Incredible set of episodes! I've also been calling Denken a dwarf this entire time because of no other reason than his beard 💀 Is that racist? I only realized this mistake after I was done with the show lol.

Apparently after episode 19, we got the information that we were done with the outsourced episodes, so 20-28 were all back to episodes produced fully in house, and you can really see the quality jump up again imo. I really like how all these fights look in anime format, to give you an idea, the Frieren manga doesn't really have full on action scenes a lot of times, some of them are just 1 page long, and its like a montage sort of collage, but the anime expands them, makes them longer, makes them cool, i noticed they even made the hallways of the dungeon significantly bigger in the anime, to allow for more epic grander encounters. In episode 23, when Denken's group finds Laufen's clone and have a brief battle with it, we dont actually have that in the manga, we just cut to them already having defeated the Laufen clone, the Frieren vs Frieren battle in episodes 25-26 aswell is made way more epic, in the manga its just the both of them spamming Lightning magic and Hellfire magic over and over again standing still until Fern gets an opening sometimes. I think Frieren is one of the examples of "manga that is actually improved with an anime adaptation" but some people might kill me for making that statement. Excited for future seasons, and for your reaction to the remaining 2 episodes.

I think that Frieren used a curse on Fern. During the episode "smell like trouble" they explain that the attacks from curses can't be detected by mages, or their mana. And that's what Fern describes here.

BTW for ep 26 they brought in Hirotaka Mori as the episode director. He made his debut as a series director last year on Heavenly Delusion, and Frierens action director helped out on episode 2. Mori returned the favor and made a beautiful spectacle for the climax

I'm pretty sure the 80 years comment was about the thing the replica used on Fern. Firstly because it was so surprising and different that I expected it to be addressed in some way. And secondly, Frieren didn't really need anything particularly special to deal the final hit because the replica had, as Fern said, "left herself open" so at that point the replica was vulnerable enough to be taken out via fairly ordinary methods.

MEGA REACTION HOH MAH GAHD

The episode cuts in this section were brutal for weekly watching

50:34 I don't like pits, but it was kinda funny how the fandom reacted to this. Even the official PR account kept posting this this shot and it got crazy amounts of engagement 😂

「シャングリラフロンティア」のリアクションが観たいですね😊

yeah your back, hope your doing well^^ Now EP 26 you witness how our universe was created, with frierens Bigbang :D The Black Hole is in science based color. i count 5 Mimics Madhouse just going mad. I love denken, actually i cant say i dislike one of the characteres oO Chefs Name is Lecker = delicious Himmel the Gamer :D how matching the time is: "sense is like ... Maybe i chose the wrong people to follow". "Date, hazukashishi"

Please dont forget The Boys.