Frieren

A review of season one

Widely regarded as a masterpiece, Frieren is a fairly well animated fantasy adventure anime that went out of its way not to stimulate or challenge the audience: the story is boring, the plot simplistic, the characters static, the dialogue shallow, the setting undeveloped, the themes unexplored. Rarely adventurous and barely fantastical, Frieren wanted so badly to be mature, it forgot to be entertaining, and it isn’t even mature.

Probably the simplest way to show that a work of fiction is not a masterpiece is to find another work of fiction that does the same thing substantially better. For example, we know The Eminence in Shadow is not a masterpiece because Let This Grieving Soul Retire also exists. The shows differ in too many ways to mention; they still do the same thing, and it is not the same thing as Bocchi the Rock or Big Order or Bikini Warriors. It doesn’t matter that one of them has a higher budget. It doesn’t matter that one of them is an isekai and the other isn’t: anything can be an isekai; the Divine Comedy is an isekai. And it doesn’t matter that one of them has an overpowered main character and the other doesn’t — except insofar as including that trope to the detriment of the story is one of the ways in which The Eminence in Shadow is worse at doing the same thing.

So what does Frieren do? Our goal, for the moment, is simply to describe the show, not to praise it or condemn it, and once again I am not looking for a plot synopsis or a list of Frieren facts. It makes no difference, for our purposes, whether Frieren be an elf, a robot, a vampire, or some other weird thing. Failure Frame also has an elf: that doesn’t make it similar to Frieren. Himmel can be a reincarnated Japanese high school student for all I care: what we need to know is what the work of fiction is trying to accomplish.

The show belongs to the fantasy adventure genre, with a quasi-medieval setting. The tone is relatively serious, but with regular moments of levity. The main characters are conventionally heroic: they’re good people, and they’re good at what they do, which is mostly fighting monsters. They experience internal conflict: regretting the past and feeling uncertain about the future, or about their own feelings, which they may be unwilling or unable to communicate. There are long, quiet scenes depicting daily life in a fantasy world, as well as elaborate action sequences depicting fantasy battles. Finally, the scale of the story is small in relation to the backstory: many years ago, a great hero saved the world, is what a character might say while gathering firewood.

As a neutral description of Frieren, the above should suffice. It’s tempting to add some information about the antagonists: they’re irredeemably evil; not everyone appreciates the threat they pose; the main character specializes in slaying them — famously so, and for personal reasons. It’s not terribly clear that these interesting Frieren facts are essential to what the work is trying to accomplish, but we can still keep them in mind.

With that understanding, the better version of Frieren is obviously Goblin Slayer. It is clear that Goblin Slayer does the same thing, meaning it matches that description; it remains only to show that Goblin Slayer does it substantially better, and we are in no danger of running out of examples, because Goblin Slayer is better than Frieren in every way that counts, from world-building to romance. I’ll give you an example so cut and dried, you could teach it in a writing class, and I’ll be attacking where the enemy is strongest: never mind fight scenes and fan service, this goes directly to dialogue and character development — I’m driving this panzer right through Frieren’s front line.

In Goblin Slayer, after Priestess loses something important, there is a scene where Sword Maiden visits Goblin Slayer in his room at night. She sits on the bed, smiles, and tells him that crying girls want someone to comfort them. Goblin Slayer tells her he already knows that. Sword Maiden, no longer smiling, gets up and walks toward the door. Goblin Slayer brings up an unrelated anecdote about losing something as a child. Sword Maiden smiles again, sits back down, and touches him lightly before leaving.

This scene, which is two minutes long, exhibits appropriate depth and complexity, being neither superficial nor inaccessible. Granted, as Albert Jay Nock said, there are ranges of intellectual experience that are open to some and not to all. Nevertheless, I am confident that any mentally normal, emotionally mature adult can appreciate this scene. Who among us hasn’t had such a conversation, and then lost their virginity?

The scene is roughly ninety percent subtext; let me spell it out so even Frieren can understand. Sword Maiden’s remark has a double meaning: she’s referring to herself. But Goblin Slayer won’t give her intimacy, his reply alluding to trauma well known to the viewer, and she feels rejected. But he doesn’t want to drive her away, so he tries opening up to her, which he can only do in his awkward Goblin Slayer way — I mean, he spends the entire scene sharpening a knife and never once removes his helmet. But Sword Maiden gets it: she appreciates that he’s making an effort for her; it’s progress.

Bear in mind, this is an action scene. It’s not a fight scene: just to be clear, if Sword Maiden is visiting Goblin Slayer in his room at night, and you hear fabric tearing and furniture breaking — that’s not fighting. But it is an action scene: you can tell by how many times I used the word “but” to denote opposition while describing the subtext. Action scenes are about conflict, they are not necessarily violent, and violence without conflict is just spectacle: another pointless tournament arc or monster of the week.

