Why do I feel frieren isn't as good as everyone says?
Frieren always felt like a 8/10 show rather than a 10/10. It's restrictions are: Even though the pacing isn't that bad, it starts to get stale and I found myself barely clinging on during the long ass flashbacks. It's not very interesting until Stark shows up, and it's not as deep as everyone was saying online. First of all, it's just a elven mage that lives for really long learning to cope with death of her human friends. When comparing it to something of Tokyo Ghoul, I found it to be not deep at all. Tokyo Ghoul, Where do I even begin? Tokyo Ghoul touches on everything wrong with our broken world. Corruption, Discrimination, it has it all and more. Tokyo Ghoul is also far more grim and sad. People also said that Frieren is really depressing which quite frankly, isn't even close to true. If you've seen Rezero, dealing with the "sadness" of frieren becomes trivial because Subaru in Rezero suffered so much more, and has way more emotional weight especially first season. Another series I think makes frieren look shallow is A Silent Voice. It's basically not even fair. ASV is deeper by a lot. It touches on real world problems like bullying, discrimination, suicide. I'm not gonna spoil the story but yea ASV is deeper.
Now you may be asking who told me frieren is deep. I saw many videos about it and my friends and family said its deep. What are your opinions? Am I missing something crucial to the story?
Now you may be asking who told me frieren is deep. I saw many videos about it and my friends and family said its deep. What are your opinions? Am I missing something crucial to the story?
Commentaires
That being said my 8s are on par with most people's favorites so...
I also have it as an 8, but I strongly value my 8s, and probably like the show more than you do. It is what it is.
I think also it might hit differently as a person ages. The desperate melancholy hits on a different level if you've had a major personal loss, of a family member or close friend who died suddenly and now every thought of them is always tinged with pain and regret about not spending more time with them, of not doing more when you could.
so why comment
unless you're comparing the complete manga + Re to the 1st season of the Frieren anime.
It's not a suffering contest, they're two series approaching things in very different manners. Getting stabbed is going to be a more acute pain than watching friends disappear from your life over time but why are you even trying to compare the two?
There are plenty of things to criticize about Frieren in my opinion but I wouldn't approach it the same way you are here.
Re:zero uses death as a plot device. It's not that big of a deal when someone dies and his ability to restart is to aid the theme of resilience that is literally bashed into Subaru's head (at least in S1, I've only seen that when it came out and haven't caught up). Re;zero is great at conveying it's message (fight for what you want in life/what you want your life to be regardless of fate), but I don't think that's as "deep" of a theme as the universally felt fear of regret.
Regretting not cherishing a loved one more or regretting wasting time in life on things that don't really matter is a pain that everyone feels and thinks about. The beauty of Freiren imo is that not a single bit of how it's written feels unintentional. The slow pace is not a flaw, but the writers purposefully slowing down to not only show us what's important (the happiness in little mundanities and being with loved ones), but also the writers expressing freiren choice in life compared to all the other fast pace characters, which is to find/understand herself and focus on doing something with the time that she has. Her being an elf with infinite time also feels genius because they in theory have nothing to regret, having the time to do everything in the world.
I rambled a bit but the point is that Frieren is a slice of life which is "deep" because it explores its themes really well, not through big world tragedies or wars like a LOT of other shows will usually do, but in a more simple, human to human sort of way.
This is definitely the "best" part of Frieren.
I'm currently watching it but the constant expository dialogue, clunky character interaction scenes and lack of decent world-building is killing me. I'm not going to lie.
The themes are fairly well explored, but there are many narrative choices that end up making the story less impactful than it should be. Such as characters explaining character behavior and motivations as if they're making sure I'm following along with the story, with no space for subtext or interpretation of a character's motivation.
The fact that many characters just start, often unprompted, to talk about their backstory feels jarring more often than not, which undercuts their supposed drama. The flashbacks also are very conveniently and overtly placed in the story, instead of leaving to the audience to make the connection between something in Frieren's past to something she's experiencing now, what we have instead is a flashback of Himmel saying "You're an incredible mage" when Frieren is trying to get her license and in the very next scene we have the same character set up with Fern and Stark saying the exact the same thing. That's a very amateurish way of reinforcing the themes in your narrative, not to mention that feels like you're being talked down to.
