Memories, Loss, & Regret in Frieren
Michael Lee
Frieren in a field of flowers | Madhouse
Let’s Start From The Beginning at The End of the beginning
How do we make sense of time? Do hands on a clock ground us in an understanding of what time is? Does the rising and falling of the sun give time a more natural, rhythmic sense of its passing? What do we mean when we say “a long time” or “a short time”? Our perception of time is always changing. It can be running out, or we can have all of it in the world. It can be of the essence, it can stand still. We wish we had more of it, but one day, ours will be up. How we view the precious little time we have on this planet is at the center of Frieren.
The series starts in an unusual place, at the end of a journey. Himmel, Heiter, Eizen, and Frieren, a ragtag band of heroes, have vanquished the Demon Lord and are returning home after adventuring for 10 years. As the gang look back at what they have accomplished, they marvel at the fact that they’d been away for ten whole years to which Frieren, an elf with a much longer lifespan than her human and dwarf companions, remarks “it wasn’t really that long…”
When you live for thousands of years, what is a mere decade of adventuring?
The way in which Frieren’s perception of time differs so greatly from the humans around her has led her to close herself off. She comes across as cold and distant. She doesn’t reveal much about herself to others, and she doesn’t learn much about those around her. They will one day die, so why get attached.
Himmel explains how he knows so much about Frieren | Madhouse
Speak of a Memory and Ye Shall See It
The driving force of the plot in Frieren (the show) is how Frieren (the character) begins to realize that those 10 years of adventuring were a time worth remembering, worth treasuring, and with this, coming to terms with the regret that she didn’t do more to enjoy the time she had with Himmel, Heiter, and Eizen. She sets off on a journey with new companions, looking forward while also retracing her steps, reaching through time to make a connection back to her friends she now wishes she had known better.
The show examines the phenomenon of memory, and how we experience it, in a beautifully organic way. In episode 3, Frieren and her new companion Fern sit at a seaside cafe poring over the menu. When Frieren makes up her mind, Fern says “Merkur pudding, right?” Causing Frieren to look up at Fern in shock before we fly back to a tavern where Frieren sits with Himmel, Heiter, and Eizen. Himmel starts with the same line as Fern “Merkur pudding, right?” to which Frieren replies “how did you know?” Himmel responds with a smile “How many years have we been adventuring? I can just tell.” Frieren, coming to a realization, responds quietly with “But I don’t know anything about you…” An admission that she hasn’t paid as much attention to her friends as Himmel has.
Memories spring forth like this in Frieren. A word, a phrase, a type of flower. These triggers open up whole worlds of memories, rich in detail, of a time now past. It calls to mind the way in which Saint Augustine of Hippo, the 4th & 5th Century theologian, grappled with the concepts of time and memory, saying
“Although we tell of past things as true, they are drawn out of the memory--not the things themselves, which have already passed, but words constructed from the images of the perceptions which were formed in the mind, like footprints in their passage through the senses. My childhood, for instance, which is no longer, still exists in time past, which does not now exist. But when I call to mind its image and speak of it, I see it in the present because it is still in my memory.”
Hearing “Merkur pudding” brings the Himmel from that tavern into the present, experienced as a memory. It is conjured up like a magic spell. Which is what memory feels like, an assemblage of words, images, and sensory feelings that somehow cast this powerful enchantment on us, that sends us into the past. Yet the spell only works on us. Memories live in this strange headspace where only we exist with these vestiges of our past. These static rememberings of a time gone by. We see this in Frieren, when the scene returns to Fern at the seaside cafe and it's clear that Fern has no idea of the significance of that moment, of those words “Merkur pudding.” Frieren apologizes for not knowing more about Fern, an out of the blue comment that takes Fern aback. The echo of the memory ripples in the present and affects Frieren’s future, as she hopes to not repeat the same mistakes she thinks she’s made.
Blue moon flowers from Himmel’s hometown | Madhouse
A Memory That Feels Brand New
Unlike flashbacks we typically see in anime, which are used to refresh the viewer’s memory and feature plot points we have already seen in a previous episode (or sometimes even earlier in the same episode), in Frieren, when we are treated to a flashback, it is also our first time seeing it. These flashbacks provide us with crucial details about Frieren’s past, and getting to experience them at the same time that Frieren does—who is, at least from the viewer’s perspective, remembering these memories for the first time—creates a powerful emotional resonance, usually accompanied by an outstanding piece of music from series composer Evan Call.
There is an elegiac sadness to memory, to any and all memories, good or bad. Even in the warmth of a memory of a person we loved, or our greatest accomplishment, there is a sense of finality, that the past is gone and cannot be returned to. You can’t help but mourn them. These crystallizations of time that bury themselves in our brains, pressurized over the course of our lives into diamonds of memory, unearthed from the gray matter and treasured for their beauty.
Beastars | Orange
So Long To The Past
I recently spent time in a neighborhood I used to frequent, with a person who I spent much of that time with, in a city I used to live in. We drank at a bar that had moved a few blocks over from where it had been, creating an even stranger sense of nostalgia. The place we were in wasn’t the one from our memories, yet we still remembered times we had at this bar as if we were still at its original location. Much like Frieren, we had returned to a place in our past, and it was unmistakable that seeing certain buildings and saying certain place names, remembering certain other people who weren’t there with us that night, but once were, brought the past back into the present; memories overwhelmed us. How could they not?
Yet, we both came to the conclusion that while it was fun to revisit an old haunt, that time that had once been our everyday existence, that had once been our present, was now firmly in our past. There was no way for it to be recreated. Time had moved on. Realizing this was unmistakably sad, that those five years were now to be cataloged, indexed, and filed away in our own personal histories, no longer part of the present. And much like Frieren, I look back on those years and wonder, “What did those five years mean? Could I have done more? Should I have cherished those years more than I did?” If you’re not careful, the ‘what ifs’ can poison a once precious memory.
Frieren can’t shake the feeling of regret that while all of her friends talked about their 10 year adventure as the most important, most meaningful in their lives, she shrugged. But as her journey goes on, it seems to be clear that she did in fact make some wonderful memories, she just might not have realized it. The series is doing an excellent job of piecing together the fragments of Frieren’s past into a clear picture not only for the viewer, but for Frieren herself. Keiichiro Saito’s (Bocchi the Rock) steady hand in the director’s chair is getting every ounce out of Kanehito Yamada and Abe Tsukasa’s excellent manga. It also helps that the show’s Animation Producer, Yuichiro Fukushi (Sonny Boy), is well known for bringing in talented artists to work on his projects, and his stable of animators is delivering a gorgeous product. Fukushi and his co-producer Takashi Nakame even brought in legendary Studio Ghibli animator Shinji Otsuka to assist with animating the journey to the meteor shower towards the end of episode 1.
Himmel’s statue | Madhouse
Remember Me When I Am Gone Far Away
Frieren’s examination of time, memory, and relationships is, quite ironically, timeless. Saint Augustine wrote about this very topic over 1500 years ago, agonizing over how to make sense of time, and what it meant for something to be ‘in the past’. Every one of us can look to the past and try to understand why our brains decided to scribble a particular period into our memories. It’s strange that it's not something we can ever really know in the moment. Until our present becomes our past, we usually can’t tell what kind of memories will be formed, and what will be lost to time forever. What does get stored, the highlight reel of our lives, is hopefully filled with a past worth remembering. Of cherished times with friends, and adventures big and small; that remind us that we have lived, and that we mattered.
Michael Lee is the Editor of KOSATEN, and writes in other places as well. His work looks at video games, anime, and Japanese fandom, with a particular focus on doujinshi and other fan-created media.
