Part II - It Got Worse (and Why)
"[...] there’s an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present. Or it could be that, in one very important sense, there is no present to grasp and articulate anymore." - Mark Fisher (Ghosts of My Life)
The anime adaptation of Frieren - Beyond Journey's End is a sensation. Not quality-wise, as I believe it to be a disappointing mess which I've already outlined in my review of the anime itself, but popularity-wise, in terms of "hype", it you will. It is currently (as of 2025, January 10th) the #1 anime on MAL
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as well as the manga being in the top 40. So what is it, that makes Frieren tick for so many, and why is it that I, specifically, think it to be an incoherent, disappointing, confused and headache-inducing mess? Allow me to try to explain and hopefully convince you that, yes, I am an extremely pretentious person, but no, I don't have any personal bias, this is a real and actual reason to dislike this story.
In Japanese, the original title is Sousou no Frieren, which contains a double entendre of "to bury" and "to kill", which resulted in the two less popular translations of Frieren at the Funeral and Frieren the Slayer. This latter one will be the only actual title that ends up being relevant or meaningful but let's ruminate on both Frieren at the Funeral, and the canonical subtitle of its English release, Beyond Journey's End. The original setup of the overarching "plot", if one can call it thus, is the death of Himmel, the hero, an extremely shallow and two-dimensional character who was massively in love with our clueless main character, Frieren, the elf. It is past the point of Himmel's death that Frieren embarks on a journey towards understanding the nature of humans, which sparks the first "philosophical" theme of this mess we're in, the extremely long life-span of elves and its effect on their relationships with the other races. Thus, the funeral, since that's our kick-off. The other major theme is meant to be a deconstruction of the hero's journey as I'm sure many intelligent reviewers have already informed you, since Frieren and Himmel were part of a heroic party of adventurers, whose quest was to save the world, and the story starts after their success already. So we have a genuinely intriguing philosophical conundrum about the passage of time, its dilution in its abundance, etc. as well as a deconstructive critique of the open-ended nature of the hero's journey on paper. What this outlines is what you, the hypothetical reader of this review who presumably hasn't read or watched Frieren, must already know, as this is what everyone talks about. Let's explore why this is meaningless to any potential readers of the actual work now.
Frieren begins as something close to an iyashikei. (In order not to make this review even longer, I urge you to look up the term if it's alien to you, it's even present here on MAL!) The extreme sluggishness of the initial micro-plots and the calm meandering and meaningless pseudo-philosophizing sets up a show which will keep ruminating and meditating on its hefty themes which we've outlined, until, very early on, suddenly it does not wish to be this way anymore. There arises the need once again for contrived reasons for another journey to begin with Frieren and her newfound apprentice, Fern, and they even get a new member of a party, a warrior, so it truly just ends up falling back into the trope it meant to deconstruct, a simple journey in fantasy. Frieren ceases to soul-search in a way similar to any good iyashikei or even a decent intellectually-aligned slice of life and begins its first demon-focused arc. This leads to little focus on any themes of philosophical or emotional merit and instead shows us the action-packed world of a character who is completely undefeatable for plot reasons, which I'll get back into later. Frieren turns, suddenly and heavily, into a shonen, and a fake-deep battle shonen at that. From this point onwards, there will be a formula of one major arc of battles and action followed by some meandering and meaningless side-questing on the major journey, and this formula persists to even the most recent chapters. This also requires some elaboration momentarily.
With this sudden shift into battle-heavy arcs the story loses most of the weight that it had in the very beginning, and the issue that keeps the reader reading it to begin with is lost slowly but surely. The battles themselves are not much to write home about. There are never any stakes as it's seemingly impossible to kill any of the main characters and even when a character were to be killed, they are always miraculously saved or brought back in some way. Character retention, despite this, is abysmal, as most of the cast that is introduced in the (rightfully) dreaded tournament segment of the Mage License Exam or whatever it's called arc is relegated to being tertiary characters that simply assist one-by-one, occasionally even two of them, per major arc of the story, so you have other characters who fight aside from the main three, who are obviously untouchable and unkillable. The fights themselves, in minor arcs, often happen off-screen or are squared away with one minor panel, while the major ones often consist of the main characters being pinned down by some force they have no way of defeating until suddenly Frieren does The Thing and every evildoer dies instantly, the end. So, for a battle-focused shonen, it's actually horrendous.
