Anime Spotlight #80: Frieren - Beyond Journey's End (Season Two Update)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Animeister

Are you alright?

Can you hear me?

I haven't found anything to corroborate this, so it's purely a notice of thematic and contemporary coincidence, but Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is being adapted from an ongoing manga written by Kanehito Yamada, illustrated by Tsukasa Abe, that was published beginning in April 2020, a month and a half after the official declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic.

The manga is about Frieren, the titular elven mage who accompanied a human hero and his stock-ish party of companions (a dwarven warrior and a human priest) on their quest to defeat the Demon King (as one does in a fantasy series). Since elves live longer than all other races, the manga (and by extension, the anime) picks up with the Demon King having been defeated...and Frieren having to spend the first episode watching her human companions grow old and die (which is why I almost didn't watch the anime—I expected it to just be an ongoing stream of tragedy).

So you'll forgive me for assuming that the creators were working through some COVID-related shit when they created an emotionally distant, nigh-immortal protagonist with survivor's guilt who searches for magical ways to make the world beautiful after helping the last and only group of good people she ever took the time to know personally defeat the leader of a group of evil, power-hungry sociopaths who pretend to be human and tell humans what they want to hear as a means of manipulating and genociding our gullible race.

These are the Demons, and considering my only other comparison at the time were the over-designed, Cockney-spewing versions we got in The Wrong Way To Use Healing Magic, I like Frieren's take on them much better, and they (or rather, the one meme of Frieren getting a female Demon to kill itself) are the reason I decided to give the anime the time of day beyond the sadness of the first episode.

The Demons are coldly terrifying, and the historical context and spectacular animation around this meme make it one of the most badass moments in modern anime.

As for the series itself, Frieren travels the land, encountering the various ways in which the exploits of her old "Hero's Party" were honored or forgotten, the changes in politics and culture that have happened in the world, a smattering of "you're the child I rescued from so-and-so way back then? But, you're so old!," trading goods and information to expand her collection of mundane spells (growing flowers, washing clothes, boiling water, etc.) and odd relics and ingredients, and being an unwitting mentor and traveling companion to Fern (Black Clover's Jill Harris) and her clueless love interest, a red-headed warrior named Stark (pronounced "Shtark" in the dub to indicate some kind of German folk influence to the series' world, and he is voiced by Jordan Dash Cruz, who has done dub work for several series I have reviewed, including Black Clover, Trapped In A Dating Sim: The World Of Otome Games Is Tough For Mobs, and Shadows House). The first episode, and later flashbacks, feature some more peak VA dub talent for the Hero's Party: Himmel the Hero (My Hero Academia's Cliff Chapin, a.k.a. Bakugo, but with a kinder, less edgy tone to his voice), Heiter the "Corrupt Priest" and Fern's original master and surrogate father figure (Dragon Ball Super's Jason Douglas, a.k.a. Beerus), and Stark's dwarven master Eisen (the Overlord Ains Ooal Gown himself, Chris Guerrero). Though Beyond Journey's End is mostly a character-driven scenery tour of break-ups, make-ups, and flashbacks, that is enough to make its twenty-eight episode first season worth the binge, and things pick up about halfway through when Frieren's desire to journey north (where the series' realm of speaking to the dead is allegedly located, as is the late Demon Lord's castle) requires her to update her mage credentials so she can prove her ability to travel safely through Demon-occupied territories, and the First-Class Mage's Exam kicks off. We're talking the usual battle tournament-type stuff with incredible effects and fight animation to make it as beautiful as it is entertaining (thanks to Studio Madhouse, who also brought us such amazing-looking series as Overlord, Hunter X Hunter, and Trigun), followed by friendly but deadly social competition in a trap-laden dungeon and a heart-warming but un-sentimental reunion between Frieren and her human teacher's elven master.

Granted, you need to be in the right mood to get the appeal of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, but it's worth enduring the first episode feels and then some.

