Review of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

The show is rated 9.37/10 on MAL at the time I am writing this review. Guess I should be grateful to all the Frieren fans for not ganging up on me when I posted on the discussion board of EP28 that "sorry, but this show is not going to be my anime of the year". To imitate what a YouTuber said, it's not Frieren, it must be me at fault here that the anime did not quite work for me as well as it did for the rest of you. But for the sake of discussion and for your entertainment, I will try to describemy experience and thoughts on Frieren after finishing Season 1.

Expectations before watching: As a huge fan of Madhouse Studio, I was very much hyped to watch Frieren before it aired last year. Never read the Frieren manga, I only vaguely knew the story as an "after-adventure" for LOTR archetypes. Having also watched Record of the Lodoss War, I could kinda appreciate the aesthetics the Japanese "high-fantasy" would go for, including the "longevity drama" everyone was talking about.

Actual experience: Yes, the stellar production value warrants my weekly following of the show. It was also fun to participate in the discussions with all the enthusiastic fans and Easter-egg-hunting YouTubers. However, somehow the harder I try to savor the story, the drama queen moments, the melancholic flashbacks and all the heavy-handed talks about magic talent/philosophy, the more I felt like Bilbo in his twilight years--"thin, stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread". At the same time, some elements became weird distractions for me in the show...in an annoying way. I will try to list out some notable things that worked or failed to work for me.

Recommended to: I am recommending this anime to Violet Evergarden fans despite myself. Frieren in many ways offered me a similar "vibe" and experience. It's honestly not quite my cup of tea, but I am sure the Violet Evergarden fans will find something to like here.

What worked for me:

++ Stellar production value. It must have cost Madhouse an arm and a leg to produce and refine this most ambitious package in recent years. 28 episodes aired across 6 months with almost every frame rendered like a classical oil painting. Fluid character animation and detailed character movement even in the most intense action sequences dwarfs even the equally impressive Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 (though Jujutsu Kaisen's action scenes are far more energetic and dramatic). It would be a no-brainer winner for all the best production design/costume design awards in "anime Oscar" (for whichever existing annual anime awards you most respect). I really cannot fault the overall audio-visual presentation of this show. It warrants a watch no matter what kind of anime audience you are.

++ Ending theme song by Milet. It's one of the most mesmerizing anime songs in recent years, and I have been a fan of Milet since her song in Vinland Saga Season 1. It's part of the show's audio-visual presentation package, but I think the song deserves a special mention.

+ Some well-written story arcs and nuanced characters. The initial 4-5 episodes form the beginning/embarking of Fern and Frieren's journey, which is a testament to the thoughtful composition of now and then, new and old in this show. There are subtle subtexts reverse-nested into the current plot/story, e.g. Frieren's former team discussing the meaning of "boring" adventure and taking on a disciple paralleling her new team. I really appreciate similar narrative techniques in movies. Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon and Bong Joon Ho's Madeo come to mind as masterpieces utilizing this technique. EP5-10 roughly form the "Demon's ploy" arc which discusses nature of beings and magical prowess in the midst of intense magic battles. This arc introduces the audience to probably the best written character in the show, The Great Mage Flamme who was Frieren's master. EP11-17 roughly form the "Team bonding and myth reconstruction" arc, which highlights the "feel-good" vibe of the show. For these first 3 story arcs in Season 1, I generally had a great time and would rate the show no less than 8/10.

+ Ambitious. If nothing else, an anime attempting to build a LOTR-type high-fantasy world and reconstruction of mythology in 2024 gets my respect and a slow clap.

What did not work for me:

-- Characterization. Having subdued main characters driving the story can be a tremendous asset to one's artistic vision instead of a liability. Brad Pitt was nominated for best leading actor in Oscars for his reserved and subtle performance in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner 2049 did similar magics with very few words. And I found both characters and performances phenomenal. Unfortunately, if Frieren went for a similar outcome with how it handled Fern and Frieren, I really cannot honestly say they succeeded. To quote a friend who really appreciated Frieren, the titular character is a "1000-yr-old teenager going through puberty". (*Holding my pukes back*) That premise can be fun, goofy, tragic and beautiful all at the same time, but Frieren's characterization just keeps falling apart for me. There is dampened melancholy, regret from past lives and her own way of reconciliation with her history all juxtaposed here, but the whole is less than the sum of all these parts. Case in point, Frieren gets trapped by the treasure chest mimics quite frequently. So OK she's got a goofy side. But that goofy-childish side never come together with her serious side to form a robust whole. At the end of the 2nd test for the mages (EP26), the mimic got her again, which should create some desirable levity for the conclusion of one of the gloomiest arcs so far. But all that sequence did for me was making me roll my eyes hard. Fern has similar problems. OK, she's an attractive and introverted tsundere with a heart of gold and enormous potential...who shoots "pew-pew" lethal sorcery at bad guys...and...occasionally punches her boyfriend...Uh, what else? Just some gal with a permanently empty gaze. Side characters sometimes have interesting backstories, but their exploits often creates annoying distractions for me.

