Like the way its structured to start with is the extremely tight view that drives home that all these other characters have their own lives and existence but you only ever the few bits when Frieren’s around and then they’re gone, while the pacing keeps up this constant feeling of time slipping inexorably away and being lost forever. It hits hard and is structured perfectly for those themes.
Then it hits a point where the story shatters into a bunch of separate threads and grinds to a complete halt in the way that stories that split into a bunch of threads inevitably do. It loses the tight focus and the feeling of “yes, these characters have their own existence but you only interact that during the moments you’re actually there” sort of thing in favor of just showing you a blow by blow of everything that’s going on with them, and instead of time slipping away no matter how hard you hold onto it it instead stands completely still.
It stops being unique and impactful and starts being “that annoying thing from BNHA where they spend like half an entire season going into excruciating detail about some little training exercise with mild competitive elements that every single member of a huge cast is participating in” instead.
I enjoyed both parts but I agree that Frierens opening arc was more unique.
I disagree. I loved it. It was a fresh change of pace that really helped slow things down and build out the current world a bit. At the same time Frieren also started to slow down and take in the world a bit more too. We slow down with her in this arc and I think that’s beautiful. It feels super intentional to me.
Yeah, one of the show’s strength’s is that it’s trying a variety of things at once, but it’s also it’s weakness. That and the author’s compulsion to cram worldbuilding into every moment leading to (what I am charitably assuming is) accidental race essentialism.
Whenever the story is in the slow paced melancholic slice-of-life “Let’s find a spell to make fresh bread” mode it’s amazing. Whenever the show is in Deathnote style “I’m thinking 4 parallel universes ahead of you” shonen battle mode, I’m not gonna lie I find that pretty entertaining, even if I prefer the other mode. But the world of the shonen battle mode show is hella Grimdark in the way something like Beserk is, and the SoL stuff is all whimsical Studio Ghibli stuff, and the author’s not doing a good enough job of bridging those two worlds and showing that the narrative can support both these things (even though it’s pretty obvious that the author is trying to make a larger point about the breadth of human experiences by having suffering and whimsy coexist in the same world). Sometimes it works (mostly with all of the Flamme flashback stuff), and I think trying to tell a story like that is a really interesting challenge for a writer, but most of the time in the show the total tonal whiplash just takes you right out of it, making the entire thing disjointed and confusing.
“You need to take things slow and live in the moment because life is fleeting and beautiful.” Ok yeah, I can get behind that sentiment. “Oh but also the peasant levies are made out of unarmed women and children, damn life sure sucks huh” and I was like, excuse me, what? Am I even watching the same show?
(And yeah I’m leaving out the whole demon thing cos that’s a whole other can of worms.)
Honestly tho I think the last part of the show really worked only because “Oh shit I need to defeat a clone of myself” is just such great narrative shorthand for the need for self-reflection… which is kinda undercut by the prior arc being Harry Potter Death Game, where the protagonists only survive by being such total badasses.
Really a mixed bag of a show, idk Dungeon Meshi is doing it more for me rn.
“Oh but also the peasant levies are made out of unarmed women and children, damn life sure sucks huh” and I was like, excuse me, what? Am I even watching the same show?
Given the rest of the what we see of character who claimed that’s arc I can’t help but wonder if he wasn’t just bullshitting or doing something like misrepresenting a desperate village continuing to fight after losing most of its adult male population as some galaxy brain human shields nonsense to turn the blame away from himself and onto others.
Honestly tho I think the last part of the show really worked only because “Oh shit I need to defeat a clone of myself” is just such great narrative shorthand for the need for self-reflection… which is kinda undercut by the prior arc being Harry Potter Death Game, where the protagonists only survive by being such total badasses.
It really felt like it was trying to channel Hunter x Hunter and BNHA there. It also felt like it was trying to backtrack a bit on the cutthroat brutality stuff, cause even in the first trial it backed off and was like “wait no actually most of them were bluffing and are actually uncomfortable with the idea of just casually murdering each other for status, but they want to intimidate the others into backing down so they play psycho” for most of them except Ubel.
