Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Season 2 debuts on January 16 on Crunchyroll.
Perhaps one of the best things about Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is how comfortable it is with low stakes even in a fantasy world full of potential excitement and turmoil. The Season 2 premiere luxuriates in daily rituals and understated reaffirmations of the bonds between its core trio: Frieren, a long-lived elven mage, her stern prodigal apprentice Fern, and the warrior Stark.
The show is set long after Frieren and her previous party of adventurers helped end the reign of a tyrannical demon king together, and became storied heroes with statues and tales told about them. The series began with the passing of her closest companion Himmel from old age. By comparison, Frieren, who is already hundreds of years old, still looks like a young woman, and will for centuries to come.
The melancholic tone of the series was set almost immediately in Season 1’s (excellent) feature-length premiere, which quietly observed the passage of time for Frieren, who sees decades as though they were mere weeks. This is how the death of her longtime friend (and potential love interest) Himmel snuck up on her. The first episode of Season 2, with the invitational title “Shall We Go, Then?”, marks 29 years since that time. It also marks the arrival of a new series director, Tomoya Kitagawa, an episode director on the previous season who takes over here from Keiichiro Saito (also known for the great and hilarious Bocchi the Rock).
Sinking back into the comforts which made the show stand out in the first place, the dramatic stakes remain relatively low in this premiere, which is simply focused on Frieren’s current party continuing to travel, bicker and reflect on the state of the world together. It’s not without adventure, as giant angry beasts pursue them through the wilderness, but the show treats this as just another day. Like in the first season, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End’s simple pleasures come from both its beautiful animation production (courtesy of the artists at Madhouse) as well as in seeing people underestimate the depth of Frieren’s knowledge. That may be in the context of demons quietly trying to take over a city, or as in this episode pulling out a magic nullifying rock buried decades prior – either way, the main character’s coyness about her stature and power is a delight. The depiction of the changing world around her is equally pleasing to the eye and ear, with the lush soundtrack from Evan Call contributing greatly to the latter area.
“Shall We Go, Then” has a little bit of everything as it gets reacquainted with familiar faces from the back half of the first season and the relationship dynamics between the main three: Fern and Stark’s will-they-won’t-they, when-the-hell-will-they bickering, and Frieren’s quiet amusement at this situation. It’s not a particularly plot-forward episode but this is part of why Frieren is enjoyable. As ever, the style of dialogue is very reserved and clipped; they also talk about things which are rather mundane, like how that magic nullifying rock works. It’s refreshing to get an anime series as capable at action design as Frieren which also has the patience to not overindulge in the bloodshed. There’s actually room for the character work to breathe.
The episode is comprised of two rather simple tales, especially when compared to the previous arc of the show, which had Frieren and Fern undertaking a complicated magic exam. The Season 2 premiere focuses a little more on Stark and his feelings about the group and himself – first through the tale involving the aforementioned rocks, and then in a plot concerning a job offer.
This interest in exploring even just the geological curiosities of this fictional world ties in with Frieren’s hunger for knowledge and how she uses her vast amount of time on the Earth to learn everything she can. Previously this knowledge had no direction, and though this first episode of Season 2 is deliberately sparse and slow-going, it still shows a world of difference simply in how Frieren is applying the fountain of knowledge at her command. Chiefly, that’s by sharing it with a younger generation, and watching what they do with it.
“Shall We Go, Then?” doesn’t really give a strong indication of where the season is going other than the next destination on the map, which is actually a point in its favour: just as Frieren savours new experiences, the show thrives on finding stories in unexpected places.
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