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Man, I'm so happy to see so many like-minded people that think this anime is overrated haha~
I'm going to share my review of this anime, which I originally posted on Tumblr. Here we go...

Okay, so… I don't like Frieren. In fact I very much dislike it. Now what I'm going to do in this note is to explicate my main reasons for why I think Frieren is not a good anime, and how I'm in total disagreement with probably everything that people seem to believe to be the case about it. In doing so, I will explore three main points. One regarding the general ... message of the anime, or what it is about. The other being somewhat related to the same matter, but probably in a rather indirect way. And the third being the characters, one of them in particular. At the end I will make a general observation and try to expand on the minor points related to it.

So first of all, from what I have been able to notice, a lot of people, in fact the majority of its audience, believe that the main message of Frieren (we're going to assume there is one) is that we should move on from the past, while still cherishing our good memories from it and holding on to them. My dear frierends, even if that is what Frieren is supposed to be about, it does a very bad job of delivering that message, as much as it might have convinced some people that that's what it is about.

The whole plot of the anime (as far as such a thing manages to exist amidst all the flashbacks and the reminiscence) is about a lonely mage's journey to a place where she thinks there might be a trace of her past companions left. So that in itself is enough for us to suspect that the main character has not totally moved on from what has happened to her. If Frieren had moved on, she wouldn't have made it her life purpose to meet again with her deceased lover and friends.

Even after taking responsibility for her apprentice, she fails to actually do anything responsible and spend her time on a worthwhile endeavor, and instead just aimlessly wanders around collecting useless spells and fake grimoire ascribed to her (again) deceased master. Can we really say that she only does that because its her hobby, or is it because she hasn't moved on from losing her master neither, and is trying to gather all the scattered pieces of her lost belongings to maybe reassemble them into at least a resemblance of that lost heritage?!

The one person that she begins her journey with was left under her care by a dead friend, and the next person that joins her party was also requested to be taken in by an old friend of her, who probably would've joined in himself were he feeling like it. And at last the other member of the party is simply a placeholder for Heiter. Literally a duplicate. Somehow everything in the present has to be connected to things in the past in most possible ways, and even completely mirror them.

Freerun sees everything through the lens of her memories, and barely manages to see anything for what it is. Places that she visits are not this or that place that is such and such in and out of itself, it's the place that Heiter said that and Eisen did that and Himmel did this. She seems to be literally unable to comprehend anything without interpreting it by referring it to her memories. She has to take us through the whole memory of Himmel posing for the sculptors every time she sees a statue of him.

Now on to the next thing I want to deal with. The closest I think this anime ever gets to making any sensible point is when Frieren tells the priest "But that's just what you want…" when they are talking about there being a heaven. That's probably the first and last wise thing she says, only for it to be followed with a "Yeah, it might be better this way," referring to believing in an afterlife, in contrast to not believing in it. We are expected to accept that believing that there is a heaven without any reason is the right thing to do, only because apparently it is better this way. So much for moving on from the past, huh.

By enforcing the idea of an afterlife the author moves further away from preaching acceptance and detachment (of the kind associated with this anime.) By admitting that it is probably better to believe that there is a heaven where our loved ones go after their death, Frieren shows that she is less detached from her past than ever. She hasn't left her past behind, enough for this to be a story of moving on and looking forward to the future, if she has to cope so hard by believing in a heaven, and one on Earth at that! Unless of course that's what everyone's idea of 'moving on' is, and I'm just oblivious.

And now the characters. Sometimes in order for one to be able to connect with a work of fiction there needs to be some likable characters. It is not necessary, but it's better than nothing, especially when that fictional work doesn't have much else going for it. Now here in the case of this anime, most characters are acceptable, if not down right horrible or annoying. I'd say the best character in regards to likability is Stark. He is kind, respectful, and hard-working. But I wish he wasn't that patient with a certain somebody.

