Frieren: What Are the Golems & How Strong Are They?

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End has perfectly combined Japanese fiction’s artistry with Western fiction’s tropes to create a wonderful fantasy work that is extremely popular worldwide, and for a good reason. While the protagonists are the story’s focus, in this article, we are going to talk about something more specific – the Golems. The Golems are difficult to define in Frieren, as we are going to see, but they are an important part of the lore, so we decided to tell you all you need to know about these entities, as well as their role in the story, which will provide you with the necessary answers.

The Golems are a specialty of Lernen, and they are able to do many things

If you remember the now-finished second phase of the First-Class Mage Exam, you’ll know that each contender was given a special “Bottled Golem” to use in case of an emergency. When broken free, the Golems would increase in size and bring the owner back to safety; this, of course, meant automatic disqualification from the Exam, but it would save the life of the user. So, what are these Golems in the first place?

Not much is known about them, but they are referred to as Magic Golems; the “Bottled Golems” are simply a subtype of Golem that has been shrunk using magic and placed in a bottle to be used whenever the user wants. This makes them quite practical and easy to carry around, and seeing how useful they are, they are quite good to have around.

The Golems can do a lot of things. They are quite tall and very sturdy, which means that they can be used in battle both for offense and defense. This is how they were used in the Golden Land, when Edel and Leren fought Macht, and were quite effective despite Macht’s power. Against weaker opponents, the Golems can actually be a trump card. On top of that, the Golems are also capable of using healing magic, which is quite impressive. This was seen during the First-Class Mage Exam when the Golems would heal the contenders who had used them.

The Golems are extremely loyal and will fulfill their task to perfection. Their sturdiness is an advantage, and they will be able to avoid any and all obstacles to fulfill their task. Their weak points have not been revealed, but it is known that they are not invincible; the authors have balanced out their abilities and have made them a useful tool in the series. Having said all of this, we are now going to explain their true nature in the series in the next section of this article.

The true nature of Golems is unclear

Now that we have gone over what the Golems can and cannot do, we can actually discuss their nature, which is a very complex topic. Namely, the Golems look humanoid, and they behave like humans, but it is obvious that they don’t really have a will of their own, and they cannot even communicate with the outside world. It seems like they are puppets crafted and created to fulfill one single purpose and will do exactly that. The process of how a Golem is programmed has not been explained in the series.

So, what are they exactly? Well, they are definitely not Monsters; we can confirm that. They are entities created using magic, but it is unclear whether a spell is used (which would make them, effectively, Spells) or if they are created in another way, although the latter seems more likely. Be that as it may, we think that the best way to refer to the Golems would be to call them (magical) entities, as they are exactly that. They are not persons in the literal sense, and they are neither Spells nor Monsters. Whether the authors will introduce a proper term for them remains to be seen, but until that happens, calling them entities seems to be the best way to go.

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