In short, Goblin Slayer succinctly expresses conflict between well developed, relatable characters through actions, including speech, with appropriately complex subtext. I happened to remember that particular scene, but the show is full of this sort of thing.

For comparison, in Frieren, there is a scene where a man is fighting a giant wasp or something, and he has to get Frieren to fight it for him. All of a sudden — I swear this is in the show — at least, I don’t think I dreamed it — he says to himself: “Oh no! I won’t be able to explain to Frieren how to defeat this giant wasp, because we never established trust through mutual understanding!” But then he thinks back to a time, many years ago, when a wise old sage told him: “By the way, if you ever find yourself fighting any sort of large winged insect, it isn’t necessary to establish trust through mutual understanding. After all, Frieren — have you met Frieren? Frieren the elf? Well, anyway, if Frieren happens to be around, she can defeat winged insects of all sizes very easily! I only bring it up because it might be relevant someday.” And the flashback gives him the courage to fetch Frieren, who easily defeats the giant wasp.

Now, is this an unfair comparison? Probably. Am I misremembering one or two minor details? Definitely! Sorry, it wasn’t a wasp: it was a bumblebee. Look, when you drive a panzer through the front line, you get a few dents in the fender; you end up hosing a few elves out of the treads. I only brought it up because I remember watching it and thinking: someone should really track down the author and teach them the Japanese word for subtext — which I guess is just sabutekisuto. Then I rewatched Goblin Slayer, because Frieren reminded me how much I enjoy not having things spelled out for me.

To be fair, the Frieren scene also includes a fairly well animated fantasy battle: lots of animation frames, camera movement, bright lights, loud noises — that sort of thing. It’s not as good as My One-Hit Kill Sister, but it’s fine. The climax, when Frieren turned herself into an F-35 Lightning and fired missiles at the giant bumblebee, was a pretty cool moment, I guess. To me, however, the scene is notable mainly for other reasons.

First, the dialogue is astonishingly superficial: I trust this is sufficiently clear. Second, Frieren’s travel companions are in no way endangered or even inconvenienced by her unwillingness or inability to communicate her thoughts and feelings; if they were, it might compel someone to change in some way, driving character development. Third, no sooner is a conflict introduced than we are told how it will be resolved, and then it is resolved in that way. Each of those is a flaw on its own; when you combine all three in one scene, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the scene serves no purpose apart from spectacle: a fairly well animated battle against the monster of the week.

“But what about the scene where Frieren stares into the distance with a look of quiet contemplation? Surely that scene is positively oozing with subtext! We can really feel the character development as she grapples with internal conflict.” Okay, first of all, which scene? Frieren has twenty-eight episodes, and as far as I remember all twenty-eight of them include that exact scene. Whatever juices it may have been oozing in episode one, surely by episode twelve that particular grape had been squeezed dry.

Frieren is remarkably repetitive. It’s not enough that we learn that Frieren the Slayer’s favorite spell summons a purple iguana or does some other quirky thing that doesn’t slay anyone, implying depth to her character: that would be Goblin Slayer storytelling, where every scene is unique, and you have to engage your brain. No, we need to be told, through a series of flashbacks, that it was also her boyfriend’s favorite spell, and before that it was her favorite teacher’s favorite spell, and Frieren once used the spell to save a child from drowning in a well. Not everything has to be related to one spell! We are well past the point of diminishing returns on implied depth, and surely there must have been a more effective way to rescue a drowning child than summoning a purple iguana. Any one or two of those would have been fine: her favorite spell can be a random spell her boyfriend liked; it implies he changed her. As it stands, we get — her boyfriend liked her favorite teacher’s spell because it saved a drowning child?

Second of all, what subtext? What character development? What internal conflict? Be specific: when Frieren stares into the distance with a look of quiet contemplation, or whatever else she does, what can one deduce about her inner life? I know what I’m supposed to be deducing: after all, Frieren is a poignant tale of loss and regret — it told me so explicitly in episode one. It’s not enough that we see Frieren crying at a funeral because she regrets losing Himmel: she has to say, out loud, “I regret losing Himmel,” and then get his name tattooed on her thigh. But I already talked about the exposition, which is at least clear: exposition aside, relating to this weird elf is singularly difficult.

Frieren is essentially someone who doesn’t feel emotions strongly. It’s not really that the events of a decade hold less significance for her because they make up a smaller fraction of her lifespan: people assign great significance to brief moments, whereas Frieren doesn’t even seem to care if she’s about to die violently. What can one deduce about such a person from a look of quiet contemplation? Are you certain she isn’t just looking at stuff? Is it possible that, in the moment when she cried at the funeral, she also completed her character arc? If not, what choice does she make in the last episode that she could not have made in the first? What facial expression does she make? I can easily answer these questions for Goblin Slayer, or Failure Frame, or Isekai Cheat Skill.

