Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

First of all, I would like to make it clear that this is an exceptional anime; however, definitely does not deserve to be ranked as number one TV series of all time…not yet at least. This is, of course, a subjective opinion and there is no way to establish an objective criteria for making criticism or giving scores. Nonetheless, Sousou no Frieren deserves more elaboration (this will be a short one though) in explaining its strong and relatively weak suits rather than just writing about its controversial ranking. I loved watching Frieren and its slowly progressing plot and satisfying portrayal of character development and relationships.Even though it is set in a fantasy world and the subject matter is closely linked to supernatural shounen cliches, it constantly subvert these tropes by adding a grain of realism that you would expect from a more grounded high fantasies or a postmodern retellings of mythological tales. I haven’t watched the series weekly, and through the middle point of the series, when the action parts elevates the show to a more versatile and unexpectedly engaging level, I thought this may very well deserve to grab the top spot.

Nevertheless, after a certain point, the flow of events has begun to feel more repetitive, and worse still, narrative takes a turn towards a very unnecessary exam arc that has never felt interesting enough even though it attempts to detach itself from the classical plot structures once again. The ending of the season also does not give the sense of a real closure for Frieren’s first season to be considered as a complete story that is satisfactory within itself while still leaving open door for further developments in new adventures.

In the end, Sousou no Frieren is an amazing prologue chapter for a work that has the prospect to reach into legendary status although it has not shown enough to be deemed as such yet; thus, it is in a way overrated. I am not really interested in fandoms or hype related to anime in general; therefore, I do not know anything about the reason behind this sudden explosion of the score, but I suspect it has great support from devoted fans. I personally wouldn’t put Frieren to my top 50 based on the first season of the anime (I have not read the manga. It is unrelated to score of the adaptation no matter how good it is. We do not give score for potential greatness), but it is definitely an extremely well made series that I would recommend everyone to watch.