Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – Season 1 Episode 13 Recap & Review

Aversion to One’s Own Kind

Episode 13 of Frieren: Beyond’s Journey’s End begins with Frieren meeting a mysterious man in the forest. The man says he had an adventurous spirit as a child but lost sight of the dream when he became an adult. Despite his childhood friend offering him a chance to embark on a true adventure with him, he refuses and now regrets it. The man asks Frieren to help him escape his bottomless swamp predicament but she’s unsure about touching his dirty hand. 

Fern arrives and persuades Frieren to help the gentlemen out. The man thanks Fern for her help and asks her, Stark, and Frieren if they want to stop by his village even though he’ll be helping his neighbors prepare for the harvest festival. Frieren declines because they have their sights set on a larger town. Unfortunately, Stark gets bitten by a poisonous creature, resulting in our trio returning to the man’s village. They head inside the church and the priest asks them to wait for his brother to help them. 

The man from earlier, named Sein, appears and helps Stark with his poison problem. The priest acknowledges Frieren by name, surprising her. He states that Heiter told him about her and gave him a holy symbol when he traveled to this village. The priest admits he’s only a provincial priest and isn’t on par with Sein. He shares increments about his past life with Sein with Frieren concerning their parents’ demise and Sein’s lust for adventure. 

The priest asks Frieren if she can take Sein along with them. The trio discuss this idea at a local inn. Frieren’s unsure, so Stark heads to downstairs to ask Sein if he’d like to tag along with them. Realizing Sein’s a corrupt priest, Stark’s unsure if he’d like Sein to accompany them. Sein doesn’t know if he wants to leave his village behind but asks Stark to take a seat. He tells Stark if he can defeat him in a gambling game, he’ll join him and the others. 

Fern and Frieren hear Stark screaming and rush outside. They learn Stark and Sein lost all their belongings to the village chief in a competition. Sein tells Frieren he doesn’t want to accompany them on their journey because it’s too late for him now. He deems himself a loser and feels he’s unfit for adventures. Sein’s words make Frieren recall when Himmel asked her to join their party. She gave similar excuses of it being too late for her to embark on an adventure. 

Frieren uses Himmel’s words of focusing more on the present than the past to persuade Sein to join them. Meanwhile, Fern negotiates with the village chief and retrieves Stark’s and Sein’s belongings. She informs them that the chief wants them to stay and enjoy the upcoming harvest festival. Fern hands the two men their clothes and returns to the inn with Frieren and Stark. Frieren believes Sein should become an adventurer regardless if he accompanies them or not. 

After failing to restore Sein’s adventurous spirit and recruit him, Frieren and her friends head to the church to speak with his brother. They ask him for information about Sein’s likes and dislikes. His brother brings up him liking older women. Stark notices Sein enter the church and chases after him. Stark asks Sein if he’d like to travel with an older woman and Sein says it was his childhood dream. Frieren tries using Flamme’s seductive technique to win Sein over but it doesn’t affect him.  

She wonders why it worked on Himmel. Sein tells them to stop trying to recruit them since he no longer wants to become an adventurer. Frieren brings up Sein’s friend, but Sein fears his buddy passed away so there’s no point in embarking on a journey when he knows he’ll never see him. Sein argues that he can’t go because he’s worried about his brother. He reveals he eavesdropped on his brother’s conversation with Heiter. 

In a flashback, Heiter offers Sein’s brother a chance to become a priest in the holy capital and says his brother can come for the ride. His brother refuses because he doesn’t want to take Sein’s hometown life away from him. Heiter understands and says he’ll tell Sein about all his adventures. In the present, Sein’s brother slaps him for not pursuing his dreams and urges him to become an adventurer so he doesn’t live a life full of regrets. 

Sein meets with Frieren and the others. He says he plans to become an adventurer to find his friend but only promises to travel with them partway. Sein leaves the village with Frieren and the others. He asks them about their destination and wonders why they’d want to go to Heaven. The episode closes with the four traveling together. 

The Episode Review

After meeting characters like Kraft, many folks’ wondered if Frieren and her friends would ever recruit a new party member. It appears fans didn’t have to wait long for an answer with this week’s chapter. Although Sein tells Frieren he only plans to travel with them until he finds his friend, we can expect his decision to change as we progress into this tale.

While there’s a possibility Sein’s friends already met his end, it was touching seeing Frieren, Fern, Stark, and Sein’s brother motivate Sein to pursue adventuring again. Abandoning one’s dream because of lost time will resonate with many folks, and this episode captures that problem brilliantly through Sein and Frieren’s sequences in this episode.

The anime continuously uses its storytelling techniques phenomenally, allowing audiences to empathize and foster deeper connections with the characters. Moreover, if fans happen to be watching The Apothecary Diaries this season, it’ll be interesting to compare Maomao’s character with Sein’s moving forward to see who is the better apothecary.

Overall, this was a fun chapter of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. It gave fans great comedic and heartfelt moments. I’m excited to see what Sein will bring to the cast as they venture toward the Demon King’s castle.