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When I decided to watch this anime I was under the impression that it would be about the shortness of human life and how these mystical creatures called elves deal with that colossal disparity in life time. I was wrong.

The first few episodes of the series got my hopes up, as it seemed that the time was passing from Frieren's perspective, aka extremely fast, with people that she grew to love soon being dead and leaving a sense of dread in the brevity of it all. I'm not lying when I say that these few initial episodes were some of the best I have seen ... (and also most of the reason for my score), they made me think a lot about time and how we waste our lives with garbage.
After these couple of great episodes, everything goes downhill. For some unknown reason the author thought it was a smart idea to sub-title the anime with "beyond journey's end" when everything past Fern being introduced is just another "journey". It becomes a pretty mid fantasy anime, at no point do we get those deep insights into how Frieren deals with the fact that in a week, from her perspective, Fern and Stark will both be dead from old age. This is so unbelievably infuriating that I choose to trust that the second season will have these types of debates instead of combing through the manga to check if it really is as shallow as it seems.

Keeping the focus on the shallowness of it all, the characters. Himmel is so great it's comical, it's like he has mastered the Confucian Study at what, 30 years of age? The guy is literally perfect. Dude is so amazing he has 100x the wisdom of an elf who has lived for 1500 years, simply knows exactly what to do and say always.
Eisen is a lot more believable than him though, he is good but isn't a moral monolith, has his own faults and regrets. Heiter on the other hand is just a plot device to get Fern into the story, serving absolutely no other purpose, nor having any personality outside of that (and being a drunkard).
Fern and Stark aren't too bad, they are annoying sure, but teenagers are normally pretty annoying so I'll cut some slack.
Frieren though, well, let's just say that the author does not have the skill necessary to write a convincing 1500 year old being. I'm not judging him though, writing elves is one of the most difficult things to do in a story like this. It seems like she has only lived through the 10 years of the Demon King slaying party and everything before simply holds no value, (except for her time with Flamme, although this also seems like a plot convenience just to send the new party on a journey north) nor does most things after. We are to believe that she has just spent over a thousand years walking around and collecting magic from random places, without ever having any significant thoughts and/or other experiences.

The rest of the story is mid. Just another isekai-esque fantasy anime. Even has a tournament arc, well that was stupid. To be honest I don't have much to add here, it really is just a generic fantasy show, with a generic teenager romance in the middle. It is truly depressing that such a great idea for a series fell on the hands of such an amateur writer.

To end this review I have to give credit to the production quality, the animation is amazing and also pretty consistent, there aren't a lot of points where I could notice a significant drop in quality (it is certainly prettier than the manga). Music is pretty forgettable but decent compared to other generic isekai-esque anime.

TL;DR Went in expecting YKK, got another Mushoku Tensei clone.

So I've noticed no one has talked about how Yowamushi Pedal utterly fails to portray cycling as a sport, so that's what I'll briefly cover here.

As an avid road cycling viewer I have found it impossible to ignore how any real world logic and strategy was completely thrown out the window for this series, how the teams are fully organized 100% of the time during races, how no one drafts off of anyone who isn't their teammates(I especially found this straight up insulting) and how there apparently is no such things as break-aways or random attacks to try and push an advantage. This anime makes ... road cycling look like a stupid and simplistic sport, with no depth and very little strategical elements.

The fact that having a really strong upper body makes you faster makes no sense at all (just look at cyclists like Wout Van Aert, Mathieu Van Der Poel, Peter Sagan and even Julian Allaphilippe) and had me laughing at it untill I realised the show was taking it 100% seriously, at which point I started crying.

This and the fact that the storyline is exactly what you'd expect from a sports shounen makes this show a tough watch, even for someone who enjoys the subject. 3/10 Wouldn't recommend unless you know little enough about cycling to not be triggered or you just really enjoy the generic sports shounen template.