Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Frieren is one of those shows that you cannot really evaluate properly after just watching 1-3 episodes. Its tone starts out calm, stoic and almost ethereal, something that most people are not used to when watching anime, so it's easy to believe this might be a sign of great narrative depth... But once you start scratching over the surface, you quickly realize how shallow Frieren truly is. SETTING Generic Tolkienian isekaislop. Set in a trite parody of medieval Europe where nothing ever seems to progress no matter how many centuries pass, it includes humans, elves, dwarves, demons, dragons... You know, the usual. Out of 28 episodes, therewasn't a single location or enemy that was even remotely original or thrilling. If you expected some elaborate worldbuilding, you'll be sorely disappointed.

STORY
When something is unique and different, that means either one of two things: it's better than average, or it's worse than average. The case of Frieren is the latter. The plot is entirely driven by the characters, and the characters are absolutely OBSSESED by the past, to a sickening degree. A dead family, a dead mentor, a dead friend, a dead hero, a dead lover... It just never ends. Some reflection over the fleetingness of life is fine, but everything in Frieren is blatant nostalgia-bait with the specific intent of inducing warm and cozy and fuzzy feelings into the viewer. This is made worse by the fact that the history of Frieren is exclusively told through brief disjointed flashbacks every 10 seconds. It's like watching the trilogy of Star Wars sequels, except there are no already established elements to be nostalgic about. This obsession with the past is probably due to the fact that no character is actually interested in the present. "Who or what is a Demon Lord?", "Why does anyone fight it?" and "What's up with magic anyway?" are evidently questions not worth answering to. The original 4-hero party was essentially just a group of coworkers who once worked together on some random project and then went their separate ways. They didn't care enough about each other to meet more than once every 50 years, yet the viewer should care?

CHARACTERS
As previously stated, every character in Frieren is a marionette attached to the strings of the past. Nobody knows what they want in life or what they even like, they all just do what they think their (dead) acquaintances might want them to do. No personal agency, no higher morality, no future goals. In short, it feels like every character just lives to die. As for their personal growth, it's always pretty much over by the end of their introductory episodes. If I had to give some additional insight on each character:
- Frieren
Gotta give credit where credit is due, Frieren is the average anime watcher's ultimate fantasy: socially inept and borderline autistic, yet nigh-omnipotent, universally loved and eternally young and beautiful. No wonder everyone has a picture of Frieren as their social media avatar nowadays.
- Fern
Super-talented genius child who later becomes super-talented genius mother-figure. Her personality is even more abrasive and aimless than Frieren's, but cute funny faces are apparently more than enough to forgive that.
- Stark
Who?
- Sein
One of the better characters in this series, since he has at least a realistic goal to strive towards in the present (even though he's still chained to the past like everyone else).
- Demons
They're not even characters, just mindless plot devices.
- Everyone else
Dead and/or irrelevant.

BATTLES
The magic system of Frieren is about as fleshed out as Harry Potter's. All you need to know is that some individuals have more mana than others, everthing else is flavor. The First-Class Mage Exam could have been a good opportunity for an original tournament arc and more exposition on the battles, but it turned out to be barely more than filler.

PRODUCTION
The drawings are pretty, the animations are fluid and the music is both soothing and freshing. That's true. For the first few episodes. But by the 28th episode, the style gets so repetitive and boring that the viewer is at serious risk of falling asleep. This is also due to the fact that the animators took almost no artistic liberty with the designs and environments; it's all so generic it might as well have been generated by AI. The openings and endings are nice, the first-half ones in particular, I'll give them that.

VERDICT
Given the sheer amount of laughable 10/10 preliminary reviews and the fact that this is one of the worst shows produced by Madhouse in at least the past 20 years, a score of 1/10 is definitely appropriate.