⬛Review info
- Reviewing Info: How I rate/review stuff is explained HERE
- Review layout: WP non-H
- Review type: Anime
⬛Review (short ver):
⚡In a nutshell: An eternal relaxing journey of quirky dry elf mage.
🟢PROS
✅Very relaxing premise
✅Beautiful presentation (art & sound, story)
✅Mostly great characters
✅Great slice-of-life Anime with sprinkle of epic fantasy
✅Great meme material
🚫CONS
❌Characters dialogues bickering is fun but also feels dry?
❌Most of side-characters also give off very dry feelings (attempt of being too real, objective makes it feel less of an Anime)
❌Somewhat teases with great powercreep that somehow ends up unsatisfying
⬛Review (comments/longer ver):
✦Story
Well.. it reminded me a lot of “Mushishi” and “Natsume book of friends” which are also amazing relaxing episodic adventure slice-of-life-chill type of Anime. Anyhow…. so is Frieren, a premise of what’s the life of “immortal” Elf after bringing peace to the world (for the most part). Most of the story is essentially oddballs party adventuring the world and doing various odd jobs. Frieren does great job bring that relaxation feeling to the table, giving off that “we just outside, adventuring and having fun while at it” . So very strong slice-of-life vibes in a classical fantasy setting.
Obviously since it’s a fantasy world we do still get plenty of ramped up exciting moments. Monsters, fights, powers etc… Which is also done amazingly. I especially loved how magic and art of magic casting was presented in this series. It’s very “classical” feel. Whilst expanding the “lore” of the world by occasionally revealing some even further past and forgotten “heroes”
But mostly it’s Anime about self-discovery of Frieren trying to understand humans and human emotion more whilst growing as Elf to become more compassionate and understanding the world she lives in.
✦Character
Characters is hard to talk about in this series. All of them had their charm, depth, subtoned stereotypes and so on. For the most part characters would be “objectively” rather good and “real” in a sense. Although… my issue with pretty much all characters how toned down their reactions, dialogues, emotions and so on were… it felt more of like watching some sort of serious western TV series…. than “Anime” . Reason is simple…. the dialogues felt so stiff and dull with strong lack of exaggerated Anime stereotypes and vibrant conversations. I mean in story setting like this it did well job keeping conversations and character interactions entertaining. But most of the times I felt same as they did in a sense of “minimal reaction, stay dull” type of feel. Kinda like when I have dry conversations IRL. Long story short…. character interactions and dialogues didn’t have that vibrant “Anime” feel.
But aside that, the main “squad”.
Frieren the quirky dry elf hunting for odd magic.
Fern, the pouty little big girl who somewhat functions as Frierens mom than Frieren does to Fern.
Stark the closeted pervy muscle head who works as comedy sidekick.
That would sum them up in my book. Aside that we have plenty of interesting side-characters with various sub-stereotypes and backstories.
✦Art & Sound
Scenic and magic art & animation are both absolutely stunning and so is the soundtrack/music in general. Whilst character art & design isn’t exactly “high quality” but has it’s distinct style, which worked well in this Anime and probably will age well.
Time Flows Ever Onward – loved this soundtrack a lot.
✦Enjoyment & Overall
Long story short, I consider this Anime quite amazing, but would have loved probably more if character interactions & dialogues wouldn’t feel as “poker face” as that made me watch them interact as well in rather “poker face” …
But definitely worth a watch if you are into relaxing slice-of-life adventure fantasy feel… If you expect action packed magic fantasy then probably not for you.