Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 09
葬送のフリーレン
Sōsō no Frieren 09

Spoiler Summary/Synopsis:

Fern and Stark get Graf Granat to the church, which has a barrier to prevent demons from entering. The priest tends to their wounds, after which the Graf thanks them for their help. After discovering Frieren’s identity, the Graf opens up about their opponent, Aura the Guillotine. Himmel’s party defeated her 80 years ago, but were unable to kill her.

Aura has an artifact known as the Scales of Obedience. If the mana attached to one’s soul is weighed against hers. The loser then becomes a slave to the winner. Those with powerful wills can resist the spell for a short time. Thus Aura has her enslaved army beheaded. This is what Frieren faces when she arrives at Aura’s location. To Aura’s surprise, Frieren doesn’t use the flashy magic of the past to destroy her soldiers. Instead she dispels Aura’s magic on them.

Meanwhile, Fern and Stark are on a battlement, preparing for their next task. Fern realizes the blood on their clothing is demon. Instantly, she’s pinned to the wall thanks to Lügner’s blood magic. Linie attacks Stark, sending him off the battlement to a woods below. Despite taking a beating from Linie, who’s using Eisen’s techniques, Stark keeps getting up to fight.

On the battlements, Fern breaks free of Lügner’s pin while he ponders what Frieren is doing. During their battle, Lügner has difficulty dealing with Fern’s speed in attacks. As such, he calls for Linie’s assistance. However, Stark allows her to hit him, allowing him to finish her. Linie’s death distracts Lügner, allowing Fern to blast him with Zoltraak.

Thoughts/Review

Man, even though I’ve read the manga, the anime adaptation is so good. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 09 continues that awesomeness. While there was still plenty of action in the episode, there’s still plenty of character work, mostly done in the form of flashbacks that conveniently tie in with what’s going on now. In a weaker show, this would be a problem. However, because the writing of this series is so tight (and as best as I can tell, mostly faithfully adapted), I give some issues a pass.

Battling Demons: Stark

The primary focus of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 09 was Fern’s battle with Lügner and Stark’s battle with Linie. Of the two, Stark’s battle is a bit more on the unbelievable side. We aren’t shown how Linie put him down the first time. And for some reason, Linie doesn’t kill Stark when he’s down. When he rises, it appears that she slices his eye, yet he soon opens it and can see.

Linie then puts Stark down a second time, slicing his shoulder. Again, she doesn’t kill him. That all smacks of plot convenience. Stark says her blows weren’t as heavy as Eisen, but clearly, they have some weight to them. The episode clearly depicted this. As such, I don’t understand how Stark wasn’t cut in half by Linie’s final attack.

When I looked at the manga, it appears the anime expanded the battle a bit. Stark was already bleeding a bit around the eye. Linie never actually hit him with her poleaxe. She blasted him backwards, indicating all his damage came as a result of such attacks. So when she sliced him, she had little physical force in the attack, thus Stark won.

So while I love this episode, I have to point out this flaw. In order to make Stark’s fight more interesting, Madhouse makes his victory less believable. That’s unfortunate.

Battling Demons: Fern

The other main battle in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 09 was Fern facing Lügner. Although she wasn’t injured as badly as Stark, she still had a stab wound in her left shoulder. And for most of the fight, she did not use that arm, which I appreciated. As such, I didn’t have the issue with her battle that I did with Stark’s. It made sense that Linie’s defeat would distract Lügner just long enough for Fern to get off a clean shot.

Stark got a character flashback to show how Eisen trained him to never give up. Fern also received a character flashback to conveniently indicate how Fern was so fast in spell casting. While it is a plot convenience, at the same time, I liked Fern’s flashback moment. (Nothing wrong with Stark’s either.) Fern understands that in terms of power, she’s no where near Frieren’s level. However, for some reason, Fern is faster in spell casting than Frieren is.

To that end, it shows that even as a “weaker” mage, Fern’s speed makes the battles end quicker. Thus Fern’s contributions are very valuable to Frieren. I like that.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 09 shows us why Frieren had such confidence in her apprentice and her warrior. We also get to see the setup for Frieren’s fight with Aura.