Sousou no Frieren

[Kraco]

It was pretty decent writing that Richter didn't, after all, really want to kill the two girls. He wasted a whole lot of energy to simply pummel them around as long as there existed the possibility that Frieren could be contained. Only after that he actually went for the permanent solution. However, in the previous episode he indicated he would try to kill one of them immediately. So, that was just a bluff, meant to demoralise the girls and possibly encourage Frieren to be hasty and make a careless mistake in her own fight, in order to hurry to save the girls.

Assuming that the threat to the world was not a pushover. You're right, that's a strong assumption going by how easily Frieren defeated everyone so far.

Saying the demons are pushovers because Frieren could defeat them is like saying olympics silver and bronze medal winners are pushovers because the gold medal winner did beat them. Frieren might be the most powerful mortal in that world right at that moment. Serie isn't powerful because she's a hikikomori who never leaves her room. Her power is purely theoretical, whereas Frieren has used all of her wits to come up with ways to slay demons and she's actually doing it as well.

[DarthEnderX]

It was pretty decent writing that Richter didn't, after all, really want to kill the two girls. He wasted a whole lot of energy to simply pummel them around as long as there existed the possibility that Frieren could be contained.

Because Denken was insistent that he not.

[Buffalobiian]

Earth moves do have an problem where if you go beyond a certain size, you're just making an elevator. He doesn't seem to throw the rocks.

That said, he was using an earth dome/shield against ice projectiles before. I actually thought that was a pretty smart move given how barriers are supposed to be relatively ineffective against physical attacks. In that case he should have used that against the water spirit bomb instead of the usual barrier - time permitting.

Another inconsistency I've seen so far is that in some fights, a barrier blocking an attack can deplete your mana completely (like if you blocked an attack that was too strong in Dark Souls, it'd break your stamina). However, when one of the rock pillars struck water girl from the ground, it broke her shield then damaged her - but that strike didn't automatically drain all of her MP compared to say Denken's fight and Richter's final shield. That would suggest that you can break through a barrier without exhausting someone's MP. One explanation for this is that you are both limited by both mana capacity and mana output - and water girl maxed her mana output into the shield, but not her capacity. Frieren states in episode 2 that long range spells are affected by mana, strength of firing and control. I'm guessing shields may also apply similarly - and Denken/Richter's output is high/instant enough that their shields are limited by their mana capacity instead of rate-of-discharge.

To be entirely honest though, analytics aside I don't think these battles were designed to follow strict mechanics.

[Ryllharu]

Another inconsistency I've seen so far is that in some fights, a barrier blocking an attack can deplete your mana completely (like if you blocked an attack that was too strong in Dark Souls, it'd break your stamina). However, when one of the rock pillars struck water girl from the ground, it broke her shield then damaged her - but that strike didn't automatically drain all of her MP compared to say Denken's fight and Richter's final shield. That would suggest that you can break through a barrier without exhausting someone's MP. One explanation for this is that you are both limited by both mana capacity and mana output - and water girl maxed her mana output into the shield, but not her capacity. Frieren states in episode 2 that long range spells are affected by mana, strength of firing and control. I'm guessing shields may also apply similarly - and Denken/Richter's output is high/instant enough that their shields are limited by their mana capacity instead of rate-of-discharge.

I thought Richter detailed this one out completely. It's why "modern" magic is shifting away from Zoltraak.

The barrier spell is perfect for defending against Zoltraak. That's what it was for, that's why it was invented. It flawlessly defends against Zoltraak so it hasn't been changed, improved or updated since.

"Modern" magic shifted to attacks that are just as fast as activating Zoltraak, but the Barrier spell can't defend against it unless it is improved (which he showed by fractalizing the facets of the Barrier), but that takes longer to cast and requires even more mana, so it effectively does nothing against the elemental magic. The mages saturate each other with strong attacks that blast through the standard barrier with physical force behind them.

