Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 15
葬送のフリーレン
Sōsō no Frieren 15

Spoiler Summary/Synopsis:

Frieren’s party comes to the next village, where they discover everyone is asleep. Sein detects a massive curse. Stark succumbs to the curse, so Sein says the quickest way to remove the curse is to remove the source. On the way, Fern succumbs too. When they arrive at the source, Frieren tells Sein to wake her for the 5-second window when he finds the monster.

Now that Frieren is asleep, Sein finds the curse originates from a giant, monster plant and flower. Sein figures he can take it out with his own magic, but the flower monster deflects it. As Sein eludes getting smashed, he recalls a story about Frieren Heiter told him as a child. Therefor, Sein cast “wake” on Frieren. In the 5-second window, she obliterates the monster, freeing the village.

The party arrive at the fortress city of Vorig on their way to Äußerst. Before they can enter, Lord Orden’s carriage arrives. He takes them to his palace to hire Stark. Frieren won’t hear of it until Fern reveals they desperately need funds. As such, Frieren agrees to lend Stark out for 10 gold and a grimoire of her choice. To that end, Stark has to impersonate Orden’s dead son Wirt for three months. His death fighting demons is secret for political reasons.

Stark trains in etiquette and dancing since he will attend a big soirée with other nobles in attendance. Stark sees some similarities with Orden’s family and his own. Fern also trains in order to be Stark’s date. On the night of the party, Fern and Stark dance, and no one is the wiser. Frieren gets paid as Orden and Stark have a final chat. Oden then goes to visit his young son, Mut, who’s sword training.

Thoughts/Review

We have two stories in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 15. The second one is contrived as all get out, but I am so down for it!

Flower Monster

The first story in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 15 is a Sein story. The episode lays out why a mage as powerful as Frieren cannot deal with curses, but a powerful priest can. It honestly felt like a tutorial from a fantasy RPG. However, this was not a problem. It merely amused me as Frieren gave her explanation.

We also got to see that Sein can also perform offensive, “goddess magic”. It is interesting that Sein casts his spells via a spell book rather than a staff like mages. That aside, it is fortunate that Frieren has Sein in the party. Otherwise, they would have died since Sein’s goddess magic gives him high resistance to curses.

I have three minor quibbles with the story. First is the flashback, where Sein remembers a story Heiter told him as a child about how Himmel’s party all trusted Frieren. When Sein is introduced, he gives ZERO indication that he knew who Frieren was, or that he’d heard of her. His older brother recognized her from his meetings with Heiter.

The second quibble is the plant monster’s distance from the village. Both in the manga and the anime, the implication is that the plant monster is possibly a few miles from the village. That’s some range to absorb the life from the villagers.

Finally, I kinda wish Sein’s wake spell period was ten seconds, not five. Even with Frieren’s amazing powers, it feels a stretch to have her wake from deep sleep, get up, and cast a spell in such a way to get past the monster’s defenses. Further, Frieren is notorious for how long it takes her to wake up.

Contrived Awesomeness

For the second story in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 15, the entire thing reeks of plot contrivance. After the previous episode featured Stark accidentally buying a lovers bracelet for Fern, this story feels like it was designed to make Fern and Stark closer. From the moment Lord Orden showed up, everything was driven by plot demands, including their need for money and Stark looking like Orden’s dead son.

Normally, I would absolutely despise plot contrivances. But you know what? I don’t care. For a start, we get to see Stark and Frieren all dressed up in fancy attire, looking quite lovely as they go across the dance floor. Madhouse really worked hard on this scene. They have experience here, going back to their Record of Lodoss War OVA work. Regardless, I loved every second of it.

Beyond the fun of seeing Fern and Stark together like this, I did like how this story tied in with the earlier story featuring Stark’s family as a child. As such, we see how Stark is maturing as a character and continues to move forward despite the trauma in his past.

Finally, poor Sein. He asks Frieren to dance, and she turns him down in favor of eating cake. 😂

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 15 was a really good episode, despite a few quibbles in the first story, and a massive plot contrivance to give Fern and Stark a lovely dance at a fancy party for the elite.