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Friday Fun Thread for July 25, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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A fantasy series that explores the idea of what a long-lived elf's life is actually like!

Does the world they live in suffer from medieval stasis? Or does she see how much humans can change in a few centuries?

Yes and no, actually a bit of hard question. Let me say this. Factually, world-building-wise, the world absolutely is not in medieval stasis.

In practice, the theme you allude to is not emphasized, with maybe one major exception. Most of the story and its themes are focused on Frieren's own characterization and experience and thus most of the world-building is more subtle and done in the background (exposition is rare). Frieren has only about three major formative periods of her 1000+ year life that we've seen details for. 1000 years ago we see some more rare flashbacks and people are dressed in Greek/Roman style clothing, so that has an implication there. However, we spend most of the time in the present with some semi-frequent flashbacks all within the last 70 years or so. We also see in the anime's current plot (28 22-minute episodes) mostly rural countryside, too, so it's hard to get a precise bead on tech development, though the source material not yet adapted eventually will show a more advanced nation. The visual vibe is maybe 1400s, we do see some pretty clean and well built out cities.

The one massive exception: tech advancement is not the focus because the show's 'tech' is magic, and magic advancement IS definitely a major theme, dealt with directly. Magic goes from restricted to humans (hoarded by elves and natural to demons, thus a major taboo) to humans leading major advances (even somewhat threatening the elves with their thousands of years of practice), and that comes up and will come up again.

I think the closest you see to this is a change in clothing trends from when the elf is young to present day. But I don't know how much you'd be able to tell apart clothing from 500AD and 1500AD (I certainly couldn't, aside from 'vaguely stereotypical ancient Greek' to 'vaguely stereotypical fantasy European').

But there is at least a little emphasis on "humans actually do change and grow relatively quickly". At one point the elf notes that it's impractical to get the magical equivalent to a license when the governments and organizations change so often.

Magic did change in a few centuries, as for mundane technology I don't recall anything specific.