People are always shocked at how much worse it seemed Himmel aged compared to Heiter but it makes perfect sense...Even though Himmel & Heiter were the same age(some incorrectly believe he was older than Heiter because he refers to him as a kid later on, ignoring that kids refer to eachother as kids too) the jobs they performed were very different. While Heiter did appear to luck out by inheriting "good genes," Himmel was the Hero, he fought highly physical battles without the benefit of a long life like Eisen or Freiren. Even Heiter, who drank, was spared physical stress Himmel or on his body. It's no different in our real lives, people who spend the majority of their life doing hard labor or physically challenging things tend to age much more quickly. We like to think all that activity will extend their lives, and for some it does, but it normally doesn not. A hard life, is a hard life. As for his shrinking, he didn't shrink, he could no longer stand up straight. As a person with a bad back, I noticed the slope of his frame immediately, it made me wince. It's another thing that makes total sense. The mangaka of Freiren seems to deeply understand not only emotions but the human condition. I enjoyed your reaction very much. Thank you.
I truly believe that its not so much lacking women in stories its that alot of times they dont write the story in a good way for female leads which makes it less likely for future stuff because bad writing doesn't go over well (like marvel) . The writer here is just a good example of really knowing people and how they really think and act in situations. If movie makers saw this anime it might usher in a new generation of amazing movies where they , like in Frieren have strong women written in a way that really makes them good characters to watch without the cringe of most new movies. Also glad to see yall like the story as much as I have since reading and watching it. Love the videos!!
To be fair the way you review is good, most people pause then talk about it only after but you pause at good times, your reactions are genuine and your takes are good so im good with how you do it. Also I loved the series also, just a master work.
@16:00 How quickly Del abandons Best Boy Eisen to make Abs Elf his favorite character! Did you catch the part where Kraft the Monk said he hadn't seen another elf in 300 years? "We'll probably meet again in a few centuries." "Everyone who knew of my righteous triumphs has died." goes so hard. Thank you for another fun reaction!
Thank you for another fun reaction video! Perhaps having a woman writer and artist on Frieren is why Himmel is so appealing? Or maybe they're just really good. @8:20 "I like a fully developed well-rounded character with an actual personality." Have you heard the good word of "My Dress-Up Darling"? 12 episodes of anime based on an ongoing manga written and drawn by a woman. Mushoku Tensei is an excellent example of creepy fetishization isekai, but there are countless other examples. In a lot of shonen manga and anime, the women aren't people, they're prizes. No thanks!
@33:20 The director of Whisper of the Heart was Yoshifumi Kondô (1950-1998). He died on 21 January 1998 in Tokyo, Japan. Have you seen the (sort of) sequel to Whisper of the Heart (1995), The Cat Returns (2002)?
The discussion of curses in the first half of the episode is interesting. They obviously didn't have time to get into what other curses might exist, but it's worth spending some time thinking about whether we've seen any other curses in action in the show so far. (I'll put some blank lines here before giving my thoughts, in case you want to think about it yourself first.) . . . . . So, I think we have seen 2 other demon spells that were probably called curses at some point in the past. The first is Qual's Zoltraak, which was an unbeatable instant-death spell when it was first introduced, before humanity had decoded it and developed countermeasures. The second is Aura's Auserlese spell. When Frieren started dispelling Aura's control over the soldiers' bodies, Aura remarked that no one had ever done that before. And it doesn't seem like Frieren told anyone else that she had learned how to do that trick, so as far as anyone knew, Aura's spell was impossible to counter. Notably, Frieren was largely responsible for both of these spells no longer being considered curses. I think Frieren's specialty, to the extent she has one, is decoding complicated magic and developing counters to it. Edit: We've also seen at least 1 other demon spell that might have been considered a curse: Draht's wire spell. Frieren acknowledged that she had no way to directly counter the wire, so there probably isn't anyone else who knows how to counter it either.