A character undergoing meaningful change is probably too much of a risk for Frieren, whose business is generating issue-length fantasy vignettes in a vaguely wistful mood. At least, it seems as though the series went out of its way not to stimulate or challenge the audience; as though the outcome of every conflict, the outcome of Fern’s bake sale raffle, has to be announced in advance, most often through a flashback. Paradoxically, Frieren often spends a half-episode setting up a reveal, but the reveals are generally anticlimactic, with no relevance beyond that segment of the story. You thought a spell was dangerous? It’s not. You thought an artifact was important? It’s not. Don’t worry about it. Generally, the big surprise is that Frieren’s party is even more overpowered than you thought. Obviously, this was a deliberate choice, but it’s also a questionable choice. I had no idea what was going to happen at the end of Failure Frame, and I quite enjoyed finding out. To be blunt, Failure Frame has a much better story than Frieren.

A story, as E. M. Forster said, is the simplest form of fiction: a series of events, one thing after another. When you add causation, you get a plot. A story demands of the audience one of the simplest of human emotions, namely curiosity: it has to make us want to know what happens next. To the extent that it does, it succeeds as a story.

Every episode of Failure Frame made me want to know what happens next. For God’s sake, every episode of Harukana Receive, a less-than-beloved franchise about teenage girls playing beach volleyball in Okinawa, made me want to know what happens next. This should not be an onerous requirement for a work of fiction! Something is going to happen: the author is going write some sort of interesting turn of events. Seras Ashrain is going to fall in a puddle of magic liquid that dissolves her underwear. The junior beach volleyball tournament is going to be delayed due to inclement weather.

Frieren very rarely made me want to know what happens next. For much of it, I knew what was going to happen next: Frieren’s party is going to walk to another generic quasi-medieval village, where they will perform menial tasks for several months while they wait for the mountain pass to thaw, and the payoff is finding out that the reason Frieren knows a seemingly useless spell for recreating the exact odor of an elf girl’s feet is that, many years ago, when she was traveling with the legendary hero’s party, he always used to — well, at this point, neither of us wants to know what happens next.

Was I supposed to be excited to find out what’s in store for Frieren and friends? None of them seem to care: judging by their expressions, a fight to the death might as well be a household chore, and their motivations remain vague even after they say them out loud. Forget Fern and Stark, they’re just along for the ride: Frieren’s goals are to travel north, to collect spells, to fight monsters, and to find out more about people. When you put it all together, Frieren is, conveniently, about equally motivated to do whatever the plot requires, which is to say, she isn’t really motivated to do anything. She can stay in one place for a long time, looking for a purple iguana, or she can slay the monster of the week and leave as quickly as possible: neither is surprising; neither is informative. Goblin Slayer’s goal is to slay goblins, so when he chooses to do anything apart from slaying goblins, that tells us something about him: it’s character development. When Frieren, on her way north, chooses to fight a lengthy series of battles in order to apply for a passport, that tells us something about the plot: it’s time for a tournament arc.

As long as we’re both taking this writing class, let’s try an exercise together. Imagine you’re writing a new fantasy adventure anime, and your goal is to recreate the core appeal of Frieren as promised in episode one: a poignant tale of loss and regret, a love doomed by the passage of time — that sort of thing. Assume Frieren itself does not exist in this timeline, so you can copy it as much as you like, down to the last detail.

With that understanding, suppose your editor drops by while you’re putting the final touches on episode twenty-eight, the season finale. Last episode, Stark was gravely injured by demons — I’m making this up, you can change the plot — and Fern insists on nursing him back to health in a quiet village. Frieren faces a decision: to press on, leaving them behind, or to stay, knowing the mountain pass will soon be blocked by a winter storm, delaying her journey. How does Frieren feel about that? What do Fern and Stark mean to her? Do they need her? Do they even want her around? Who is she to them: a mentor, a party leader, a close friend, an eccentric aunt, or a third wheel?

Or maybe Fern — who in this version would not be wildly overpowered — has to pass an arduous written test: the fifth-class mage exam. She studies for weeks. Frieren is there to help her out, and Stark is there to cheer her on. Fern passes the test and gives Frieren a big hug. The examiner asks Frieren to step into his office; she emerges ten minutes later wearing — a first-class mage medallion. Fern is not amused. “I don’t know, dear, they said they had a special award for me.” Somehow Frieren’s medallion already has a chocolate stain. Later, she drops it in a duck pond by mistake. Remember, we are only trying to recreate the core appeal of Frieren as promised in episode one.

Anyway, your editor suggests that, instead of all that, the last eleven episodes of the season, representing forty percent of the runtime, should be a magic tournament. This is definitely the way to deliver on the promise of episode one: poignant tale, passage of time, dead boyfriend — all that stuff. Make up a reason why there has to be a magic tournament right now. It doesn’t have to be a good reason: by order of the wizard high council, the kingdom has passed a new law, and everyone has to fight in a tournament to decide who gets to ride the purple iguana. It’ll be great! No, Frieren doesn’t need to care about the outcome of the tournament. No, Fern shouldn’t care either. By the way, Stark won’t be participating at all: he can take just a nap for the last eleven episodes.

