The replicas are a power of the lord of the dungeon, a demon called Spiegel. It can create perfect replicas from gathering information about the people who enter this dungeon. While this means that it can replicate their magic and fighting capabilities, the replicas don’t have hearts. This is why hypnosis or any mental magic are not effective on them because they’re mindless puppets. This fact is interesting because that means one has to beat them by sheer force.

It’s interesting to see what the other mages do in this situation, but because there are so many mages here, not everyone are capable of showing their powers. For example, Edel, the pink haired girl, is able to analyze what these replicas could be, but cannot fight them as her powers are not combat-friendly. This is why she had to retreat. In the previous episode, Lange, the first girl who had to retreat, did not show what she is capable of. Ton, the green-clad mage  who went in by himself, has not shown what he can do. It’s unfortunate that not everyone is allowed to show off their capabilities.

Despite that, there are still cool scenes for the characters that matter, aka the ones that were blessed with screen time. Ubel and Land were able to show off their skills, with the former having a cool sequence with her own copy. For Wirbel and his group, they also get a cool fighting scene where they blast magic at each other; Wirbel shows off how much of a skilled tactician he is; in fact, I’ve heard from people who follow the manga that the Wirbel scene is all anime original. I can see that Wirbel might be a studio favorite, hence the addition of this original scene. While Sense prefers not to fight, her copy that was fighting Edel and her group shows off why she is a first class mage and why she is extremely dangerous if fought. Sense’s magic focuses on manipulating her hair; because it’s so long, it moves everywhere and the recipient has to be quick on defending. She would be a difficult opponent if she weren’t a pacifist.

Despite the constant combat, I do like that Frieren is still enjoying her dungeon raiding experience as she detects a hidden room and activates the hidden switch. The sight of them finding the mural of the king who used to live in these ruins was pretty. While it’s not something that interests Frieren, it does interest Fern and seeing her in awe makes Frieren happy. It’s cute. I also like the scene where Fern gets a bit too possessive of Frieren when Methode gets too cozy with her. The pouts are cute.

I do like that Fern is confident that she can defeat Frieren because she’s the only one who knows her weakness. Frieden’s weakness is that when she turns around, her mana detection stops activating. That means her moment of weakness is not being able to detect mana when her back is turned. I do like that Frieren seems all powerful, but her weaknesses are still present. It’s also stated in the episode that her weakness is actually what amateur-level mages deal with. She never stated it because she’s embarrassed as she was never good at it.

Another thing I liked is that the mages are strategizing on how to deal with Replica Frieren and how to deal with other replicas that will soon gather to where they are. It’s a nice sense of cooperation. Frieren and Fern deal with the stronger opponent while the other mages will stay behind and deal with the others. What I liked is that whenever a new mage shows up, they bring vital information. Dunste brings in that the replicas don’t have true minds of their own. Lawine and Kanne bring in that the one responsible for the replica is a demon named Spiegel; Lawine knows because her eldest brother had ventured into the dungeon for patrol once. Now, it makes me wonder when Wirbel, his group, Land and Ubel will show up and if they will know about the plan.

My favorite part of the episode has to be the fight scene between the two Frierens. Frieren always used basic magic throughout the show, so for her to amp up the level of magic she’s using just to fight herself was a treat to watch. You can tell the spells she’s using against herself are high leveled because they do look like what Denken would use and we’ve seen what he used during his fight with her a few episodes back. It’s so interesting to see Frieren fighting a mirror of herself. If you’re a fan of the Tales series, I legit was playing the song Meaning of Birth from Tales of the Abyss in my head.

Like with the fight between her and Aura, Frieren doesn’t think too much of her opponent as she starts thinking back to a memory with Serie. The reason why humans are able to use magic is because of Flamme’s efforts into creating a world where humans can use magic. Serie wants magic to be special, so she hates what Flamme had done, but it seems that she’s still lenient on the changes of a new era. It makes sense why she’s so skeptical. Change is scary. What would the future hold if humans were to wield magic? Fortunately, it had changed positively as there are plenty of strong mages, like the ones in the exam. I love how Serie and Frieren are foils in a way. One has silver hair, the other has golden hair. The other prefers to stay idle in her abode while the other prefers to wander about. They dislike each other, but still respect each other greatly, albeit begrudgingly. They both have a connection with Flamme as Serie was her teacher and Flamme was Frieren. It was as if Flamme was the fire that gathers the elves together in a way. 

One funny part about this episode is the flashback to Frieren strategizing a way to defeat a dungeon boss with the hero’s party. They were planning, but left Heiter out because he was hung over. I love that the group establishes “off-days” for Heiter and just leaves him be when he is too hung over to function. The fact that Frieren drags him around is even more hilarious.