Another great episode. Really loved the first part about Himmel not wanting Frieren to be alone and that is why he had so many statues made.

One of the (many) things that I really enjoy about this series is its portrayal of demons. They really feel quite alien but relatable at the same time. They fall right into an uncanny middle between human and monster that always has you second guessing yourself about them. Frieren probably says it best in that they can understand our speech, but can't be communicated with; drawing a clear line between being able to speak and being able to understand and convey thoughts and emotions through speech.

There are many parallels I can draw between this series and Mushishi, but this portrayal of demons reminds me a bit of how mushi are described by Ginko. They are more or less wild things living in nature and when they intersect with humans bad things can happen, but it isn't out of malice or any kind of emotion, it is simply surviving in the environment it finds itself. I think Frieren views demons in much the same way. They are not hurting humans out of malice, but simply creatures that find themselves in a world full of humans. As a survival strategy, the demons found ways to use humans to their advantage, it just so happens that those strategies involve manipulating and taking advantage of human emotions.

As far as human is concerned Frieren was alive before reliably recorded history, and will go on to live so long for generations to come. To see her commenting "Elves are on a slow decline to extinction" I first feel sad, and then realize it'd be so slow it would be unimaginable to me.

Frieren will probably live at least another 1,000 years. Will Frieren still be alive in 10,000 years? Will she have overcome elves' lack of passion at least once and have an offspring during that time? If so, will her offspring goes on to live another 10,000 years? If elves will be going extinct, it'll still be a long, long time in the future.

EDIT:

Next week will be the episode with the same name as the series title: "Sousou no Frieren".

GOD I CAN'T WAIT FOR NEXT WEEK. They really killed it with that cliffhanger. Frieren's such a badass, even the way she let herself get taken down, but refused to take her eyes off her enemy. Also, to not tread on what others have said about this episode, it's interesting that they mentioned other creatures that use human speech to trick us, and that human speech is what distinguishes demons from monsters.

The writing was really great too, with the demons using honeyed words that sound sympathetic, but they turn around and acknowledge they don't really know what it means except that they get to live a while longer.

As anime only, I thought Frieren would be like episodic adventure series so didn't expect this kind of conflict. But I am enjoying the series. Love that Frieren's "I am strong, stronger than you boss" final scene.

Frieren's constraint/lazyness is great - I'm sure she could have taken on a few human guards. Especially with Fern and Stark assisting. But same as in the flashback, she wants to teach them a lesson about demons?

The way the demons are in this series, it almost feels at odds with how relaxed the characters are. It's a calm, soothing world as long as you don't mind the monsters wearing a human face while talking sweet words, out to eat you.

Great adoption of the manga. I am hyped for the next episode.

The way demons are depicted reminds me a lot of LLMs (and AI in general).

• Less powerful demons have no understanding of human thought and are really bad at fooling people (see the girl-demon in the flashback).

• Medium powerful demons still have no understanding of human thought, but are somewhat good at imitating people (see the present-day demons from todays EP).

• More powerwull demons...

  Spoiler

  start to develop more complex strategies for fooling humans.

• While the most powerfull demons

  Spoiler

  are implementing strategies that trancent both human strategies and the original demon strategies.

this article by scott alexander does a good job of explaining how AI's are inhuman intelligences, that are trying to fool humans into thinking they have morals. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/perhaps-it-is-a-bad-thing-that-the