hey hey it's me superdude and today I want to talk to you about frein now I I know there are a lot of videos about frein on YouTube at this point like a lot a lot it is the anime of the moment in a lot of aspects and has surpassed Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood at the top of the my anime list rankings though Full Medal always retakes that slot because people are really passionate about fmab so who's to say if it'll stay there it's more to say that this anim is in the upper echelon are
very good and everyone knows it so you probably have already heard some fear int takes maybe even several but I promise I'm trying something different here so if you could give me a chance for like 5 minutes I would appreciate it for those of you who have watched my balers gate video first off thank you but second you would be aware that I've been running tabletop RPGs for years now one of the principal concerns when running home brw ttrpg settings is finding sources for inspiration if the world is your own then you have to populate
it with stories characters heroes and villains interesting places and ideas and all that takes a lot of imagination perhaps too much imagination to make a truly cohesive world of any scale you're inevitably going to pull from your lived experience or take inspiration from people stories or historical events even if accidentally I remember early on when I was making my setting I was trying to make an Elven City and I was trying to think up a name for that City and I was like rivendale rivendale sounds good that has an Elven feel to it and my
fiance had to point out to me that rivendale is very close to Rivendell which is you know the place where froto goes the Elven City in Lord of the rigs this is part of the reason why the dungeon Masters Guide ends with a list of book books and movies to read and watch as does the lazy dungeon master and why any writer's advice for improving is to keep reading and keep writing the more encyclopedic your references the more you have to pull from to produce something new from the parts all of your memories and experiences
are great for making human stories but for the Fantastical genres of fantasy and sci-fi you often have characters from entirely different species complete with different methods of thinking body types cultures and perceptions of themselves others and the world they inhabit not everything about you should map onto their perspective so how do you get inspiration for writing and role-playing an alien perspective we could look at other Fantastical stories for inspiration but your mileage may vary some of the times you get some truly alien creatures and other times you get basically humans only different from us in
terms of Aging or body shape or the fra path of adapting humans from a non-majority culture to be your alien species so there's a decent chance it'll seem alien to your Western audience but this is a dangerous path to take threatening to misrepresent or tokenize a group into stereotyp ypes and imply some pretty nasty things about the real life groups from which you took inspiration this topic and its usage is very much not black and white but honestly it's out of scope of this video because it's fundamentally not what I'm talking about I want a
truly alien species and there's nothing alien about our fellow humans we may be culturally different but we both still have a fundamental human core to us I'm getting in the weeds what I'm trying to say is creating truly alien sentience is hard even for people whose job it is to write that sentience now imagine instead you're just like a person making a dwarfen character in your Sunday night D and D game and you can see how this is a complicated trick to attempt I am presently running a game with lots of elves in it and
what everyone did was make their characters around 100 years old at the oldest if not partially human I call this the leara effect where sure this species is capable of living for a millennia but it's hard to conceptualize what that would be like for us role players so we choose the youngest possible version of that species that is still recognizably our age helps us to empathize you see and this is is off topic but we all know what the real answer to this question is right it's hard to put yourself in the head space of
something so alien and I don't blame my players for sidest stepping the attempt and going with a more human headp space It Ain't Easy even for professionals that is why I think frein Beyond Journey's End is a fantastic work for any fantasy lover not just anime fans because the show does an impressive Job showing what the world is like from the perspective of an elf showing how the world looks and reacts of their longevity as well as how they solve problems and how that crucial difference in perspective from the human one allows both parties to
learn and grow from being in each other's company this is a great source of inspiration for any interested in the Elven head space but indeed any long liveed species and I would like to examine that in this video now for some disclaimers I do not plan on being kind with the spoiler squeamish in this video I will talk about everything from the front to the back of the show and my journey to illustrate my point so if you haven't seen the show and are on the fence here are some quick reasons to watch it art
good characters good writing good and also it's not just another copypaste fantasy show nothing against you if you like isekai but if you you scroll through the titles of those series you really get the sense that they have a hard time differentiating themselves from the pack fan is not suffering from that and as a game master anytime a world does something that isn't Lord of the Rings of Forgotten Realms it has my attention and while those tidbits that show that this isn't just generic fantasy are nice for me it's never really the focus because this