-- Worldbuilding crumbles under the weight of the show's ambition and its glaring lack of substance. Medieval allegories and LOTR homages aside, Frieren's world feels...surprisingly empty. If the show meant to deconstruct/trivialize classical fantasy tropes/archetypes while also retroactively reconstruct them for a new generation, perhaps spend more time substantiating both the deconstruction and the reconstruction? This problem made the "feel-good" portions and the teary-eyed flashbacks a bit too forced and wishy-washy for me, almost as if they should feel good for the sake of feeling good. I guess just like Violet Evergarden fans, Frieren fans would argue that it's a "soft" worldbuilding which allows the characters to poetically emote or resonate. Unfortunately that did not work for me because main characters keep falling apart. In the show, all the talks about magic talent/ personal magical philosophy are a bit too heavy-handed without much substance. The magic system can be quite abstract or out of touch with reality. We got some jargons like "total mana", but the system never becomes robust enough to be regenerative (such as Hunter X Hunter's Nen system). For comparison, I am never the biggest fan of Harry Potter, but at least magic is interesting and intuitive in Harry Potter with its own regenerative logic. In the end I just found it the best to understand Frieren's magic power equivalent to Dragon Ball's power level. Frieren and Flamme are really just magical Freeza who happens to be "on the good side". Sorry, but I am honestly not impressed by that. While Frieren's cosmology superficially resembles LOTR, I find the author's view on power (and cosmic powers) very cynical and Nietzschean. That might not be a problem in itself. After all, many great manga/anime have similar cosmologies. But for Frieren, a show about retroactive humanistic reconstruction, that is a huge problem. I will discuss why in the following paragraph.

-- Pacing among other problems in the mage test arc. For an arc spanning 11 episodes which makes up about 40% of Season 1, it taxed my patience out while magnifying all the aforementioned problems and introduced new issues. Blatantly ripping off Hunter X Hunter's Hunter test arc, Frieren's mage test arc is hilariously inferior to the Hunter test arc in almost every way. In the Hunter test arc, the worldbuilding is phenomenal as it immerses the audience in the semi-anarchical world of Hunter. Survival is not guaranteed in the Hunter test, yet there are great mentors, reliable and loyal companions among various fleshed-out saints and scoundrels to befriends with or fight against. The audience quickly find many things to love about Gon, Killua, Netero and even Hisoka despite some of them having very limited screen time. But Frieren (and its author) just wants everything in their show. Semi-anarchical world like Hunter? Check. Feel-good conclusion? Check. Half a dozen sociopaths and yanderes among the competitors? Check. Chicken-soup style life-affirming messages? Check and check. Test rules which do not make much sense? Check and check. The main tester, the 2000-yr-old grandmaster mage who is just a gloating A-hole and downright unlikeable jerk because she wields absolute power of destruction? Check! (Note to the author: you do realize Serie is not that different from Sauron, don't you?) See, in my dumb understanding, the author is essentially saying that almost all the top mages are murderous psychopaths, but it's ok and life is good simply because they stop to smell the same roses on the roadside and listen to the same fairy tales like the rest of us. I am sorry but I honestly cannot buy into that sentiment, no matter how much chicken powder the author adds to this messed-up, deeply cynical chicken soup.

-- Annoying distractions. Like I mentioned above, dangerous sociopaths have a disturbingly high correlation with top mages in the world of Frieren. This means the mage test arc is flooded with unlikeable and cringey characters. To name a few, Ubel, Sense, Serie, Wirbel, Lernen and Denken. The author wants the audience to believe that beneath their murderously pragmatic side, they are all "deeply caring and sympathetic characters carrying their own regrets and torches". I am sorry but again I cannot honestly buy into that. Another annoying distraction might be my imagination, but am I the only one who find the exposing gothic lolita outfits for many characters overdone, distracting and at dissonance with the tone of the show?

Again, like I have always said. What did not work with me might work wonders for you, and there is no shame loving something that speaks to your heart in a very personal or private way. I just listed out some reasons why Frieren did not work for me, and I am open to concessions and future corrections when my anime-watching friends shed more light on Frieren's flooring brilliance for me. But for now, allow me to just say that maybe I am just weird and cannot vibe too much with Frieren.