I love how, much like the confrontation with Qual, this show subverts your expectations of a typical shonen. In the end there is no big bombastic fight, it’s over in minutes. And DAMN that ending, even though Aura is evil, felt cold as fuck.

If I have one criticism of this episode in particular is that it felt like a long wikipedia entry info dump. That’s just a thing anime/manga do from time to time but it felt more pronounced here. Within a minute of Flamme giving her speech about hiding mana you pretty much know exactly how things are gonna go.

Damn if this show can’t still make me tear up, seeing the flowers around Flamme’s grave.

Why is it so good.

DAMN

Cowardly or not, the only tactic that matters is the one that ends the battle with you alive and your enemy not! Concealing your mana seems like an incredibly useful deception tool that I’m surprised isn’t more common in the universe. Then again, it seems like a tactic exclusively meant to deal with demons, and they don’t seem like that common a threat (on the other hand, there is apparently an entire branch of study dedicated to reverse-engineering and improving demon made spells like Zoltraak, so who knows.)

Loved how most of the episode is spent on the hype build up. Like when the scales are introduced it becomes pretty apparent that they are going to be used and that Aura won’t like the results. But we really spend time on why Frieren hides her mana and why it won’t ever occur for demons as a valid long-term strategy. And so by the time the scales come into play we are absolutely hyped for the result. Which is followed by immediate and complete dismissal. Frieren has no interest in demons besides killing them. Even when presented with someone pretty high in demon hierarchy, Frieren does not care for any information or giving any orders, besides killing them as soon as possible.

Also that decapitation scene is just great.