Frieren: Beyond Journey's End Season 2

Episode 5

I think we've all had a time or two in our lives where we're left facing the hard decision of which would be worse: ruining somebody's fun or letting them eventually be disappointed all on their own. This is the dilemma Frieren is facing in the first half of this episode—and not for the first time.

Fass is a dwarf who has spent two centuries of his life hunting for the legendary liquor Boshaft. And while he may be long-lived, it's far from an insignificant amount of time. The problem is that Frieren is intimately familiar with Boshaft. Centuries (perhaps millennia) ago, Boshaft was the cheapest of cheap liquor. However, as a bit of a practical joke, the elf Milliarde carved in stone that it was the greatest ever, and so as the ages went on, the mortal races started to believe it.

Now, Frieren is left with the fallout. She doesn't want to help Fass because, once he finds a bottle and learns that the legendary liquor is crap, his dreams will be crushed and his life will seem wasted in retrospect. That's not something that Frieren would wish on anyone—especially not with her growing understanding of mortality. So 80 years ago, she opted to let Fass continue to dream.

However, what Frieren didn't understand (until Heiter told her, anyway) is that failure is something that can be lessened if you have people to commiserate with. By sharing the Boshaft first with Fern and Stark, and later with the whole town, even Fass can find the joy and humor in the situation. After all, he found the legendary liquor. And while it turned out to be terrible, he and everyone else are now part of the legend.

As for the back half of the episode, it is a reminder of how our heroine views time. Time has never really mattered to Frieren before. It's only on her journey with Fern that it has suddenly become so. Moreover, Frieren has the bad habit of viewing bloodlines as she would people—she expects that a grandson will basically have the same temperament and values as a grandfather.

So when Frieren was told she could repay a loan, she, Himmel, and the others took on their journey; at any time, she took the lender at his word. She saw a man who, despite being a fallen noble, believed in them enough to support them and so took him at his word. Of course, the actual contract was far more concrete, and Frieren is now in major debt.

At first, it seems like the apple has fallen far from the tree as Frieren is basically enslaved to pay off the debt. However, it's revealed that the young money lender is just desperate. Things in the north are not going well due to demon attacks, and he had the power to strong-arm Frieren into saving his business and all those who were depending on him, so he took it.

Honestly, it's a rather weak adventure with a mixed moral and, ultimately, false drama. I even laughed out loud when the super-serious climax music began, all for Frieren casting the equivalent of a search spell. Sure, the scene was beautifully animated, but the dissonance between plot and music was a bit much.

All in all, this week felt like a mixed bag—largely lacking the personal introspection we've gotten from the season so far. Anyway, it looks like we have no new episode this coming week, so I'll see you all in two weeks when the next big story arc begins.

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Frieren: Beyond Journey's End Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.