The characters themselves aren't given opportunities to shine, they mostly have fairly similar interactions throughout the narrative and there's very little exploration of facets of their characters because they're often interacting with each other (which means always the same dynamic) and when they interact with those outside their circle, it's always in that non-threatening and helpful way.
The lack of culture, architecture, language and overall world-building elements definitely bums me out because I live fantasy worlds with rich and well-thought out elements, but I kinda give the story a pass because its focus is mainly on Frieren's journey and her grief.
For a show that is so highly regarded, so much so that it is Top 1 and Top 2 of MAL and many people's favorite anime, I'm kinda surprised by how its execution is so clunky and lacking. Visually, it's beautiful and its lyrical moments are nice, but feels a bit generic visually, the anachronisms also clashes really hard with Frieren's naturalist approach to storytelling as well.
One man's trash is another one's treasure, after all.
Most importantly in my opinion is that it focuses on feelings of nostalgia and sadness. The audience is shown parallels between the person Freieren used to be and who she is slowly, actively growing into.
The emotions Freieren explores aren't as dark and confrontational of others, but they are impactful and resonate with people. Dress that up in an easy to swallow fantasy narrative lacking weird sex stuff and having consistently good animation, and you've got a huge success from global appeal.
Frieren in particular had lived for over 1,000 years spent almost all of it alone. There's a brief stint with Flamme and later the Hero's Party, and even that only recently stirred up more impactful emotions in her.
Magic is handwaved for sure, but many successful series do this. Soft or hard magic systems are up to the author and reader to determine what they want to experience.
Regarding the journey of the Hero's Party, the narrative isn't about them. It's about the impact they had on Frieren and her slow realization of this. A major theme is regret and nostalgia; this is much easier to convey by showcasing parallels between the past and the present in a way that demonstrates Frieren's emotional growth.
I don't doubt that would work fine as a series, but those are a dime a dozen, even if I'm a sucker for them. So many heroes exist to defeat the Demon Lord, but there are far less emotionally stunted elves going through a journey of self discovery.
For God's sake cant we just enjoy a variety of shows without worrying about which one is "better" or more "deserving of praise"? Anime is not a Zero sum game of enjoyment
Let them indulge. :D
I don't think that that's a "this subreddit" thing or even an anime thing. I think that's people looking to generate discussion, vent, compare and contrast things for the sake of some feedback or instigation of engagement and debate, etc. on the internet since its conception.
And nothing is going to hit for everybody. There are many like you who think its good but not great as well as many who don't think its good at all. Not a single anime can avoid that.
Frieren *also* touches on real world problems but its not a real world problem that is important to everyone. I don't think I would have thought Frieren was anything special twenty years ago but as I age the passage of time becomes a lot more real. And that is, at its core, what Frieren is about. I'm honestly surprised it got so popular because I thought its a show that would really only hit with oldtakus like me and thats far from the majority of the fandom. To be clear, that just reflects my experience. Clearly a lot of young people also enjoy it and secondly I have no idea how old OP is to say anything about how that should or should not affect them. Thats just how I experienced the show and why it matters to me.
Wether or not any of that makes it deep, I don't know or care. Depth is overrated in my opinion if not a straight up red herring when it comes to media critique. A show either speaks to you or it doesn't. That is all that really matters and it can happen with a very simple or a deep convoluted premise.
I don't think you are missing anything, its not a very complex show to miss things in. It probably just doesn't do it for you and thats completely normal. Again, not a single show hits for everyone.
You'll one day lose a friend or loved one, or many and you'll be hit with that realization that you'll never be able to see them again and how to deal with carrying on with YOUR OWN LIFE with those voids they left.
Big bad evil deeds, and obvious corruption and horrific acts are lowkey some of the easiest tropes in all of writing to get people to be on your side of a story. Good and bad are easy. EVERYONE wants to root for good, or for the righting of wrongs.
Dealing with loss is much, much trickier and a far more insidious type of sadness and emptiness that doesn't resonate with those who lack levels of empathy or just haven't experienced it on a deep enough level themselves.
That's the one reason why I consider Frieren a perfect story.
Some others fixate on the "emotional" aspect (can't relate as a 30+ year old viewer).
