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Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

This is a critique of the Frieren: Beyond Journey's End series's season 1

Tags: critique, reference, movies

Needless to say,

HERE BE SPOILERS

Visual & Formal Language

This was animated by MADHOUSE, the framing and composition seem very standard for animes of this time period. Lots of scenic introductory shots about the world using classic framing guidelines like “the rule of thirds” and “putting the horizon at the top or bottom”.

That’s not to say that the composition wasn’t great though. For example, take a look at the following shot:

Frieren holding a suitcase walking down a hilly stone path on a sunny evening. Facing away from the camera, in the direction of Frieren is more of the stone path with a pale blue sky above. The top and top left are lined with trees, the right side has a moss-covered stone wall lined with flowers. A wagon rolls past her to the left shot in the foreground.

Season 1 Episode 1

Frieren holding a suitcase walking down a hilly stone path on a sunny evening. Facing away from the camera, in the direction of Frieren is more of the stone path with a pale blue sky above. The top and top left are lined with trees, the right side has a moss-covered stone wall lined with flowers. A wagon rolls past her to the left shot in the foreground.

This shot looks good, but there are a lot of things working here. Let’s look closer, now look at the relationship between Frieren and all the high contrast boundaries in the shot:

Same as the previous image, with thin black lines at a third of the way into the shot. A red line vertically down the center and two blue lines from the top right and left corners to the bottom center of the image.

Season 1 Episode 1

Same as the previous image, with thin black lines at a third of the way into the shot. A red line vertically down the center and two blue lines from the top right and left corners to the bottom center of the image.

Frieren is placed exactly in the center of this shot, the wheels of the wagon behind her along with the side of the hedge to her right angle downward, pointing towards Frieren. The landscape in front of her is placed a third of the way down the shot and the wagon takes up almost exactly a third of the frame from the left. Important landmarks are placed at these points too, like the tree to her left and the path in front of her.

The camera movement also seems very standard for a shounen anime. Since this is all digital, shaking and handheld movement are rarely used and impossible shots are now possible. Though, because of the intrinsic nature of this series trying to retell the legend of a seemingly immortal elf, many scenic shots were made and long takes for dialogues, to develop the world.

The rhythm at which edits were made also seemed very standard. The action sequences have lots of impact frames and there is heavy use of “shot + coutershot”. How could I not talk about my favorite 作(さく)画(が) (sakuga) scene, this:
Season 1 Episode 9 No caption here because I explain everything in the next paragraph.

In order:

  1. This is a great use of a first person shot. You’ll see why this is great during the Philosophy & Themes section.
  2. When Fern gets attacked (0:02 - 0:03) and pushed back, notice the focus pull. This is completely unnecessary but it give the viewer a sense of confusion when it happens. It’s barely noticeable until you see it, and then you can’t not notice it.
  3. Then when Stark gets attacked, notice the ground around the demon’s shoes (0:05 - 0:06). This isn’t just moving the ground’s texture really fast and adding motion blur to it, this is every frame of her sliding on the stone floor being animated.
  4. The movement right before Stark’s second impact is also really interesting, you can see the hit being prepared for 3 seconds (0:10 - 0:13).
  5. Then, when she lands the hit, notice the placement of her hands. She swings her axe around to build momentum and hits Stark and immediately afterwards you see the hand lower on the axe completely relaxed and gently holding onto the axe (this becomes relevant later on this episode) but it conveys the fact that the entire momentum of the swing was carried through into Stark.

The lighting and contrast were very interesting. Look at the following shot for example:
Frieren’s reaction to Heiter wanting Frieren to take care of Fern.

Season 1 Episode 1

Frieren’s reaction to Heiter wanting Frieren to take care of Fern.

If you pay close attention to her hair you might notice this:

Three boxes, colorpicked from the borders of the black lines right before meeting her white hair and her actual hair. From left to right; the first box has a green-yellowish color, the middle box has her hair color (white, slightly pink) and the last box has a purplish red color.

Chromatic aberration.

Three boxes, colorpicked from the borders of the black lines right before meeting her white hair and her actual hair. From left to right; the first box has a green-yellowish color, the middle box has her hair color (white, slightly pink) and the last box has a purplish red color.

This is called chromatic aberration. The name might sound ugly but the fact of the matter is that this is an artefact of capturing an image with a lens, and this is a digital medium. So the fact that this is being done for every single shot is impressive to me and I like it. Artefacts can be used stylistically, and I think this was a great choice. I think when you consider Frieren’s design being mostly white, this makes even more sense. In order for light to get split like this, you need to have many wavelengths in a single light beam. And, a way to get many wavelengths into a single light beam is to simply have the light beam be white.

Statues are heavily used throughout the story to emphasize the passage of time. To people other than Frieren, statues are used as a signal to the distant future that a certain character was of great importance. People in the distant future might not even know the name of that statue’s name, but people can recognize that that person was important. Statues and monuments make appearances all the time. To Frieren though, statues and sand castles are all the same, temporary and enjoyable for some time.

Since this is an anime, it intrinsically has the usual hyper-pigmented hairstyles, elaborate clothing, and absolutely no subtleness when it comes to personalities (in other words, you know exactly how a character acts, does and sounds just by looking at them). Some people like this, others don’t. This last part is very normal anime I think, so either enjoy it or don’t.

Sound & Music

The OST for Frieren is beautiful. I love how the violin motif that usually plays whenever they’ve arrived somewhere new shows up in so many other places too. I feel like I’m a Pavlov’s dog trained to associate the little violin motif to “this is chill and happy.” Now, for the rest of the instrumentation, I gotta say that although I’m not a fan of the ending song, it still is very catchy and the instrumentation is still impressive. However, I’d say it’s not anything to write home about. The intro song however, is really good I think. I like how many of Yoasobi’s songs show the protagonist being a badass and Yoasobi mixes hip-hop themes into the song to further this point:

Again, I feel like the environmental sound used throughout the season was very standard for an anime. That’s not to say that it was boring, far from it, it matched precisely what it had to match. Sure, it wasn’t Dungeon Meshi levels of sound design, but it was still pretty good.

I watched this series both in Japanese and English and both versions were excellent. I did enjoy how the English voice actor for Frieren had a somewhat deeper voice, further conveying Frieren’s maturity and calm demeanor. The petty arguments between Stark and Fern, specially around the end of part 2, were

Performance & Blocking

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Philosophy & Themes

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Micro‑Observations

This is the most important section.

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Cultural Context & Style

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Personal Reflection

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Connections

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Optional Rating (not Quality — impact

ImpactStoryCharactersVisualsAudioEnjoyment

End of Film Entry

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