Sousou no Frieren, episode 7
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| Episode | Link |
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| 5 | Link |
| 6 | Link |
| 7 | Link |
| 8 | Link |
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Another great episode. Really loved the first part about Himmel not wanting Frieren to be alone and that is why he had so many statues made.
One of the (many) things that I really enjoy about this series is its portrayal of demons. They really feel quite alien but relatable at the same time. They fall right into an uncanny middle between human and monster that always has you second guessing yourself about them. Frieren probably says it best in that they can understand our speech, but can’t be communicated with; drawing a clear line between being able to speak and being able to understand and convey thoughts and emotions through speech.
There are many parallels I can draw between this series and Mushishi, but this portrayal of demons reminds me a bit of how mushi are described by Ginko. They are more or less wild things living in nature and when they intersect with humans bad things can happen, but it isn’t out of malice or any kind of emotion, it is simply surviving in the environment it finds itself. I think Frieren views demons in much the same way. They are not hurting humans out of malice, but simply creatures that find themselves in a world full of humans. As a survival strategy, the demons found ways to use humans to their advantage, it just so happens that those strategies involve manipulating and taking advantage of human emotions.
One of the (many) things that I really enjoy about this series is its portrayal of demons.
I haven’t seen this portrayal before Frieren, it is an intriging idea, and I think the author did a convincing job with the example of the demon girl, that it is totally not the “yesterday’s enemy can be tomorrow’s friends” trope you see in so many other novels/mangas/animes.
Those tend to be racism allegories, which is definitely not the case here.
GOD I CAN’T WAIT FOR NEXT WEEK. They really killed it with that cliffhanger. Frieren’s such a badass, even the way she let herself get taken down, but refused to take her eyes off her enemy. Also, to not tread on what others have said about this episode, it’s interesting that they mentioned other creatures that use human speech to trick us, and that human speech is what distinguishes demons from monsters.
The writing was really great too, with the demons using honeyed words that sound sympathetic, but they turn around and acknowledge they don’t really know what it means except that they get to live a while longer.
I went back and checked how they did this in the manga and this episode actually ends mid-chapter (chapter 15). So, it wasn’t a cliffhanger at all in the source. However, I really like how they did it in the show. The cliffhanger was really well done.
Edit: Also, yes. We have only adapted 14.5 chapters so far in 7 episodes.
I think part of why I like this cliffhanger more than your average cliffhanger is we know what’s going to happen. It’s not like some bog-standard “oh no, it looks like our hero is about to die, how will they possibly get out of this? Find out next time!” that builds suspense but is also incredibly annoying. We know that there’s either going to be an ass whooping or someone will come in and stop it. So the suspense is a positive one.
We have only adapted 14.5 chapters so far in 7 episodes.
This is crazy, because it really feels like we’ve done way more than that. I guess because the pacing can take its time to really give an immersive feel to the world. Sounds like I’ll be reading the manga after the anime’s done though; this is def good enough to warrant it, even if I feel like the atmosphere of the anime is one of its strongest points.
As far as human is concerned Frieren was alive before reliably recorded history, and will go on to live so long for generations to come. To see her commenting “Elves are on a slow decline to extinction” I first feel sad, and then realize it’d be so slow it would be unimaginable to me.
Frieren will probably live at least another 1,000 years. Will Frieren still be alive in 10,000 years? Will she have overcome elves’ lack of passion at least once and have an offspring during that time? If so, will her offspring goes on to live another 10,000 years? If elves will be going extinct, it’ll still be a long, long time in the future.
EDIT:
Next week will be the episode with the same name as the series title: “Sousou no Frieren”.
Do you know what sousou translates to? MAL lists an alternate title translation as “Frieren at the funeral” but I couldn’t determine if sousou actually means funeral or not. (Using google translate, I know no japanese.)
I have seen elsewhere that it is a pun and can be loosely translated as either Frieren’s at the funeral or Frieren caused the funeral. But I don’t really know enough Japanese other than to say those are fairly liberal translations.
葬送 (sousou) literally just means funeral, フリーレン is Frieren and the の (no) in between usually indicates possession in some way.
