So, I have had a little bit of time to digest this episode and even rewatched it (which I almost never do). I initially watched the episode during my lunch break today so I didn’t have much time to put some thoughts together, but this is probably my favorite episode of Frieren so far (I feel like I say that every week).

I have said before that the action sequences in the Frieren manga were not my favorite parts. In fact, the action in the Frieren manga is, imo, the weakest part of the manga. I think that this showdown with Aura demonstrates Frieren (the story) at its best. The author is an immensely talented storyteller, so instead of doing the anime/manga thing that everybody was expecting, having a big fight, the author stuck to their talents and told us a story instead. Ultimately, it is a story of why there wouldn’t need to be a fight at all.

In the story we are told this episode, we learn about Frieren’s training and her relationship with her master Flamme. This is a nice mirror to the flashbacks in the previous episode in which both Fern and Stark have their own flashbacks to training with their respective masters. Ultimately, they relied on the training from those flashbacks to overcome the challenge in front of them in the form of Lugner/Linie. So, as viewers, we could already piece together that Frieren was going to do the same to Aura.

However, there is a lot more story to tell. We also learn about Frieren meeting Himmel’s party and how Himmel could sixth-sense-style feel that Frieren was strong in the exact same way that Frieren could tell Flamme was strong when they first met. We also learn about one of the inspirations for Frieren’s (somewhat) love of eclectic magic: Flamme’s favorite magic to produce a field of flowers (which we saw that she does as well for Himmel’s party on their journey).

Finally, there is a lot of worldbuilding that we receive through these stories. We learn that the demons have tried to kill all the elves; tying back to when Frieren was previously speaking about how elves are close to extinction. We learn a bit about demon’s social hierarchy and why they can’t hide their mana in the way Flamme does. Even inconsequential things like the architecture/dress changing from the ancient Greek styled scenes with Flamme up through medieval styled scenes with Himmel. There are just so, so many things to really get into with this episode.

If I have a complaint about this episode, it is that there is a noticeable drop in animation quality during some of the flashback sequences where Flamme and Frieren are walking through the city. Their characters suddenly are much more static and no longer have facial features. I hope that this does not portend a drop in quality on the horizon for this incredible show.