There’s even less room for sympathy as Genau discovers a dying man who witnessed the massacre during the intro sequence. It turns out that this is Genau’s hometown and that he knows this particular villager, who is a baker. While he doesn’t play out the tortured, vengeful reaction you might expect given his birthplace was just reduced to rubble, it isn’t long until we see there’s a bit more to him than acting as a callous instructor. He comforts the dying man, telling him the kind of half-lie he alluded to earlier when he says his companion Methode has healing magic that will save his life. The first part is true, but not so much the second: The villager dies from a festering gut wound before they get to the church, where the rest of the bodies are gathered.
As Genau and an unusually somber Methode look over the dead, the former comments on how deeply unfair it is that regular people are the ones killed in these kinds of attacks, while the ones who sign up to fight, like the First Class Mages, get to live on. Methode picks up on his implied survivor’s guilt and reassures Genau that this village was already gone when they got the message and that there was nothing they could have done.
Then the pair detects something frightening: Two powerful mages are incoming. Surrounded by death, a genuine tension kicks in as these very killable side-characters prepare to fight. Luckily, when one of the mages crashes through the window in a breach and clear, it turns out it’s a familiar face: Hey, it’s Frieren, and she’s showing up halfway through the episode like Culumbo sauntering into a crime scene. To the show’s credit, these kinds of sequences where the protagonists show up midway usually feel pretty heavily foreshadowed, but I genuinely didn’t see this one coming until Frieren’s telltale summoning circles appeared. Our central elf remarks that she thought Genau was a demon, based on the bloodlust behind his primed magical strike. Despite his calm external demeanor, the man is stewing inside, especially as he recalls the way the baker, whose bad bread he’ll never get to taste again, clung to him as he died.
Now that all of the First Class Mages summoned by the elf Serie are here, it’s time to figure out what exactly happened. As the gang looks over the corpses, they see the town’s guards among them. They were members of the Chivalric Order Of Norm. As a refresher, this is the martial branch of the merchant association that Frieren helped last episode. Then we get a casually shocking reveal that will cause power-scaling-obsessives to audibly gasp: It turns out that this local guard captain (of, like, five guys) was stronger than Stark. While our beloved frontliner catching this random stray may seem odd at first, it serves a few purposes. First, the fact that the Norm group stationed such a strong fighter in this unremarkable town shows how much it values each and every human settlement under its protection (a sentiment that probably would resonate more if it wasn’t a for-profit organization). And perhaps more pertinently, since our heroes have only encountered small-fry demons in this town, the one who killed this powerful warrior must still be out there somewhere.
From here, the group tries to do medieval forensics, with Methode and Stark attempting to figure out the nature of the assailant from the slash wounds they left behind. They come up with a few theories, but none fully stick. After some unsuccessful speculation, they prepare for dinner, and an adversary even more imposing than this mysterious demon appears: the horrible, rock-hard bread from the previous episode. It turns out we haven’t seen the last of these nightmare provisions. Even after helping the Norm company, this institution still needs time to rebuild its supply lines so travelers won’t have to munch on several months-old goods. On the bright side for Methode, she gets to witness Fern nibbling on her block of bread like a squirrel, which, when combined with reuniting with Frieren, satisfies her self-described love of cute sights. For them and us, the chat is a nice little break from the pervasive gloom.
But then, as Stark speaks with Genau, we get the final stinger. While he and Methode initially thought the lacerations on the corpses indicated a two-armed swordsman, they eventually put together the reality of the situation. It’s a four-armed swordsman! Cut to an ominous silhouette, which very much implies this is one of the few (the last?) unaccounted-for generals who served the Demon Lord.
While this closing moment makes it clear that “A Demon-Slaying Request” was a bridge to an upcoming fight with this gassed-up bad guy, the fact that it took so much time to stew in the aftermath of a demon attack sells the series’ priorities. Yes, we will likely soon get an absurdly well-animated fight sequence with this four-armed fighter, and it will probably be quite cool. But this second season continues to balance these occasional explosions of violence with emotional moments that give these battles dramatic weight. Also, the bit where they’re repeatedly forced to eat the driest, stalest bread in human history is pretty good, too.
Stray observations
- • I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but I love the contrast between the delicious elven Lembas bread from The Lord Of The Rings and the horrible blocks of grain the heroes of this story are forced to eat. It feels like one of those grounded touches to the show where, despite Frieren being a several-thousand-year-old elven mage who bested this world’s Sauron equivalent, she still has to deal with types of trivial concerns her Quendian cousins would never dream of.
Elijah Gonzalez is The A.V. Club‘s associate editor.
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