Have you ever caught yourself doing something mundane, such as fumbling around a blade of grass or walking on the curb of the sidewalk, only to be struck by the intrusive thought that your group of friends will not be able to attend each other’s funerals? Heavy stuff, right? Well, the new fantasy anime Freeze: Beyond journey’s End reveals this emotional premise and explores the value of enjoying the beauty of the world with our loved ones while we still can.
Freezing: Beyond journey’s End by Studio Madhouse begins in an unusually unusual place for a new anime series: at the end of an epic journey of a group of heroes to kill a demon king. After the 10-year journey of our heroes, the world has entered an era of peace. The townspeople dance in the streets and play music cheerfully, and the king plans to erect statues in his honor to commemorate his selfless feat. However, what will not last so long will be the life of the conquering heroes, except that of the wizard of the group, Freeze.
While his friends are worried about how they will live the rest of their lives in search of regular jobs, Frieren casually reveals that he will probably spend the next hundred years wandering around the country collecting spells with all the enthusiasm of a college student. write H.A.G. S (have a great summer) in the high school yearbooks of friends. Frieren is an elf mage who has been living for millennia and will of course outlive her companions a thousand times, or something like that. She’ll be here for a while yet.
Although Frieren keeps his casual promise to clarify his schedule of occasional visits to her for the next 50 years, members of her former group gradually die, leaving her without them on a seemingly aimless journey of low-risk adventures. Friends.
Freeze, who streams on Crunchyroll, is also doing another rare thing in the animation industry: a two-hour premiere of his first four episodes. The only other show to have done this recently was Oshi no Ko no Hidive, which I think helped streamline the tried-and-true three-episode testing period. Anime viewers sometimes offer new series that immediately engage viewers in the show. And I must say that the first four episodes of Freezing did not disappoint me.
Over the course of the first four episodes of the series, Frieren meets a new friend in the form of a sorcerer’s apprentice named Fern. However, the more time Fern spends with freezing, the more she starts to wonder if her trip with freezing has a purpose. Frieren finally confesses that he is actually retracing his old adventures. We learn that the frivolous spells she has accumulated, such as a spell to sour grapes or to clear a statue of rust, are meant to somehow make her relive and honor the glorious days she had with her group. . For example, Eisen, the dwarf warrior of his group, ate green grapes during his mission, and the statues of Hiemel, the hero of the group, have been degraded since his death.
Ultimately, Frieren’s trip is a selfish trip to belatedly experience events to which she once refused to accompany her party, such as watching a local festival or a sunset over the sea. She wondered: why did you insist on inviting her in the first place?
Frieren, whose temperament oscillates between distant and downright lazy, is gradually learning to be more considerate of the time of her new companion and to want to discover the beauty of the world, which she has never experienced up close with her old group. A journey that, in her opinion, lasted only one hundredth of her life.
In a sea of seasonal fantasy anime shows whose premises feel like crazy Mad Libs games that, to be honest, have little to no staying power in the minds of viewers who are looking for a show to commit to, Freeze: Beyond journey’s End stands out as someone with the potential to really excite viewers with every episode.
While enjoying the contemplative pace of the show’s pseudo-life and giving Freeze countless moments of vulnerability as she learns to appreciate things like sunsets and festivals, she turned down invitations from her party to experience them firsthand. Rest assured that the showsets are preparing another great adventure for Freeze at the end of its fourth episode. This quest will undoubtedly bring some of the dangers and actions that Moderna fantasy anime fans are looking for in a new series into the melancholy.
Time will tell whether the second half of Frieren’s first season will maintain its pace as a thoughtful fantasy series that takes time to meditate on death and the beauty of life, or whether these foundations will give in and turn it into another action-oriented fantasy anime that will turn into a supersaturated and packed autumn season.