the mental processes of not only the eponymous Frieren, but the other characters, too, as they draw parallels between the past and the present much like a real person does. Frieren as a person has a lot of people to bounce off of, to emotionally resound with, and even beyond the graves, people to recall.
This is what got a lot of people to bawl early on. What sets Frieren above the rest of anime’s zeigeist of fantasy schlock is, above all, its intimate character work.
Beauty in the tragedies, beauty in the finite.
It’s said that characters aren’t humans, but getting them as close to humans as possible with doubts, beliefs, stories and history, that’s what makes them tactile to us an audience! And having them relieve past experiences while showcasing their present emotions, how it makes them feel, how they apply it to their life, it feels real. It feels grounded. It feels like something a human would do. Because it is.
God, it makes me cry. Every single episode.
