If You’re Not Watching ‘Frieren,’ You’re Lacking Out on the Greatest Fantasy Anime in Ages

Whereas Solo Leveling finally turned Crunchyroll’s Anime of the Year in 2025, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End was on the brief record of individuals’s uncrowned kings of anime that 12 months, and for good purpose; it took everybody unexpectedly with how disarmingly good the present was. Studio Madhouse‘s anime adaptation of Frieren additionally doubled as a return to type for old-school fantasy anime with out all of the gimmicks that’ve made the style spinoff over the previous decade.

The fantasy style, largely, as much as that time was oversaturated with isekai exhibits that mainly performed Mad Libs with their sentence-long permutated premises of so-and-so with a secular trendy/RPG-class day job truly being goated at that job and getting all the women and what have you ever, that all of it however turned synonymous with the style. Relatively than shake the puzzle items that make up the hallmarks of the fantasy style and haphazardly decide up what performs up the min-maxing stats of a hero’s development essentially the most, Frieren was a return to type to old-school fantasy tales the place character and world-building result in development, not arbitrary quantity crunching.

Its second season on Crunchyroll seems to be to be extra of an excellent factor. For many who nonetheless haven’t been placed on to the present, enable us to rely the methods why Frieren is a family title within the anime neighborhood as a must-watch show in this jam-packed season.

On the entire, what makes Frieren such a magical breath of recent air is that it has a reasonably meditative vibe to look at—type of like an animated lo-fi beats video with a fantasy twang to it. The present begins with Frieren, the mage of the heroes’ get together, on the finish of her nice journey, having already defeated the massive evil and saved the world. When her get together go their separate methods, years cross like seconds for her, what along with her being an elf, resulting in a little bit of survivor’s guilt as she sees the get together members she spent a non-insignificant portion of their lives adventuring with die, amongst them the hero Himmel, who undoubtedly had emotions for Frieren. Emotions Frieren didn’t acknowledge till it was too late.

Do you get deja vu? #frieren pic.twitter.com/7Q4CoWcXDr

— 𝐶ae (@caezelnut) January 17, 2026

However life marches on. This time round, nonetheless, Frieren goals to rectify her previous errors by taking within the small, mundane moments with a brand new get together as she retraces her steps from her nice journey because the mentor and, let’s be trustworthy, surrogate guardian of a warrior named Stark and a fledgling mage named Fern. These are two heroes who additionally simply so occurred to be the earlier apprentices of Frieren’s get together members. Alongside the best way she takes the time to essentially soak within the little moments that make life so great; that is made abundantly extra poetic and a contact melancholic since Frieren is a mage of a thousand or so years, making her functionally immortal in comparison with her human allies.

She didn’t admire this sufficient along with her previous get together, and she or he regrets having needed to lay two of her mates to relaxation. She doesn’t wish to repeat that along with her youthful upstart get together.

Whereas the present continues to be primarily all vibes, it’s removed from aimless. In the end, Frieren’s aim is to succeed in Aureole, the rumored last resting place of souls, so she will be able to converse to Himmel the hero once more and bid him a correct farewell. However that doesn’t imply she and her mates can’t settle for a couple of aspect quests alongside the best way. Be that killing demons, getting into a mage match that had no enterprise being nearly as good because it was, or taking up garden-variety quests for the possibility {that a} chest is definitely stuffed with treasures and isn’t one other mimic—a vice uniquely Frieren’s.

When the present isn’t wowing followers with its pensive writing and likeable ensemble, it’s blowing their minds when the in any other case chill anime’s motion pops off extremely arduous. Be it from its flourishing of intricately animating the ruffles of moving fabric as characters take off jackets or the kinetic drive of riding alongside a dragon, the present’s struggle scenes go above and past what one would assume it could, given each its contemplative premise and the manga’s tendency to forgo showcasing its fights so prominently. Translation: The present hits.

A lot of what makes Frieren really feel so particular behind the scenes comes right down to how excellent Madhouse has been at adapting the manga and at retaining the present within the anime zeitgeist. Exterior of the content material of its episodes, that tender love and care additionally interprets into season two’s outro, “The Story of Us” by Milet, the place artist Mimei Aoume used hand-drawn colored pencil sketches to create its ending sequence, in addition to its social media crew making damn-near daily posts of Frieren plushies in every kind of wierd real-life settings.

https://t.co/oY44O5Nr3O pic.twitter.com/HVrtitc0TH

— 青梅美芽AoumeMimei (@aoumemimei) January 18, 2026

It additionally most likely doesn’t harm that the present triggered a whole artist boom on Twitter when a fan asked folks on Reddit for tips on how to attract Frieren with an uptilted head pose from a decrease perspective. Oh, additionally, a real-life Frieren fan stopped a knife attack in 2024, turning into an area hero, as a result of “if Himmel was there, he would’ve executed the identical factor.”

Seeing as how One Piece also became a symbol of rebellion, Frieren being proper up there as a logo of heroism is nearly as good an instance as any of its affect on the anime neighborhood of their day-to-day lives within the brief span we’ve had it within the mainstream.

Whereas season two comes with a little bit of a dour notice that it’ll solely be 10 episodes, in comparison with the primary season’s double-cour (half) 28-episode run, a lot of that’s as a result of ongoing manga additionally affected by a number of hiatuses. This, partly, is as a result of authors’ well being, based on AV Club. (The collection is written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe.) That mentioned, there’s nonetheless loads of materials to be lined this season, which the impatient anime-onlys amongst us can learn forward of time on the Viz Manga app. For what it’s value, we’re guessing the season will seemingly finish someplace round chapter 71~77 for individuals who look after that type of factor (season two begins on chapter 61, btw).

New episodes of Frieren: Past Journey’s Finish Season 2 stream each Friday on Crunchyroll.

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