Now for the ending music.

It isn't a "banger" in the same way I've classified other anime bangers, and like Frieren itself, you have to be in the mood (read: prepared to cry and feel lonely, which, I was not prepared to do for the re-watch; three words in and I couldn't breathe, so I hit the skip button) to want to listen to it. But between the lyrics, the sad, reassuring, lonely, friendly feel of the song, the incredible animation of the closing credits sequences, and the fact that instead of using a different song, the second half of the season uses a different verse of the same song, this is a must.

"Anytime Anywhere" by milet

Season Two is around a third of the first season's length, at only ten episodes, and literally picks up where things left off, with Fern having passed the First Class Mages' Exam and Frieren having failed because of a spiteful exercise in humility, before they and Stark head out (prepare to subconsciously draw attention to how many times you hear some variation of "well, shall we head out, then?") on what is essentially more of the same journey that we've been following the trio (and in flashback, the quartet—or ka-tet, if you're a Stephen King connoisseur) on over the previous twenty-eight episodes. 

Notable events include a flashback to Frieren's pre-Journey encounter with a future-sighted Hero (whom the children of one village have honored with a puppet show where he looks like Hitler?), Stark and Fern's first date, the trio helping a dwarven miner track down a stockpile of alcohol that's the most disgusting elven creation since the Rings Of Power, another mid-season uptick in action as they actually start having to fight high-level Monsters and Demons in the Northern Lands (like, imagine a volcanic woodland peppered with underground anti-magic crystal deposits and inhabited by snakes with gorgon powers, gargoyles, a lizard kaiju that looks like King Ghidorah without wings, and no less than two sentient Monsters who could give the DanMachi minotaur a run for his money) on the regular, culminating with a short battle arc where they run into two of their former Exam opponents (one of whom has magic that just makes him Hawks, though his dub voice is Aaron Roberts, a.k.a. Kamui Woods) and have to collaborate to bring down a four-armed serpent Demon swordsman who can manipulate the mass and density of his evil Green Lantern swords. As with nearly all of Frieren's visuals (there are some odd, static moments this season, and a few instances of "low detail, no face" when the context calls for more), this fight looks amazing. But as is the point of the series, said climactic battle is just another landmark dotted throughout her two-plus-year trek of vicarious nostalgia with a pair of legacy companions, as the final two episodes get back to the formula of "go to place, solve problem in exchange for a grimoire that lets you crap soft-serve ice cream in fluent Latin, buy expensive, useless crap, cue flashback to how the Hero's Party was there eighty years ago so the special moments are cheapened by repetition, 'shall we be off, then?,' rinse, repeat." The series has gone from using this last to illustrate how Frieren's traveling companions have changed her behavior and perspective on humanity, to just being an exercise in how little a person can actually change over time, and I find it to be an irritating, frustrating crutch of a plot device, to be perfectly kind about it.

And don't forget the "subtle" world-building commentary about how militant nationalism and commercial fascism are "necessary" (see Serie's monopoly and hive-like modularization of magic and mage deployment according to their "purpose," as well as the overt description of the Norm Trading Company as a commercial entity with military might who "control all life" in the Northern Lands as examples) in a realm of Demons and Monsters. I don't know if I'm supposed to read it as a brutally cynical takedown of the world we currently live in, or a disturbingly honest defense of questionable behavior in the same context, but I kind of don't feel as invested in continuing with the third season when it comes out next October.

Frieren was right; the winds of change do make flying magic unreliable....

I suppose I should also mention that the second season's ending theme is another milet track with "Take On Me"-like visuals ("The Story Of Us"), but lacks the sob-inducing gravitas of "Anytime Anywhere." Here it is:

Stay Tuned for my thoughts on HeroMachine: Phoenix Edition tomorrow. Thank you again for getting me to a second month over ten thousand views, and please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford my quest for new spells, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

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First-Class

Animeister,

Whispering our lullaby for you to come back home.