Frieren Took Me By Surprise 2: Time

The poetic way Frieren: Beyond Journey's End handles the passage of time.

I’m at a crossroad with Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End: I’ve done an intro, so what should I speak about next?

Most people start by apologizing for how slow-paced Frieren can be.

They’re forewarning so you can adjust your expectations, and rightly so. This show does require an attention span. A real one. But it also rewards it.

Slow pacing is normally a sign of weak writing. But I believe this slowness is not one of this show’s weaknesses, but a strength.

FRIEREN TAKES ITS TIME… AND WHY THAT’S A GOOD THING

There’s many storytelling reasons as to why a slower approach enhances Frieren’s story rather than hinders it; One of its many themes is about how heroes are formed in the small moments, in doing what’s virtuous in the quiet of your daily life.

It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.

–J.R.R. Tolkien

We will return to this quote often: It lies at the very heart of Frieren. Tolkien’s influence permeates this story from its exploration of the long life of elves to its philosophies, to the permanence–and deeper meaning–of rings, statues, and artifacts; how works that outlast lifespans tie us to the story of who we are and how we got here.

Frieren shows us how we can find comfort in the small joys in life just as the Hobbits did, and how miswielded power spreads corruption, just as the One Ring corrupts.

But that doesn’t mean Frieren has nothing original to say; far from it. It provides a unique and fresh world in its own right, has its own angles of approach, and it is rife with fine-tuned lessons that today’s world desperately needs – The fact that this story resonated with mainstream audiences gives me hope for the future.

Modern writers like to throw everything they’ve got at you with fast cuts, shock value, and Rule of Cool, worried if they can’t hold the attention of the average TikTok-addled mind for more than two minutes, they won’t have an audience.

What’s resulted is a homogeneity of entertainment that hops from one moment to the next far too quickly to allow for much breathing room.

This phenomenon can be observed in most Michael Bay films, this assumption that audiences are too goldfish-brained to get through even simplest dialogue without throwing in constant arguments, yelling, and artificial zaniness in the background.

Remember the time in the Bay Transformers movies where Witwicky argues with his parents about college while Mojo the chihuahua humps other dogs in his “penthouse” while wearing his “bling”? How about the scene above, where Megan Fox’s character is trying to communicate with an “elite hacker” the government supposedly fears, all while he yells at his grandma?

Anime hasn’t fared much better with its never-ending parade of desperate, attention-seeking isekai.

Frieren bucks this trend and takes its time on purpose. It lets you get to know the characters in the quiet moments, bringing tension to a simmer, then a slow boil. This artistic direction is a bold gamble in Current Year; the perfect salve for an ADHD-heavy, smartphone-infested, zombified instant-gratification world.

And it stands out from the crowded and busy anime market because of it.

A Completely Different Timescale

They say if all of Earth’s history were fit to a standard 12-hour clockface, modern humans would appear in the very last second: 11:59:59.

Perhaps this concept best represents what the passage of time can be like for elves in the world of Frieren. The story makes it clear that Frieren herself has lived for over 1,000 years, but she is considered young compared to many other elves.

To put elves’ timescale further into perspective, a much older elf named Serie remarks that taking 1,000 years to make even a simple decision is no big deal to an elf – But this was perhaps an attempt to trivialize Frieren’s comparatively “short” lifespan.

Serie is not Frieren’s biggest fan, and is one of this show’s most compelling and thought-provoking characters because of it. More on her, later.

[First Episode Spoiler Warning…]

The premier episode covers a 10-year span in which a group of four heroes go on the quest of a lifetime. Their goal is as cliché as it comes: to slay the “Demon King”. But Frieren is distant during this adventure, aloof and unsure why they bothered asking her to tag along in the first place.

To an elf like Frieren, it’s all over in a blink.

So at first blush, this show seems to be an exploration about near-immortality. But that same episode continues far beyond that 10 year span (“beyond journey’s end”) as it follows Frieren’s departure from her fellow heroes to return to her preferred default–a life of isolation–only to return fifty years later.

What follows is poignant and emotional. And then, finally, Frieren starts to change.

[…End of Spoilers]

This style of storytelling is rare, but it has been done and done well.

Some greats have tackled the concept of dealing with immortality. Lord of the Rings and Interview with the Vampire immediately spring to mind. But the finest take I’ve ever experienced arrived in the form of a video game: Lost Odyssey. In it, the main characters are immortal … and they must pay the price for being so over and over again.

Each time there’s a tragic loss, there’s an underlying knowledge that this is far from the last time. And there’s this fear that one day, the main characters will forget even those who meant the most to them.

So they try to document it in journals, erect memorials, do something to prevent their memories from being swallowed up by the cruel, unyielding passage of time, even though it’s all in vain.

Immortals struggle with this constant churn of loss and change around them. They are afraid of getting too close to someone, too connected. Most of all, they fear falling in love. Because in another blink, everyone they’ve known will die. Two more blinks and everywhere they’ve known will crumble. This lack of permanence never gets easier.

I feel like I’ve already said so much, yet so little.

Next, we’ll fully analyze the first episode of Frieren and see where it leads us.