Over and over again, this episode features people staring wistfully at the world around them. A dwarf stands proudly before his bridge. Later, Frieren and company drink in the beautiful icy landscape. Elsewhere, Denken steels his determination as he glimpses his lost homeland. What’s certain is that these individuals are ready and willing to risk their lives in these lands. But before we start discussing such serious matters, however, we must set the stage. Right from the get-go, the party faces a 3000 meter deep canyon that they can’t simply fly across. Luckily, they find a bridge after traveling a short bit upstream. In fact, Himmel bought this bridge, knowing that he would never live to see it. He bought it all for his elf crush, too. Sheesh. Well, there’s your “aww, Himmel was the goat!” moment of the episode. In fact, he specifically told the Gehen the dwarf to ensure that the structure would last a thousand years. I’m no architect, but I feel like that’s a tall task for a wooden bridge or any bridge for that matter with such strong winds and nasty fauna in the area. But again, I’m no expert. Plus, the point isn’t to quibble over the practicality of a wooden bridge.

Frieren’s party reaches a village that is busy reconstructing many of its homes. Apparently, a dragon did all this. In fact, there’s a whole ass nest of dragons living nearby. Frieren even remembers her old party having to run away from a flight of them. Yo, stop living in dangerous places. “But our homes!” is such a weak excuse. It’s not just your lives you’re endangering. It’s also the lives of the people who have to come all the way up here to help you, i.e. the adventurers whom you’re about to petition to get rid of said nest. I’m going to keep putting my hand on the stove, and you need to keep bringing me to the hospital when I do! It’s asinine! And even if and when the adventurers succeed, it’s not a permanent solution. Frieren‘s universe feels video gamey at times, and that includes respawning mobs.

Even with his fancy niello wings, Genau still has to get up close and personal against a demon armed with four swords. Sure, the mage starts the fight off with a few projectiles, but what happened to the rest of his spells? Didn’t he nuke a demon a couple of episodes ago with a ranged attack? Meanwhile, Stark can’t keep up with Revolte, so he falls back on a familiar strategy: taking a direct hit to distract his opponent. In fact, he later invokes the same exact lesson that helped him overcome Linie back in season one. The more things change, the more things stay the same. There’s always a bigger fish out there, though. At some point, he’s going to meet someone who can take him down in a single blow. You can’t meat-tank everything. But I guess in that scenario, he’d probably just run.

Genau’s former partner apparently died, because he prioritized protecting a child in battle. Genau’s take is that although this made his former partner a good person, it also made him a fool. Sure, I suppose the utilitarian calculus shakes out if you assume that you would’ve defeated the demon.

The episode opens with demons slaughtering an entire village and its inhabitants. A man cowers in hiding. A child probably cries his or her last cry. A woman attaches a message to a carrier pigeon, but it isn’t for help. It’s too late for that. All she can do is seek vengeance for the fallen, hence the episode’s title: “A Demon-Slaying Request.” Seeing all of this, I can’t help but wonder about the nature of this world and where demons even come from. I don’t like how demons are portrayed in this series, but fine, let’s grant that they are absolute evil, no questions asked. Why are they surging in power again? And why now? Why did humans sit idly by and allow this to happen to themselves again? After Himmel defeated the Demon Lord, why wasn’t there a campaign to expand northward and completely annihilate demonkind? They, the demons, were presumably at their weakest point, no? Unless, of course, demons just spawn in like a video game. There’s so little that we know about this world and how it works.