Backward Significance in Frieren’s Funeral Scene
One of the more interesting structural elements in Frieren is the way that the text plays on hindsight to add progressive significance to a key moment from the opening chapter: Frieren’s emotional breakdown at Himmel’s funeral. #frieren 1/9
Frieren has an intense (and beautifully-illustrated) reaction at Himmel’s funeral. At the time of first reading, this makes perfect sense – it’s a funeral after-all and Himmel was Frieren’s companion on an epic quest for many years. 2/9
What the reader fails to realize at this time is that Frieren doesn’t show that kind of emotion. As the series goes on, she consistently demonstrates a completely unflappable calm, even within the greatest potential moments of emotional turmoil. 3/9
In any given chapter thereafter, Frieren having an emotional breakdown would be shocking. In the first chapter, we simply don’t have the character context yet to mark the departure from the norm. As the series goes on, and Frieren stays stoic, this breakdown just keeps accumulating noteworthiness. 4/9
In so-doing, the manga creates a rather devious metatextual effect. Like Frieren, the reader is forced to look back on events that seemed unimportant or insignificant in the opening chapter and to recontextualize those events in the context of the present moment of reading. 5/9
This process places the reader very directly in the shoes of Frieren, thus making our elf protagonist’s original ignorance not just forgivable, but perhaps even a little bit relatable. After all, we fell for the exact same trick. We didn’t know any better and, when it comes to Himmel, neither did she. 6/9
In hindsight, her breakdown is wildly out-of-character and thus reflects the depth of the epiphany that she is struck by in consequence of this life-altering event. Nothing breaks Frieren like this throughout the rest of the series. Only Himmel. 7/9
In Abe’s illustration, the normally stoic and detached Frieren is rendered, for lack of a better term, a wreck, her usual veneer of stoic disaffection completely shattered. Her words express remorse, perhaps even self-admonition “why did I never think about getting to know him more?” 8/9
This moment is important – it is arguably the first crack in the dam of the flood that becomes Frieren’s entire overhaul of her life’s philosophy, spurring the journey that defines the entire series. That much is evident, but just how out of character it is only becomes apparent thereafter. 9/9