Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

The first 17 episodes of this show are fantastic. Very reminiscent of adventure shows I really enjoyed like Kino's Journey and Girls' Last Tour. Was a big fan of the show essentially being these characters going on a bunch of sidequests in the midst of a much bigger journey. Even then, when the action comes in, it's done mostly very intelligently and doesn't focus too much on the predictable tropes you'd expect. Then you get into the Mage Exam arc which focuses way too much on combat, by far the weakest element of the show. I wasn't really a fan of how it expanded onhow magic worked, because it ultimately just felt like My Hero Academia bullshit to me. My powers are that I can control water! I can use ice! I can use empathy... whatever that means! This is where that dreaded shounen tag rears its ugly head and the show starts to drag a bit. You get this sudden introduction of a bunch of relatively forgettable characters fighting each other only to stop for 20 minutes to explain their magic or their backgrounds or whatever. Some of them are okay, but for the most part I just really didn't care.

Luckily, this is only truly bad during the dumb bird catching episodes. The dungeon crawling stuff and fighting the replicas was at least a bit more interesting and fun. I just don't think this mage exam stuff needed to last this long. It's a massive genre and tone shift from what the show initially sets itself up as. I didn't hate it or anything, it just felt much more like typical shounen slop, so I was disappointed that it went in this direction.

With all that being said, a part of me almost wants to give this a lower score, but it does what it does extremely well. Animation is great throughout, music is exceptional, and it manages to balance its drama and comedy pretty well. I can see why a lot of people like this. Don't really get why it hit #1, but hey recency bias gonna recency bias. It is a great show, but far from a masterpiece.