Okay, how do you feel about the structure and pacing of your anime after these helpful suggestions? (And you thought the comic book writer in Oshi no Ko had it rough.)

In case the point of this exercise is not yet sufficiently clear, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that either Frieren is not actually about what it promised in episode one, or it is singularly wasteful in delivering on that promise. For no good reason, by order of the wizard high council, it turns into a different show — and it sort of interested me! I liked the new characters: they seemed to be motivated to participate in the story; for a while, the structure of the tournament brought them into conflict with one another; and they all used different types of magic. Suddenly there were cute girls: four of them! The girl with the hair buns started dating some old guy with a beard, which was funny.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last: one thing Frieren despises more than subtext is character conflict polluting its fairly well animated fight scenes. Accordingly, the great magic tournament, whose rules never made sense to begin with, soon degenerates into an interminable series of skirmishes against magically animated suits of armor or some other equally uninteresting video game enemy. It reminded me a bit of Solo Leveling. It’s actually insulting that Frieren has a character say, out loud, “we were allies in the first round, but we might be enemies in the second,” and then does nothing with that.

The passport application arc is Frieren the fantasy adventure at its most conventional, which makes it, in some ways, the most enjoyable part, and yet still disappointing. On the positive side, as I said, we have a new cast of characters with mildly interesting motivations, relationships, and conflicts. Moreover, the arc lasts just long enough to exhibit noticeably greater complexity in its plot and structure: basically, it’s the junior beach volleyball tournament from Harukana Receive. On the negative side, the arc still isn’t good, and its existence makes it impossible to justify the slow, boring, repetitive parts when the show was pretending to be a series of vaguely wistful fantasy vignettes.

Truthfully, while it was airing, I stopped watching Frieren about halfway through the season. I didn’t decide to drop it: I just never got around to watching the next episode. It had failed as a story to that extent. I’d rather rewatch Failure Frame — so I did. Do I lack patience? Certainly: if patience is the capacity for allowing things to waste one’s time without becoming irritated by those things, I have none at all. On the other hand, a lack of patience is no obstacle to enjoying works of art. For example, I am currently reading a book: it’s a history of early modern England in twelve volumes, around seven thousand pages long. Am I thereby exercising patience? Not really: the reason I am reading the book is that all or almost all of its seven thousand pages are interesting.

Frieren wandering from town to town was quite uninteresting, as I said, but did you know that in the actual middle ages, vagrancy in England carried the death penalty? Very interesting! Imagine if we put Henry Tudor in charge of San Francisco: I’d watch that anime. Imaginative fiction should be imaginative, should it not? It should be at least as imaginative as a daydream I once had about Lancastrian heavy cavalry riding down homeless junkie Democrats with lances. I mean, Gate was pretty imaginative.

So the time has come to discuss Frieren as a fantasy adventure. Forget any medieval history you know: we are here for heroic legends; we are dealing, as Grote said, with a past that never was a present, a region essentially mythical. The knight, the wizard, the fire-breathing dragon, the magic sword, the treasure chest, the chain mail bikini, and the busty feral cat-girl it mostly fails to cover: every trope, meaning artistic tradition, by its longevity alone has earned our respect. The tropes would not be here if they did not have a truth in them, reverse-isekai’d here from the mythical-imaginative region.

The history of fantasy adventure — the line of descent from Teutonic mythology to Japanese animation, through Conan the Cimmerian and Gandalf the Grey, and then on to Krai Andrey and Leon Fou Bartfort — is too well known to merit discussion here. I happen to enjoy the genre, tropes and all. Of course fantasy has its well documented foibles: it has been two centuries since Carlyle admonished the ordinary poet, forever seeking in external circumstances, in some past, distant, conventional heroic world, the help which can be found only in himself. Nevertheless, I refuse to quibble with the myth that violence is more romantic when it is carried out using medieval technology.

Fantasy adventure is not a problem in need of solving. However, it must be admitted, after so many generations of imitation and refinement, and due in part to the intrusion of fantasy game mechanics, many tropes are now notoriously stale or even ossified. The Elben were magical creatures, before they were assigned a block of ability scores, but everyone now knows what an elf is: long ears, lives in a tree, green armor, bonus to archery. Game mechanics are mechanical, game systems are systematic: two things magic can never be, or it ceases to be magical. If magic means nothing more than casting fireball — well, anyone can pick up a can of gasoline and a book of matches and “cast fireball” at the lawn, though the neighbors may not appreciate it. Fantasy used to be magical; it used to be fantastical. Lovecraft understood that slaying orcs with a sword is no more inherently fantastical than shooting the neighbor’s dog with a handgun. The Odyssey is fantastical, and so is Beowulf, and so is Macbeth, and so is The Lord of the Rings, but fireballs are not. Rarely is the modern wizard a magical creature.

