Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
Non-spoiler review: Seen quite a lot of animes and it's rare to see an anime with iyashikei elements in the narrative to have widespread fame into the mainstream. Frieren does a perfect job in fusing so many themes into its plot without exaggerating the cliche. As a person who has seen his fair share of animes to a point where I think animes have become saturated and predictable, that I only need to watch the first 5 minutes to know the entire anime. I more or less couldn't with Frieren, and that made me thoroughly enjoy this anime. A very uniquely executed anime to its entiretyfrom character to story development. What this anime does perfectly is that it never exaggerates the different narrative themes it takes from but to balance it out to fit what it tries to portray: a life lesson in the world of action adventure and magic.
Development of story and characters is what I enjoyed the most in the show, and it does a great job in pacing such characters from newly introduced ones later on in the anime and further developing the existing ones. The character development is so well done, I haven't seen such an anime for a long time that has done so well with character and story pacing, that it creates this immersive bubble to have an actual connection to the series, and I think this outclasses a lot of animes that were priorly "popular" in its category before frieren came out. Only a handful of animes achieved proper emotional attachment with a long progressive unique storyline with a good enough pacing, and frieren did it better in all aspects. Even if Frieren's storyline seemed to be just another "run of the mill defeat the demon king adventure", yet the adventure doesn't feel like it's "just another destroy the demon king journey" that every fantasy anime has already done many times over. Frieren's plot is so straight-forward but at the same time very unique like no other anime has come to do, because of the style and execution that it has created with its pacing and progression, and that so many factors and great timing played a part in making the anime fantastic.
For example, here is another factor Frieren does great in. You ever seen an anime where they do great at one thing, but exaggerate in another. Maybe some anime series out there the drama gets too much, the comedy is over the top, or a few character personalities are overly contrasting that is indifferent in comparison to reality for how exaggeratingly "pervy, edgy, optimistic, pessmistic, etc" they are. However, Freiren never leaned on one thing too much, it never exaggerated a narrative, the comedy, drama, fantasy, dialogue, or the characters it tries to present to you and be percieved as this "yet another anime "thing".", it was very well balanced all throughout in so many areas where nothing became a nuisance. And I loved that.
Anime for these past years has become so boring nowadays for a picky viewer like me, frieren reminded me the enjoyment of what anime can bring. And I dont think, as far as my memory can remember from all the series I have came to witness in my anime fandom years, that any anime has done the same level of execution style of story-telling that Sousou no Frieren did, I can't recall any, I think Frieren by far, is the only one with such a style. Call it subjective, but when you've been calling every anime season boring, "yet just another anime cliche" before the release of frieren, it means something to me.
Great Anime, recommended to anyone who enjoys similar themes and genres.