Moving on, what about the initial themes and the focus on philosophical rumination, where does it go from then on? Well, you know, uhh, fuckin' nowhere. All of its themes derived from real thinkers tend to be extremely surface level and not even particularly meaningfully explored. The entire Golden City arc is focused around an exploration of the concept of qualia by a demonic character named Macht. His entire shtick is attempting to find out what the difference is in a human's and a demon's Nagelian "what-is-it-likeness", colloquially known as qualia. For those of you who haven't heard of Nagel, this is a philosophical paper from 1974, which explores the non-mechanical, non-physical function of qualia, the quality of experience. There is a difference in all species' qualia, which is evident from the beginning of the debate. Where does Frieren take its meditations on qualia? Nowhere. The conclusion that is drawn from Macht's arc is that qualia... exists. And people are different from demons. Therefore coexistence between them must result in bloodshed. So, once again, it's a long-winded and pseudo-intellectual excuse to have our main characters fight the demon. These themes are never explored beyond the assumed intelligence of the 14-to-16-year-old reader, so one is never given any meaningful thoughts to grapple with. This is the high schooler's idea of deep writing.
Speaking of the writing: it gets worse. As most other things, the writing is seemingly relegated to being a secondary thing to the action and spectacle so oftentimes, entire chapters are dedicated to characters spewing whole pages of meaningless exposition to one another, all in the name of "world building", completely outside of their general characteristics. Another issue with it is that it's ridiculously stilted and wooden, there is often zero personality to the writing, aside from specific characters having laser-focused extremely specific one-liners which they are legally required to say every single time they are on-screen. It becomes tiring quite quickly and fails at making the characters anything more than two-dimensional caricatures of what a meaningful personage is. Despite this, information about the world isn't abundant, so every other chapter, more exposition is needed, thus further demolishing the personality of conversations.
The world that we've built up thus far in these 140 chapters, by the by, is extremely derivative and I wouldn't hesitate to call it boring. It sometimes plays around with the joke of expectations, like the one point where it is implied that dwarves live underground and a dwarf corrects this by saying they do live above-ground, but the whole reason this joke even works to begin with is because so much of the world is strict rip-offs of Tolkienian Western fantasy writing that it's almost miraculously amusing when something actually differs. Aside from this, any meaningful political theme of the world is often quickly brushed away. The conclusion, for example, of the Golden City arc, would, in any coherent setting, have wide repercussions on the world at large, or at least the area of it that the main party is traversing at that time, and yet all we get is a stupid excuse for another side-quest to begin and then it never matters ever again.
The story often seems to tease at returning momentarily to the soothing quality of its early iyashikei-esque arcs by suddenly grinding to a halt, but especially in the arcs following those that have been animated, any small gesture or interaction is relegated to wordless, single-panel pictures, so the tiny moments and memories that Frieren is meant to cherish by measure of the original meaning of the story are never actually seen or touched by the reader. They, as well as most smaller fights, take a "tell, don't show" approach, of a Marvel-quality one-liner telling the reader "this place sure was interesting" or "this fight sure was tough", but those qualities are never explored, simply implied.
Another telltale sign of the extremely diminishing creativity of the author is shown to those with any cursory understanding of the German language, as all the characters and locales are named in German and if you understand what the specific words mean, it becomes extremely childish, once again reinforcing what I said about the high school-tier writing. A strong warrior quite literally named "strong", a mage who turns things into gold called "to make", a man building a bridge to go to the other side of a canyon called "to go", it's extremely disillusioning and ruins my immersion readily, whenever it rears its ugly head.