Therefore, with the tropes very nearly if not actually ossified, thoughtful persons who happen to enjoy fantasy adventure must welcome thoughtful subversions of the genre. Unfortunately, not all subversions are thoughtful. There are three types of subversion: look at this trope; look at me not do this trope; and look at this wonderful living world. In the first type of subversion, an author who is aware of the genre’s existence draws our attention to one of its tropes: this is not nearly as clever as the author would like us to believe. In the second type of subversion, an author who despises the genre does the opposite of one of its tropes: this is universally stupid and obnoxious. In the third type of subversion, which can be considered thoughtful, an author who loves the genre endeavors to bring it to life, tropes and all, cat-girls included, in a world that feels real.

I assume you know what’s coming: Goblin Slayer is a textbook example of a thoughtful subversion that elevates the raw material of modern fantasy adventure. What sort of person decides to become an adventurer? What’s it like to hand out quests for a living? While the legendary heroes are off fighting world-ending threats, who protects the starting zone from a pack of level one monsters? The entire series is built around the answers to such questions: not only the setting, but characters, conflicts, and themes.

The isekai subgenre of fantasy adventure is full of thoughtful subversions: Cautious Hero, told from the point of view of a hero-summoning goddess; Trapped in a Dating Sim, whose world-building is comically inconsistent on purpose; The Dungeon of Black Company, where getting rich is more important than fighting demons; I’m Standing on a Million Lives, making strange and creative use of game mechanics; Grimgar, for a less romantic take on Japanese high school students conscripted into medieval warfare.

Frieren, on the other hand, features just about every standard fantasy adventure trope you can name, it even draws our attention to them, but it never takes them seriously, never brings them to life. Here we have the obligatory adventuring party, with a well balanced mix of races and classes: elf wizard, dwarf fighter, human cleric — hey, wait a minute: why would any of those things be true? Faced with a world-ending threat, who thought it would be a good idea to deploy a random band of mercenaries on a ten-year expedition, on foot, without military support of any kind? I guess Himmel came up with that idea on his own, and started calling himself a “hero” as a way of explaining why he was going to kill a foreign head of state — but why would he stop to explore a bunch of dungeons along the way? What even is a dungeon? Who is digging all these dungeons, littering them with treasure chests, and populating them with monsters?

At the risk of belaboring this point, in The Lord of the Rings, the actual Fellowship of the Ring makes sense in light of the plot: it has a reason to include various races; it even has a reason to visit an underground complex filled with monsters on its way to address a world-ending threat. It is not yet the obligatory adventuring party; it may indeed be the original adventuring party. Decades later, those tropes are thoroughly ossified, but in Goblin Slayer, the party again has a reason to include various races, although it is less about uniting against a world-ending threat than about shunting goblin-slaying responsibilities onto a random band of mercenaries. Again, the party has a reason to visit an underground complex filled with monsters: it has no relevance to the world-ending threat that someone else is dealing with off-screen, but it has a lot of relevance to the people nearby who don’t want to get eaten by goblins, which is refreshingly straightforward. Meanwhile, in Frieren, the adventuring party and the demon lord and the dungeon crawl exist, as expected, and our attention is drawn to their expected existence, and that seems to be about as far as the world-building goes.

Maybe some of that was explained in the manga. Maybe some of it was explained in the anime, and I wasn’t paying attention, because the story was boring, the characters static, the dialogue shallow, and so on. Either way, it doesn’t matter: I don’t need an explanation or a list of Frieren facts. Spare me your encyclopedic world-building: this is not about formulating arguments that made-up facts explain made-up events. I simply want to feel as though the world is real, and the characters really live in it, so if you introduce a conspicuous trope, or any idea, really, then you have to put in the work to bring it to life. Otherwise, I might as well be watching someone else play a video game.

The antagonists, the demons, are said to be mindless monsters that imitate speech like parrots do, to deceive humans — which is clearly not true: they use language just like humans do, to communicate thoughts and feelings. They do that more consistently than Frieren does! Demons are remarkably forthright, and more emotional than the main characters. A dying demon comes clean about trying to deceive humans, which is the last thing a mindless monster that imitates speech to deceive humans would do. A spying demon asks another demon, in private, to explain how families work, thereby expressing curiosity, requesting information, and deceiving no humans in the process.

What the spying demon should have said was — nothing. Instead, we should have seen her attempting to deceive a human by offering to let him eat her family, or have sex with her family, or soak her family in sour cream, or build her family a new gazebo. That would have effectively conveyed the notion that demons imitate speech without understanding it. In the hands of a good science fiction writer, like Philip K. Dick, it would have been appropriately unsettling. Maybe the demons have figured out how to imitate humans in every respect except our familial relationships, and the one thing saving humanity from being infiltrated by replicants — I mean, demons — is a fantasy Turing test. “True or false: would you like to kiss your sister?” Maybe the demons try to brute-force the Frieren test by memorizing family-related behavior, and the humans respond by concealing their behavior or changing it at random. So Frieren comes to a village where everyone kisses their sister to deceive the demons: I’d watch that anime.