is all a very character-driven story if it doesn't matter to frein it doesn't matter at all so that's the quick sell if you haven't watched Beyond Journey's End you really need to and also I will be spoiling stuff up and down this Show's for season so if you stick around you can't say I didn't warn you also I know a lot of people watch this in Japanese I'm going to be trying to pronounce the names as their authentic German pronunciations as best I can I say as best I can because I already know that I
have failed uh multiple times in recording this I just know that in advance but I promise you that I'm trying so please grant me that Grace I'm trying my best lastly I will refer to the character as frein and the show as Beyond Journey's End even if the true title of the show is frein Beyond Journey's End for clarity sake cool all right let's get into it f Beyond Journey's End lets you know it's deal right from the title the most important point in this world's history has already come to pass the show opens right
after the hero party returns triumphant from a 10-year journey to defeat the demon king ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity the world over not that this matters though the entirety of the celebration happens within 6 minutes for us ending with the other characters reminiscing about their Misadventures contained within the greater Journey frein cuts through that though though saying our adventure was a mere 10 years the others try not to let this bother them the next day fan sets off on her own to explore and learn new spells less than a minute passes
on our side before 50 years have passed and almost due to happen stance she remembers that himl the hero is holding on to something for her and she wonders how he's doing this is the first time she's actually referred to any of the party members by name by the way she returns to find him an old man much to her surprise and they all take off together to see the erab bishara again as they did on the night of their celebration but this time from her special spot in the mountains where the sky is clear
and the Majesty of the shower is on Full display the music swelling the colors exploding across the screen this is our climactic moment for the first episode not the defeat of the Demon King nor their return but this moment in the mountains why this moment because this show is about ferin ferin couldn't be bothered with the Demon King it was a mere 10 years after all but this appreciating the beauty of the world catching up with friends you haven't seen in a bit that's something we're celebrating the writing of Beyond Journey's End is lock step
with Fan's head space most of the time and that shows with where narrative weight is placed in this episode though frein doesn't realize it this moment this week's hike into the mountains would be himmel's last and it is here when frin comes to an emotional understanding of how short a human's life really is when all you do is travel it is rare to see the same person twice she had an intellectual understanding understanding of aing but she had never stuck around anyone long enough to see it now that she seen its effects images of Himel
and Company flood her mind realizing that this is it it was a mere 10 years but it was only 10 years she doesn't have enough memories of him she never got to know him not really and that hurts she reflects on this ring which we'll be talking about later and sets off for another Journey this time to learn more about the humans skipping 20 years she is tricked by heer the priest from the hero party to take his adopted daughter Fern in as her student he's a bit of a bastard you see soon after heer
himself dies once again hammering home Fan's lack of understanding for The Human Condition though this time is a bit different from when himl died pause if you want to read and takes off with Fern on a New Journey by this point it's been at least 74 years since the Demon King's defeat and 24 years since himmel's death and fan has made little progress in understanding The Human Condition but Fern will change that for fan a great deal in the short time that they have together the only only truly alien aspect of frein we've seen so
far is that she experiences time differently but this extends to her problem solving as well the principal example of this in the show's run is quall a captain of the Demon King's Army who developed one of the most sophisticated killing spells in history zolr a spell so powerful that the hero party couldn't defeat him so they sealed him away delaying the encounter by 80 years during that time human studied little track and Incorporated it into her magic system until it became nothing more than ordinary offensive magic as well as developing defensive systems that could account
for Z tr's strengths and weaknesses frein destroys quall with her own Z TR which we've been seeing for multiple episodes now by the way ver was literally casting as a child Beyond Journey's End does this a lot characters will explain something later that has been visually present in previous episodes showing off the competency of Fern and Fen as Mages or serves to make characters more Dynamic than we could have known about at first blush the Z Trak moment serves two purposes to show Fan's growth across these 80 years and ability to use time time as
