Sousou no Frieren

[Ryllharu]

Does he though? I'm pretty sure that's just him being cowardly again. Because I think they two of them could have easily taken those 2 demons.

Apparently, soloing a dragon did nothing to help him evaluate his own strength better, because he's still convinced he's a weaking.

The fear is what makes him stronger than someone who has comparative physical strength. That's what Eisen was pointing out.

Stark is very strong. Stronger than Eisen was 80 years ago at his own peak. But Stark is still afraid of strong enemies. He's never overconfident because of it. That gives Stark a distinct edge. He is cautious because he's always wondering if he'll die facing an opponent.

He has a good balance of pride not to run away when he needs to and goad an opponent into paying attention to him, but he's cautious enough not to make fatal mistakes.

They can't afford losing the lord of the city. The demons want him too, so even if the demons think they have the advantage because they can find Stark, Fern, and the lord, with their blood spatter, they are still forced into the position of chasing Fern and Stark. With Fern's proficiency in suppresses her mana, that means the duo can reset for another ambush.

The only other strategy the demons might have is to start slaughtering all the townspeople to lure Stark and Fern out, but even then, Fern can likely obliterate them from beyond the demon's own range. The demons had the advantage inside of the castle's rooms after Fern made her presence known.

So yeah, tactical retreat was the best call.

[DarthEnderX]

They can't afford losing the lord of the city.

That guy's fine. The demons were planning to torture him a bunch, so he's obviously not in danger of bleeding out right away.

They're bending the meaning of "wild beasts" a bit the more we learn about demons. Yes they're evil, but they also pursue magic. what's more is that this demon appreciates beauty in effort like one appreciates art. A being like that has to know what a father is. They can't just know it as "it's a word that ignites sympathy in humans when we use it".

It's irritating. They're intelligent enough to figure out "words can make them hesitate in killing us" but not smart enough to figure out "the reason they kill us in the first place is because we kill them". Since we've still not been given a reason WHY they kill humans in the first place, there's no reason why they should. Because all it does is get the demons killed in return.

[Buffalobiian]

E9

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Well as soon as we get the gist that the girl was imitating Eisen, we knew she was fucked since Eisen said outright that Stark was stronger than him. Seeing him tank that hit was unexpected though since he's not exactly supposed to be durable as far as we know.

Fern being quicker wasn't something I saw coming. Leaving barriers to Fern during the fight with Qual makes even more sense now.

[David75]

It's true we didn't have the full picture fed to us before, only bits and pieces, but Fern is very good at fine mana manipulation and fast.
No wonder Lügner quickly understood he would die before she's depleted in a battle of attrition.
She's so efficient, even with less mana she can outlast him.
And I think she didn't even break a sweat of bat an eyelid. Somehow she's very much like Frieren when fighting.

As for Stark, well the shoulder slash didn't kill him. I guess that was a surprise... A bad one for my tastes. But since he can slash mountains, why not. He's no magician, but he probably still even unconsiously mobilize mana in his fights, like when blocking that slash.

[Kraco]

Fighters would be totally useless against monsters and demons if they couldn't make themselves much tougher than random humans. Based on what the demon girl was saying, she reads the opponent's mana flow and can then copy their movements. From that we obviously know qualified (worth anything) fighters use mana to boost their physical prowess. It makes sense that also includes defence, not only attack.

This should have been a decently educating experience for both Fern and Stark.

[David75]

Thank you Kraco, I didn't connect all the dots, Linnie clearly told us what I was trying to paraphrase.
Stark is extremely strong, so much so he doesn't even know himself.
That's probably why he kept his right eye, his raw defence activated. That was my first gripe.
He bleeds easily, but does not take much damage.

[DarthEnderX]

This should have been a decently educating experience for both Fern and Stark.

Yeah, maybe Stark will learn...the exact same thing he should have learned from the dragon.

"Oh, I'm actually very strong, and I should actually fucking attack."

