Episode 26 is the end of the 2nd Mage Exam and what an exam it was. Huge massive melee fights and huge massive lore reveals all in the same episode!
Madhouse was on fire in this episode, and their animation was beyond powerful beauty. Just stunning! And the individual fights were so well done.
But for this reviewer, it was the massive lore info which threw me against the wall like Fern.
The lore revealed is closely associated with individuals by name.
Serie opens Episode 26, and immediately waves the Frieren Death Flag, “If you are ever to be killed, it will be by the Demon King or a human mage.”
We obviously know that the Demon King did not kill Frieren, so we are left with a human mage. This flag is waving for Episode 28 which will be
Chapter 60 in the Manga. Madhouse will end this Season 1 with the most shocking event in the story!
From the very beginning of the Second Mage Trial, raiding the King’s Tomb, Denken immediately saw that this test was not a competition between the Mages as was the First test to capture a Stille.
He knew correctly that the best strategy was to work together, but because the mages were suspicious of each other, few wanted to work as a team. He entered the tomb with only five mages, himself,
Laufen, Richter, Methode, and Länge. The other 13 mages are still feeling hostility for each other from the first mage test. But eventually all the mages come around to his point of view, and join a
combined team. The lore here is critical. Against the clones in the tomb, the mages have a decided advantage because they can communicate strategy, and organize their teams accordingly. Denken is
extremely rational, but if he saw the all out fight between Frieren and Fern against the clone Frieren, he would have realized that Frieren was being very easy on him in the first test.
Übel is right, and her attitude is not crazy. People who are used to using rational methods, do use their rational brains too much. Magic in this world is all about perfect visual imagination. Rational thought can box you into a self fulfilling box trap! I have been in many meetings and heard all of this before. To build anything in the real world, you must be Übel and have perfect imagination or close to it. A baseball player has to imagine hitting the ball, before he can hit it! An ice skater must imagine her entire routine, before she performs it, and even if she falls, the most important thing is to quickly get back into her routine. Before one can build anything, the builders must have close to perfect imagination of the object they wish to build. The less imagination invested upfront, is usually an indicator, of later errors in design. Certainly rational thought is always necessary, but it’s not sufficient. Another interesting factoid is that Übel uses scissors to illustrate her technique. This is also a reference to Methode’s discussion about the rock-paper-scissors nature of the world they inhabit.
Methode explains how this world of magic, is a rock-paper-scissors type of world. “A battle between mages is kind of like a rock-paper-scissors match, after all. An extremely complex rock-paper-scissors match…
with countless moves to win through.” This means that unlike worlds with OP, there are no real top dogs. Mana power is not everything, as Frieren explained to Fern. Any mage in this world can be destroyed by any other mage with different and specific skills. It’s heavily recursive. Mage A destroys Mage B, Mage B destroys Mage C, and Mage C destroys Mage A. This is the complexity that Methode is explaining. This leads to clone Frieren use of a very special skill.
The clone Frieren uses a very special something against Fern. The clone looks at her, and that causes Fern to slam against the wall, breaking her staff. Fern says “What happened….did it attack me? I don’t sense it’s mana at all…..I don’t recognize this attack as magic…Incredible Mistress Frieren…this is the Apex of Magic.” The clone Frieren is completely defenseless, and Frieren blows it away. Frieren does not explain what this attack was about or how it works. All Frieren says is “You did great Fern…..It’s been 80 years or so since I was cornered into showing that.” This would indicate that Frieren last used it against the Demon King, but we are not told anything more about it. When this new Frieren team reaches Ende, there will probably be a backstory about the Himmel party destroying the Demon King and we will revisit this Apex of Magic.
There is a very significant translation difference between the Manga and the Anime. Both are translating a Japanese word into English. The Anime uses “The Height of Magic” and the Manga uses “The Apex of Magic”. While Apex and Height have many significant meanings and similarities, there are significant differences in the meanings with regard to the story itself. Apex leads directly back to Flamme, while Height does not. Several fans are of the opinion that Frieren learned this particular skill from Flamme, and the use of Apex would support that. This is how it works, and is a very detailed linguistic track.
E:Apex comes from the Latin of the Roman Republic. L:Apex refers to a cap, with a very unique pointer on it’s top. This cap was worn by a very special order of priests who served and worshiped only a specific god.
The priests were called L:Flamen. It is speculated that the L:Apex pointed to the highest point in the sky or heaven where the gods lived. Also the point indicated the high social rank of the L:Flamen. L:Apex means then the very highest, and is not a Heighth indicator. While E:Height can indicate the highest, there is ambiguity, in that the word can mean any length at all. E:Height can be traced back to G:höhe, and the L:Apex cap looks very much like the German Pickelhaube, the pointed helmets worn by the Prussian military. The E:Apex and L_Apex were never used as a military symbol, but always retained their religious roots.
The G:Flamme comes from the L:Flamma for fire or flame, and means very much the same thing in German as it did in Rome. The L:Apex was worn by the L:Flamen. Now obviously L:Flamma and L:Flamen have a very similar sound but also a similar functional meaning in that the ancient L:Flamen priests offered sacrifice to the god and used L:Flamma for the burnt offering. This connects Flamme to Apex and is the reason that the manga translation seems to be the intended translation. (But it is hard to believe that any of this was intentional by the author of our story, Kanehito Yamada yet there are so many connections in all of this, that it is difficult to argue against it. So who knows?)
In the Third Mage Exam, which is an interview with Serie, she asks Frieren one question, “Tell me what your favorite spell is.” Frieren immediately answers “The spell to produce a field of flowers.” Serie immediately ridicules her for loving a spell which is worthless and calls her foolish. She then fails Frieren on this third exam. Frieren just turns and walks away. We immediately enter a backstory showing little Himmel lost in the woods, but Frieren finds him and shows him her spell to produce a field of flowers. When Himmel grows up and forms his adventure party, the only Mage he wants to recruit is Frieren, all because of the Spell to create a Field of Flowers. In a very direct way, Flamme’s foolish little girl’s spell ended up destroying the Demon King. This is why the ED shows the Field of Flowers. It is key to understanding the strange rock-paper-scissors nature of magic in this world and how Frieren “still dances in the palms of her teacher, Flamme”!