a tool to solve for problems but it also shows the human strength of progress 80 years is a huge amount of time on the human time scale and it is only because of human research that soul track became both far stronger than it ever was in qu's hands and also not a big deal a spell a child could cast a prodical child but still we will discuss the human strength later but this moment shows Fan's power over time and though we won't really see it again because few of her foes are ever is ancient it's
still one of the standout moments in the series to show off her strength and intelligence good thing in episode 3 then putting their best foot forward early fren's full view of time and her training over the years makes her one of those classic op main characters that is its own archetype and shown in battle animes but we rarely see her pop off unlike in those other shows why is that frin rarely pushes herself to her limit for the same reason shigo kagama from Mob psycho 100 doesn't going all out with your abilities is flashy unnecessary
and doesn't provide the optimal path towards their respective goals for Mob his holding back often has to do with the fact that he doesn't consider his psychic poers anything to write home about his unrivaled telekinetic prowess doesn't make him a good person or strong or attractive it's just one aspect of him and they aren't an effective tool for his betterment so he rarely uses them opting for more conventional methods of self-actualization frin has existed for so long that her training has made her with one known exception unrivaled at magical ability but frin is not an
ambitious person so she isn't one to pull out the big spells for any old monster fren's want is to learn more about the human condition and this isn't a way to get people to talk talk to you when she does fight she only uses the base amount of Mana necessary to win while using standard spells the style of fighting taught to her by her master and refined over centuries of practice and passed on to Fern in both of these instances we don't see Power getting these characters what they want only development does that so they're
both relaxed in their op nature saving power for when it is necessary besides there are other elephant characters that we can talk about if we want to see what type of power is rewarded in this world we see three elves over the course of the first season fan coughed in zadia cofed has done something great for the world in the past but that event has completely faded from Human memory a fact that seems to injure him he stands as a look into the future of himmel's Legacy if no one exists to carry himmel's memory into
the future even the Savior Humanity will be forgotten but this fate is even more painful for someone like kof because he is still here still alive hundreds potentially thousands of years of existence and Good Deeds just gone because humans don't live long enough enough to remember you but zadia is far more interesting in this department unlike frein zadia is ambitious having opinions on what should be done with the gift of magic and exerting that idea onto the world she taught FL often called the legendary Mage in the modern day from which frein learned many of
her own abilities flma was a human Mage who was initially responsible for setting up the kingdom state of learning making magic more accessible for others than ever before after fl's passing she had hoped that cier would take over in this Pursuit further assisting Humanity's fledged magic interest B zier has a different Outlook she believes magic should be special letting just anyone use it would be disrespectful to the power of magic but as we see in the modern day she has complied with fma's request in her way magic has spread the world over sure but those
who want to be recognized as exceptional magicians must go through a rigorous testing process with some tests having no Clear Solutions and others liable to get you killed on the name of taking the title of first class Mage and one more thing to receive a spell from Z 's collection a collection rumored to contain any spell in the world so what does this achieve through Z's interest in keeping magic special she has taken the Imperial Learning System of fl's dreams and constructed a pyramid from it any Mages vying for the upper ranks must be willing
to fight each other or even die for that position all for status power and to have a wish granted by Sader who sits on top of that pyramid what makes this system particularly Elvin is that all the humans in this world regard this as normal Vern remarks multiple times on their Journey that only first class Mages can walk in the northern continent freely and every human in the society has existed inside of the Kingdom's rule for centuries generation upon generation of people who think nothing of zier's magic gemy or how her beliefs about magic have
unwittingly become theirs a whole Empire's belief around magic being cultivated and shaped by a single individual's beliefs on Magic's function a directed use a soft power over a political system for centuries that is the power of an elf who wants something for nearly 20 episodes Zeda is never mentioned nor thought about but her pressure on the society is never too far off she is an every opener after all she cannot be avoided and while you spend Untold episodes learning about fedan and fern later Stark and Zion and the old party zier hangs over all of
it Beyond Journey Zen's actual most OP character zier is a very ambitious elf but as I said earlier fan has no such Ambitions for herself fan is one of the most powerful Mages in the world but despite this she doesn't say she loves she just likes it she doesn't want for much she just travels from place to place collecting these spells that she likes this is what FL thought made fan special I pointed out that Zia and flma are two very ambitious people one changed the world and the other continues to shake the world actively