Other fans are even MORE problematic (I heard that some see the "Demons" as stand-ins for other human* ethnicities, kek).
Frieren IS perfect. The perfect comedy. (I also love Dungeon Meshi though)
EDIT: (after skimming comments) Wow, am I the only one who loves it purely for the comic relief? I feel so alienated! Comedy fans, where are you?!
Yeah, I don't think that's the reason you can't relate.
But 6s and 7s are my most commonly-given ratings to seasonals.
But it definitely isn't the #1 anime of all time as its MAL rating shows.
Anyway, expect to receive more comments about how you should come back to it when you're older because you "just don't get it." Frieren fans have this idea that anyone who dislikes it is stupid, immature, or impatient, even though it's published in a weekly shonen manga whose readership is nearly 70% teenagers and children, and is deeply beloved by kids and "normies" in Japan.
For a lot of Frieren fans this is their first first foray into more slow-paced and pensive manga despite still having plenty of action, so a lot of them get incredibly haughty about being able to sit through it and automatically look down upon anyone who dislikes it, even though many of them haven't experienced anything that is truly and consistently slow, opaque, and thoughtful. In your case it seems like you just prefer more transparent, fast-paced, action-forward shonen/seinen and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's going to be used against you.
Personally I love slow-paced manga and anime and I still dislike Frieren because it's just incredibly surface level, straightforward, and oftentimes immature. Those first few episodes were great but everything afterwards feels like Disney, and that's not why I seek out anime and manga to begin with. I like complex and nuanced stories, and despite occasionally dealing with mature themes, this simply isn't one.
>First of all, it's just a elven mage that lives for really long learning to cope with death of her human friends.
This concept is really interesting and has a lot of potential, especially with the central conceit of Frieren outliving everyone she ever cared about. I think it's disrespectful to say it's "just" that, as if death and loss isn't one of the most painful human events that unite us all. You're reducing something that's incredibly powerful and important to people.
Anything can be "just" about its plot. Tokyo Ghoul is "just" about a shy college student who turns into a zombie learning to cope with his new life. Re:Zero is "just" about some guy who goes to a new world and has to keep reliving events. A Silent Voice is "just" about some teenager who feels bad because he bullied a girl in high school. Do you see how easy it is to be reductive?
Personally, the problem for me is that the potential this story allows for just isn't met in Frieren because it eventually just becomes a typical Tolkienesque fantasy with occasional flashbacks. I mean, there's an early *tournament arc* for crying out loud. The "idea" of Frieren is incredible, but for me, the *execution* is bogged down by how it adheres to the clichés of its demographic and genre and doesn't commit to that central conceit.
Again, considering the stories you brought up, it's clear that you connect more with edgier action series with male MCs whose emotions are more front and center than the characters in Frieren, and that you prefer more dramatic anime that aren't heavily westernized. Frieren's setting is an extremely standard western fantasy that lacks a lot of typical anime tropes and feels indistinguishable from the average RPG or fantasy stories we are used to in the wesy. The characterization in Frieren is also far more reserved than those series, especially in the anime, so it's understandable that you might not feel very invested if you're used to and prefer more blatant expressions of emotion.
But the series you brought up is also not really comparable at all, except for maybe A Silent Voice. All you're really saying is "I like and connect to these completely different stories more than this one." It's an arbitrary comparison because it's generally understood that emotional responses are subjective. Instead of complaining about Frieren being an 8/10 and not a 10/10 (which is, again, a very high rating that many people would agree with) as a jumping off point to talk about how much "deeper" your favorite stories are, why not just make a post dedicated to praising them and exploring their themes?
>Now you may be asking who told me frieren is deep.
No one is asking this.
Depth, emotional response, and relatability aren't applicable to sterile rating scales. More people just need to accept that the art we personally connect and resonate with is going to be different for everyone. Frieren just isn't for you and that's fine. No matter what anyone says, it's not a character flaw, and you aren't lacking qualities if you don't enjoy it.
But if you sincerely want to understand why people connect with it, just ask them. Talk to your friend and engage with what they're saying instead of bringing up which series made you more emotional. Depth is extremely subjective, and you're never going to understand why people feel certain ways about different things unless you listen and set aside your own interests. It's not a competition. Art is wonderful because of how different people connect with different things and I think we should all learn to appreciate that more.