I really think it is a useful exercise to reverse-engineer a work of fiction in this way. If you wanted to write about loss and regret, would you include a magic tournament? If you wanted to write about a lonely elf getting to know people and trying to empathize with them, would you give the antagonists human-like thoughts and feelings, and then call them mindless monsters that no one should get to know or try to empathize with? If you wanted to write the antagonists as mindless monsters, wouldn’t you put at least a little bit of work into following through on that idea? The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic deals with loss and regret, and it has demons, and it has none of those problems.

Frieren is not written well enough to justify a detailed analysis of its plot or its setting. Notice how often it uses flashbacks and how rarely it uses foreshadowing. Notice how the first demon that Frieren fights looks and acts nothing like subsequent demons. In general, the anime exhibits the hallmarks of a slavishly faithful adaptation of a manga that was written one issue at a time and not planned out. That’s probably why it seems so reluctant to follow through on its own ideas and deliver on its own promises, as if committing to an overarching plot and moving it forward in a well defined setting is too difficult or too risky: let’s just fight video game enemies for a couple of volumes.

It’s not unusual for a manga to attract an audience with a strong first volume, exhaust its creative impulse almost immediately, then coast; and the animated adaptation will peak around episode one. After one episode, Spy Family was widely acclaimed as “the perfect blend of action, comedy, and spy thriller,” and then it kept airing, and it turned out to be a mildly amusing family-friendly sitcom. After one extra-long episode, Oshi no Ko was widely acclaimed as “a supernatural murder mystery uncovering the dark side of the entertainment industry,” and then it kept airing, and it turned out to be a fairly entertaining soap opera. After one episode, Zom 100 — do I need to say it? That one turned out to be laughably bad. At some point, you have to stop falling for the same trick, which gives us a new mediocre anime of the decade at least twice a year.

To be fair, some of the writing mistakes in Frieren are easily overlooked because, as I said, the show simply isn’t engaging enough that I was invested in the plot or paying close attention to the setting: it’s rare to see noticeably boring background art, but somehow Frieren manages. Now, Goblin Slayer certainly isn’t flawless, but at least it’s consistently interesting and exciting and adventurous and fantastical. When I think about what happened in the story, I almost always remember more than what occurred on-screen, which is a valuable quality in a work of fiction. Frieren, on the other hand, was thought-provoking only to the extent that I rewrote it in my head to make it more fun. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes: the demons don’t make sense; the hero party’s ten-year journey doesn’t make sense; the passport application process especially doesn’t make sense. As far as I can tell, apart from a vaguely wistful mood, Frieren is an empty shell. One could argue it delivers on the concept of demons better than the demons do, because it imitates long-form storytelling to deceive the viewer.

Frieren’s goal is to retrace her original journey — that is, until a dwarf gives her a flashback, and then her goal is to reach a specific location, which happens to be at the end of that journey, but never mind that now. It seems like nothing about the original journey exists until it becomes relevant to the current episode, at which point it pops into existence in a standalone flashback, disconnected in time and space from the rest of the journey, almost like a series of issue-length vignettes with no overarching plot. As a result, after twenty-eight episodes of flashbacks to the hero’s party, I still don’t know what it was like being in the hero’s party — wistful? I guess it was wistful. How was your ten-year expedition, Himmel? “Wistful! I explored some dungeons, smiled at some children, and killed a foreign head of state.” I wonder if Himmel slept with any women over the course of ten years. No, of course not: he just gazed at them wistfully.

For a fantasy adventure anime, Frieren is remarkably safe. I don’t mean safe for Frieren; after all, it’s full of demons and other monsters of the week: I mean safe for the viewer. It’s rare to see a fantasy adventure anime with a target demographic of high school guidance counselors. Of course Himmel doesn’t sleep with girls! The man is far too busy gazing wistfully at a field of spring flowers, or sharing a cordial yet respectful handshake with his colleague Frieren. It’s even difficult to imagine Frieren coming across a village where the humans fear elves: that would be prejudice, which is wrong. Surely everyone is pleased to see a non-human mercenary wander into town one day, armed with overwhelming firepower. It’s not that Frieren needed prejudice, or slavery, or even incest comedy: it’s just that the show might as well be set in San Francisco.

Consider religion in the world of Frieren, where an ancient elf, a holy priest, and other purportedly quasi-medieval characters seem less alien in their outlook than our own ancestors, and in some cases, our own neighbors. The dwarf doesn’t believe in heaven: when you die, you turn to dust. The elf, Frieren, argues that heaven can’t be proven or disproven, since we can’t observe the soul. To Himmel, it doesn’t matter either way. The priest also doesn’t care, but he thinks it would be convenient if heaven existed as a nice little reward for us, and everyone seems to be on board with that. I know very little about religion in Japan, but it seems to me as though Frieren has put the exact same tepid post-Christian skepticism in the mouths of four characters. As expected, Himmel the hero’s take reflects the least thought — and I don’t just mean among the four of them: it reflects the least thought humanly possible. I don’t need religion in a fantasy adventure anime, but this feels like eating children’s vitamins for dinner.

