Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Cute girls + isekai-esque fantasy setting. Heck, Frieren could take place in the same world as Mushoku Tensei, that's how similar they look. As with all anime fantasies these days the main inhabitants of such worlds are same-faced lolis whose only distinguishing features are the body parts they are sexualized by, ie Fern has her big breasts, Übel has her armpits and Frieren has her... feet? I was baffled when I found out how much fans get off the feet animation of Frieren, but maybe this explains why the anime spent so much resources on animating them with such detail. The first thing you learn inanimation is to focus on the great picture, so you usually simplify things like hands or feet to be able to work faster and more efficiently on the things people care about. But apparently times have changed and now everybody cares about what the little toe is doing.

Anyway, the anime is not bad, it's very well-made with great production values. It's just very uneventful. Characters are just walking around without much aim and nearly every episode has Frieren reminiscence about the past and how things were so cool back then... why couldn't we see those adventures instead? They sound a hell of a lot more eventful than what's going on in the present.
The characters seem to be aware of how boring this show is and lack any sort of facial expressiveness. Emotions like surprise or fear are never seen, at best Fern will pout or Frieren will smirk. There is an arc where supposedly emotionless demons are introduced and they showed more emotions than the humans, what's up with that? So even the few moments of tension in this otherwise slice of life type fantasy adventure are underplayed by how little the characters seem to care.

This also hurts the characters themselves due to how their personal journeys are undercut by them not really caring. Fern has a little mage exam arc going on but it's not like she does it because she cares, she just does it because why not. With Stark it's even worse, we see him train from time to time but it's more as a way to get rid of him to focus on Fern and Frieren. Stark mainly seems to exist to be shipped with Fern, without her he has barely anything going on that justifies his main character status.
There is a priest who joins for a while who has the most personality of them all and even shows emotions from time to time, but then he leaves and we go back to pouting + smirking.

Fans say it's okay that the show is uneventful and lacks tension because of the theme, but that seems like a copout given how banal the theme really is. It's about cherishing your time with your friends as long as you have them and bla, aka the safest and most generic theme everyone can agree with and where nobody runs the risk of being challenged or let alone offended by it. It's not even as good as it could've been because the main character is virtually immortal. If she was on her dying bed and looked back regretting her life decisions it would be dramatic, but as it is she will just redo her mistake by spending more time with a new group of people.

Lets be honest here, it's not the story or the theme that's the main appeal, it's more so that Frieren is an anime equivalent of ASMR. The pretty colors, the detailed movements, the subtle noises and all that stuff that tickles the senses are the reason why people enjoy this show. It's a show where you can perfectly shut your brain off while watching and have your senses do all the work for you. Which is not the worst I suppose, but kinda weird seeing an ASMR anime at the top of MAL. Like is this really all it takes?