Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Episode 10 Review

A Powerful Mage

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Episode 10 covered Frieren the Slayer’s origin story. I assumed this would be something we’d get far later in the series. However, this isn’t the first time I felt this way. I also thought Frieren revealed being Flamme’s apprentice very early on.

Is getting these things out of the way early better or worse? I’m not particularly a fan of removing some of the potential mystery from the series early on. For example, why Frieren hates demons so much could have been left for later. And it may have been more impactful to reveal later.

But, at the same time, revealing origin story stuff late in a series can feel like retconning. Often time, characters and their motivations are established over time. And when you throw in a twist origin story late in the game, it can go against what viewers have come to accept.

One Piece actually includes a perfect example of this that I plan to write about sometime in the future.

Anyway, we now know Flamme took Frieren in as her apprentice against Frieren’s will. Well, sort of against Frieren’s will. Flamme thought Frieren was a promising mage and decided to carry her away from her village. When Frieren asked to be put down, Flamme said no.

So, as you can see, this is a classic case of kidnapping. Or maybe it’s elder abuse considering Frieren’s age. Either way, Flamme wanted to train Frieren so that Frieren would be able to continue her work.

What’s Flamme’s work? She wants to eradicate all demons from the face of the Earth (or whatever planet this series takes place on). Unfortunately, despite being even stronger than Frieren, time isn’t on Flamme’s side. Luckily, time isn’t something Frieren has to worry about.

Frieren the Trickster

At the end of Episode 8, we learned that Frieren developed anti-demon offensive magic. And, she taught Fern this magic, leading her to believe it was standard offensive magic. Well, that wasn’t the only anti-demon technique Frieren taught Fern.

It turns out that Frieren also taught Fern how to continuously suppress her mana output. By doing this, she can trick demons into believing that she’s weaker than she actually is. But, unlike the anti-demon offensive magic, this technique didn’t originate with Frieren. It’s something Frieren’s master, Flamme, taught her to do.

If you watched the episode, you shouldn’t need me to explain why suppressing one’s mana is a thing. But, I will anyway. Demons don’t suppress their mana because it’s how they gauge strength. The whole hierarchy of demon “society” depends on this. And so, they don’t even consider that someone would want to hide their strength.

More importantly, why do we care if someone’s suppressing their mana output? Well, once we know that’s what they’re doing, it changes how we view them. For example, Flamme could have simply been a genius. But now we know she was a genius and had insane levels of mana.

That doesn’t exactly make anything Flamme did less impressive. But, it changes the context. There’s a huge difference between having a massive mana reserve and being a normal human. If Flamme was the latter, we’d expect how she fought demons to be very different.

And, this is relevant for the present story because of Fern. Yeah, Fern. Not Frieren. We’ve known Frieren is a very strong mage. But, until Episode 10, how strong Fern actually is wasn’t clear. Like Lügner, I thought Fern was compensating for her lack of mana with speed. She’s not.

1,000-Year-Old Mage

Did anyone predict that Frieren was going to overpower Aura’s mana with her own to win the fight? I can’t say that’s what I was expecting to happen, even if it did seem like the obvious path forward.

Why didn’t I predict that? Because other details implied something else was going to happen instead. Remember how someone with a strong will could resist Aura’s commands for a limited amount of time? Since that was mentioned, I assumed it would be relevant. But, that ended up not being the case.

It would have been pretty cool to see Frieren hold out until Fern and Stark came to back her up. I mean, we still haven’t seen the three of them fight a powerful enemy as a party. And I feel like that’s something that has to happen at some point.

Something else I was wondering about is how Aura is even here in the present. We know she fought against the Hero’s party in the past. And yet, both she and the Hero’s party survived the encounter. That’s weird, right? I can’t imagine the Hero’s party would have let her escape.

What makes this even weirder is that, in this episode, we got a flashback frame of the Hero’s party fighting Aura. In this frame, we see all four members of the Hero’s party fighting her. And, notably, Himmel slashes Aura with his sword, causing her to drop her Scales of Obedience.

So, we know that the Hero’s party both injured and disarmed Aura. And yet, she’s here in the present. I have a feeling that this is something that will never be explained in detail. But, since Frieren isn’t surprised that Aura’s alive, it implies she knew Aura survived.

Final Thoughts

What do you think of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Episode 10? Were you expecting to get Frieren’s origin story this early? Does Fern actually having a large amount of mana change how you view her victory over Lügner? And, how do you think Aura survived her fight against the Hero’s party? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of Episode 11 is available now.