[Ryllharu]

Yeah, maybe Stark will learn...the exact same thing he should have learned from the dragon.

"Oh, I'm actually very strong, and I should actually fucking attack."

His fear is what makes Stark stronger than Eisen. Demons specialize in manipulating their enemies to have them let down their guard because that's the type of inhumane predators they are. Humans get overconfident, and then they get killed or worse (like what Aura does) because demons play weak when they can, either to give them a new opening or because they think it is entertaining to toy with their prey.

Stark has confidence issues, but his fear is what will keep him alive because he will never get overconfident. Eisen was the same way.

The series is pretty consistent in the point that to successfully hunt demons as Frieren has for a millennium, you are either go full force on them right away like she does, or you goad them into trying to toy with you first, like Fern does.

Frieren has been teaching Fern to be underestimated for being a human, or for Fern to imitate her to make them furious. Eisen's strategy for his protege is simply keep getting back up and smash them. Hah.

Linie kept thinking that Stark was weak, or at best "strong for a human," which is what warriors need to kill demons. Aura has the same weakness when someone has strong willpower, but she found a gruesome way around that.

edit:
Also, Stark has been in legitimately like...four real battles. He ran off during training, stared down a dragon, then trained again for another two years.

We learned that Frieren has been doing her lazy thing again and making Fern do all the fighting since they started traveling, but mostly so Fern can excel and have experience to make up what she lacks in capacity.

[Buffalobiian]

She's so efficient, even with less mana she can outlast him.

I thought the key wasn't that her efficiency mean she'd outlast his mana, it's that her actions-per-minute would land enough hits to kill him since his defence will allow him to be struck too many times before her mana ran out.

[Buffalobiian]

Episode 10

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Seeing Flamme old hit harder than any other character, probably because she was a mentor to Frieren, and despite the Hero party having the most impact on Frieren emotionally, to our (my) eyes Flamme was a parental figure and thus family.

Interestingly, despite Flamme being the greatest mage, she had no confidence in being able to kill the demon king. She had technique, but needed someone with a long life who could combine that with huge mana.

The logic behind demons hiding their magic for stealth but coming out when the enemy is a mage doesn't fully make sense. From what we've been shown, only mages can assess others' mana flow. Himmel and Eisen looked to the priest for assessment, and a priest is just a weak mage. Thus hiding mana seems to be a useless technique for demons if they go all out for mages.

As for Frieren's love for magic.. it seems like she loved it at first, but training under Flamme meant her magic exposure was limited to control and combat. Himmel encouraging her to find useless spells must have sparked her love for magic again despite still saying overwise.

[Ryllharu]

This would make sense why the Demon King would go after elves as a whole 1,000 years ago.

They're the only race out there who can live long enough to surpass demonkind with honed mana capacity, which inherently makes them a threat to demonic hierarchy.

[DarthEnderX]

"That's right Freeza. I've learned to suppress my power level!"

[Kraco]

The logic behind demons hiding their magic for stealth but coming out when the enemy is a mage doesn't fully make sense. From what we've been shown, only mages can assess others' mana flow. Himmel and Eisen looked to the priest for assessment, and a priest is just a weak mage. Thus hiding mana seems to be a useless technique for demons if they go all out for mages.

You first need to get close to your target to fight them. I imagine the more you passively release mana, the farther away other mages or sensitive people/demons/monster will detect you. It might also be necessary sometimes to avoid fights if your mission is something else. However, I reckon demons instinctively compare themselves to other demons, and other magic using creatures, and thus, when facing off, don't try to suppress their mana at all. Clearly weaker demons would likely succumb. Human mages might lose hope if there's a huge difference. I don't consider it impossible a lone demon would develop a unique way of life by suppressing mana, but it would affect the demon's standing in the demon world.

Suppressing mana, as such, must not be anything outlandish for the demons, as Aura talked about it leisurely, it's just living one's whole life while suppressing mana that seems too ridiculous to believe for the demons. In fact it ought to be so for most human mages as well.