We'll split the difference, call it a 9/10 and then I fail to see the issue.
Bait used to be believable.
The plot itself is superficially beautiful, but it’s very simple and shallow. Feeling emotions is human and normal, and the anime doesn’t make it feel unique or profound. Frieren, as a protagonist, is often emotionally distant to the point of being frustrating. Long stretches of dialogue and her lack of reaction make watching the series slow and tedious. Her journey is about relearning how to feel, but almost every other character exists only to support her emotionally or to serve as tools for her to learn to feel or stop feeling. Apart from Stark and some of her past companios, none of the characters actually contribute to real progression. She could go through the entire journey alone and nothing about the story would fundamentally change.
Everything that’s supposed to be emotional often feels like a cheap trick. Nostalgia, flashbacks, or sentimentality could work, but across nearly 30 episodes, the formula is the same over and over: “I can do X, flashback, action, done.” It becomes repetitive to the point of frustration. I’ve rewatched the series multiple times, and each time I notice more flaws. This is a show that supposedly deserves a 9/10, yet it ignores flaws that would be criticized mercilessly in other anime, simply because its beautiful art style and cinematic presentation make it easy to accept a story this shallow.
The fights are probably the worst part of the series. Most battles are just characters casting the same spells over and over with no strategy, tension, or creativity. Frieren herself is absurdly overpowered, and she has been that way even before being trained by Flamel. It completely removes any sense of stakes or danger, and the only justification the story gives is that she’s old and has read a lot, despite never actually showing meaningful progress. The Mage Exam arc, for example, is essentially a generic tournament with zero stakes, following the same repetitive formula every time.
For me, it’s like watching the Avatar trilogy. I go to the cinema to see Pandora and the amazing world they built, it looks real, it’s beautiful, it’s cinematic, but the emotional moments are lazy, and behind the flawless CGI there’s a generic story with trope-y characters. That’s exactly what Frieren feels like: visually stunning and well-presented, but hollow at its core, with an emotional narrative that never actually delivers real depth or meaningful growth.
At the end of the day, Frieren is style over substance. The world is shallow, the characters are flat, the pacing is lazy, the fights are uninspired, there are no real stakes, and the plot repeats itself endlessly under the guise of emotional depth. I get why some people love it, and I’m glad it resonated with them, but for me it’s kinda overrated. I’m genuinely curious: what did Frieren do for you that it completely failed to do for me?
Man, people have such skewed rating systems lol. An 8/10 is not "isn't as good as everyone says", that's basically "exactly as good as everyone says."
I don't even necessarily disagree. But I don't agree with your points. Somoene else said it but "suffering" isn't a contest and it's not the only form of drama or stakes.
> People also said that Frieren is really depressing which quite frankly, isn't even close to true. If you've seen Rezero, dealing with the "sadness" of frieren becomes trivial because Subaru in Rezero suffered so much more, and has way more emotional weight especially first season.
First, I've never heard people say it's depressing. You might have heard "melancholic", which does not mean "depressing", though it deals with similar negative emotions.
Second, the idea that this story isn't depressing because this entirely different story with an entirely different tone is "more" depressing is ridiculous.
Con esto lo puede hacer el favorito de muchos, pero de eso a compararlo con series de muchisimo más nivel simplemente no es posible. La gente que le gusta Frieren comenta dentro del circulo y no fuera de el en muchas ocasiones porque saben que Frieren está hecho para un publico en específico y si se quiere tomar otros elementos como acción, romance, complejidad o profundidad, realmente se le podría considerar como un anime "normal o un poco más arriba del promedio".
A mi me gusta lo que la autora ha creado aunque no es motivo suficiente para poner en un pedestal su obra. Si se trata de Slice of Life, si, indiscutiblemente es uno de los mejores ya que aparte de ser ese su foco, se le van sumando ciertos elementos de otras historias que lo hacen más entretenido que la mayoría de su género foco, pero más allá de eso realmente no te tiene enganchado al asiento, o ese es mi caso porque prefiero que la trama de una historia realmente avance más rápido y con las pausas necesarias para digerir todo.