Frieren -- Beyond Journeys End a review and Analysis📖

You belong to the intended target audience of this article, if you like ...

I have read a Manga called "Frieren -- Beyond Journeys End" (Or something like that). Here follows my Analysis of it.

My Short Summary

Frieren is a 1000 year old mage. She defeated the demon king together with a heroic group of humans, and one dwarf. Humans usually die before they reach the age of 100. Frieren has seen many humans come and go (die) during her livetime. Frieren still is fascinated with the world and humanties potential for evolution, she does not know everything about this world and its limits yet.

How Civilizations fall 📜

So .. I think Frieren is related to the meaning of live and the fall of ancient civilizations 🗿. Let me explain this crazy interpretation:

- Some Civilizations last for 1000s of years. Examples are ancient Egypt, Rome, Greek, Persian or Japanese. For us people they seem immortal.

- Frieren is a mage that is at least 1000 years old. She has witnessed many friends come and go. But still many humans left her wondering and searching for their meaning of life 🌄

For example:

- Her master wanted her to cast a flower field around her grave. 🌷

- Now, in search of a blue flower she spends many months searching a forest 💠

A second example:

- Her past friend, who already died a long time ago, enjoyed looking the sun rise 🌄, but she slept to long to witness it with him.

- Now she travels to the beach to wittness the sun rise after his death, before that she cleans the beach of trash -- hard work.

The death of Frierens friend, who was a hero, gets sad the longer you read the story in my opinion, since there are always hints and flashbacks about his subtle influence on the main character. The little things she remembers -- like the hero carrying a box to gain some reward -- are shown in very detailed ways. Eventhough his livetime was very short he influenced this 1000 year old mage profoundly.

- I think the older civilizations get, the more disconnected they get from the reality that lead to their founding principles. Of course this does not mean **all** rules or laws made by a Civilization are proven wrong by time or technology. Just some ideas might become outdated while others increase in relevance. For example Religions might establish rules that get proven unnecessary or even detrimental in the future, where new technology is available.

Language and interpretation of old laws change. Since the times march on, other things grow in importance and new technology might make things that where very important or central once, obsolete. This leads to the wonder and excitement of these aging civilization, after all there are always new things to explore as previously unthinkable things happen. Fascination with the universe and its endless expanse start to interest civilizations the older they get. 🌌

This perspective might explain Frierens autistic side, where she does not understand the basic desires of people but still respects, questions and studies them.

Once she faces a demon interested in human psychology in chapter 100, its comments deepen our understanding of Frieren (I am citing from memory):

Since you have lived for Eons your Mental state diverged radically from humans, they might as well consider you a Monster.

Frieren might look human, but she is an alien creature that looks humanoid 👽. She sees everything from a completely detached autistic yet interesting perspective.

I believe this relation between Frieren and humanity might be comparable to that of an aging Civilization looking at its eventual successor(s). In Frierens case, she represents Elven Civilization, which has battled Demon-kind in a prior age of legends. But now the human civilizations start to rise higher and higher, as Frieren herself was raised by a human legendary Mage. Humanity unknowingly is profiting from the fight between Demon-kind and Elves which both underestimate humanities potential. Their infighting accelerates humanities rise.

This is comparable to the Roman and Persian civilization battling in Anatolia and Persia while in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula a new Empire rose that conquered them both: The Ummayads 🐫 -- to the complete surprise of the two ancient giants.

Fall of an organized competent power can only be initiated by an Unknown/Unrecognized Force 🏴

Here I attempt to reason why Frieren defeated the Demon King. This is ironic as I only read up to chapter 105, where the fight with the demon king is not shown in full detail, but the setup of the story allows speculation. As we know, Frieren is not the most powerful combat mage: Another Elven Mage named Serie has greater combat abilities and even greater interest in the evolution of combat.

Once an empire grows too strong and competent, the only way to defeat it is from the shadows of the hidden and unknown. Frieren deceived all the Demons by exerting a lot of energy just to hide her own true strength(an Aura of magic). Only that way she managed to get even close to defeating the Demon King, who underestimated and misunderstood her. If Frieren trained harder her combat abilities would even surpass the greatest Elven Mage Serie, but instead she spends most of her energy and time hiding her strength.

There also is the theory that if Serie and the Demon King clashed, they would have destroyed the planet. An underestimated Mage with equal interest in combat and random flower field spells was needed to topple the Demon King without causing Armageddon. This is very similar to the cold war, where a clash between the two super-powers -- The Soviet Union and the U.S.A. might have brought nuclear winter catastrophe ☢. An unexpected drive for freedom in the Soviet-Unions periphery combined with dark secrets revealed during the Glasnost reforms brought it to fall.

Praising the Frieren Anime 📺

Not complete & many mysteries still unknown 🍕

I shall note I have only read the story up to chapter 101. After that the story will continue.

Thanks for reading ~ Artiosis.