Frieren: How time breeds contentment

Key things

• Time Breeds Complacency: Frieren reflects on his long life and the dangers of ignoring important moments.
• Complacency has deep roots: Lack of change and fear leads to comfort without progress.
• Defying Complacency: Frieren remains adept at magical practice in the midst of a rapidly evolving world.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is an anime that plays with many philosophical ideas, one of which is how time breeds complacency. This anime begins when the hero's party returns after defeating the greatest evil in the land, the Demon King. The story then really begins as Frieren, a powerful elven mage and former member of the hero's party, bids farewell to her friends who have grown old in the blink of an eye. He sets out to find an understanding of himself and his time with them. Along the way, he encounters the complacency of his past and the complacency brought on by this time of peace.

Complacency is best described as a feeling of satisfaction or calm even in the face of danger or needed change. This is where the saying “ignorance is bliss” took root. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End it addresses time and gratification by expanding time so that it is seemingly not a factor. Frierene's life is long enough that the ten-year journey she embarked on to save the world feels like a Tuesday to everyone. This allows the show to question how brief a moment needs to feel before it can be considered irrelevant to one's life as a whole.

How time plays a factor in Frieren

Satisfaction settles over time due to two main factors working in tandem. Lack of external force or threat requiring change and fear of change tend to be the biggest culprits of complacency. Being able to continue without necessary changes brings a sense of comfort as needs are seemingly met. Then when change is needed, it is difficult to accept that something has appeared that has disturbed this comfort. Therefore, it is easier to ignore the problem. Contentment took root.

Frieren's entire arc is built on this trap of complacency. After living such a long life and knowing how many years she had ahead of her, she became content and began to move. Despite the ever-looming threat of the Demon King, Frieren never considered the future of the world she knew would survive. She lived alone in the woods until a group of heroes approached her and asked for help. The ten years she spent with them allowed her to see the value of even the relatively smallest moment, because a moment can't be taken back once it's gone.

This show's look at the importance of the moment and the long-lasting effects of an experience also brings to mind how one might look at the show itself. With episodes lasting roughly 23 minutes, they are a relatively small part of the day. However, this does not necessarily limit the impact they can have. These philosophical ideas around self-indulgence and the importance of the moment can have a profound and lasting impact.

Contentment is an undercurrent of the show, there are also instances where it was never allowed to settle. While Frieren fell into complacency, the other mages of humanity marched on. After defeating the Demon King, top mages began to work on analyzing and creating demon magic. By the time the show's main storyline picks up, humanity has been intensively studying magic for over 80 years.

This is best shown when Frieren sets out to confront the demon Qual. In his time, he had an ultimate attack that killed everyone in his path. Over time, this attack became the basis of human magic development, and since Qual was unable to evolve with it due to being sealed away by Frieren, his attacks became equivalent to the basic attacks that a modern mage would soon learn to use. and defend against. Humanity constantly felt the pressure and fear of magic, and thus never settled into the complacency found by those more practiced in it. Humanity as a whole, at least in the realm of this show, never seems to come across as complacent. They continue to strive for more, their magical studies progressing until, as Flamme predicted, a human mage emerged who stood before even the elves.

Another example of how to go against complacency may also come from Frieren herself. While she has found self-satisfaction in her life, the titular mage never stops practicing magic or seeking it out. At first it seems like a funny prank on her part, but it's clear that it has made her an extraordinarily powerful mage. This dichotomy shows that complacency is not necessarily an all-consuming force and can instead have control over different, specific aspects of life.

Deadline raises the stakes and time lowers them. But the stakes are not always life or death. Sometimes it can be as simple as whether the experience leads to the ability to help someone, or even just a smile on the road. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End it shows that even the smallest moment could and probably should have the same meaning as the biggest. Time is running out and should not be wasted.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is now available to stream Crunchyroll.