Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

[pendell]

Not really. The demon magic isn't THE only magic source. There are several types. Broadly, there are officially recognized as:

• Spellcaster magic - what most spellcasters use.
• Goddess's magic - what priests use. Holy scriptures contain Goddess of creation magic, but are heavily ciphered. Priests spent lifetimes deciphering them, once deciphered they can be used by any priest (or mage with Goddess's affinity like Methode) with scripture and magic tools (magic channelling wand/staff).
• Curses - Magic used by demons. They can be dispelled via Goddess's magic or when deconstructed, they can be countered. One way to recognize a curse is that Defence magic can't stop it.

Some demon magic is analysed and becomes regular human magic - see Zoltraak

Spoiler

Show

, see flying magic

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It's not just a Galadriel Expy, it's about learning to live in a world where you are affixed, while it keeps changing. In Frieren's world evolution is a fact of life.

Well, there's at least one more kind -- "Folk magic". Little spells to make ordinary life easier. A spell to create a flower bed. Or clean a statue. This was the special interest of Flamme and, now, of Frieren. It's a source of contention with Sere, Flamme's teacher, or so I understand. Sere sees magic as the province of the chosen few and a tool for killing monsters, nothing more, nothing less. She doesn't want magic to be used by the masses and she doesn't want it diverted to recreational , frivolous pursuits. In her eyes this distracts from a mage's main job, which is either training themselves to maximum power or killing monsters.

Apart from Goddess magic, I don't think there's such a thing as a "source". Magic is mana. Every living creature can gather it and make use of it. Demons, being made of mana, were the first to use it and construct spells. Because of these roots, humans considered ALL magic save that from scripture (I assume) to be demonic in nature and forbade it's research. Flamme in their world is to Hippocrates is in ours, taking a discipline (magic in Frieren, medicine in ours) out of the realms of spiritual understanding and treating it as a natural discipline with natural causes and natural solutions. Flamme did this precisely because she wanted more "folk magic", more magic for ordinary people to use. Flamme legalized magic, made it a respectable study and that is to their world what the industrial revolution is to ours.

The parallel to medicine is apt; in the real world, early modern medicine involved digging up dead bodies to learn anatomy, or injecting people with animal blood to give them cowpox and thereby gain immunity to smallpox. All of this was frankly weird and it weirded out not just religious authorities, but ordinary people as well. Yet today its accepted and dissecting frogs is an exercise for secondary school students. Which no one likes but , considering all the other stuff one has to do in medicine, it's probably a good entry gate test to see if it's a career you want to pursue.

It's not just a Galadriel Expy, it's about learning to live in a world where you are affixed, while it keeps changing. In Frieren's world evolution is a fact of life.

Oh, not just a Galadriel expy, no, Frieren is her own character and her own story. Still, there's enough similarity with Tolkien's world that if Frieren stepped into middle earth I don't think Elrond or Gil-galad or Feanor would bat an eye. Given she probably doesn't speak either High-elven or Sindarin, they'd probably consider her Moriquendi (Dark Elf) but would accept her as such.

Respectfully,

Brian P.