Freezing: How Time Begets Complacency

Key insights

• Time breeds complacency: Freeze reflects on her long life and the danger of ignoring important moments.
• Complacency runs deep: lack of change and fear lead to comfort without progress.
• Defying Complacency: Freezing remains adept at wielding magic in a world that is rapidly evolving.

Freezing: Beyond Journey's End is an anime that plays with numerous philosophical ideas, including how time breeds complacency. This anime begins with the hero's group returning after defeating the greatest evil in the land, the Demon King. The story really begins when Frieren, a powerful elven mage and former member of the hero group, says goodbye to her friends, who have aged in the blink of an eye. She sets out to find understanding for herself and her time with them. Along the way, she encounters complacency from her past and complacency that comes with this time of peace.

Complacency is best described as a feeling of contentment or calm, even in the face of danger or a necessary change. This is where the saying “ignorance is bliss” comes from. Freezing: Beyond Journey's End deals with time and complacency by expanding time to the point where it appears to no longer be a factor. Frieren's lifespan is long enough that the ten-year journey she took to save the world was like Tuesday to everyone else. This allows the show to question how brief a moment has to feel before it can be considered irrelevant to a person's entire life.

How time plays a role in freezing

Complacency occurs over time because two main factors work together. The lack of an external force or threat demanding change and the fear of change are usually the main causes of complacency. The ability to move on without necessary changes provides a sense of comfort as needs appear to be met. Then, when change is required, it becomes difficult to accept that something has come up to upset that comfort. This makes it easier to ignore the problem at hand. Complacency has taken hold.

Frieren's entire story arc revolves around this trap of complacency. After living such a long life and knowing how many years she had ahead of her, she became complacent and started to just do things. Despite the ever-looming threat of the Demon King, Frieren never worried about the future of a world she knew would survive. She lived alone in the forest until the hero's group approached her and asked for help. The ten years she spent with them allowed her to realize the value of every moment, no matter how small, since a moment that has passed cannot be brought back.

This show's look at the meaning of a moment and the long-lasting impact of an experience is also reminiscent of how one might view the show itself. Since the episodes last about 23 minutes, they take up a relatively small portion of the day. However, this does not necessarily limit the impact they can have. These philosophical ideas surrounding complacency and the importance of a moment can have profound and lasting effects.

Complacency is an undertone of the show, but there are also examples of how she was never allowed to settle down. While Frienen fell into complacency, the rest of humanity's mages marched on. After the Demon King's defeat, top magicians set to work analyzing and constructing the demons' magic. When the main plot of the series begins, humanity has been intensively involved in magic for more than 80 years.

This is best seen when Frienen confronts the demon Torment. In his time, he had an ultimate attack that killed everyone in his path. Over time, this attack became the basis of human magical development, and since Torment was unable to evolve with it due to being sealed by freezing, his attacks were equivalent to the basic attacks that a modern mage learns early on and defends against. Humanity constantly felt the pressure and fear of magic and therefore never fell into the complacency of those who were more experienced in it. Humanity as a whole never seems to encounter complacency, at least in the realm of this show. They continue to strive for more, and their magical studies progress to such an extent that, as Flame had predicted, a human mage superior to even the elves emerged.

Another example of fighting complacency can also come from Frieren himself. While she found complacency in her life, the titular magician never stops practicing or pursuing magic. At first this seems to be just a funny quirk of hers, but it becomes clear that it has made her an extremely powerful magician. This dichotomy shows that complacency is not necessarily an all-consuming force, but instead can have control over different, specific aspects of one's life.

A deadline raises the stakes and time lowers them. But it's not always a matter of life or death. Sometimes it can be as simple as whether an experience leads to being able to help someone or even just a smile at the end. Freezing: Beyond Journey's End shows that even the smallest moment could and probably should be just as important as the biggest. Time flies and should not be wasted.

Freeze: Beyond Journey's End is now available to stream Crunchyroll.