Frieren: Beyond Journeys End is a unique anime in many ways, but at its center, it’s about the passage of time. Time for many of us feels like sand slipping through our fingers as we desperately try to hold on to it, but for an elf like Frieren, well it’s another thing entirely.
In the manga and the anime adaptation, we are transported to a world where magic and monsters exist, where humans live amongst demons and the rarely spotted elves. Frieren is one such elf and she serves as the protagonist of the story as, after many years, she finally decides to get to know humanity better and sets off to do just that.
For an elf, the life of a human passes in mere moments since elves live rather long lives in comparison, witnessing the rise and fall of towns, cities, and civilizations.
So how long do elves live?
Elves are humanoid in appearance, with only the pointy ears distinguishing them from humans. They live naturally long lifespans, aging at an incredibly slow rate to the point where they are considered immortal. We have yet to meet an elf who visually appears old, with the anime having introduced us to three in the form of Frieren, Serie, and Kraft. The manga includes one more, a mischievous elf by the name Milliarde. Of the ones we have met so far, Frieren is actually the youngest.
We are never given an exact age for Frieren, but understand that she has lived for more than a millennium (a thousand years) by the time she and the Hero Party vanquish the demon king. One of the reasons there are so few elves is that a thousand years prior to his death, the Demon King’s armies targeted elven villages given that elves were naturally adept at magic and could live long life spans making them a threat to the Demon King. Frieren was the sole survivor of her village, and at this time met Flamme.
For the thousands of years between Flamme and the Hero Party, Frieren continued her search for magic for the sheer joy of it. This is something that Serie, cannot not fully comprehend. Serie is known as the living grimoire as she remembers every spell from every book of magic ever written. Despite being her elder, Frieren refers to Serie as a child, unable to express emotions properly, an issue which seems to plague many elves and is one of the reasons behind their dwindling numbers.
Along with the decimation of their kind at the hand of the Demon King, Frieren believes that the reason for their dying out is their lack of romantic or reproductive instinct. When they come across Kraft on their travels, he mentions that he hasn’t seen another elf in 300 years, highlighting just how rare they now are.
We don’t know exactly how old elves can become then. It seems possible that they can live for tens of thousands of years. It would be interesting to meet an older elf, older even than Serie, and see what advice they could possibly offer Frieren and her party.
(featured image: Madhouse)
