Sousou no Frieren - Vol. 5 Ch. 41 - Moment for Resolve

[Solipsist]

@vereo
Not necessarily dog-eat-dog sort of thing. From my POV, I took it as literally as it was explained: There are a shit ton of low-tier mages, and they don't care to waste them if they're not going to amount to 1st rates, which are far an inbetween. Even though that's an odd statement, given that Frieren stated that "there used to be a LOT more mages walking around, everywhere".

That being said, I can agree it is an astonishingly barbaric method, in which good candidates can be slaughtered merely due to the difference in specialties or by pure luck. That test also motivates people to prioritize deadly spells and cowardly methods (in competitive battleroyal , good luck finding anyone. They all figured out it's the best strat to just hide somewhere until the end of the game. Beh.)
So, yeah. Pretty dumb stuff, which may as well be the point.

@Joco413413
Because it's totally counter-productive. Literally. It reduces the amount of seedlings you may have in the future, because you order them to kill each other.
The monster problem aside, here's a problematic scenario: What if literally all the contestants have the potential to be 1st rate? And then some, or most of them, die to in-fighting? How helpful is that? How "stupid" are they by participating and not "knowing" that they'll face equally strong foes?

The whole test is just stupid once you really think about it. If the academy cared about maximizing their 1st rates, they'd actually have a program to build them up from the ground, and have more standard way of testing individuals, rather than tell people to risk their lives for no reason.

 

[Doomroar]

@Nunally That's irrelevant, also Wirbel is more skilled than psycho girl, he defeated her twice, but he doesn't wants to kill on the exam so he was buying time in order to get a deal, that's fine, and is not what my comment complains about.

This chapter was bad because it wastes time. Having Wirbel and Psycho girl buy time in real time also wastes the time of the reader, and to end it in Fern arriving to mediate after the time has been wasted aggravates things more.

In page 10 Wirbel wins, then lets her go because he doesn't wants to kill her, then on page 13 he wins again, and starts stalling for time until the chapter ends, that stalling could have taken 1 page, at most 1 page and a half with psycho witch mentioning how Wirbel is also hesitating and buying time at the end, using the saved time on something else.

Instead we get 4 pages of literal filler, out of them the only thing of actual value is the 4 panels in which we get to know about Wirbel past, that means that the time spend used on stalling is literally used on nothing but stalling, in the form of psycho girl having o tell us on 3 different pages that Wirbel is not killing her already despite being in a position to do so, there's no need for that,

We know that psycho girl lost and as thus she now has to buy time and wait for someone to come and help her, but that doesn't means we have to accompany her on her time wasting, we can perfectly spend those pages on someone else then come back.

That's the kind of bad writting that an anime director uses when they need to stretch an episode, but this is not an anime, is a manga there's no need for such things in here, it unnecessarily stretches a chapter.

 

[Joco413413]

@Solipsist

They weren't ordered to kill each other though.

 

[Yunyo]

It's worth noting that attempting to kill other teams is an unnecessarily risky strategy considering the potential fallout.

In the previous chapter, one mage was sent to handle Frieren's group, which seems doubly foolish in retrospect unless you're really confident that your teammate can 1v3.

All sorts of things can go wrong and at the very least you wouldn't be able to pass the exam.

 

[Flamfag123]

Can the black haired bitch please die off. She is too dangerous to be kept alive. I hope she learns her lesson some way or another. Even the edgelord blond guy has some sense of humanity.

 

[CastleBeki]

No deal for you

 

[Nunally]

@Doomroar In my opinion, this manga pace is always like this.
- Really slow when its person to person story/battle. Remember Aura fight? Fern & Stark battle spans for 3 whole chapters. They just trade blows for few and the rest is talking (and some monologue), the priest join quest need 2 chapters and basically he just reminiscing the same thing in every one, his decision to left even need 2 separate chapters too.
- Easily skip most of the events. Like when Stark disguised as a noble son, 3 month pass in just one page.
- Character that look important will have their own backstory explained soon after introduced.

