Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
Sousou no Frieren is being considered the best anime ever in this website. Personally, my own experience with Frieren was watching the very first episode when it released, thinking it was just fine, and then forgetting about it until I saw a lot of people over the internet praise it like it's the second coming of Christ. I ignored it at first, but eventually I got too curious and decided to go watch the rest of the anime. After binge watching it in like 3 days, my honest and objective opinion is...Frieren is extremely overrated. And anyone who actually believes this is the best animeever, or that it even belongs in a top 50th, clearly have not watched more than 5 anime.
It is by no means horrible, but it's one of the most "okay" anime I've ever watched. And I know exactly why it is so popular with normies. The anime panders HARD to your emotions. What I mean by that is that almost every episode tries to make you cry and feel sad about characters that you barely know anything about. In the very first episode they give us a funeral scene, of a character you know nothing about, and we see Frieren crying. I mean I get what the scene is representing, but there was not enough buildup for me to care. And pretty much every episode tries to pull on your heartstrings, so yeah I can see why it was so impactful for some people, especially women. Personally I find it hard to cry over sad scenes that are build up through short flashbacks. Every time it happened it made me wish that this anime was like a season 2, and that Frieren's first adventure was season 1. That would had definitely made me care way more. In fact, the flashbacks made the first adventure way more interesting than what we actually get to watch.
The plot is by far the weakest part of this anime, and I can easily explain everything that happens in the 28 episodes. Frieren finishes her first adventure, then she goes on her own adventure with a new disciple, then they meet the disciple of Frieren's friend, and all three of them travel together to defeat the demon lord or whatever, and during the journey Frieren keeps going through places she has been with her previous party, and every time Frieren has sad flashbacks, then sometimes you get some world building, and eventually the anime gets to the "competition arc" and that's pretty much it for the rest of the season. It is a very slow anime, and season 1 feels like it was 20% of what the complete story is, which makes it even funnier that people are already praising it so hard. Maybe if this was season 3, but so far nothing really that amazing happened to consider this story even close to decent, and it's not even unique or anything.
In all honesty I did not hate the anime, cuz otherwise I wouldn't have finished it. There's a couple good moments and characters that made me wish there was already second season to watch, because as it is the story is just unfinished, and what I have seen so far isn't enough for me to recommend this anime over all the actually great series out there.