Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

I loved all the main characters: Himmel, Fern, Frieren, Heiter, and Stark. Each had their own unique personality despite not having any major depth to them. While there isn't a great deal of character development, you can see the progression through Frieren's present and past selves – how she desires to rekindle the bonds and relationships she had with her party. The dry, deadpan humor, often involving Frieren's eccentricities or Fern's exasperation, is a huge part of the show's charm. I didn't care much for Fern as a character, probably because she embodied strong characteristics of a typical teenage girl: getting mad over simple situations, notexplaining herself and blaming others, and being overly judgmental. But then she would be willing to listen, reflect, and admit her shortcomings, only to revert to old habits, which was pretty funny! I definitely had mixed feelings when it came to Fern.

*Frieren* intentionally focuses its world-building on emotional journeys and the passage of time, often leaving the broader fantasy elements as a backdrop rather than a foreground.

The fragility of human life compared to Frieren's extraordinarily long life is shown beautifully. So beautiful it's sad, yet hopeful at the same time. Frieren never truly has any lasting friendships because of her immense lifespan as an elf, and it's also poignant to see that she never bonds with anyone of her own kind.

The series offers a compelling mix of dungeon exploring, fight scenes (though minimal), overpowered characters, a bit of slice-of-life, emotional depth, slow pacing, comedy, adventure, drama, fantasy, and magic. The way it incorporates all these diverse genres into one 28-episode series without messing it up is definitely noteworthy.

You constantly get a change of setting at least every other episode. You're introduced to a new problem, job, character, or struggle, or a combination of these. This keeps the plot engaged, and all these situations almost always connect to Frieren's past in some form, telling a deeper story about who she was. Despite how quickly these exchanges happen, the show does a good job of maintaining a very slow pace. I thoroughly enjoyed the storytelling.

The power system revolved around magic, which was funny and interesting, but nothing truly unique or new. Defensive magic, such as shields, was a constant topic of conversation, more so than offensive magic. Power scaling wasn't an issue because the characters were generally presented as either strong, mid, or low-level mages. The only significant growth you saw was in Fern, and even that was minimal.

The fight scenes were visually impressive, but that's about it; nothing overtly groundbreaking. Most of the "good fights" were just flashy displays of random spells we had no clear understanding of. Fire, lightning, and ice popping up, and spells clashing against other spells – these were more like cool light displays. With no understanding of what constituted a strong or weak spell, or even what kind of spell it was, the battles felt somewhat pointless. The only thing that made you aware of a spell's potential strength was how powerful you already knew the mage to be. And considering there aren't many fights, it doesn't mean much to discern this.

Magic is constantly shown as a more comedic and personal muse for Frieren. Instead of symbolizing superior strength and power, it was about cleaning tough stains on clothes and creating flowers 😂, which I loved. It was more symbolic and personally deeper in nature for Frieren.

I wished that there was more talk about the Demon King and her party's encounters with him. I also wished the characters were more diverse fantasy creatures like demi-humans, beasts, talking plants, etc., beyond just humans, demons, elves, and monsters, especially when traveling to different towns. The places they visited were not very unique or interesting. Most, if not all, were very similar, and there wasn't anything that truly stood out about them. They often had the same layout, which felt far off from the distinctiveness of previous towns.