A lack of direction and creativity also ends up demolishing this main theme of self-reflection and coming to grips with one's mistakes, missed opportunities, just overall an interaction in the bygone past, when (from here on, this paragraph will be a mild spoiler) Frieren gets quite literally just transported into the past to meet the members of her heroic party again. This is not only in complete opposition to the very point of the entire story but it ends up resulting in absolutely nothing for the following 20 chapters.
Another extremely important portent of doom that I feel compelled to address has to do with what I previously mentioned, character retention. As I previously mentioned in my review of the anime adaptation, there is a character added to the main party quite early on, Sein, who means to establish the proper chemistry of the group as the fourth member, which also creates the analogue to the original Hero's party, as they were also four members and had their own priest, which Sein serves the purpose of. He is then unceremoniously written out of the story. In the most recent arc, I'm assuming in response to the absolute disbelief of the anime's follower base, he is written back into the story just as unceremoniously as he left, and guess what? He exists initially just for the convenience of saving the life of a character who might otherwise have died, but out of convenience, his own personal goal of finding his childhood best friend ends up once again intersecting completely with Frieren's own party's goal, as one of their assailants is, in fact, the very same best friend. How convenient!
Speaking of convenience to the plot, it will oftentimes happen that the timelines of the villains and heroes just so happen to line up so no actually enticing and exciting developments happen and things are simply proceeding exactly as the story needs them to, in order to stay properly as the hero's journey requires them to. Ever wonder why Frieren's deciphering of a spell and her opponent's demolishing of the magic barrier protecting Frieren and her party both take exactly two months? That's right, it's just because the author wrote themselves into a corner and now needs things to conveniently line up so the story does not veer into anything interesting or exciting.
All of these characters, Sein, Denken, Land, Übel, etc. seem to exist primarily just to be devices to further Frieren's journey, so let's finally address the elephant in the room: What the fuck is the point of Frieren even taking this journey, if it's only the battling, banter and one-liners we get from it? Absolutely fuckin' nothing, there is no development to be gained and all of the moments they're meant to cherish are buried under this pseudo-intellectual drivel and boring, one-sided battling. Enemies become more and more exaggerated until this initially quiet story about a mage grappling with mortality and her own lack of it is fighting in a huge metropolitan wizard town against fucking shadow assassin warriors who are supposedly the strongest combatants in an entire empire but for contrived plot reasons have gone rogue and now simply wish to kill all mages. I know, that seems exaggerated, but no, their super evil and very meaningful goal is quite literally to "extinguish all mages". When did this story about the value of life, of memory, of nostalgia, of cherishing the little moments, suddenly turn into John Wick and the Sorcerer's Stone?
"As long as no more than a small minority are capable of reading and writing, universal alphabetization seems like a messianic project. Only once everyone has this ability does one notice the catastrophe that almost no one can do it properly." - Peter Sloterdijk (Du mußt dein Leben ändern)
I need also to address the effect that the anime adaptation had on the manga and its reception. Let's get something out of the way here: The anime does, in fact, repair a lot of the cracks in the firmament. The music, the animation, the color, the presentation, all of these do have an effect on the overall emotional value of the downtime and they even manage to make the meaningless and shallow battles in the story somewhat more enjoyable, even if the faults and stilted, wooden nature of the writing will show through regardless, in the end, just as it did for a lot of people during the Exam arc of the anime. This will, likely, fix some of the smaller issues I had with the foundation of the manga, when the second season is released and these things are put into proper motion, but the issues at large are with the very body of the work, rather than its organs in the aesthetic foundation. The story itself is flawed and bleeding out, devoid of connection to those organs in many points, whereupon closer inspection will reveal that it is simply not as profound as one might have craved.
The actual art and presentation of the manga is not great. The faces are unsearchable, since most characters have very little expression to back up any emotional substance to their sentiments, as well as any active events, such as battles, being of little to no visual substance as well. The backgrounds are pretty, but when what ought to be the foreground is in the background, pretty won't save it from becoming devoid of connection, once more.