fan is a character who wants for little what flma called a mage of Peace time as zier actively demonstrates if frein actually wanted something if she put all of her drive and long lived lifespan towards something there's a chance no one could stop her but that is exactly the thing that makes her special she is a mage of Peace the one who could defeat the demon king and then not become one herself but we do see glimpses of this world where fan was this dangerous driven World destroying foe in the demons and her copy the
demons literally have a special name for ferin as she has so long lived that she is a bogeyman amongst their people her hatred for them being known across multiple generations and now being a horror story to them and her copy stands as a dark mirror to the frein we know figuratively and literally thanks to the copy we don't need to imagine a frein who uses all of her powers to crush others regardless of their sapience or Humanity or or El vanity I I run into this problem all the time humanoid is a human Centric word
we need a better word for humanoid beings in fantasy settings if anyone has any please leave a comment I've been dealing with this for Years anyway we don't need to imagine that callus frin this is her right here I shudder to think what would happen if this one was out in the world what Devastation it could cause so in this character we have a nearly all powerful figure with a full view over her time giving her significant advantages in this world but being an elf isn't without its drawbacks for one ferin seems to be a
high functioning autistic as an aside no I don't think ferin is supposed to be autistic in this story but much like how data from Star Trek next Generation is often read as autistic for his misreading of emotions or social situations a lot of neurod Divergent Behavior can be found found in fan much like I previously said about Comey and her journey to try and understand her human compatriots and therefore come to an emotional understanding of their Journey here is a lot of the observations necessary for an autistic person to develop an understanding of sociality and
the mask that isn't ingrained in US autistic peoples it doesn't map one to one obviously frein will never find herself fully understanding Humanity just like a neurod Divergent person will never become their typical in their entire life but I found a lot of my own experience in frein and since I'm autistic I see my autism in her if that makes you upset that I see myself in characters that I feel a connection there even if it's not textual I find it weird that that would bother you intentional or not writers sometimes write things in the
characters that they didn't intend but it's there for others to find and I don't think that's a bad thing anyway back on topic Fein has a hard time understanding the emotions or thoughts of her human companions which is often represented by her flashbacks to the original party flashbacks are used constantly and consistently throughout the show but in the first episode The flashbacks are very few due to where ferin is at that point in her life we see scenes from the hero parties Collective past as narrated by the other members but ferin does not contribute only
after him's death does Fein have flashbacks from their time together but just flashes pictures in her mind nothing more solid than that our first real flashback of himl is in episode 2 where we see himl talk about the flowers of his hometown but let's shelf the flower talk that's important for a later point I want to focus instead on episode three where Fern points out Fan's affinity for Merkel pudding something him did all the way back then himl says when you've known someone for long enough you pick up on the little things about a person
this sentiment wounds Fe and though because both then and now she couldn't tell you anything about her party members despite them demonstrating the reverse she had a long way to go in episode 3 and she still has much to learn and always always will but this moment serves as our first glimpse into frein's Dynamic with her current party ferin does not inherently understand the thoughts and emotions of her companions but sometimes she sees something in them that reminds her of himl and puts things into perspective for her she begins to understand a bit of The
Human Condition by seeing that it wasn't just himl being himl but perhaps a more human trait with each flashback she grows to appreciate her current crew and understands him a little bit more as well after Stark joins the party he serves as a window to eizen the Dwarven hero of the hero party and his faults and fears as well as seeing how Fern and Stark respond to each other and through them understanding the real significance of that ring she keeps somewhere inside of her she may have had an idea of what the ring meant but
through watching these two dumb asses slowly down their armor around each other and dare I say it fall in love she realizes himl loved her too maybe she loved him as well this is the core of Beyond Journey's End the central strength of this series growing empathy gain through trying to understand others and letting that greater understanding make both your current and previous relationships more meaningful Beyond Journey's End is a Shonen meaning it's made for young boys right I can think a few better senten sentiments than engaging with everyone in your life with empathy and