I never thought about this before, but when Lord Orden mentioned that Wirt and the enemy commander had exchanged fatal blows, it must have reminded Stark of his fight with Linie, where he tried to do exactly that. As for why Stark fights with an axe, the simple reason is that he learned how to fight from Eisen. But I think you're definitely right that he's got lingering trauma attached to wielding a sword (see also: that look he gave the Hero's Sword in Episode 12).
Trashing Star Wars online? Bold. The biggest difference between Star Wars of the past vs Star Wars now is that the original trilogy was just literally a Space Western. It's not meant to be taken seriously and is just a good time. The practical and special effects, the steadicam, were all incidental to serving the movie. Let's be real. Lucas was never a great writer; plot was never his thing. But the ambiance, the flow of the film, he is top tier. Star Wars never sold itself is high sci-fi, whereas Dune is a very serious, very high sci-fi story. As long as you can enjoy a piece of media for what it is vs. what people want it to be, you'll tend to enjoy them even while able to critique them. But then... deconstructing heroes is a pretty poor trend since there is less and less ingenuity in all media spaces; there are way more stories out there so if you take the 20/80 rule (20& are good) you still end up with way more trash than good..
Good job with "Äußerst". The "ß" is just a way of writing double-s in German, and "äu" is one of the ways to write the diphtong "oi" (the other way would be "eu", as in Euler), so, yes, the pronunciation is indeed "oi-serst". "äußerst" is a modification/superlative of "außer" (= outer), meaning the "most outer"/"outmost" (the -st being grammatically the same as the -st in "most", "best"). Most European languages have that funny feature where modifications (plural form etc) of a word suddenly change the way the vowels are pronounced (like "au" /ou-> "äu" /oi in this example). Unfortunately, English lost that cool feature a mere 1000 years ago when the French conquered England and neither the Germanic umlauting, the French metamorphing nor the Celtic affection survived in the then developing Frankensteinian pidgin dialect that became the foundation of modern English.
The dance scene is actually completely hand-animated: no CGI and not even rotoscoped. They did use mo-cap footage to use as a reference for the scene but everything was drawn by hand.
Star Wars is baby's first Sci-Fi... which is actually a Fantasy series of films that happen to exist on a Sci-Fi setting. So, they're a series of Fantasy films disguised as Sci-Fi... while also being a series of Kids Movies disguised as Adult Movies, and the disguise was so perfect not even George Lucas noticed he was doing movies for kids, and only realized it when it was pointed out to him! I personally find the best Star Wars movie to be mediocre when you compare it with what I'd consider truly great/amazing movies. Though I still need to give The Last Jedi a rewatch and see if it holds or not.
Oh yeah, and nice to see you both back! I feel like Fern's "It doesn't suit you" is a "and" situation, where she can feel like Stark suddenly showing all the etiquette is out of character for him, but she still gets flustered by it. One doesn't preclude the other.
1:03:04 I wouldn't be surprised if Sein, despite Frieren not being its type, would consider her an option, but I don't think it could go the other way around since Frieren is hung up romantically on Himmel on a subconcious level (from what we can infer at least).
56:56 I would say Fern is the one who acts the more like the leader, the one who takes charge most of the time, because while she wants to help Frieren with her quest of finding Aureole and of tracing back the path she took in the party of the Hero, she doesn't want to take away her "short" human life "wasting" years like Frieren would if she was alone.
50:25 I don't know if you're are into idol anime (I know Oshi no Ko is technically about idol, but not really), but there is this full 3D CGI anime called Girls Band Cry, and the CGI in it is really good. It's one of my favourite anime of this season, not just for the good CGI, but for every parts of it. Also I haven't watch it but there is Trigun Stanpede from Studio Orange that has amazing CGI.
Although myself not a fan of Starwars, but oof my condolence of starting starwars at 7-9. Dune films are great and the books also pretty great~ My favourite moment of this episode aside from all the cool and beautiful visuals, is the shot at the very end. Frieren looked at the whole party standing at the wall waiting, she smiled and look down on a book. Doesnt need dialogue but you can read a lot out of that, just a short clip shows you a lot about Frieren coming to this far.