Why that school of thought doesn't work on Fern or Frieren is because the former has flawless pinpoint control, minimizes the size of her barriers and therefore never uses too much mana on her barriers; the latter has an overwhelming mana pool and can just buff up the barrier when she really needs it.

Fern was getting affected by the rocks. But she uses what she needs, which is just enough, and then switches to pure saturation while maintaining peak efficiency. Frieren taught Fern that Offense is above all. Other mages simply can't keep up with Fern's casting speed.

Frieren just can't be overwhelmed because she has an inexhaustible supply of mana compared to essentially anyone attacking her.

Both of them hide it (the anti-demon strat), so anyone who can sense mana will always be caught off guard and lose.

"Modern" mages are unknowingly following in the footsteps of demonkind, so of course Fern and Frieren's ego-less style is going to defeat them every time.

edit:
The one closest to their fighting style is probably Ubel. She appears to just cut stuff with absolutely no startup, telegraphed movement, or any indication of any kind besides presumably mana that needs to be actively detected.

[Buffalobiian]

I thought Richter detailed this one out completely. It's why "modern" magic is shifting away from Zoltraak.

The barrier spell is perfect for defending against Zoltraak. That's what it was for, that's why it was invented. It flawlessly defends against Zoltraak so it hasn't been changed, improved or updated since.

"Modern" magic shifted to attacks that are just as fast as activating Zoltraak, but the Barrier spell can't defend against it unless it is improved (which he showed by fractalizing the facets of the Barrier), but that takes longer to cast and requires even more mana, so it effectively does nothing against the elemental magic. The mages saturate each other with strong attacks that blast through the standard barrier with physical force behind them.

Why that school of thought doesn't work on Fern or Frieren is because the former has flawless pinpoint control, minimizes the size of her barriers and therefore never uses too much mana on her barriers; the latter has an overwhelming mana pool and can just buff up the barrier when she really needs it.

Fern was getting affected by the rocks. But she uses what she needs, which is just enough, and then switches to pure saturation while maintaining peak efficiency. Frieren taught Fern that Offense is above all. Other mages simply can't keep up with Fern's casting speed.

Frieren just can't be overwhelmed because she has an inexhaustible supply of mana compared to essentially anyone attacking her.

Both of them hide it (the anti-demon strat), so anyone who can sense mana will always be caught off guard and lose.

"Modern" mages are unknowingly following in the footsteps of demonkind, so of course Fern and Frieren's ego-less style is going to defeat them every time.

edit:
The one closest to their fighting style is probably Ubel. She appears to just cut stuff with absolutely no startup, telegraphed movement, or any indication of any kind besides presumably mana that needs to be actively detected.

This doesn't address what I'm talking about, which is whether a shield will break only after depleting your mana, or whether it can break without depleting your mana. It seems like the answer is that it can be either, depending on whether your limiting factor is your capacity or your output.

[Ryllharu]

I thought I did in the first three paragraphs, but I guess it wasn't clear enough: It depends on the attack.

Zoltraak? Mana depletion wins the encounter. The Barrier will not break, you just won't be able to produce them anymore and one will slip through.

"Modern" magical technique attacks that hit physically? Strong enough, and they will break the Barrier unless it has been reinforced, which slows down the activation time of the Barrier.

[Kraco]

Zoltraak? Mana depletion wins the encounter. The Barrier will not break, you just won't be able to produce them anymore and one will slip through.

I still think Bill's point is interesting. There could be an individual limit to how much energy, how many watts, a magician can pump into their shield. This would also mean that the smaller the shield, the more energy it receives and thus the more powerful zoltraak it can withstand, since the total energy per second is not divided by many shield elements. However, if the zoltraak, or exceedingly rapidly repeated zoltraaks, is still more powerful (has more joules) than the defending magician can pump into the shield per second, no matter how vast the magician's remaining mana pool (how many kWh of mana they have left), it doesn't matter. The shield will break and the magician will take damage, despite having even plenty of mana remaining. Of course I'd assume mana control and other forms of training would widen the bandwidth through which a magician can pump mana into the shield.