understanding another consequence of her age is that frein's effectively a folk Mage or hedge Mage in Dragon Age terms I'm planning the seeds now Dragon Age video incoming look for it in months being a hedge Mage has its advantages like having the folk spell for catching birds in her pocket for the bird catching Challenge and being overall unpredictable to her colleagues but other times it's a detriment like her inability to detect Mana while casting something all rookie mes learn to get over early on and is the point of embarrassment for ferin you see we say
all Mages overcome this weakness but ferin is over a thousand years old over a thousand years to hammer in sloppy mistakes sure she's all powerful but she's effectively an apprentice of one of the earliest Mages there was no rule book then like there is now Fen says it best to Fern before the dark ferin fight she has had a thousand years to learn magic and she knows a lot she knows spells you wouldn't believe exist but zro a spell that's 80 years old is etched into the human magical identity so deeply that Fern was casting
it as a child for ferin that is a relatively new spell that takes some time to pull out of her lexicon which makes her slow on the draw for Fern it's as simple as breathing this forms the Lynch pin of their plan for defeating Fan's other me she can match it Toe to Toe and a fight but Fern's speed Fern's lifetime of focus is the tip of the spear the death blow will be delivered by Fern this doesn't prove true because Fern still has a lot to learn but as Zia said to Fan hundreds of
years ago now it is that Precision of focus the human ambition that would someday defeat ferin it's just that that day wasn't today this is the other half of Zed's feelings on the magic debate that I referenced earlier the Relentless strength of human progress zier was aware that this standardization of magic that flma wrought would be unstoppable that humans would take the magic and expand it in directions she could not conceive of Z isn't one to say what she means in fact often saying the opposite of what she means so we are only left to
guess but perhaps her initial denial of fma's call to help the human Mages came from a place of fear dreading what magic would become with the progress of humans pushing it in the coming centuries elves hold the threads of history in the palms of their hands and if so inclined shape it but humans are chaotic uncontrollable passionate and perhaps zier feared what would become of her if the humans were left unchecked so she took her place on top of the hierarchy to control the march of progress or maybe to be kinder to her than I've
been at every other point so far in this video Perhaps zier Love flma just as Fen has learned to care and love Fern and decided to follow fma's request after all in her own way despite her short life flma achieved something zier never thought possible as well as setting ferin on the trajectory to help save the world from Evil zier recognizes that and perhaps due to that fact followed inma's wishes after all seeking to grow her vision further maintaining her Legacy for all time in her way of course as a show of love to to
her student and child who's to say what's true Beyond Journey's End is pretty subtle with how it handles Zeda rarely revealing what she's really thinking she exclaims that training humans is a waste and yet seems excited at the possibility of taking Fern on as her student she says she regrets teaching flama and yet remembers her favorite spell actually she remembers the favorite spell of every student she's ever had that doesn't sound like an uncaring teacher to me though zier is the most enigmatic Beyond Journey's End makes it clear that no character in its story is
without compassion and we should try our best to understand and empathize with all of them except monsters and demons of course there was a lot of discourse around the complete evil of the Demons online that I completely missed you can watch other videos if you have an interest in seeing what they were talking about I previously said I don't really like completely evil sentient races but I feel Beyond Journey's End does a good job showing what it is about demons that makes them abjectly monstrous beings as well as showing why fear and hates them so
much evil species can be done right and I think Beyond Journey's End does good job in that regard it does muddy my greater point but what can you do it's almost like the story is more complicated than any one theme and I think that's probably a boon and not a bane anyway I've been doing a lot of table setting here to finally get around to my final Point Fan's conception is the mage of peace him's love for her the relationship between FL Z and Fen all comes to a head here with this spell let me
explain zier and frein are elves of diametrically opposed magical philosophy and standing with between both of them is flma flma left two major gifts to frein her demon fighting technique and her favorite spell fma's methods of fighting demons flies in the face of typical conventions around magic concealing her Mana purposefully in order to get close to demons and deal a killing blow you see demons are naturally gifted in Magic and put their minds towards its Pursuit Above All Else as a result demon Society we could call it that is based around magical prowess alone if
one demon has more Mana than the other then that other one knows better than to mess with it directly magical might makes right fma's technique short circuits their societal beliefs around magic after all if your magical prowess is your measure of worth in this world why would anyone purposefully choose to be lesser Fen lost her home young as a result of a demon attack we could assume a similar tale for FL to these two it isn't about showing your awesome power it's about killing demons the demons see this as a bastardization of the gift of
