Frieren: Reckoning with the Remains of the Day
Can we ever escape the velvet-gloved grip of the past?
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, a Japanese animated series that unfolds with quiet tenderness, examines this question through the lens of the elfin titular character. Blessed with seemingly eternal youth and vast magical powers, Frieren is oblivious to the passage of time, as villages bloom and wither on the sun-dappled horizon.
Nonetheless, she is left disconsolate by the sudden death of Himmel, a legendary knight and her long-ago companion on the demon-slaying journey of the title. Despite his obvious devotion to her -- culminating in a silent proposal on a knee, no less -- only after Himmel’s death does Frieren begin to dwell on the moments brimming with Himmel’s unspoken affection, which she failed to recognize in time.
Frieren’s predicament is similar to that of Stevens, the self-effacing butler at the heart of Kazuo Ishiguro’s early masterpiece, The Remains of the Day. As Stevens finds upon cautiously stepping out of his professional shell, the object of Frieren’s longing is vividly alive in her memories but achingly out of reach in life.
Unlike Stevens -- trapped by rigid social mores in the twilight years of the British Empire, as well as his human lifespan -- Frieren must contend with herself over the millennia stretching out before her. She decides to embark on a long journey north to commemorate Himmel’s memory, with two precocious charges in tow.
The story starts out slowly as long journeys tend to. The rustic setting is so quiet and tranquil that you could hear a heron gliding in for a catch. But not to worry, the countryside is teeming with flesh-eating demons. Soon enough, the journey becomes an adventure, and we start to see flashes of the impish personality buried behind Frieren’s world-weary demeanor.
Making her way north, Frieren encounters many reminders of her past journey with Himmel, including the odd statue or two. But her bittersweet loss gradually evolves into a belated appreciation of Himmel’s attentiveness towards others, as she grows into a mentor and an unlikely agony aunt to her party. New friendships and memories follow. After centuries of ascetic isolation, Frieren herself seems the most surprised by her newfound joie de vivre.
Frieren and her party make weeks-long detours on a whim, and tie their scarves in a perfect sequence of knots. Tea-time is a paramount ritual. It’s a world removed from the optimization of every waking hour and the fraying of attention spans. It combines the stoic dignity of a bygone world -- Stevens’ ideal -- with a modern sensibility for self-renewal. It’s a fantasy universe, yet somehow it always feels like home. Looking into a familiar mirror, we find ourselves wondering if we can ever be truly free from the past.