In this particular case of the demons confronting Flamme+Frieren, my bet is they tried to separate Flamme and Frieren from each other by lying about letting Flamme leave. They would have then killed both one by one, which should be easier in most cases. So, showing their full mana power level makes perfect sense.

[MFauli]

Watched episode 7. This is a bad anime, but I'm too far to quit now. It's like every character is trying to 1up each other at "how boring can I sound". And the whole "it's supposed to be that way" is no good argument to defend that shit.

Also "Lord Lügner", lol. I thought we were past the random use of German nouns in Japanese stories. For those unaware, Lügner means "liar", so he's literally called "Lord Liar", rofl.

No idea how this anime got popular, but I guess that says a lot about the quality of this year's fall season. Rock bottom.

[Ryllharu]

Also "Lord Lügner", lol. I thought we were past the random use of German nouns in Japanese stories. For those unaware, Lügner means "liar", so he's literally called "Lord Liar", rofl.

Is it "random" if that is literally his role in the arc?

[MFauli]

Is it "random" if that is literally his role in the arc?

Then "random" is the wrong word, but it's dumb. Why not name the villain "Lord Badguy" next? And the love interest "Miss Futurewife"?

Anyway, I'm up-to-date now. Criticism remains. It's dumb to make all characters react as bored as possible. And it's another case of "heroes are all powerful without working for it". Yeah, yeah, somewhere offscreen they trained for years, yadayada. But it's lame when a young mage girl just overwhelms a demon lord, without changing her facial expression - even when she was pierced, lol.

[Ryllharu]

You're seriously missing the point, and actually arguing Lügner's dumbass excuses he tried to make to comfort himself post-Hubris loss to Fern.

Fern trained for years under arguably the most accomplished mage in all of history, who herself trained under the most famous mage in all of history. Frieren has doubled down on this and forced Fern to do most of the fighting the last several years in order to have Fern rapidly catch up in experience. Fern is debatably one of the best mages around, and certainly for her age, due to Frieren's honestly rather brutal training methods that are disguised as Frieren being lazy.

Fern has a strange attitude due to the harsh life she'd had until their journey started. She's just a cold and closed off person. But she's also a hard worker, and they've always shown that. She practiced zoltraak every single day for years and years until she could pierce that rock.

Demons train and practice and refine their specific spell of favor for centuries at a time and take enormous pride in it. They lament that "geniuses" exist like Frieren and retrospectively (lol) Fern. They are too stupidly prideful to admit that humans or elves could ever be better than they are at magic. They are literally fabricating reasons for their "unfair" loss. Fern is simply better at magic than Lügner. Just like Stark is a better fighter than Lanie. And Frieren has always been stronger than Aura.

Fern and Frieren (and Flamme) both trick demons by suppressing their magic. That gives them an edge and encourages the demons to fail, but they are by no means weak. Demons stagnate. We were led to believe that Frieren stagnated too, but instead she was following Flamme's order to build a truly monstrous mana pool.

Bottom line, the demons lie to themselves when they lose. They refuse to admit that someone better than them can possibly exist. They've fallen behind the curve of development in magic and they're very bothered by it.

[DarthEnderX]

Then "random" is the wrong word, but it's dumb. Why not name the villain "Lord Badguy" next? And the love interest "Miss Futurewife"?

"It's Dutch for Dark Father!"

Fern has a strange attitude due to the harsh life she'd had until their journey started.

Or Elves just be like that. We have no point of comparison.

[Y]

I'm confused how naming the guy an unsubtle German loanword is an issue at all. You know the characters in Dragonball Z are named Vegetable and Freezer right?

[DarthEnderX]

I'm confused how naming the guy an unsubtle German loanword is an issue at all. You know the characters in Dragonball Z are named Vegetable and Freezer right?

Yes, but those are just name. Not literal spoilers for what the character's deal is.

Also, a con artist that calls himself Mr. Conartist probably wouldn't be very successful.