As I’m attempting to catch up on Winter 2024 anime as quickly as possible, I’ll dive right into the review for Frieren episode 24. I hope it’s enjoyable.

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Episode 24: Perfect Replicas

This was an exciting and interesting episode. The first thing I will comment on is the Spiegel creature. It’s an ancient monster that scans the memories of trespassers and creates perfect replicas of them to fight them off. I think that’s a fascinating idea for a monster. I was also interested to learn that the Spiegel cannot create new minds for the replicas. The copies act as if they have minds, but there are no thoughts in their heads. That’s why they can’t be hypnotized.

In other notes, Sense is more tricky than I expected. Nobody passes her tests because they can’t beat her replica. In other words, she will only let mages pass the test if they’re better than she, herself. In this episode, a girl named Edel and her group were the ones unlucky enough to run into Replica Sense first. Edel got stabbed through the chest after her hypnosis attempt failed. She broke her bottle and escaped. Hopefully, she’ll survive if quickly treated by magic healers.

I was fascinated by Ubel’s interactions with Land and her fight with her replica. Ubel is an interesting character, but she’s not exactly a pleasant person. She’s cold and conniving. For a moment, in this episode, I wondered if she was becoming more altruistic. She and Land were cornered by the replica of Ubel, who had stolen Land’s escape bottle and sliced open his chest. The real Ubel offered her escape bottle to Land, as he was dying. When he refused to take it, Ubel went out to fight the replica by herself.

This seems valiant and heroic, but in reality, it was all calculated. Ubel knew it was the clone of Land that was dying, and from her interactions with the boy so far, she had gathered that he didn’t want anyone to die because of him. Thus, she created a situation where the real Land would have to come out and help her beat the replica or else let her die in the act of trying to save his clone. It worked. Land quickly appeared and rescued Ubel, just when the replica had restrained her with a binding spell.

Before Edel’s mishap made it clear that replicas have no minds, I thought the copy of Ubel was capable of empathy. It seemed like the creature empathized with Ubel in order to gain the use of her binding spell, which would have been an interesting twist. However, since we know it is a mindless copy now, there must be a simpler explanation. The replica Ubel simply had access to the binding spell in the same way it had access to her level of mana or her skill with a spear.

Anyway, after defeating the replica, Land and Ubel continue traveling together. Although she knows more about him now, Ubel remarks that she has gotten closer to being able to empathize with the inexpressive Land.

With her keen eye for exploring dungeons, Frieren discovers a hidden room with a majestic stone mural of the ancient king. Fern and Sense are quite impressed. Afterward, the three of them encounter Denken and his companions. They begin brainstorming for a way to defeat the replica of Frieren that lies behind the door. During the discussion, the tall female mage named Methode attempts to restrain and hypnotize Frieren to test her resistance to these forms of attacks.

The way in which Methode did this was amusing. She hugged Frieren to restrain her, letting the elf’s face rest against her large bust. I do think Methode has a fascinating way of holding and hypnotizing people, but more than interesting, I’d call it sexy. Methode is hot. Fern’s reaction to seeing Frieren snuggled by a big woman made me smile. She got jealous, apparently feeling as if she’s the only one with the right to be affectionate with her master. Fern is cute.

At the end of the episode, Fern announces that she knows a way to kill Replica Frieren and she thinks she can pull it off. Next week, we’ll see what her idea is. I’m willing to bet it involves presenting a Grimoire or a Mimic to the Frieren copy. She will be captivated by it and the others than can use that chance to attack. That’s all for today.

~Thanks for reading~

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PATREON