Frieren: Beyond Season’s End
It’s a tale as old as time: throughout a new wave of anime seasons, one you’ve never heard of catches your attention with near unanimous acclaim from everyone who’s looked its direction. This once happened to me with Jujutsu Kaisen. Then, with Blue Box. Now, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End has finally presented itself to me, after much vouching from several close friends. I’m happy to report that Frieren has passed the test with flying colors. This beauty of this series cannot be understated, and here’s why it’s important for you to catch up before its third season premieres in October of next year.
Frieren presents itself as another anime with RPG elements following a party of various classes on a quest. However, the important plot beats lie in the characters’ interactions with each other and how they both learn, the pacing showing both sides of this growth. The party the series follows is actually the mage Frieren’s second party, following her first whom she accompanied to slay the Demon King. As we’re shown throughout her travels with the second party, there was much about humanity Frieren took for granted in the moment. Being an elven mage with a lifespan of over 1000 years, the way Frieren processes a regular human interaction or even just views it works much differently from someone with a normal mortal lifespan. When Himmel, the first party’s hero, passes away, Frieren vows to spend the rest of her time understanding humanity now that she’s lost the chance to better understand the ones she’d already grown close to. Now joined by her fostered apprentice Fern and the young Stark, a mage and a warrior respectively both looked after by former party members, Frieren begins her journey to Aureole. Said to be every soul’s final resting place, Frieren travels with the two to look back on her expeditions with the hero party in hopes she may see Himmel one last time.
That may have been a mouthful, and admittedly sounded like a bloated story to follow even for me when I first picked up the series. However, you as a viewer are never thrown right into the madness from the start of any given episode. The whole rhythm of Frieren never feels frantic or fast-paced, which is fitting given the setting of the mage looking back on the land she’s already come to know through the hero party’s triumphs. Every episode takes it slow, letting the viewer get to know the party as the party gets to know each other. This is by no means a boring approach, as each aspect of Fern, Frieren, or Stark explored in a given segment keeps the viewer engaged with just how human it makes them feel, even the elven mage. I’d argue her strides are the most important, not just because of her main character status. Setting out on this journey to understand humanity, the viewer gets to watch as Frieren shares much more with the human race than she ever thought possible.
Going back to Blue Box, Frieren has probably the most consistently beautiful visuals that elevate its emotional stakes since the sports anime wrapped in March of last year. Each strand of hair moving in the wind, every subtle change in a character’s expression is something a viewer will pick up. No matter the surface-level significance of one of these cuts, the emotional resonance in the show can be enough of a slow burn that you’ll pick up a habit of watching all intently. As the show progresses, the dynamic between the party feels less like a dynamic and more like each of them is a moving cog that requires each other to function. It’s far from the clearest-cut example of the found family trope I’ve seen in a show like this, as each member of the party has their own complicated history with a family. Fern and Stark were both raised by different members of the hero party when they were young, though both were orphans of war.
Both seasons of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End are now available to stream on Netflix, Disney+ with Hulu, and Crunchyroll.