Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’d like to return to the ramblings of Frieren and her companions, as we arrive at the presumed conclusion of our party’s battle with Aura the Guillotine and her duplicitous envoys. This arc has frankly not been Frieren at its best; dubious thematic implications aside, enemies that are simply “born evil” do not result in interesting drama. There is no motivation to tease into there, no grappling with the infinitely complex range of conflicts that can pit multifaceted characters into mortal combat without a clear sense of right and wrong. And what’s more, such enemies do a discredit to the heroes they face, forcing them into the frustrating moral binary of “either I execute these creatures mercilessly or I am simply a naive fool, hoping for a redemption that is beyond their fundamental nature.”
It’s a rough storytelling choice, one entirely lacking in the nuance that has characterized Frieren’s exploration of nostalgia and finding purpose in life. My only consolation is that, in spite of the author directing her demons to explicitly state “we are evil and there’s nothing else to it,” their general actions have clearly demonstrated they actually do have personalities, individual values and passions that define them. Truly “driven by pure malice and nothing else” characters are actually kind of hard to write, being so far from the genuine experience of any human being who has ever lived. Thus Frieren’s insistence that they be exterminated feels frequently undercut by the text, either intentionally or accidentally implying it is not that her world runs according to ‘70s DnD logic, but that she herself has embraced a conveniently simplistic perspective that doesn’t actually account for the world’s complexities. That’s of a piece with Frieren’s overarching personality, and it is the main hope I cling to as we return to the field. Let’s get to it!