Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Frieren started out pretty interesting. The gimmick of the show is the main character (Frieren) is an elf who never ages, and it follows her experience over a long period of time. Her party of adventurers defeats the Demon King before the show even starts. And then the show follows the aftermath. It spends a lot of time in the beginning slowly setting things up and introducing characters. I found myself liking it more then I thought I would. Then episode 20 hits and the contrived "Mage Exam" arc starts and it throws all of that out the window to start a super generic Shonentournament type story. It is such a jarring tone shift. Frieren is literally one of the strongest mages in the world but is forced to participate in this game with a bunch of new characters... its just so whack. And this seems to be the entire back half of the first season. Ima finish it but prob won't watch season 2 unless the last episodes CMV.