It seems for this anime when it comes to how they feel about them the community has focused more on the looks of the characters than their personality. This isn't anything new of course, but Frieren just isn't the kind of anime that you would do that with. There's much more attached to a character than just how they look or behave on a surface level. Yeah this character might be a 'tsundere' and most anime have one or two characters like that, but those anime don't try to be deep (usually.) Frieren does, and so I'm going to treat it differently. And this is where Fern comes in.

Fern is (almost) everything wrong with this anime. Everything else about Frieren could've been flawless, and she would've been able to single-handedly ruin it. She alone is enough to make this anime annoying to a point that you couldn't watch one episode of it. IF and only if you see her for what she is. Not for the little tsundere girl that pouts for you, and not if you are a free-for-all masochist. She's whom I wish Stark had less patience with. Like, man, have some self-respect for the goddess's sake. [I get it, though. Fetishes and all, okay.]

Fern is not cute, or a likable character. She is just rude, a prude, and imprudent. She is self-righteous, and doesn't know respect, for others and their boundaries. Even if you don't agree, the author is very much aware of that, and that's why she in the episode about her birthday goes through a development point which is supposed to open her eyes to how she has been presumptuous in regard to her attitude towards Stark. But of course as most character developments in most anime it is one of those that its effects hardly lasts until the end of the episode in which it occurs. Of course, that's what the fans are in it for, why would you get rid of it?!

This story takes place in a dead world. The Story has already ended, and it is as if the author is narrating it from the end to the beginning, such that the story is altogether 'spoiled' in a way. That could have been a fair approach to take, but the way it's done in Frieren is crude and unrefined. Frequent flashbacks of Himmel and the heroes journey at the turn of every corner is taken to a point that it's just ridiculous. This story takes place too much in the past.

It is hard to care about anything that happens in this world. The journeys they make and the challenges they face are more like the clean-up after a party. There is not much significance attached to them. All the important stuff have already happened when the original heroes were trying to defeat the demon lord. One may argue that there is another story-line independent from that of the heroes, that of Stark and Frieren and Fern in the present time, and therefore that's not so much the case, but with how much that alternative story looks like an extension of the past one and an attempt at a replication of it, it just cannot serve as a replacement for it.

I believe that starting from the "Journey's End" is not a good idea in general. That of course means it's not just Frieren, it's all of the stories that start from the end that I've got a problem with. But I'm not stubborn about it, I could see myself enjoying a story of this kind if it's well executed, but I can't do that with Failuren given the inconsistencies in its concepts and its nihilistic atmosphere, that makes you feel like none of the things you encounter in the course of the story matter in any way.

Yes, there has been a past. And you want to talk about that. But if you're going to put the audience through the things that are happening in the present, you can at least try to make them not appear so pointless. When all the purpose lies in the past, and the contemporary characters are hardly anything that one could become attached to given how they are just shadows of the previous set of characters, the present ceases to matter. And on top of that how even the past parts of the plot do not contain much that would appear of considerable significance is the nail in the coffin.

The interpersonal matters of the characters do not compensate for the lack of external conflicts when the characters are just stock that could be easily replaced with anyone else, without a particular background or personality attached to them except for the bare minimum that helps distinguish them from each other. This anime tries very hard to appear deep by long stares into the horizon and longer gaps of silence, but it only shows the depth of its foolishness. Frieren thus fails to add up to much in the end.

I must inform you here that I did not watch all of Frieren. No, that doesn't invalidate my point. If an anime is so unbearable that you can't bring yourself to finish it, then maybe it does deserve some criticism. Also, just as a movie that has murder happening all through it, and in the end those people that were seemingly killed turn out to have actually survived the murders, is not a movie about anything but murder, whatever might happen in those few left episodes that I haven't watched doesn't make too much difference for me as this anime has already spent enough time in the manner I described here for me to think of it like this and for it to be too late to redeem itself as far as I'm concerned.

[Bad Plot,
Bad Characters,
Not much of a theme,
Good art,
Good animation.]