Furthermore, I could also imagine the shield itself could have variation between magicians. One magician could perhaps store enough mana in the shield to block 10kJ attack, one could maintain a shield strong enough to block 20kJ. Frieren probably can block 100kJ... But if the magician tries to pump more than that into the shield, they might lose control. Not that it would necessarily be an issue since simply maintaining the shield eats energy, meaning mana from the shield is dissipating into the atmosphere continuously, so having too "thick" a shield would be a suicide, unless you expect the fight to last a single second.

[Buffalobiian]

Zoltraak? Mana depletion wins the encounter. The Barrier will not break, you just won't be able to produce them anymore and one will slip through.

"Modern" magical technique attacks that hit physically? Strong enough, and they will break the Barrier unless it has been reinforced, which slows down the activation time of the Barrier.

So, firstly let's talk about how you'd deplete a barrier between Zoltraak and shield.

If Frieren fires 100J of Zoltraak, presumably a defender's shield will drain 200J of mana from the defender since the spell's very nature makes it costly (per the inventer of Zoltraak whenever they covered it).

I think we agree so far that shields against Zoltraak seem to never break until the defender runs out of mana. Let's discuss the mechanism. Suppose Frieren's final attack against Denken at the end is a 1MJ Zoltraak (we've seen her fire some spectacularly big ones) - how does Denken use 2MJ of barrier to block this? Did he have to actively cast a 2MJ barrier beforehand (seems unlikely), or does he cast a barrier that automatically drains whatever is required?

If barriers can drain mana dynamically based on the strength of the attack, then why can't it do that against physical attacks? It seems like physical attacks disproportionally drains shield. Using the first scenario, a 200J mana shield might only be able to block a 1kg rock being hurled towards it. Hurling that rock would only cost 50J of energy - so spending 100J on rock hurling would do more shield damage than 100J on Zoltraak.

Now you mentioned that if a physical attack is strong enough that it'll physically break a barrier. How would that work? If shields dynamically drains capacity then physical attacks should just make defending even more inefficient, but should not break with mana left.

If shields do in fact break after a limit then there's no point blocking attacks after a point. If shields are only good at blocking attacks from monsters and warriors (per this episode), then never block a ball of water - be it Frieren or Richter - since that would imply an inherent damage cap to barrier magic.

This is all unless mage output is also taken into account. If Frieren and Denken (who has 1KJ of mana remaining) both can perform 1KW of magic each, an exchange of 500J to cast Zoltraak vs 1KJ of shield would be resolved instantly with Denken now having 0 mana.

If Richter puts in 1KJ of mana into smashing a pillar into Kanne, she'd require 4KJ of shields to block it. If her output is 4KW or more, she'd just deplete her capacity. If her output is less than that (eg 3KW), then the shield would break and she'd take physical damage (but be left with 1KJ of mana).

This would make sense mechanically, but the fact that we've never seen Zoltraak break someone's shield by saturating output alone without depleting mana seems to be oddly coincidental.

[Y]

Qual's spells broke several shields Fern was generating without running her OOM. She also set up a double-layered barrier rather than reinforce the first one, and split the defensive spell up into numerous little pieces, some of which broke individually as Qual probed her with the normal attacks.

[shinta|hikari]

Geeks all of you.

[Kraco]

I reckon a physical attack makes the shield simply shatter without expending the expect amount of energy, per se. So, it just disturbs the structure of the shield. We know the shields are kind of flawed as they are, in a certain sense, since merely creating/maintaining them without deflecting attacks already eats energy. Perhaps the shields are structurally utterly incapable of dealing with a physical object interacting with them. At least a physical object any more solid than gas, unless it's the atmosphere that already makes them inefficient normally.

[DarthEnderX]

Geeks all of you.

