@wickerbottom
Agreed, and structure-wise it's quite clearly rebuilding her past party on purpose. In this setup Frieren IS the hero (a real one this time, sorry Himmel lol), Fern is the mage, Axe boy is his master and now we have the priest. And the only unchanging piece is Frieren.
Do you know what hit me this chapter? Every single one, begind with recounting how much time has passed since Himmel died. But, as the story progresses, even I find myself not thinking about Himmel when he's not being brought up. That is to say, even I as the reader, a *human* reader, start to forget about Himmel and the past (the first chapters) as I read along week by week. But then, every time a new chapter starts and every time Himmel si being brought up by Frieren, it hits me again! And that's just it. People move on, people change, loose interest or find new things to think about. But Frieren doesn't. She doesn't forget, nothing is fading. It's probable that each chapter starts the way she starts each day, just to keep track of time. But the *things she says* do not change, not in close to 30 chapters now. And the time passed since Himmel's death is always the very first thing she recounts, only then moving on to where they are and possibly what they are doing. If humans were like a blackboard you can write on and then erase it to make space for new things, she's like an old streetlamp with a 15cm-thick layer of posters and adverts stapled to it over one another, but not one of them is ever thrown away. They just accumulate and you can see every one by just lifting the the top layers..
Well. That was a thing I thought about. And now I'm all melancholy again. Shit shit shit.
Oo. Another point: the reason the hates Sein, I think, is because he behaves exactly the same way she did when Himmels wanted to recruit her, I take it.