For what it was it wasn’t terrible, but it really did ruin the feel the first bit had. Like Frieren being this horrifyingly powerful bag of repressed trauma whose whole life has been some weird deep cover sleeper agent shit is entertaining, and I honestly think the show could have ridden a lot more on the having her give up on subtlety and just casually murk some horribly threat before continuing on with something silly and trivial bit a lot more, like its slowly revealing that it’s just One Punch Man, but Elf. That was a funny enough gag and they could have gotten way more mileage out of it than they did before miring themselves in the snails-pace blow-by-blow shonen fight scenes.
Really a mixed bag of a show, idk Dungeon Meshi is doing it more for me rn.
Yeah. It doesn’t hit as hard as early Frieren, which actually brought me to tears repeatedly because the whole “endless churn of people you may never see again as time slips inexorably away” shit strikes a nerve hard, but it is overall the better work.
I mostly agree but would say it petered out even earlier: only the first six or seven episodes were any good (and they were extremely good), while everything after that is borderline trash that feels like it was from an entirely different show.
OK. I gotta ask do you simply have very high standards (which is fine) or do you not watch a lot of anime ? Because Frieren is easily one of the best shows I have watched in quite a while. Like can you give me 3 recent anime you thought are better ? Mind you im no stranger to disliking popular things…like im no big fan of Cowboy Bebop for example. Not meant to sound combative, I’m just genuinely curious.
It’s mostly that I have high standards, but I’d also be lying if I said I wasn’t biased against the rest of Frieren specifically because the first bit is so good (if that part’s a 10/10, the rest of the season is a 5 or 6). I mostly watch stuff that’s well-reviewed as opposed to seasonals so I don’t have anything super recent, but for “within the last few years”, I’d say:
- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
- Chainsaw Man
- Bocchi The Rock
Check out the Apothecary Diaries. Dungeon Meshi and Helck are also very good, but I like the Manga way more.
I couldn’t stand the feudalist bootlicking of apothecary diaries :/
They’re all on the list lol, I’ll get to them eventually.
Those are actually three really good shows, so at least I can confirm that you have good taste. (Because I’m the objective arbiter of good taste). Nah, it’s cool, I was just curious. I certainly agree that the beginning and the rest of ‘Frieren’ have a different vibe.
I would have probably asked you the same if you said Cyberpunk, Chainsaw Man, or Bocchi were trash. I probably wouldn’t call 5 or 6 trash, but I legit watch stuff rated 3/10 at times… doesn’t happen often, but it happens.
Yeah fair enough, it’s why I said it was borderline. And for what it’s worth I’m operating on the compressed “video game score” scale where if it’s below a 7 it’s not worth talking about.
Oh and I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned it yet but Frieren lost a bunch of points with me for having a Goblin Slayer-tier “Racism is Good and Necessary” two-parter.
that annoying thing from BNHA where they spend like half an entire season going into excruciating detail about some little training exercise with mild competitive elements that every single member of a huge cast is participating in
It gets a bit combat heavy and the cast inflates a lot. I would not have minded if they had more big time jumps and granular story telling.
But I’m enjoying the training arc if for no other reason than it’s an opportunity to do a bit more world and history building. It’s no longer just The Frieren Show.
I liked the arc with the demons for a similar reason. And I’m hoping we’ll see it get back into a more dramatic pacing as they move on.
Nah I liked it throughout and thought it was very strong.
It stops being unique and impactful and starts being “that annoying thing from BNHA where they spend like half an entire season going into excruciating detail about some little training exercise with mild competitive elements that every single member of a huge cast is participating in” instead.
I never really felt this
I can’t honestly say one way or the other because I was able to binge like the first cour plus a few episodes of the second. within three nights That made a lot of the cliff hangers of the Mage test a bit more insufferable for me than they otherwise would have been, I think. For me, everything literally came to a screeching halt.😅 I did end up reading the manga and devoured the rest of that in about two nights. So I’m satisfied for now. If they ever announce a second season I’ll probably binge the second cour before it comes out and see if I find it faster paced with less delay.
