Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

To preface this I want to say that while I thought Frieren season 1 was a pretty good anime, I wish I loved it as much as everyone else seems to. Here are my reasons as to why it is both awesome and underwhelming at times. Animation: The animation is beautiful. The artstyle here is pretty unique as far as I know and the drawings always look good. When things get action heavy, Madhouse really flexes it's muscles. Seriously awesome looking show. OST: Love the OST. Evan Call is back from Violet Evergarden and he did an amazing job. "Time Flows Ever Onward" is by far myfavorite track and perfectly conveys the mood of this show's fantasy world. Voice acting: I don't know about the Japanese voices, but those are usually good. The English dub I found to be awesome on this anime, so much so I don't know if I could see the characters being voiced in other languages. I think that makes this anime a whole lot more accessible, so this is definitely +points. Themes: I thought the themes in this anime were pretty great too. Lots of anime spends time exploring big ideas in almost cynical and dramatic ways, but Frieren seemed to keep it pretty realistic. We often naturally drift into feelings like Frieren about life, but this anime reminds us that it's the little things that are good in life. Life is good and a gift, we should treasure what we have. This anime has lots of good moral lessons and keeps a clear line between good and evil most of the time. Story: This is where I start to feel a little more iffy about the anime. The story is generally pretty good, I especially enjoyed the earlier arcs with Aura, the fights with demons and the demon child. The mood is usually done pretty well and there are some references to Dark Souls which usually doesn't happen in anime to my knowledge. As good as the story is, it can sometimes feel a bit inconsistent because sometimes we'll be in high octane fights and in other moments dialogue heavy scenes or moral lecturing (which is not strictly a bad thing). I had a bit of a hard time staying invested in this anime because the pacing felt a little wack. The worldbuilding is pretty neat btw, so that's +points. Characters: One of Frieren's strongest points is it's characters. I enjoyed the character development with Fern and Frieren both, plus there's some nuance to be found in each character. Stark was a fun addition and we get to see some of the history of the party and it's impacts on the world of Frieren. The only criticism I really had is that there seems to be a decent amount of repetition with the characters - Fern gets angry, Stark is kind of a straight man, and Frieren is somewhat apathetic/lazy. However I don't think these issues were really large enough to create a big issue in the series, after all I still rate it "Very Good (8)". In the anime industry, this show is a refreshing high fantasy story that has good moral lessons for it's viewers. I wish I had enough fun watching it to rate it a 10 - and that might happen down the road. But for now, I consider it to be a solid season that has very good merit.