I know right?

Motherfuckahs out here with calculators trying to determine magic shield strengths.

[Y]

To be clear I agree the magic system in Frieren functions however it needs to for the episode to finish.

[shinta|hikari]

I think it follows the rule of cool.

Even if there may be logic in the writing, it doesn't always get shown correctly in animation, many times intentionally for the cool factor.

[MFauli]

People in this thread thought more deeply about this anime than its creator.

[Ryllharu]

I think we agree so far that shields against Zoltraak seem to never break until the defender runs out of mana. Let's discuss the mechanism. Suppose Frieren's final attack against Denken at the end is a 1MJ Zoltraak (we've seen her fire some spectacularly big ones) - how does Denken use 2MJ of barrier to block this? Did he have to actively cast a 2MJ barrier beforehand (seems unlikely), or does he cast a barrier that automatically drains whatever is required?

If barriers can drain mana dynamically based on the strength of the attack, then why can't it do that against physical attacks? It seems like physical attacks disproportionally drains shield. Using the first scenario, a 200J mana shield might only be able to block a 1kg rock being hurled towards it. Hurling that rock would only cost 50J of energy - so spending 100J on rock hurling would do more shield damage than 100J on Zoltraak.

We actually don't agree. Somehow my posts keep getting reinterpreted despite how clear I think they are writing them.

The barrier designed to defend against Zoltraak NEVER breaks against Zoltraak. There's no merit in discussing joules or anything like that. The defender drains mana casting it, but it always works as long as their opponent is using Zoltraak. It is literally what the spell is DESIGNED to do. Doesn't matter how big the zoltraak beam is, aside from the defender maybe losing an arm because the beam splashed over. The barrier is the size it needs to be to stop the zoltraak beam, and it always works. The mana drain is the size of the barrier and how long it is held up, nothing more. Frieren explained all of this to Fern.

The barrier is not AS GOOD at defending against physical attacks, and it can get broken by them.

Why was Qual able to break them? Because Qual was a genius at killing magic. Frieren admitted to Fern that if the fight went on any longer, Qual would have reconfigured Zoltraak (in a similar manner that Frieren tweaked it to kill demons harder) to go right through the barrier spell she spent 80 years perfecting.

Y is right. The magic system works the way it needs to in order to support the narrative. It is constantly retroactively tweaked, along with all the lore of the series.

[Buffalobiian]

"Modern" magic shifted to attacks that are just as fast as activating Zoltraak, but the Barrier spell can't defend against it unless it is improved (which he showed by fractalizing the facets of the Barrier), but that takes longer to cast and requires even more mana, so it effectively does nothing against the elemental magic. The mages saturate each other with strong attacks that blast through the standard barrier with physical force behind them.

Why that school of thought doesn't work on Fern or Frieren is because the former has flawless pinpoint control, minimizes the size of her barriers and therefore never uses too much mana on her barriers; the latter has an overwhelming mana pool and can just buff up the barrier when she really needs it.

So if barriers don't actually use mana to block magic but simply cost mana to maintain duration and area, then weak physical attacks are simply pointless - such as the girl with flying rocks. If a physical attack's advantage is in circumventing barriers, then those that don't are just as (in)effective as Zoltraak. A barrage of rocks requires the same shield size/duration to block as much as similarly-sized Zoltraak attacks. I suppose lifting 100 rocks might be different from controlling 100 Zoltraaks though.

Fern also said it "feels like a cannon" when she blocked her rocks. If the shields only cost mana to maintain duration and area, it shouldn't "feel" like anything. It either blocks or doesn't, or feels draining to maintain because of a long duration or large area of effect.

The magic system works the way it needs to in order to support the narrative. It is constantly retroactively tweaked, along with all the lore of the series.

I've heard this a few times, and while it may be true - until the anime has gotten ahead enough for us to conclude that it does retcon old lore, I'll only be able to look forward with what we're shown thus far.