I thought this is better suited for next week, but here you go.
葬送(Sousou) can be both a noun or a verb, as a noun meaning “Funeral Procession” (which is the wikipedia page that corresponds to the Japanese entry 葬送), or simply “Funeral” (but usually 葬儀(Sougi) or 葬式(Soushiki) is used to just refer to the ceremony).
As a verb 葬送（する）, usually it means “to attend a funeral”, but it also means “to give somebody a funeral”, and if you stretch that a bit, “to cause somebody to have their funeral”.
So the translation “Frieren at the funeral” is using the “attend” sense of the verb, but there is another meaning to “Sousou no Frieren” that will probably be revealed in the next episode.
That was very informative, thank you.
Frieren’s constraint/lazyness is great - I’m sure she could have taken on a few human guards. Especially with Fern and Stark assisting. But same as in the flashback, she wants to teach them a lesson about demons?
I think she is just kinda indifferent, she doesn’t mind being stuck in prison because 2-3 years mean nothing to her.
In a way, Frieren’s lack of gravitas is refreshing. Usually, when you have elves (which are not just isekai hot babes with long ears), they are at least a little bit haughty, and it makes sense, too: having lived for thousands of years, some acquired pride is to be expected. But Frieren, while undeniably long-lived, and it is reflected in her personality (by relation to time mainly), absolutely does not feel superior to humans. Celebrate her early wake-up by spoon-feeding her? Sure! Carry her like a sack of potatoes? Thank you very much.
Yeah I love the way she is portrayed, it’s unique. So often in media these seemingly immortal beings behave like regular people, Frieren’s seemingly cold demeanor is just a consequence of her being so long lived, it is definitely a very refreshing take on such a character.
Also I think maybe just the way elves are. She says they lack romantic feelings, so that may also reach out to other social interactions. Humans to them might be unpredictable tides that carry them along, even if by way of potato-sacking lol.
I think it’s less that they don’t have romantic feelings and more they just take it really slow, like 100 year long courtship slow. They clearly are capable of feeling strong, complex emotions considering how she broke down and cried at Himmel’s service.
As anime only, I thought Frieren would be like episodic adventure series so didn’t expect this kind of conflict. But I am enjoying the series. Love that Frieren’s “I am strong, stronger than you boss” final scene.
That last scene was amazing. He has no idea who she is and probably thinks it’s a bluff. When it’s too late he will probably come to the realization if who she is.
The way the demons are in this series, it almost feels at odds with how relaxed the characters are. It’s a calm, soothing world as long as you don’t mind the monsters wearing a human face while talking sweet words, out to eat you.
This is a great point I hadn’t thought about before. This is something that is not present in the manga to the same extent due to the medium being inherently black and white and still images. The animation really adds a lot of character to the world in how it is portrayed so peacefully most of the time; Frieren waking up gently in the woods to butterflies landing on her nose for example. Even the demons themselves in this city are smartly dressed, extremely cordial, and outwardly forgiving of being threatened by both Frieren and the local lord. However, their true nature is so discordant with the rest of the world it adds a lot to their “otherness”.
Great adoption of the manga. I am hyped for the next episode.
The way demons are depicted reminds me a lot of LLMs (and AI in general).
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Less powerful demons have no understanding of human thought and are really bad at fooling people (see the girl-demon in the flashback).
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Medium powerful demons still have no understanding of human thought, but are somewhat good at imitating people (see the present-day demons from todays EP).
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More powerwull demons…
Spoiler
start to develop more complex strategies for fooling humans.
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While the most powerfull demons
Spoiler
are implementing strategies that trancent both human strategies and the original demon strategies.
this article by scott alexander does a good job of explaining how AI’s are inhuman intelligences, that are trying to fool humans into thinking they have morals. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/perhaps-it-is-a-bad-thing-that-the
This thing is an alien that has been beaten into a shape that makes it look vaguely human. But scratch it the slightest bit and the alien comes out.
This pretty much describes demons in Frieren. Different demons you have to scratch at harder than others, similar to how better AI models you have to engineer your prompts better to get it to break. The best fictional stories are the ones that can help us to better understand and contextualize the nonfiction world around us.
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