Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Inherently joyous yet holistically bland. The most fun boredom can get. The nicest tasting air iykwim. A production masterpiece that blends the mundane with the fantastical. An iyashikei battle shounen. Neither here nor there really. On paper, Frieren’s proof of concept sounds nothing short of incredible: a melancholic pilgrimage to heaven, through autumnal forests and peaceful villages, chasing the meaning of the past, the depths of humanity, and each other. Yet it is way too pronounced in its (non)thematic and/or superficial evocations for me to really deeply care about what's going on. It's 28 episodes long yet feels weightless because of how little it says duringthe entirety of those 700 minutes. The fact that nearly everyone makes the same points about the show—its flirtations with remembrance, memory, and time—reveals just how belaboured and preordained its insights are. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when a series is billed as "contemplative" and "meaningful", you’d expect either more emotional heft or at least a fresher, deeper exploration of those ideas than just recalling them ad nauseam.

Aside from the humour (juvenile stuff appeals to me don't ask why), I didn’t enjoy much else. There's astoundingly little character work here: the cast barely grows beyond their stock personalities, with Frieren herself being the only dynamic exception. Even the worldbuilding fails to make itself feel alive or distinct. Every town, every person feels the same, to the point where you get no sense of progression the heroes are making, because everything is treated like an RPG encounter. Heck, the entire setting seems mostly ripped from a random RPG whenever it pivots to its medieval setting. I had little to no sense of the scale of how vast this journey is in the present, nor how big or difficult it was for the heroes’ party in the past. Even the thousand-year-old flashbacks felt like they could’ve been only a couple of years ago because again, the show does nothing to establish a meaningful sense or flow of time. This sameness also bleeds into its depiction of species—elves, dwarves, humans—who are essentially interchangeable except for lifespan. If any prodigious human with the right strength/mana can fill the same role, then what’s the point of their distinctions? Why this level of anthropocentrism in a fantasy series? Maybe because it lacks the imagination to craft a world beyond human sentiments, unlike the literary pool it draws from. Even the wonky magic system further undermines variety, since competent mages can nullify the need for vanguards or priests by simply being “good”.

One of the show’s biggest misses is how it discards the weight of Frieren’s thousand-year lifespan. Her abnormal perception of time is reduced to just two focal flashbacks—one of which is only 80 years ago. Textually, this tells us she views time differently, but it does little to deepen her tale. The earlier episodes briefly cast light on her reactions to time, but these moments are more or less played for comedy as the show progresses. For such a central premise, it’s a strangely forgettable way of exploring her character. The back half of this show then devolves into the most banal rendition of the Hunter Exam arc, halting any sense of intrigue or adventure it was once trying to build and shifting from somewhat alluring naturalistic fantasy to Dungeons and Dragons.

Demons, I've heard, present a fresher take on antagonists in the sense that they're wholly irredeemable entities that you can't talk-no-jutsu your way into empathy with. And while any prospect of understanding is nullified with them, they don't provide any interesting layers to the overall narrative (except being, like, very easy to co-opt xd.) The whole world of Frieren is then carved into two neat halves: absolute good and absolute evil. Which, if you couldn't tell, tanks any prospect of complexity and depth. Non-demons are inherently good, with very few outliers introduced later on who display inhumanity (but are still in touch with it (?), so any potential of moral reckoning just diffuses anyway, okay.)

Frieren's opening episodes offer some of the strongest direction in how pace and mood synthesize with its themes, because loss and time are given nary a window to settle for Frieren. But instead of, idk, continuing this breakneck speed of time slipping through her fingers because of how short her companions’ lives are, her journey slows down to a crawl, with her development (what little that amounts to) happening at disproportionate speeds relative to her.

The show is a consistent production marvel: its western iconography and fantasy elements are beautiful when given space to exist. But it still leaves much to be desired in terms of design and execution. Characters are as unfeeling and unfettered by their environments as can be, being unusually stone-faced throughout much of the show except during banter. Music is also as predictable as can be. The world’s generic mechanisms are conveyed less through feeling and intrigue and more through interjections of backstories and expositions; some of them are genuinely handled really well earlier on but become increasingly egregious as the show goes on.

The series has momentary glimpses of heart and intrigue, but nothing strong enough to sustain enthusiasm. I stayed mostly for the stupid humour + I wanted to check why it was the critical darling of its season. Overall, while I see the appeal of a well-crafted seasonal that distinguishes itself from the heap of isekai, Frieren is, for me, serviceable yet mostly forgettable entertainment at best.

Like someone else said, "Truly So-So no Frieren."

tl;dr frieren feet good, frieren show ahhhhh