magic taking your power and willfully hiding it sacrilege and given what we know about zier's magical beliefs she likely agrees somewhat though again she's very enigmatic we see her using this varability later so who's to say how she really feels about it FMA agreed that this was a bastardization of magic but it was a method she came up with to fight demons and an effective one at that and she even theorized that it may just be enough to defeat the demon king her second gift to ferin was her favorite spell the field of flowers works
as advertised creates a bed of flowers a truly harmless spell but looks pretty in these two gifts we see fl's anger towards demons but also her greater capacity for kindness and fality as compared to her master and frin took both of these gifts into the future as fl's bid to produce a successor worthy of saving the world how did these gifts Faire then concealing Mana is an exceptionally powerful gift giving Fen the highest demon kill count of any living being but against the demon king we are not directly told how effective this trick was against
their primary foe but frian admits that if it weren't for the hero party if any of them were missing they wouldn't have won zier mocks fan for this noting that fan is essentially a failure fl's technique did nothing to at her in that destined battle and if it weren't for her party she would have died there and sure that may be true but Fen wasn't there just to test a trick against the demon king which begs the question why Fen we've seen at this point that himl went with the rest of the crew into the
forest searching specifically for the Elven Mage the forest we know he was looking for her in particular so why her and not some other Mage that's because himble wasn't meeting ferin for the first time here but here as a young boy who got lost in the forest and a standoffish older elf showed him the way home and when he didn't move because he was too wary of this foreign Elven figure she took a moment and cast The Field of Flowers showing the beauty of magic to his scared and Lost Child in a moment that changed
his life so he went home he trained he grew up he asked that same elf to Adventure with him to defeat the demon king and together with her colleagues they did so and here facing off with zier 79 years later this frin understands that it wasn't her trick that helped defeat the demon king but her master's favorite spell a spell that captured little him's heart and kept her in his thoughts for more than a decade is what caused him to return to her and then then a mere 10 years later defeat the demon king it
was Fan's capacity for peace her gentle nature that gave him all hope and he in turn became a Beacon of Hope For All Peoples helping random passer by no matter how small their problems erecting statues of himself to continue spreading hope in the future and encouraging countless others in that future to live by his example and that is only possible due to her long life how she carried lessons from hundreds of years earlier and influenced little Himel into becoming the world's savior she would have died there without her compatriots sure but if it weren't for
kindness if it weren't for frein none of them would have had that shot in the first place thanks to ferin and s's influence the world finds itself in a new era when we must ask ourselves a question in this age what is the most useful spell you could think of a spell that blights plants a black hole whatever the hell this thing is according to Fern it's Pressa digitation the spell that cleans your laundry and gives it a fresh scent and honestly after spending 28 episodes with freerun I can't help but agree I am super
dude thanks for watching so yeah that's the video hopefully it brought something new to the table in this Deluge of analysis freen has received there's just so much depth of detail and character in this anime and manga that you could really just pick any subject and get lost talking about it I have almost exclusively talked about ferin and zier and the video was as of recording 30ish minutes long there are so many characters I mentioned once or straight up never talked about so I hope this helps demonstrate the density of Storytelling on display by Yamada
hopefully this proved insightful for anyone wanting to make stories about long-lived characters and if you for some reason are still watching and didn't see beyond Journey's End I haven't even scratched the surface of all that's great about this show if this video and the greater cultural consensus hasn't convinced you then I don't know man I I give up I guess you're built different here's your contrarian gold star you're very very based I want to grow up to be like you someday finally I would like to thank my patrons for their generosity and helping fund this
little adventure of mine through your patronage I am able to put some funds back into getting better gear improving my craft and hopefully getting another new mic I'm a bit too loud so I peek this one a lot I need a mic that I can yell into so I guess if any of y'all have recommendations do let me know anyway signing up on patreon gets your name in the video allows you to see them early and sometimes I ask questions though that's been rare need to get better about doing that anyway that's it thank you
so much for your generosity it means a lot as well as to the general YouTube crowd that stayed till the end for that you get a cookie let me know your fear and thoughts and indeed other good alien media thoughts in the comments thanks love you bye
