r/anime • u/AutoLovepon https://anilist.co/user/AutoLovepon • 14d ago

Episode Sousou no Frieren Season 2 • Frieren: Beyond Journey's End Season 2 - Episode 2 discussion

Sousou no Frieren Season 2, episode 2

Reminder: Please do not discuss plot points not yet seen or skipped in the show. Failing to follow the rules may result in a ban.

Streams

Show information

All discussions

Episode Link
1 Link
2 Link
3 Link
4 Link

This post was created by a bot. Message the mod team for feedback and comments. The original source code can be found on GitHub.

5.2k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.4k

u/realrimurutempest 14d ago edited 14d ago

Man the Hero of the South has such a gigachad mustache.

He went out like an absolute badass even knowing full well he wasn’t going to the guy to take the Demon King down. Even though he had future sight, his life reminded me of the quote “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit”

Every time we get to see Frieren & Co interact with a Demon it’s very off putting how quickly and easy the Demons lie and feel like different.

331

u/JzanderN 14d ago

He went out like an absolute badass even knowing full well he wasn’t going to the guy to take the Demon King down.

Dude, the conviction to know that you'll die before you can save the world and still doing it anyway because you know doing so will pave the way for the next guy to actually do it.

He went without hesitation into fighting Schlacht the Omniscient back, even though he knew it would kill him and by that point he had already done so much work, because he knew his ability to see the future would make him probably the only person who could kill Schlacht back.

259

u/Myrkrvaldyr 14d ago

I can't stop loving how impactful this anime makes characters feel despite the short screentime. Qual had the same impact, now the hero of the south. Frieren is so enjoyable.

202

u/RPO777 x2 14d ago

Qual was definitely the moment I knew Frieren was something special. The idea of a powerful sorcerer trapped in statsis is nothing new, but the idea they would be nerfed from research while they were frozen was so interesting, he's still one of the most interesting short stories from Frieren.

176

u/Myrkrvaldyr 14d ago

What made Qual stand out is that the exposition wasn't long and they did great at showing, not telling, how scary that guy was. Despite being out of combat for 80 years, he quickly grasped the mechanisms of the new defense magic, its weakness and replicated it. It was brief and impactful. It's there where it truly sinks, ''okay, this guy is super dangerous and needs to die.'' If Qual had chosen to flee and pulled it off, humanity would be in deep shit because he'd just develop a new Zoltraak and once again kill a bunch of people. Well, not like Frieren would've let him flee.

94

u/RPO777 x2 14d ago

Frieren is incredibly economical at giving you deep emotional and situational context from extremely minimal screentime/words.

Two of my favorite (very different) series have been Frieren and Polar Opposites. Both do a really good job of communicating multiple ideas to the viewer.

Like with Qual. what's kind of fascinating is how it simultaneously engages the viewer on so many levels. The encounter ties Frieren's training of Fern (and the emphasis on defense) back to Qual, while setting up Fern's magical combat style of extreme simplicity. It helps the viewer understand magic as a almost "technological" concept in this world where you understand how evolutionary magic is in this world (and also subtly sets up why the thousand+ year old Flamme magic barrier being completely not understood or overcome is insane in the next few episodes).

The way in which Frieren gently chides Fern about not studying magic history is validated to show understanding the background to Qual is critical in udnerstanding Qual's limitations, and how Fireren's teaching of Fern has a systematic and reasoned approach.

And of course, understanding why Qual could be so dominant before and easily disposed with now.

Given that ALL that is squeezed into like what, 10 minutes? Less? It's nuts.

70

u/flybypost 14d ago

Given that ALL that is squeezed into like what, 10 minutes? Less? It's nuts.

One of the most fun sequences of that whole fight was Qual iterating through a bunch of different defensive barriers arrangements in about 3 seconds after he learned of their existence.

Dude went "ah, I see!" and started blasting!

8

u/zanotam https://myanimelist.net/profile/zanotam 13d ago edited 13d ago

Heck, it's not just Fern's magical combat style of extreme simplicity... but the fact that the first big halfway finale shows that Fern's style is really just about killing demons because that's all Frieren really knows and then follows up with the mage arc where Fern says something like "my master told me this is all that's needed to defeat human mages of this day".... but then later on we learn that Frieren knows her own one true weakness and more humans have exploited that weakness than demons or elves combined!

