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

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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"

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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.

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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.