People in this thread thought more deeply about this anime than its creator.

From what I've been told so far (per above about rectonning etc), it may be true. So this discussion is about "based on what we've been shown, this is how the system would work if the information presented thus far is true and intentional". Anything that doesn't fit is either yet to be explained, or is a miss/sleight/oversight/disregard by the author for the sake of other aspects of the story.

[Kraco]

The barrier could be said to work perfectly against physical attacks as well, despite what Richter said, since it reduced the power of physical attacks enough to make them essentially harmless or avoidable. I mean, neither of the girls were missing limbs or even an eye after that fight. Not even bloody broken bones. Richter was totally out of mana after doing the work of a thousand bulldozers, yet didn't gain anything from all that effort. If a barrier stops any zoltraak 100% without ever shattering, that might have created utterly ridiculous expectations in the minds of the magicians. In reality it's okay for a barrier to shatter, as long as it has stopped or critically slowed down the attack. Which is exactly what happened, in fact, since the girls are okay. Just create another barrier for the next attack from the opponent. Especially since maintaining a barrier eats mana constantly, so if no attack has hit a particular barrier element, the magician will discontinue that element anyway, wasting the mana invested.

So, yeah, there's nothing wrong about the barrier at all, there's just something wrong about how the magicians view things. Once again, Frieren has got it right: stick to the basics.

[Ryllharu]

So if barriers don't actually use mana to block magic but simply cost mana to maintain duration and area, then weak physical attacks are simply pointless - such as the girl with flying rocks. If a physical attack's advantage is in circumventing barriers, then those that don't are just as (in)effective as Zoltraak. A barrage of rocks requires the same shield size/duration to block as much as similarly-sized Zoltraak attacks. I suppose lifting 100 rocks might be different from controlling 100 Zoltraaks though.

Fern also said it "feels like a cannon" when she blocked her rocks. If the shields only cost mana to maintain duration and area, it shouldn't "feel" like anything. It either blocks or doesn't, or feels draining to maintain because of a long duration or large area of effect.

The barrier spell is made for Zoltraak. It is not made to deflect rocks. It does deflect rocks to a degree, but Richter's point is that unless it is modified, which slows down the casting time, the barrier is not strong enough to block repeated physical attacks.

Fern correctly realized the same thing Richter was explaining to the duo.

Stop overthinking this.

Frieren and Fern use the basics because it always gets the job done. Zoltraak is made for killing. Barrier is made for defending against Zoltraak. Zoltraak is very efficient, has no telegraphed casting, its casting time is effectively zero, and when well-controlled has incredible range (as shown by Fern when she was young).

[Buffalobiian]

The barrier could be said to work perfectly against physical attacks as well, despite what Richter said, since it reduced the power of physical attacks enough to make them essentially harmless or avoidable. I mean, neither of the girls were missing limbs or even an eye after that fight. Not even bloody broken bones. Richter was totally out of mana after doing the work of a thousand bulldozers, yet didn't gain anything from all that effort. If a barrier stops any zoltraak 100% without ever shattering, that might have created utterly ridiculous expectations in the minds of the magicians. In reality it's okay for a barrier to shatter, as long as it has stopped or critically slowed down the attack. Which is exactly what happened, in fact, since the girls are okay. Just create another barrier for the next attack from the opponent. Especially since maintaining a barrier eats mana constantly, so if no attack has hit a particular barrier element, the magician will discontinue that element anyway, wasting the mana invested.

So, yeah, there's nothing wrong about the barrier at all, there's just something wrong about how the magicians view things. Once again, Frieren has got it right: stick to the basics.

Based on this last fight, the girls should have indeed been reduced down to no zero mana after blocking Richter's giant pillars. If Richter was correct about barriers being shit against physical attacks (regardless of mechanism since that isn't clear) then he should have won that fight way earlier. The girls having mana left is a little suss, unless water attacks are somehow way more mana efficient than rock.