Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 02
葬送のフリーレン
Sōsō no Frieren 02

Spoiler Summary/Synopsis:

For four years, Frieren works on translating the grimoire for Heiter. At the same time, she trains the young Fern as a mage. Frieren tells Heiter that Fern has learned more in four years than most do in ten. However, Fern is not yet a “proper mage”, and Frieren will have finished the grimoire work before that happens. Heiter collapses due his ailing health.

Frieren goes out to where Fern is training. Fern tells her she will not stop her training to be with Heiter. She recounts how Heiter stopped her from committing suicide after the death of her family. As such, Fern feels she owes it to him to be able to stand on her own. Frieren respects this. Sometime later, she informs Heiter that the grimoire didn’t have anything about resurrection.

After chatting with the dying Heiter, Frieren realizes he tricked her. He explains why he took Fern in. Fern manages to complete her trying before Heiter dies. After his funeral, the two set out, doing odd jobs with their magic. In one town, an elderly herbalist hires them to clean Himmel’s statue, which is outside of town. Frieren wants to plan Himmel’s favorite flower, but none are around.

Months pass and Frieren cannot find said flower. Fern becomes concerned Frieren will spend years looking for a flower when there are more important things she could do like saving people. The herbalist encourages Fern to open up to Frieren. As such, Frieren acknowledges Fern’s concern. However, Frieren finds the flowers growing at the ruins of a watch tower.

Thoughts/Review

Even though I’ve already read the manga, I have to say that Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 02 was a faithful adaptation, yet struck a deeper emotional cord than the manga did. And that’s not a bad thing.

Passage of Time

One of the themes of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 02 is the passage of time. This is probably shown the strongest with Heiter’s passing. While the episode covers about five years time, for Frieren, many elements go back ~75 years or so. So when she takes the job to clean Himmel’s statue, she was there when it was first erected.

Then we see the passage of time via the herbalist. She’s an elderly woman in this episode. However, she was a child when Himmel saved her and her town from a monster attack. But as time has moved on, very few are still alive who remember that event. Thus the memorial to Himmel falls into a state of disrepair. At the same time, Frieren collecting odd spells comes in handy to help clean said statue.

However, it was via Fern where the passage of time theme came out the strongest. When Frieren decided to plant blue moon weed flowers at Himmel’s statue, she spent at least six months looking for them. For Frieren, that may as well be six days. However, Fern sees it as obsessing over something trivial. After all, Frieren may spend years looking for something that doesn’t exist.

And yet through Frieren’s flashback, we understand why this trivial thing was so important to her. She didn’t appreciate back then, but she does now. So while it is a plot contrivance that just as Fern raises her objections, Frieren finds the flowers, I also think she’s teaching Fern a lesson here. As such, I’ve no complaints.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Let me wrap up my review of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 02 with some final thoughts.

• Again, shout out to Madhouse for making such a beautiful anime, at least so far.
• Also, I’m loving the incidental music of this series.
• This is a minor thing, but even though this is a Western-styled fantasy, I do wish the Japanese honorifics were there. Fern speaks with an interesting dialect. I feel her addressing others with the -sama honorific isn’t getting reflected by making it “Ms.” (so far), the same as they are changing the -san honorific to.

In the end, I loved watching Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 02. I’ll be honest, I wish I could marathon this, that’s how good it is.