Religion is awful and terrible — that is, religion is awesome and terrific — that is, religion inspires awe and terror: suitable material, perhaps, for heroic adventures or meditations on immortality. A man’s religion is the chief fact with regard to him, as Carlyle said, religion meaning not the church-creed that a man professes, but the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious universe, and his duty and destiny there. He said that two centuries ago, in a lecture series that used to be well known. Note the title: On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. I wouldn’t necessarily call it reasonable to look for a literate, educated, and cultured outlook on religion and heroism from a fantasy adventure anime, but if Frieren wanted to be mature, and not merely safe, it should have dug a little deeper than not at all into the vast copyright-free quarry of mankind’s literary heritage — not that it needed to be mature! Again, I enjoyed Failure Frame.

Critics who treat maturity as a term of approval, according to C. S. Lewis, cannot be mature themselves: to be concerned about being grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish, are the marks of childhood and adolescence; and to carry on even into early adulthood this concern about being adult is a mark of arrested development.

In that respect, Frieren is an adolescent franchise. It is the perfect anime for people who are embarrassed about enjoying anime. You can watch it in the living room, in class, or on the train. If anyone walks into the room, or boards the train, and catches you watching a Japanese animated television show, and says to you, “That must be one of those Japanese animated television shows that are corrupting the youth of today with hot naked girls,” you can tell him no, there are no hot girls in Frieren, and if there were, they would be fully clothed! I swear, I would never look at a woman’s sexy body!

Fan service? Not on my watch! Nothing ruins a work of art quite like women’s breasts: their big, round, bouncy breasts. Honestly, if I have to see one more pair of big round breasts, bouncing and jiggling right in front of my face, I am going to cry, and then scream, and then shoot myself. Go ahead, show me them: I dare you, I double dog dare you! I have had it up to here with women’s breasts in Japanese animated television.

In all seriousness, I’ve been to the Louvre: it’s full of fan service — by which I mean, there are many famous paintings and sculptures depicting, yes, women’s sexy bodies. I think some of that art predates written language: ancient urns with big round breasts. If that embarrasses you, don’t go to the Louvre, and don’t watch anime on the train.

I said I would drive a panzer through Frieren’s front line, and I have done that — the encirclement is complete, elven forces are surrendering — but I feel as though Frieren still has not learned her lesson properly, so it’s time to shoot some prisoners. As I said, Goblin Slayer is better in every way that counts — absolutely including the fan service.

In Goblin Slayer, there is a scene where Farm Girl, an attractive young lady with big round breasts, wakes up in a state of undress, goes to the window, and greets Goblin Slayer, who is outside the farmhouse checking for goblins. Later, they walk into town, where Farm Girl, who is now fully clothed, overhears some people disparaging Goblin Slayer because he looks weird, smells bad, and spends all of his time slaying goblins.

As usual, the writing exhibits appropriate depth and complexity, expecting the viewer not only to deduce the subtext of each scene, but to keep track of the plot: to interpret new scenes in light of old ones, and to reinterpret old scenes in light of new ones. This is neither a recondite point nor an esoteric doctrine: it is the definition of a plot. This is how setups and payoffs work; this is why foreshadowing is more difficult to write than flashbacks but ultimately more satisfying to the viewer. Before I spell it out for you, watch up to episode two of Goblin Slayer and ask yourself: why is Farm Girl naked when she wakes up? Call it the pons asinorum of anime criticism. I’ll give you a minute.

Farm Girl, clearly, feels safe at the farmhouse. Is she unaware of the threat of goblins? Is she about to suffer the same fate as the overconfident adventurers in episode one? No, Goblin Slayer is there to keep her safe; that is, the fan service, meaning innocence and beauty in this world, is predicated upon a man who crawls around in a slimy hole, covered with mud and bloody slime, crushing goblin skulls for a handful of copper coins. Goblin Slayer, indeed, is not well liked, his appearance is ghastly, but Farm Girl, the person who likely knows him best, trusts him so completely that he gets to see her pantsu. All of this, by the way, foreshadows important developments that I won’t spoil.

Imagine watching all that and getting nothing more out of it than “fan service.” These people exist, and I bet they adore Frieren. Really, if you find subtext as intimidating as a woman’s naked body, you might be more comfortable with Frieren-style storytelling, where every little thing is spelled out for you every single time, and you never once have to engage your brain. “Oh no! I won’t be able to explain to Farm Girl why goblins are dangerous, because we never established trust through mutual understanding!”

