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Finished Frieren. I enjoyed it overall. It ended up being different than I expected. I went in knowing nothing about it and I expected it to be one season about learning to deal with loss, so once they went to the license exam, I knew it was going to be something else.
I’ll be looking forward to more time with Frieren, Fern, and Stark, but I hope it doesn’t get padded out too much with side quest stuff.
We went to look for something else to start after that. We watched the first Delicious in Dungeon, and it was interesting, but it didn’t have quite what we were looking for.
Next we checked out To Your Eternity. Very intriguing from the start, and we got through 6 episodes, but man, this one is a bit more brutal than we were initially prepared for. Good concept and story though, so I’m excited to see where the story goes.
I do want to check out Plus Sized Elf to see what they did with it, but it’s not something I can watch at work, and I somehow have a feeling it wouldn’t be enjoyed at home no matter how many potato puns there are. 😜
Not anime, but For all Mankind has been my first pick of what to watch this month. Nice alternative history of the space race. Just started season 4 and it has been good, ridiculous fun.
I always find peoples’ reactions to Frieren interesting. When I am reading the manga, my favorite parts are the really slow, side-questy portions of the story. But, when I watch the anime, the OST and stellar animation really elevates the action sequences and make them stand out. Overall, the story will continue to meander between slow, SOL sections and the dramatic and intense battle arcs.
I do feel everything in the show is very well done. I think I may have had a better experience if I had read some more about it first though.
I saw the first episode, and then didn’t have a chance to go back to the show until a few weeks later, so it had me primed for the vibe of that first episode with the intense emotional depth and the power of Fern’s abilities, and there was some humor, but it felt there to humanize Frieren a bit.
The variety of SOL and action is good, but I feel the action kicks in very quickly. Many of the battles come in suddenly without much buildup, and end very impressively, but typically within half an episode. That makes it feel more episodic to me instead of one cohesive overall story. The part I felt did things the way I most enjoyed was when they met the demon peace envoy in the walled city. It had more suspense and buildup as we figured out the who and why of the story and it fleshed things out more and gave more weight to the outcome of the battles. You had time to worry for the party and appreciate the power of the opponents, not just our MCs.
This is probably why I also enjoyed the bird hunt from the license exam. It wasn’t a self-contained single episode plot, had many POV, and gave time for a lot of back and forth which group was on top.
The story does leave me wanting more, and I think when it is complete, that will bump up my appreciation of the story as a whole. I just got my expectations set up for something that would be a one season, intense show, and it is not. Again, totally my own doing, and I would have benefited had I read more about it in advance.
They’ve got a ton of really great elements here though, from the animation, to the voice cast, to the storytelling, and I think this has potential to be something huge that gets recommended to people for years to come. I just haven’t gotten quite into the perfect groove for this yet, but I think I’ll be ready for the next season.