In order to try and focus down my criticisms, I will attempt to now establish an overall frame of critique for Frieren. The primary problem that I'd like to establish is that despite the initial setting and premise, the author clearly does not understand how to create the atmosphere that they were aiming for, nor the themes that they wanted to establish, in a consistent and coherent way. This confusion about their own work led them to create something that goes the opposite direction and ends up simply recreating the trope the work was attempting to deconstruct. In this failed attempt, the characters and their development is quite readily sacrificed, the dialogue is oversimplified and heavy terminus is used only to create the idea that something meaningful and deep is being conveyed without any actual conveyance of such things, the side characters and secondary arcs are meaningless and happen primarily off-screen anyway, and the story seems to be going nowhere anyway, since not much of substance has happened since the Exam arc, except for introductions to more imposing demons that meant absolutely nothing and had zero emotional weight. The humor also became so utterly formulaic that in the last 80 chapters of the manga I snorted at one joke and chuckled at one other, there were no more reactions. I might be a humorless fuck, but I'd still like to think I can at least laugh. So, with all that said, can we at least say that it succeeds at being the battle shonen that it has become? Nope, as I've established, that's also out the window quite readily.
"One ascends into profundity, but profundity is nothing but a complication of the shallows, and 'one' is nowhere." - Nick Land (The Thirst for Annihilation)
In order not to complicate this always-already complicated review any further, I will conclude here: Frieren is a mediocre battle shonen hidden beneath a veneer of meaningless platitudes towards surface-level ontological and epistemological themes that could be more aptly and meaningfully explored in singular chapter of the stellar iyashikei that Frieren was once seemingly meant to be. An artifact of charred remains, a dream of unfulfilled promise in the face of complete and utter failure. Frieren manages not simply to be Gonzalez, the mechanical fuck-up, the unforced error, that leads to all further fuck-ups, but also to be Bartman, the poster boy for its own damn failure, parading the corpse of a particularly enticing and relatively unique story, stored in a robe woven from the fabric of derivative, boring and drab shlock.
If you love battle shonen that makes you seem way smarter than you actually are to your classmates in the 9th grade, pick this up. If you want something that actually delivers on any of the promise of the extremely strong beginning, try Mushishi or Violet Evergarden or whatever. Or just drop it 4-5 episodes or so into the anime. Have a good one, friends.
Jan 10, 2025
Sousou no Frieren
(Manga)
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Not Recommended Funny  Preliminary
(140/? chp)
Part II - It Got Worse (and Why)
"[...] there’s an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present. Or it could be that, in one very important sense, there is no present to grasp and articulate anymore." - Mark Fisher (Ghosts of My Life) The anime adaptation of Frieren - Beyond Journey's End is a sensation. Not quality-wise, as I believe it to be a disappointing mess which I've already outlined in my review of the anime itself, but popularity-wise, in terms of "hype", it you will. It is currently (as of 2025, January 10th) the #1 anime on MAL ... 
Jun 14, 2024
Dungeon Meshi
(Anime)
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Essentially, I am simply happy to have gotten a better fantasy anime than Frieren. This show very clearly sets up exactly what it intends to do from the get-go: It has gorgeous animation, good humor, lovely looking food, some important things to say about ecology and personal philosophies, as well as some deep-running brief stints with surreal and mystical plots that will likely be unraveled fully in season 2.
It never intends to do more than is the capacity of its wheelhouse, but all it does, the brief little quips, the returning jokes, the occasional emotionally charged moments and the comfortable vibes, it does excellently, all ... 
Mar 17, 2024
Sousou no Frieren
(Anime)
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Having gotten most of the way through Frieren at the behest of multiple recommendations, chief among which was a friend who was truly surprised by the first few episodes, expecting nothing but a good isekai and getting instead something more unique, I felt it important to write down my thoughts, whether people read them or not, and especially whether they agree or not.
Frieren is a truly interesting, maybe even bewildering experience, split entirely into a completely separable duality. One half of it is the half that every single person praising it to high heavens has written their video essays about, and this paragraph probably won't ... |
