Frieren doesn't have its own unique style in any way. It just feels like every other Fantasy/Isekai ever. and I know it's not an Isekai, but it certainly feels like it in a lot of ways. The characters are very uninteresting and forgettable, the ost is one of the most generic things I've ever heard, the directing is very basic and boring, and the world is also uninteresting and forgettable. It's ironic how the only intriguing location is one we never see on screen through the whole anime (The North). Besides that there isn't a single location that sticks out. So in terms of style this anime offers nothing that anybody who has seen more than 20 anime likely hasn't already seen before. It's not ambitious in any way and just feels soulless. I will say that for an anime to be good it doesn't have to be avant garde, or have insane directing that blows your mind, but there is nothing this anime offers that even makes up for its lack of identity (boring soulless characters and world).
World Building-
I've seen so many people praising the "amazing world building" this anime has, but I don't understand where they are getting this from.
The actual locations they go to feel like they have little to no importance in the actual world. They just feel like random kingdoms and villages, but why are these kingdoms actually important in the world? We are never really told, so it kind of just feels like they are just there to give the characters a place to go. it makes the world feel less alive and less dynamic. The world isn't changing around our characters, but rather they are changing around the world. It makes watching them journey around random areas feel meaningless. I never once during this anime thought to myself about where the characters would go next, nor did any area feel distinct from each other. There was nothing differentiating the different areas culturally and it just made the anime really boring and feel not alive. There was never a single character we met in one of these areas that wasn't also forgettable.
The world we are in is also so incredibly stereotypical. The fantasy elements aren't creative in any way and they just feel like copies of the same blueprint that fantasy stories have been using for a long time. Even Konosuba was parodying these stereotypes over 10 years ago but yet we are seeing them even more now for some reason. Regardless, Frieren does nothing interesting with these elements. The magic system is generic, the Demons are just bad guys who want to kill people, the kingdoms and villages are all generic, and I can go on and on. It just felt like this anime had a checklist of fantasy setting elements to include, but didn't bother to do anything interesting with any of them. The magic system is poorly implemented as well. Why doesn't pretty much everyone in the world use magic? It's such an advanced tool that I feel like everyone even people doing basic jobs should use it to make their jobs more efficient. It isn't a very well thought out concept and it goes back to what I was saying earlier about how they just included it because that's the norm for fantasy stories.
Animation/Art/Directing/Soundtrack
This is the strongest part of the whole anime. The animation was insane sometimes and there were lots of pretty colors that I actually liked looking at. Animation is such a non factor though this barely added anything to the experience for me. This is probably the least important category when it comes to making a good anime. As far as the art goes, I thought the background scenery was overly generic a lot of the time. Once again, it felt like I couldn't separate it from anything else. It didn't feel very atmospherically alive, but if it did I think I would've liked it a lot more. If this anime was more like Mushishi for example where each scene is just breathing life, I would've appreciated it so much more. In Mushishi there is always so much going on in the background and environmentally, even when nothing is happening it creates such a nice watching environment, that I am just completely entranced. It feels like this is what this anime wanted to be, but failed miserably. The lack of an interesting soundtrack also plays a heavy role in this. There were times where it actually felt like the soundtrack was AI generated.
The directing was very boring and there were a lot of annoying flashbacks that happened in the middle of a fight. Sometimes I literally forgot the fight was even happening because of how long the flashbacks were, which is where the problem lies for me. There is nothing wrong with the flashbacks inherently, but they were just very annoying and uninterestingly implemented. There were some scenes where a monster or demon would die, and for some reason they would randomly dissolve as if it was a video game or something. And there is also an annoying amount of explosions in this anime. To the point where explosions pretty much mean nothing since there is one every 3 minutes on average. Even when nothing happens to cause an explosion, one will just randomly happen anyways.
There were a lot of questionable sound design choices surrounding the comedy scenes that took me out of whatever immersion I possibly had left. They would use silly sound effects that didn't fit in the actual world and it felt really off putting. However, as for my first positive in this whole review, I actually really love the crystally sound effect they use whenever a character uses magic. It actually sounded really cool and it was probably my favorite part of the whole anime.
Comedy-
This anime does a poor job at mixing in its comedy with seriousness. There is one episode where Stark is bitten by a venomous snake and he was on the edge of potentially dying. Yet, the characters were being very unserious about it, as if it didn't even matter. There were many instances of this during the anime and it just got unwatchable. How am I supposed to take this anime seriously when even the people making it aren't taking it seriously.
Besides that a lot of the comedy feels like it was written by a 13 year old. The jokes just felt very forced in, and it often repeats jokes a lot as if us hearing about the drunk priest again for the 50th time was gonna be any more funny than the 49th time. A lot of the characters are purely used as comedy sticks and don't even feel like their own person. Pretty much the entire cast of Frierens old group are 1 dimensional comedy characters that got carried by Frieren to defeating the demon king. The priest is drunk every time we see him in a flashback, himmel is always acting like an idiot which is supposed to be funny because he's actually supposed to be like a hero or something, but he actually is just a goofball (its funny and stark is totally not the same character), and the beard guy never talks and is pretty much just afk. Oh and if one drunk priest wasn't enough, we get a second one midway through the anime.
Characters-
None of the characters feel like humans. They are constantly expressionless, especially during fights, and it just makes them very unrelatable. The way they talk is robotic as well. It's annoying that our main 2 characters are the most expressionless in the whole anime, and of course they get the most screen time. I already talked about the other characters from Frierens flashbacks, and that applies here too. Most of the characters are either expressionless robots, or purely comedy characters. There are very few actually serious characters and when I say very few I mean only 2. There is no character development, and everyone stays the same as they were before. After Stark defeats the dragon on his own early on, he doesn't grow as a character, he just stays as an annoying whiny brat. Fern is always mad at stark, even when their relationship progresses, it always goes back to square 1 and nothing ever happens to progress anything really.
Plot-
Boring, nothing happens between episodes 10-18. There isn't really much to talk about because there isn't really much plot to begin with. Frieren is kind of just looking after Fern because the drunk priest wanted to and they just wander around together. That's pretty much it. I guess they have an objective to go up to the north so they spend 18 episodes doing nothing, and then doing an exam so that they can try becoming tier 1 mages to go up north. It's very boring and nothing happened this entire season. This anime is more about its themes than its plot but I think the themes aren't explored very well. I did resonate with them a lot early on, but the same themes of nostalgia and time perception got really repetitive and they never really went anywhere.
In conclusion, this anime is not good in any way and honestly I gave it the most positive rating I could've possibly given it. I was bored from start to finish, and there was very little redeeming qualities in this anime. The only reason I didn't rate this anime lower is because I think there are much worse anime out there and in comparison to those, I guess this one isn't the worst thing ever, but it probably deserves a 2 or a 3 in reality. This anime is full of plot conveniences and nonsense. If you would like to see more of what I thought about this anime, feel free to check out the youtube channel in my bio. I uploaded a full length review on this anime where I talk about a lot of the things I wrote here, as well as a lot of other things I didn't go into depth about.
