Frieren: Who Was Ewig the Sage & Why Is His Grimoire Important?

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is currently a very popular anime adaptation of the manga of the same name written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe. While the fans are still getting acquainted with the series and its lore, we have decided to help them by providing you with more information on the characters, their stories, and some other concepts seen in the series. In this article, we will be talking about the Grimoire of Ewig the Sage, as you will find out who he was and why he was so important in the initial stages of the story.

Ewig the Sage was an ancient sage who supposedly crafted a grimoire about immortality, but it turned out to be a fake one

Returning to the first episode of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, we know what happened. Frieren, Heiter, Eisen, and Himmel defeated the Demon Lord after a 10-year-long journey, and then they split up not long after the meteor shower. Frieren promised to reunite them again in 50 years and show them a place where the meteor shower is even more beautiful. Fast forward 50 years later, Frieren, still looking the same due to her Elven heritage, reunited her friends and fulfilled her promise.

Aside from her, they were all very old and fragile; soon after the shower, Himmel died. Eisen was old and weak, while Heiter said that he was on the brink of death as years of alcohol consumption finally got to him. This turned out to be a lie as, 20 years later, Frieren once again met Heiter, and while they were happy to see each other, Heiter also had two favors to ask Frieren. One of them was related to Fern, which Frieren initially rejected but later accepted, while the other was about a book that Heiter had dug up from a grave.

The book in question was a grimoire supposedly written by someone called Ewig the Sage, and it supposedly contained the secrets to attain immortality. As Heiter was not a mage and had limited knowledge of the subject, he asked Frieren to decipher the grimoire, as Ewig supposedly used coded images to present his knowledge. Frieren commented on how old the code was, but she said she could probably crack it in five or six years.

Before we explain who Ewig was, we’ll just tell you quickly why Heiter was even interested in it. Namely, when Heiter returned to his home after Himmel’s funeral, he said that he was not afraid of death and that he was now a hero, which meant that he was guaranteed a lavishing afterlife. When Frieren visited him again, he seemed to want the secret of immortality, which prompted Frieren to ask him why, as he seemed unafraid of death.

Heiter then explained that he had lied 20 years before, thinking it would make him sound more brave and that now, 20 years later and closer to death, he was more afraid of it than back at the time. He then said that even if he could not become immortal, he would want some more time and joked that a long life is the ultimate expression of a healthy life, as prescribed by the holy scriptures. This prompted Frieren to call him a “corrupt priest” once more.

So, who was this Ewig? Well, Ewig was a sage who lived a long time ago. Since the grimoire turned out to be unimportant, the authors never really explored his story further. We know that he was a human sage who died before the manga began, but that’s about it. Nothing else has been confirmed about him, aside from the fact that he was, seemingly, dealing with issues of resurrection and immortality.

He seemingly left a grimoire with the knowledge that Heiter took from his grave and gave to Frieren. The grimoire supposedly contained answers on resurrecting the dead and becoming immortal. While both Frieren and Heiter doubted its authenticity, Frieren still agreed to decipher it, commenting on how the magic was coded with images and how the people of “that time” really loved these kinds of things. Still, it was never specified what “time” she was referring to, so we can assume that it was sometime in the distant past, as Heiter could not decipher it.

So, what happened with that grimoire? Did it make Heiter immortal? Well, it turned out that the grimoire was actually a fake. Frieren really did read into it, but it turned out to be a fake, so there’s that. It doesn’t seem to imply that Ewig was a complete fake in the series, but that the grimoire that Heiter had dug up was a fake. Ewig was seemingly a legit sage, and he seemingly coded his other grimoires – as the one Heiter took was not the only one, as it has been implied – with images like the one Frieren deciphered.

Sadly, this is all we have about him, and maybe the manga will go back to this part of the story later, although it doesn’t seem likely, seeing how things have been developing in the manga. But who knows… maybe we’ll find out the secret of Ewig the Sage after all.

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