1:07:33 “We remember the dance better than the action! “ Same here… That was the best, most memorable, and romantic animated dance since “Beauty and the Beast. Haha, and the belching montage at the end made me wonder what kind of top comments you would have gotten if you had posted that on Tik Tok.
41:38 “What does that mean, ‘high-handed’?” It means he was pushy, aggressive, The word they used was “gouin” 強引 (forceful). As the leader of one of the three great Houses of this region, he was probably used to getting his own way… I imagine he was demanding and didn’t listen to anyone in the Hero Party as they passed through his region.
So happy to see you back again! (Sorry in advance for the length - I never know when to shut up, even when it’s writing) 0:57 - Wow. I don’t know why, but for some reason being called a “family man” makes me feel older than a thousand-year-old elf lady. 🤣 1:54 - One of the ways I spend time with my kid is by watching certain shows together (mostly anime). Frieren seemed like an interesting one to try, but I was unprepared for how close to home its themes hit. The biggest emotional reaction I had to a show in a long time is coming up in Episode 17. It was quite the gut punch. The way the show made me feel makes me very interested in listening to what others have to say about it, and you guys are very pleasant to listen to. It’s always a pleasure to see you upload a new video because I know it’s going to be thoughtful, fun, and interesting. 9:25 - I don’t like mid-roll ads myself, but I also understand that it’s what channels need to do to get any money from Google’s gnarled clutches. Do what you gotta do. 14:15 - *sees the chance of watching you guys react to “Gundam: Witch from Mercury” slip away* 😔 17:31 - *activates lightsaber* So you have chosen your own destruction… (j/k) Seriously though, I totally get what you are saying regarding the story of Star Wars being “mid”. It’s a very basic good vs evil plot. Looking back on it, I don’t so much love it for the story as a whole, but rather for the collection of amazing individual moments that make up the story. I can quote the entire Episode IV Death Star battle verbatim. I love Yoda pretending to be the most annoying dork in the universe as he secretly tests Luke’s patience. Also, not even kidding a little bit, the battle between Luke and Vader on Cloud City is right behind Westley and Inigo for my favourite movie swordfight of all time. The characters in the original trilogy are some of the most vibrant I’ve ever seen. They are iconic in my memory in a way that many others can never be. I can understand the idea that Dune is perhaps a more “grown up” version of Star Wars (just as I think Game of Thrones is the same for Lord of the Rings - in terms of depth of plot I mean), but honestly now - Baron Harkonnen going up against Darth Vader? It’s not even a contest in my mind. BTW - I’ve heard rumours about “despecialized” versions somewhere out on the high seas... if you follow me. 31:35 - If it isn’t a system she can break, Frieren ain’t interested in it. 35:35 - I really love all the little details that get put into this show. Sein whipping his head around as he dances around the chaos flower to keep his situational awareness up is an amazing touch. Seeing touches like this that aren't strictly necessary but nonetheless elevate the final product really makes me believe the people who made this show really enjoy their jobs. 47:32 - Aerial is baller confirmed. I find the story in the second half of the episode a little weird. It’s not been that long since we had another story with a noble whose son died fighting demons and the fallout from that. I know they aren’t one-for-one comparisons in terms of plot, but seeing another father coming to terms with his son being lost only this time it’s crammed into a half-episode instead of being spread across the equivalent of three full episodes doesn’t feel quite right to me. It feels a little repetitive. Still, the efficiency of the writing in the show helps the emotional beat at the end land pretty well regardless. 'Til next time!
A key component of the Aura's misjudgement is the fact that Frieren stayed hidden for a thousand years. It's such a ludicrous and inefficent long game that no one would even consider it being done. Let alone Demons, for whom that idea is a fundamental blind spot of their psychology. And since she trained for so long, her control was great enough to even fool the heightened demon mana detection.
The nature of demons is revealed in this arc, and explored further in an arc that probably will be covered late season 2 or season 3. As it stands, demons are very effective at manipulation, because even being told upfront by Frieren, and even Lügner himself, we still doubt. Language is so intrinsic to humanity, we can't help but anthropomorphize demons.
