While I try to avoid doom-scrolling through my YouTube feed, there are times when I end up spending several minutes just trying to find something interesting and/or educational to watch (or giving up and deciding YouTube is a waste of my time). It was one of those times when I came across a video that talked about how great an anime called “Frieren” was. At the time I didn’t watch more than a few minutes of the video, but from a few video clips I got the feeling the anime was for a fairly young audience. At least the art style gave me the impression it was somewhat ‘kiddy’, and therefore not very serious.
But a few weeks later I saw this anime was available for watching on Netflix, so I couldn’t help trying it out. After having watched the entire first season (all that is available at the time of writing), Frieren turned out to be one of my favorite anime series of the last few years, so I thought I would give it a proper review on my blog.
The first thing that surprised me was that despite having a sort of a childish art style, the characters and the tale told with them were all quite serious, at least a good part of the time (though of course there were times when they relaxed and joked around). This was actually quite a good thing, since I wasn’t looking for an anime targeted at young teens without any real meaningful content.
The story focuses mostly on Frieren, an elf, and it turns out elves have the ability to live much longer than humans. However, as you may know this characteristic of elves isn’t anything new (it was mentioned as early as the Lord of the Rings, and perhaps before that), but what is new is how the colossal gap between human and elven lifespan is adopted as a major focus of the story.
Frieren makes friends with a handful of characters, both humans and other races, but generally most of the other characters live significantly shorter lives than her. This causes awkwardness and other problems between her and the others. To Frieren, they live but a fraction of her lifetime, hence her interactions with those people are necessarily different and shallower. But at some point she gets the desire to learn more about humans and see what makes them tick, in a sense, which is how the series starts.
As usual, I don’t plan to go much into the story progression and conclusion as I intend my reviews to be mostly spoiler free. But I do want to talk about what makes this anime great, as well as the aspects that are less impressive.
First of all, in general I really liked all of the main characters and how their development was the most important driving force of this anime. It has been said that most great stories are character-driven, and this is no exception. I feel that all the major characters were very fleshed out, with great dialogue and wonderful voice actors. The first season is long enough to see each of them go through some important developments.
Also, for much of the season, I felt the pacing of the show was especially well done. In some of the better episodes some problem was introduced, and then solved cleanly by the end of the episode, often with some lesson learned or at least hinted at. This efficient and well-thought-out plot progression reminded me of the wonderful pacing of the classic anime Cowboy Bebop.
But more than anything I enjoyed, or should I say loved the music of this series. While clearly inspired by traditional medieval-era music, I felt the composition and how it evoked a spectrum of emotions at just the right times was quite amazing. A variety of instruments were used to good effect throughout, and took a few episodes until I noticed music repeating. There were more than a few times when the music swelled at a key turning point in just the perfect way, literally bringing me to tears. Had the music not been of such a high level of quality, my opinion of this series as a whole might have changed significantly. (On a personal note, my favorite movie soundtrack of all time is from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which is also medieval-themed, and was what lead to my ‘locksley’ nickname).
On the negative side, I felt that in the second half of the first season a bunch of characters were introduced, and much of the time was spent on focusing on side stories instead of those of the main characters. This aspect reminded me of anime series like Naruto (in a bad way). Even though I was satisfied enough by the ending of the first season, the different style of storytelling was a disappointment. It seemed as if the director/author was trying to artificially build tension by drawing out certain scenes over several episodes, which is a practice I simply don’t enjoy watching. In the first half of the season there were still some story lines that crossed episode boundaries without feeling like they were trying to keep you watching.
In terms of the Japanese used, while there were some fantasy-themed difficult words throughout, overall I felt like the main characters talked with casual language that was down-to-earth and easy to understand. Honestly, I expected a centuries-old elf would speak with more flowery, literary language, but the casual tone taken by Frieren made it that much easier to emphasize with her. I think the contrast between Frieren’s amazing experience and power and her casual attitude is one of the things that makes her a great character. By the way, after watching the series I accidentally discovered “Frieren” actually means “cold” (as in temperature) in German.
When watching the first episode I happened to have English subtitles turned on, but as there were some questionable translations, I soon shut them off. I will say it was very satisfying to be able to watch the rest of the episodes in Japanese with English subtitles disabled. For some reason, Japanese subtitles were not available, but that was only a minor annoyance. I am considering writing some post(s) analyzing the translations, let me know in the comments if you would appreciate that.
Despite having lost some steam in the second half of the first season, I admit this is still one of my favorite anime series of the last decade or so. Despite having cute-looking characters, the topics addressed are quite serious and important, the action and atmosphere gripping, and the masterful music underlies everything in a way that borders on a masterpiece.
I give this anime’s first season a high recommendation, and I’m looking forward to the second season.
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