OP: “lulu.” by Mrs. GREEN APPLE

Sousou no Frieren is a funny sort of series. I like it, at times love it. But I also don’t quite get it. Right now the second season (albeit all of one episode) is ranked #1 all-time on MAL. And I imagine you can guess what’s in second place (and S1-2 are #1 and #5 on Anime Planet). To me that’s patently absurd, frankly. There are just way too many mediocre patches for me to fathom that sort of near-unanimous adoration but hey, what the hell do I know? My opinion is obviously a tiny minority on Frieren but that’s a position I’m pretty used to by now.

The thing is, if I’m going to be swimming against the current I’d rather it be degrees of affection and not abject disagreement. As I said I do like this series, and there are times when I consider it both great and profound. That in itself is enough of a rarity for me to hold it in high regard. A series has to be great pretty much all the time for me to consider it for masterpiece status, but that is what it is. It’s good to have it back, even if this season is only the very odd length of 10 episodes (which I assume is for arc adaptation purposes). With the manga’s endemic hiatus issues source material is always going to be a problem for this adaptation – in contrast to its anime and kaijuu contemporary Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, which has material to run for a century or thereabouts.

With that said, the second season kicks off in highly agreeable fashion. To paraphrase the prophet Costanza, it eased into the season like an old man into a nice warm bath, no offense. There was none of the so-so no Frieren of the Exam Arc – this reminded us of why the series is so highly regarded by so many. And once more one of the MVPs is Evan Call, whose background music holds these reflective episodes in its warm embrace and lifts them up on gossamer wings. My only complaint, frankly, was that there was a creepily large amount of smiling going on. Way too much, to be honest.

There wasn’t a whole lot of plot here. But more so than with almost any other series, that tends to be a good thing with Sousou no Frieren. The less hard it tries the more it accomplishes. To the extent it has any the impetus of the story is a “magic-nullifying crystal” that Frieren finds while the trio is getting back into the rhythms of the road. This MacGuffin is very much truth in advertising – it’s a crystal that nullifies magic within a three-meter radius. It’s worth a shit-ton and the party is almost broke, but Fern declares that they can’t carry it with them for fear of their magic being nullified in a danger situation. Now, they could rig a sled or something to drag it along more than three meters behind them (or  just make poor Stark walk that far back) but I won’t be a stickler…

Soon enough the reunited trio falls into a hole above a cave, which is absolutely jam-packed with the MNC. This presents an obvious problem, and Frieren – who seems not worried at all and in fact to be enjoying herself – lets Stark know that their lives are in his hands. “We’re just a couple of girls in here” she says – a tart reminder that Stark called her an old hag. Stark is as always unsure of his own courage under fire. Much as a certain dwarf was a long time ago (and indeed in many ways Stark is kind of a hybrid of Eisen and Himmel).

Despite noting that the cave they’re stuck in is likely the lair of a giant monster, Frieren is carefree and has no trouble falling asleep that night. Stark’s resolve is put to the test when said monster shows up – a venomous apex dragon that’s a “bad matchup” for Stark. The solution? Run. But when you’ve been around as long as Frieren has almost any situation recalls something similar from the past, and so it is here – and like most of her memories of the heroes’ party this is a joyful one. Running away has its own pleasures, I suppose.

Back up top, an inn at a crossroads finds a reunion with Wirbel and his party. He’s in a chipper mood and reminds Stark of the offer he made before (if we saw that on-screen I’ve forgotten). Frieren’s unconcern in letting Wirbel recruit Stark reflects confidence in his loyalty to be sure, but it may just be tinged with a bit of belief that he might be happier. it always seems to me that Frieren and Fern treat Stark pretty badly in a very casual way. It’s a lark to them, not so much to him. That was one reason the dynamic seemed much better with Sein present – Stark needed an ally and Sein was that. So when he pleaded with Fern “so be nicer to me”, I didn’t take that entirely as the joke it was almost surely intended to be.

That said, the three-way dynamic with the power trio is still one of the best parts of Frieren and it was great to have it back. This is really what the show does so well – just show people bounce off each other, reveling in the pleasures and frustrations of comfortable familiarity and life on the road. We’ll get back to plot soon enough, and as long as we stay away from mage exams it will probably work just fine. But I hope there will be time for a few more eps like this one, because they cut right to the essence of this series like nothing else does.

ED: “The Story of Us” by milet