Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is a major hit, and deservedly so. In an age where fantasy anime and manga often lean heavily on gaming and RPG tropes to a fault, here instead is a much more conventional setting that also isn’t prone to the typical older swords-and-sorcery clichés. It’s a marriage of old and new while quietly forging a path all its own.

Unlike many titles in the genre, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End takes place after defeating the big threat to the world. Its heroine is the quiet elf mage Frieren, who helped vanquish the Demon King as a member of the party of heroes. Due to the nature of her species, Frieren is extremely long-lived: To many, their 15-year quest would be a milestone, but to her, it’s just a drop in the bucket. However, at the funeral of an old party member, the kindhearted (albeit somewhat vain) hero named Himmel, Frieren realizes just how life-changing that “brief excursion” really was. In response, she embarks on a new adventure that has her retracing the steps the Party of Heroes took, gaining a new appreciation for both the past and the present, and the people who walked into her life. 

Essentially, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is like an epilogue extended into an entire series of its own.

The original manga is currently serialized in the magazine Weekly Shounen Sunday. This ostensibly places it in the same demographic as works like Detective Conan and Inuyasha, but it also doesn’t carry the same essence as your average shounen or their typical power fantasies. Sure, Frieren can be seen kicking ass and schooling the ignorant, but what makes her an incredible heroine is not the ability to sling deadly magic or her many years of honing magic. Rather, it’s the way Frieren has very different priorities when it comes to magic. 

Instead, her real motivation is collecting fake grimoires and spells of all kinds—especially ones that are often considered mundane or even useless by others. Frieren is like a master chef from the world’s most highly rated restaurant whose eyes light up every time she gets to try the latest fast food gimmick item or cheap street stall. To her, the beauty of magic is most deeply reflected in the small and humble spells, and Frieren’s experience makes her marvel at both the familiar and the unfamiliar. There’s only one very specific exception, and it’s where Frieren is most able to show her true power in combat.

I relate to Frieren and her ideals a lot. In the pursuit of my hobbies and interests, I try to view them through a lens of discovery where silly little things are valuable in their own right.

Frieren has neither rose-tinted nostalgia for the past, nor a conviction that the forward march of progress is inevitable. Some things used to be better, some were worse, and contemporary cultures are a product of centuries of change and development but also the fading of memories. Even magic is affected by cycles and trends, which is something Frieren tries to convey to her student, Fern, and also anyone willing to listen.

The combination of the epilogue-like nature of the series, its heroine’s personality, and her tendency to take a very long view on things makes Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End feel more like equal parts fantasy adventure and travelog in the vein of Kino’s Journey. Episodes can take place over the course of a day or even six months, and travel companions will sometimes literally mature. The series also often flashes back to moments with Frieren’s original party to provide context or an interesting parallel to her current journey. And much like Kino, when things go down and action is necessary, characters don’t disappoint. 

While Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is not entirely devoid of console and PC RPG tropes (the hero and demon lord archetypes are chief among them) I want to reiterate just how much the series is not an isekai, a reincarnation story, or based heavily in the aesthetic trappings of RPGs where badassery is the main appeal. Sure, it can scratch a similar itch because Frieren is often secretly the strongest person in the room, but the series doesn’t rely on those tropes as lazy shorthand in lieu of actually being accessible. 

In other words, this is potentially a perfect gateway anime that also holds up for longtime fans of anime and manga. With Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, you have a reminder that sometimes a work is popular not because it appeals to some lowest common denominator, but because it’s just solid storytelling with compelling characters, an interesting world, and a narrative that encourages thoughtfulness. It’s definitely going on my list of all-time greats, with Frieren herself being one of the best to ever do it. 

And by “do it,” I mean appreciate life and all its wrinkles.