Btw, if you are not hating, you will notice that Wirbel and his corps are fighting Aura army before and he managed to survive againts her (you remember Aura power right?).

 

[LittleMiniMe]

Yea!!!! Go Fern!

 

[Doomroar]

@Nunally The difference between this fight and the others is that in this case the fight was already over, we saw it end twice, one character was already defeated and waiting to be rescued, and the other was indecisive about finishing off his defeated adversary and trying to make a deal.
I am ok with Wirbel getting his backstory introduced, as a matter of fact it was the only thing of actual importance that happens after page 13 other than of course the very final page.

Is not necessary that he was facing Aura herself, he could have gone against her army and underlings, but if he did face Aura it means that either he is the guy who used his great will to negate to power of the scales, or that he has more mana than Aura but he failed to defeat her somehow.
Assuming that he did face Aura, then if it is the first case it means that he was never gonna kill psycho witch and was truly just wasting our time.
And if it is the second it means that he is already an exceptional mage, in here we are also getting our time wasted because for such a great mage that girl is not a good measurement bar at all.

Either case we end with a filler battle, that becomes even worse because of the grandeur of the previous feats of someone that faces Aura the Guillotine and survives. He went faced a demon general and now is here wasting time dealing with a witch that acts like a lesser demon.

 

[Jacktris]

 

[AlphaKawai]

Well this is a situation

 

[Nunally]

@Doomroar I think our power estimation to her is different, but she is stronger than you think. If you remember, our psycho girl first introduced just next page after Frieren talking about how she lose to few 'genius' human mage before, coincidence? Later its confirmed that she managed to kill first class mage before (in 2nd class mage exam, thats why she is still 3rd class).
On another side, if psycho girl managed to overwhelm Wilber even once, the fight will be gone as you intended. Wilber will already lose his head (in the first page even, her magic designed for swift killing after all), thats show how dangerous she is. Thats why the fight feels drag out, he really careful in dealing with her and of course because he intended not to kill (if he can and its already explained why).

 

[John_von_Shepard]

boring.

 

[AceTheBase]

Please halt, bitch!
To the morons saying this is boring, this is arc has literally given us more world building than any others so far. We're learning about how/why mages are declining, stupidity of the Mage association and even internation conflicts.

 

[Temperans]

Its really strange because from the way I see it this chapter did great building up tension in that fight. If Wilbert messed up at any point he would be dead. Similarly the fact he doesn't just kill her says a lot about his character not being a wanton murderer. The fact he let her go, and she tried to use that to kill him/destroy his eye says that she really would kill anyone that gets in her way.

Those 4-6 panels have said a lot about the personality of these two, while showing a bit more of world lore, and showing more of what mages can do. Something that just 1 panel would not be able to show. It also did well in setting up the the mystery of "who won that other fight?"

Also yeah a battle Royale is a very bad way to test 1st class mages as that lowers the pool of all classes. While also lowering the amount of people who can act as mentors for new mages. Which considering how long its been, yeah no wonder there are so few mages. A good portion were probably killed off trying to finish those exams, or left to do their own thing away from cities. Either way, it results in a large decrease.

 

[silencers]

This arc is fucking amazing. I was behind for about 7 chapters and this exam arc is basically Frieren's chuunin exam. I want more.

 

[monozuki]

@John_von_Shepard surprisingly, yeah. I've not enjoyed this... tournament arc, to be perfectly honest. This format seems exceedingly unfit for this manga. To me at least. (or it's just the execution that I have a problem with)

 

[xtrone]

I hate how every single name is german and as I speak german the most names are really dumb. for example: stark - strong

 

[RexNemorensis]

The North Gon Hold It Down

 

[Midnight_Reader]

I wanna see Frieren let go of restricting her mana.😩😩 She's so badass!😩👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼🤩🤩