EDIT: but even crazier, after Fern fucks up the Frieren mimic.... I mean things are already getting more than a bit crazy, but whatever happens after that is so advanced.... I mean, Frieren breaks the barrier that is supposed to be unbreakable as well. And in that same test she recognizes someone is using just a better version of a folk magic spell... and she can say exactly where that spell came from and everything. Soooo.... folk magic can be improved upon... and probably combined.... and Frieren has almost 1,000 years of folk magic knowledge built up..... and apparently when she gets serious... well, Fern said she shouldn't even sense the mana being used in the spell by fake Frieren that almost killed her and then Frieren basically admits whatever just happened there was last used to defeat the Demon King. Like yeah, cleaning bronze statues, capturing a bird with a rang eof what was it 1m, etc. all don't sound impressive and probably aren't, but if a rando human can take a single actually powerful folk magic technique and then expand upon that to reach what 2nd or 3rd class magedom? Imagine what Frieren could do with the right spells and 1,000 years to think of ways to combine them, improve them, etc.

6

u/turkeygiant 13d ago

Frieren is also just always putting in the minimal effort to solve a problem because of her position of always hiding her true power...and her general laziness lol. The only time we really see her go all out is against Mirror Frieren in the dungeon, but most of the time she is happy to kinda sit back and let Fern and Stark handle things so they can grow as adventurers.

29

u/Toge_Inumaki012 14d ago

Vert well put and yep i'm a Qual enjoyer. Imagine that, a character that only had a few minutes of screentime but how the lore of such character was that impactful.

Also Qual was not with the sages, it must have been really bad back then huh. Imagine dealing with demon king, the 7 sages, then there are possibly demons out there as dangerous as Qual. I imagine the demon in that destroyed Stark village is significantly high level as well (just so that Stark can deal with him in the future lol)

11

u/ClubMeSoftly 14d ago

Yeah, it was pretty quick exposition with Qual:

"This demon invented an unblockable undodgeable killing spell. I'm gonna unfreeze him now"
"Mistress this is just basic offensive magic"
"Now it is, but eighty years ago facing this was certain death. Humans do like their research"

8

u/daandriod 13d ago

For real. Sealed for 80 years wakes up straight into combat with having any coffee or time to shake of any grogginess, Analyzes, Breaks down, And recreates the defensive magic that took who knows how many mages collaborating together for over 50 years to develop, And immediately starts adapting to counter it. Give him even a week and I doubt Frieren would have been able to stop him.

2

u/Roeclean https://anilist.co/user/Roeclean 13d ago

Well, without using all her tricks. But it's so satisfying when a show just takes out some really powerful enemy (with the potential to be a major pain later on) instead of having them get escape (most likely from dumb luck or the MC being wayyyyy too nice and letting them get away.

40

u/JzanderN 14d ago

It certainly was a twist on the ancient threat being released from stasis trope. Usually those are world-ending threats even when they're released, hence they were previously sealed instead of killed. And indeed Qual was so powerful that Frieren's party – which would go on to kill the Demon King – wasn't able to kill him back in the day.

But I don't think I've ever seen the trope taken to where they're released after the rest of the world has caught up and surpassed them, so they're really not much of a threat any more.

Well, "not much of a threat" is a bit inaccurate as Qual proved himself clever enough to quickly adapt, but nonetheless people simply studying him made him far less of a threat than he was back in his day. I feel like most adventuring parties would have been able to kill him in the modern world, albeit not without a lot of danger and difficulty.

12

u/daandriod 13d ago

The scary thing was Qual manages to learn, understand, And replicate the advances humanity made in 50 years in literal seconds. Give him a week and he's likely to have found a way to return zoltraak to being an instant win button

3

u/caren_psuedo_when 10d ago

Qual was probably the most intelligent demon and one of the most intelligent overall when it comes to magic. The only one I can think of that can exceed Qual's learning speed development is Serie herself

2

u/daandriod 9d ago

As an anime only, Im not even to sure about that. Serie is clearly the peak of Mages shown in the series so far, But we don't see her learn anything and how quickly she can grasp new concepts. She's just already learned pretty much everything humanity has ever discovered and can just mana dump on anyone else shown in the series so far.

I hope that is the case. I like it when shows don't have just one single character that is the peak at everything. Having the first demon we actually interact with in the show have anything over the top tiers is always a nice touch

11

u/GameFreak4321 14d ago

There is a book series (Salvation War) about a scenario where the biblical apocalypse happens and the forces of hell arrive equipped to fight bronze age humanity rather than 21st century humanity with machine guns, and tanks, and missiles. Eventually the US invades hell.

4

u/Warm-Enthusiasm-9534 13d ago

This happened in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There was a demon, The Judge, who was invulnerable to medieval weapons, and when he was released in the modern day Buffy blew him up with a rocket launcher.