Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Frieren was a huge disappointment. I'm a huge fantasy fan and have read/watched a lot of it, and I'm a fan of the genre (unfortunately, since it's one of the genres with the highest amount of shoddy work out there, it's hard to find truly good series among the bad ones). I liked the first episodes; they were a good foundation, and I don't expect much from the beginning of a story... The problem came as I progressed. As soon as they introduced the demons, I started to notice how incredibly weak the writing in this series is, and how it seems to rely entirely onthe visuals (which are undeniably excellent; the direction and animation are incredible). But I'm not a fantasy fan because I like bright lights, I'm a fantasy fan because I like good stories and characters, and there's not even a hint of that here.
And as if that weren't enough, then comes the magic exam saga, incredibly long and completely pointless, and full of fights I didn't care about.
Maybe it was also the high expectations, since I heard it had excellent world building (false, there isn't even world building in this series, every location is as anonymous and dead as a Hollywood set), excellent writing and character development (but where? The characters are identical from their first appearance to their last, with the exception of Frieren who has a minimum of evolution from episode 1 to 3, but that's not character development, it's the incipit of the story) and instead I found myself faced with a fantasy battle shonen full of aura farming (because for some authors and viewers not showing human emotions is cool, for me it's just a stupid trend).
I consider the fact that this anime is at the top of the list yet another demonstration that people don't care about the content, but how beautiful the packaging is.