Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Just throwing hot takes here TL:DR. This series is the embodiment of MID. Mediocre world building for a fantasy series. Mediocre characterization for a Slice of Life series. Mediocre action/battle for a action shonen series First, story. The "nostalgia" premise/concept at first looks interesting, but it keep get dragged and milked to death. The plot barely moving, it keeps meandering and meandering. Always throwing the already dried-up "nostalgia" for every episode. If you look at other series with same concept, like To Your Eternity, you could tell that the story quality differences are like day and night. Pretty sure that the author doesn't know what to dowith the series outside the already dried-up "nostalgia" part, despite it has TONS of unexplored parts that can be improved.

Second, the world building. Being a high-fantasy series, you would expect great world building on it. But no, this series only has cheap RPG setting, even isekai slop has better world building than Frieren, let alone be compared with fantasy masterpiece such as Dungeon Meshi, or Witch Hat Atelier who has much more detailed and creative world building. Also don't expect creative magic system in this series despite it's focused on magic, because the writing is so lazy and inconsistent, and the author always take out the "Deus Ex Machina" magic all the time.

Third, the character. The characters are uninteresting and bland as f*ck. If you think it's special for being stoic and zero expression all the time, well sucks to be you, it's straight up BORING AND LAZY CHARACTER DESIGN, and you can't change my mind. Imagine the characters are dying with painful wounds, and their characters faces are literally "😑". There's no characters has special left mark with their personality for me. And in addition, if you looks at the main source (manga), the author keeps adding tons of forgettable and unnecessary side characters.

Lastly, the animation and production values. Finally, the only great part of the series. While the production value are high tier for SoL series, the action/battle are still underwhelming compared to actual action shonen anime out there. Also, the plots keep the characters from using interesting and flashy magic, so blame the author lol. Also, it's funny that Frieren fans slandering the action shonen fans, while their favorite anime also is a shonen that hardly carried by animation (because the story and characters are mediocre)

Yeah, thats it. Idk why it can sits at #1 while it's so mediocre, and no way it's better than something like FMAB, Steins:Gate, Monster etc etc. Idk that anime fans can falling this low. Even if you read the manga, I can say that it's average at best (lazy panelling, zero expression characters, bland arts etc etc). I would give 5/10, but considering that the animation are quite good, I'll give 6/10 instead.