I’m beginning to feel a little bit guilty about shooting the prisoners, so we’ll move on. In case the point is not yet abundantly clear, I have no problem with anime depicting women’s sexy bodies, also known as fan service. Refusing to depict them is not more mature than depicting them; being sexless is not more mature than being sexy. If an anime happens to depict them in an obnoxious way, it is not that women’s bodies are inherently obnoxious: it is that some particular anime is being obnoxious about them.

To be fair, anime is sometimes obnoxious. If you enjoy anime, and you happen to be a mentally normal, emotionally mature adult, then actually sitting down and watching a new anime is a paradoxical pursuit, because you do want to watch an anime, but you also want to enjoy a well written work of fiction. The paradox lies in the observation that certain anime tropes are obnoxious to the point that no one can tolerate them for longer than eight seconds, and the mere avoidance of one of them is counted by many as a major plus. “Sure, the plot makes no sense, the jokes aren’t funny, the animators forgot to draw the legs, and the all-kazoo soundtrack is grating — but at least there’s no harem. I’m definitely coming back for season four!” For myself, I definitely am not coming back for season four, but I can appreciate the sentiment: the sexless harem, yelling-as-comedy, and assorted shonen slop will get no quarter from this reviewer.

Therefore, although I give Frieren no credit whatsoever for sparing some adolescent train passengers some embarrassment by not depicting women’s bodies, the series has also avoided some actually obnoxious tropes: “at least there’s no harem.” This too may come as a relief to certain train passengers, but avoiding some obnoxious tropes does not in itself make a work of fiction excellent, and going out of one’s way to avoid anything potentially outrageous risks infuriating viewers who actually enjoy anime.

Poetry, said Dryden, must generally please, but it is not to be understood that all parts of it must please every man. Tragedy is not to be judged by a witty man whose taste is confined to comedy. Nor is every man who loves tragedy a sufficient judge of it: he must understand its excellencies too, or he will only prove a blind admirer, not a critic.

Anime ought to be judged by someone who loves it and understands its excellencies. Anime is frequently outrageous, ridiculous, nonsensical, and delightful. It isn’t aimed at high school guidance counselors. Don’t watch it on the train. Chivalry of a Failed Knight, for example, is a masterpiece: essentially a perfect season of anime. It should have been called Anime: Just the Good Parts. Yes, it is one long magical sword-fighting tournament with thigh-high stockings and incest comedy. If you don’t like anime, you won’t like it with anime on top and a side of anime: I trust this is sufficiently clear.

Frieren, the safety scissors of Japanese animated television, has thrown out much that was outrageous and ridiculous and just plain fun, and it hasn’t even thrown out all of the obnoxious stuff. Stark belongs in My Hero Academia. Between Fern and Himmel, it is difficult to decide who is more annoying. Certainly Fern is given more scenes to inflict her bad behavior on us: “Stark! What did you do, Stark? Stark! Did you drink juice after bedtime, Stark? Do I need to lock you in the cage again, Stark?” Himmel, though, is stamped more clearly with the author’s approval: “What makes me a hero? Well, Frieren, I smile at children and fight video game enemies. You know, at the end of the day, the real heroes are the guidance counselors.” As I said of women’s bodies, it is not that characters with obnoxious personalities are inherently obnoxious: it is not annoying to watch Kuroki Tomoko be annoying. The problem is the tone, as if the viewer is expected not to notice that the cute, feisty wizard girl is an unbearable brat, and the wise and noble hero an empty-headed, feckless buffoon. Truthfully, I liked the demons better than the main characters. I liked Ubel’s armpits better than Himmel’s stupid smug face — but not even Ubel’s armpits will bring me back for season two.

Yes, these are my own personal thoughts and feelings about Frieren. As far as I can tell, there is only one legitimate reason to write a review, and that is to express oneself: that soul might in some articulate utterance unfold itself to soul, as Carlyle also said. Do you need a recommendation? My answer is the same in every case: sure, watch a few episodes, see if you like it. Watch Goblin Slayer, too. Watch Fight Club. Read King Lear. Listen to Abbey Road. Carlyle reviewed Voltaire: he didn’t need to “recommend” him.

Perhaps I didn’t need to shoot the prisoners. Standing here, beside a smoking panzer, it’s easy to second-guess a few rhetorical war crimes. Certainly Frieren is beloved by many. It’s a high-budget streaming series for a general audience, in a popular genre, in a popular art style: it’s not difficult to account for its popularity, considering that The Lord of the Rings already exists. It really was not my intention to antagonize its fans, discourage new viewers, or injure the sale of the anime and manga: motives ignoble and degrading to the critic. Probably Frieren is not quite as irritating as I have made it sound, and I quite like the fan art. If my words appear ill-mannered, consider this: as the civilest man in the company is commonly the dullest, said Dryden, an author, who is afraid to make you laugh or cry, out of pure good manners makes you sleep. I only endeavor to be more interesting than Frieren, an anime you can watch on the train.

Originally published on my Substack.