Episode Rating (both): B
Episode 3 ended with Stark and Fern set to go out on a date, and the first half of episode 4 deals with how that date plays out. The whole affair is as awkward as might be expected. Stark definitely tries, but he’s still operating more off a pre-set plan than being adaptive to Fern in the moment. That’s not fully what Fern wants, but she can tell that he took the date seriously even if he did propose it in flippant fashion, and that’s enough to satisfy her – for now, anyway. Methinks Stark will have to up his game for the next time around. This is also one of the rare times we’ve seen Fern dressed in anything other than her normal traveling clothes (albeit still in purple!), so seeing her dolled up a bit is a definite treat.
The beginning of episode 4’s second part also casually provides what may be the solution to one of the series’ long-standing mysteries: how the trio can get away with traveling so light. (They’re never shown wearing backpacks, for instance.) While this has never been even hinted at before that I can recall, Frieren’s suitcase is here strongly implied to be a Suitcase of Holding.
The rest of episode 4 and episode 5 then bring us the first tastes about why a First-Class Mage is necessary for an excursion out into the Northern Plateau. Given what the trio encounters, it’s a wonder that anyone can actually live out there still, even with connections to past generations on the land. The Norm Company, introduced in the second half of episode 5, provides a partial solution, but even though it wields power equivalent to a nation, it has its own struggles. Both that encounter and the previous one involving the dwarf obsessed with a legendary liquor bear direct connections to Frieren’s journey with Himmel’s party. In the one case, it involves Frieren taking on a task that her party passed on the first time; in the other case, it involves a debt incurred in the past being used to connive Frieren into finding a new silver vein to help finance the company.
The first of the two episode 5 cases is arguably the more interesting one for two reasons. The first is that it introduces an elf other than Kraft or Serie, one who Frieren apparently knew in the distant past. (The implication here is that she lived in the village that Frieren did, so she may have been slain in the attack that Flamme came across all those centuries ago.) The second is that it addresses a point I’ve long wondered about in my study of history: the possibility that something recorded as history or legend was written facetiously, or even as an outright joke. Per the series’ usual style, It still gets turned into a philosophical point in the end. The second case, which harkens back to a debt incurred during Himmel’s days, is mostly just an excuse to have Frieren truly show off her magic. It’s impressive, though I have to wonder how much of that was just Frieren deliberately making a spectacle out of it to emphasize how irreplaceable her action was.
Overall, both of these episodes are fine but unspectacular for the franchise: enjoyable and with the requisite bits of signature spectacle but not as deep or insightful as much of the rest of the series.
USA Anime 