maria mison: integrated awakenings

(yes may spoilers, i read the manga and updated po sa anime)

Freiren reminds me of an indie ttrpg game I played that invites you to look at a civilization through the passage of eons, cornering you into this omniscient perspective, witnessing, storying these larger forces (war, calamity, technology) instead of an often exclusive singular and linear life. It’s a rare perspective that feels historian/god-like and it’s the kind of tone that Freiren easily occupies as she is a near immortal elf, and is new to the grief of what is, subjectively a short time in her long spanning life.

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I feel like the reason Freiren has gained such popular appeal is because we have all been her in that grief takes a delayed and hammering tone. How it is both inspiration and question, map and flimsy tracks of how we’ve come to know ourselves and grown. How stories and ourselves don’t feel linear, how half of ourselves can feel trapped in that golden time, how history and legacy lives alongside us, not behind us, in this proposition called life.

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I’ve done that too, is what i find myself saying in the first few episodes. I’ve looked for echoes of people in the relations and things they’ve left behind. I’ve restarted and retraced and have seen pedestals from different perspectives and lights. Time becomes a fluid thing or maybe even a blanket that curls in itself and enfolds you, with surprising pockets. The string of what is realized and is remembered is an internal feelingsense and repose. I really have to say the writer of this manga has such a good grasp of this feeling of restfulness and closure, if anything it’s the only gold freiren is looking for. (and the paminsang grimoire)

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Worthy of note is also Himmel, who’s so incredibly sympathetic with Freiren’s time blindness, and has such an attunement to legacy, who gets to remember, and how we want to be remembered, and the point of story and dreams in the time in and out of peace. Parang ang self-aware niya sa branding?!!?? PERO alam rin niya na there’s a burden to being the only one who remembers, so he has this incredible empathy and reach, in allowing his own love and legacy to truly outlive him.

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It’s like writing from the perspective of a mayfly, or a magical familiar who is entrusted to a flame or figure that would outlast them, and investigating: how would they profess their love? How would they lay the foundations of the earth of that palace, long after they’ve gone? Who even has the stamina to think this way? (Dare I say capricorn-pisces energie pero i digress pagbigyan) It’s such an incredible foil to freiren’s “I would like to waste my time”, and echoes flamme’s human ambition and knack to want to change history, such blessed impatience. It’s perfect that the symbols that mark himmel-freiren’s relationship are an eternal lotus (metal) and an almost extinct flower (ephemeral, hidden) always walking around these ideas of sudden and rare blooms, and how things can transcend such harrowing temporality.

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Halata naman po yung roots ng fantasy genre sa Lord of the Rings ni Tolkein, sa malakasan at malawakan na worldbuilding at pagiisip sa journey bilang metaphor sa life. Nasabi na ng iba, but it is important that explorations of these genres have an earnest question and relationship to the propositions of this world para di mo feeling cinopypaste lang yung breadth ng mundo ni Tolkein/Open World games. (TTRPG-Fantasy-Video games have an intertwined history kasi so valid read na yan).

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I’m excited for this genre to have more explorations around non-human protagonists: for example small elementals or familiars that perceive time, memory and urgency differently from human counterparts. Mas madalas kasi it’s the human that’s whisked into a non-human lens. What’s wonderful about Freiren is the way it progresses and is presented is securely from Freiren’s protracted elf-like perception of time. I hope more directors and writers lean into this potentiality?

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BONUS THOUGHTS:

HIMMEL’S VOICE ACTOR BEING THE SAME AS NISHINOYA IS SUCH A WIN, he has this easy cheeky bishonen charm, and this character design that reminds me of roy (FMAb) and ergo! Royai. Sobrang deserve po niya ang magleading man role/dead wife trope kasi why not explore the sanctifying nature of death via a self-absorbed hero? ALSO, I’ve had some indie ttrpg friends already explore similiar themes to freiren of post-journey post-hero reckonings in slice-of-life or not so slice-of-life settings — may writing gig nga ako right now for it, I’m just happy na it’s vibe has a mainstream representative na. AYUN LANG.

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salamat for reading, mwa

maria