Sousou no Frieren

During their decade-long quest to defeat the Demon King, the members of the hero's party—Himmel himself, the priest Heiter, the dwarf warrior Eisen, and the elven mage Frieren—forge bonds through adventures and battles, creating unforgettable precious memories for most of them.

However, the time that Frieren spends with her comrades is equivalent to merely a fraction of her life, which has lasted over a thousand years. When the party disbands after their victory, Frieren casually returns to her "usual" routine of collecting spells across the continent. Due to her different sense of time, she seemingly holds no strong feelings toward the experiences she went through.

As the years pass, Frieren gradually realizes how her days in the hero's party truly impacted her. Witnessing the deaths of two of her former companions, Frieren begins to regret having taken their presence for granted; she vows to better understand humans and create real personal connections. Although the story of that once memorable journey has long ended, a new tale is about to begin.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Frieren Main

Tanezaki, Atsumi Japanese

Fern Main

Ichinose, Kana Japanese

Stark Main

Kobayashi, Chiaki Japanese

Himmel Supporting

Okamoto, Nobuhiko Japanese

Übel Supporting

Hasegawa, Ikumi Japanese

Eisen Supporting

Ueda, Youji Japanese

Flamme Supporting

Tanaka, Atsuko Japanese

Heiter Supporting

Touchi, Hiroki Japanese

Sein Supporting

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Denken Supporting

Saitou, Jirou Japanese

Fukushi, Yuuichirou Producer

Taguchi, Shouichirou Producer

Aoki, Haruka Producer

Taguchi, Ayuri Producer

Reviews

Feb 2, 2026

beussta

Recommended

you can summarize this anime in one word : PERFECTION

frieren is a way of life, you breath frieren, you wake up frieren, you sleep frieren
if you doesn't like it, you didn't deserve to been born

it's better than everything in the world !
better than shingeki no kyojin, steins gate and full metal alchemist reunited !
it's better than haikyu even if there is no sport in frieren !
it's better than the lunch your mama did in your childhood !
it's better than every dr*g !
... it's even better than sleeping with somebody !
it's a massage and a jaccuzzi in same time

there is no better story than frieren, even the lord of the ring sound like a crappy latest season of stranger thing
the animation bury demon slayer
the music bury every songs made by master sawano
the humor is better than konosuba
the mimic chest's joke is better than PH "step bro i'm stuck" section

you MUST watch it, every days, every weeks, every years
you must leave your friends, your GF/BF or your job to watch frieren all the time

there was no anime before frieren, there wil be nothing after, frieren is the whole anime history by itself
i want this only anime with 63 seasons

the greatest story of all time, travel from point A to point B with randoms events and some flash back memories, BRILLIANT !!! the mangaka is a genius, i never saw that before
The music is epic, even if none of it particularly stood out to me, don't try to understand it's the frieren effect
the animation of this walking simulator is so good now even real life looks like a power point demonstration

you must love frieren, i love her so much, i want her in real life...
i love her so much i want to cosplay her even if i'm a big 100kg dude
i want to be a mimic chest to swallow her
i love her SO MUCH i want to be a review moderator on MAL to delete negative or critical reviews with spurious motives (any resemblance to an existing moderator is purely coincidental, nobody could be that petty and childish)

WATCH FRIEREN or you will have missed out on your life

I'm getting chills writing this review because I have PTSD from this excellent anime

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Feb 2, 2026

Elso-chan

Mixed Feelings

This is not a bad show, it's even good, but I can't in good conscience say it's truly number one among every piece of animated media to come out of Japan. Also, as someone who speaks German, it is very difficult to take the show seriously when the writer clearly decided on every proper noun by typing a word into google translate and just running with that. The show doesn't hit the same when you realize its the adventures of Freeze, Distant, and Strong while reminiscing about some dude named Heaven. That girl named Laufen sure does run fast, that Denken guy sure is thoughtful ... and that übel girl has a bit of an evil streak to her, doesn't she? I wonder if they're going to have difficulties crossing the Difficult Mountains on their way to the city of Door. It does take you out of it a little but you don't know any German, this won't really apply.

On the plus side, it is refreshing that, for the most part, this is a fantasy anime with world building that doesn't make it feel like a video game or rely on the isekai trope as a crutch to introduce the world to the audience, although it definitely reads as the writer's D&D campaign. The pacing is well done, they do a great job of weaving together the contemporary events with memories of Freiren's past adventures.

The characters are where the show falls apart just a bit. As I stated above every character is named by taking a word, translating it into German and that is also how that character is going to be characterized with little depth for most characters we meet. The dynamic of the main three cast members is a bit of an issue. Freiren and Fern don't really feel like distinct characters, their personalities are too similar so they end up being more defined by their more unique character flaws, which makes Fern rather unlikable because she doesn't communicate her feelings well, so when she gets upset, she simply comes off as unpleasant. Freiren is simply defined by being aloof to how others around her feel, except when she inexplicably isn't and she reads someone 100% correctly.

Overall, the show is enjoyable for an audience looking for a fantasy anime that lacks many of the distasteful tropes that have been plaguing the genre as of the last decade. It's not overly grimdark like RE:Zero and it's not a deconstruction of the genre like Konosuba. Frieren is more like a modern Record of the Lotus War. A solid fantasy adventure but it's not really worthy of the pedestal that it's been placed on.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Feb 3, 2026

Dhaarok

Not Recommended

Frieren is one of the many overrated shounen anime out there and I can summarize my review with one sentence: „If you became kinda interested in frieren, because you have heard it’s so much more than just a isekai, don’t believe it, because it is exactly that, just another isekai." Now I’m not a fan of isekai, and if you read this review you will find out why, so this anime is not made for me, but just for more diversity in views I will analyze this anime a bit closer.

Frieren is one of those anime where you can literally see the quality dropping, with ... the earlier episodes being made nicely and at the end it has one of the longest pacings I have ever seen. Since the artstlye isn’t in any form detailed and costly they can’t tell me they ran out of money. I assume they just wanted to milk the cashcow to the end and stretched it out as much as possible.
Like I said before the start of the show was quite nice. It had a few things which didn’t really make any sense, especially the riddles, but it had a nice build up and a good pacing. It seemed to me as if the start also really wanted to surprise the viewers with something unexpected, regardless of how illogical it was. It also didn’t do much good in terms of atmosphere, in some cases it even destroys the atmosphere it built up just for surprise reasons. The main characters are also unexplained overpowered, sure there are a few stronger but that alone doesn’t justify a little kid being physically stronger than a well-trained grown up demon, just because he “grew up in the woods”, which is btw contradicted later on. But besides a few negative things to say, the start (first 1-3 episodes maybe) was ok. It had a goal and set motivation from the character side, the main story kinda made sense (more than the rest of the show) and they had some kind of, what the fans claim as “tactics in fighting”.

In the second arc the terror already begins. Motivations from the characters were completely forgotten and not even mentioned in order to have a little conflict for the goal of this arc. The reason for the first arc and what they have achieved was completely pointless and even contradictory as explained in the later arcs. The following arcs shine with, not knowing what to call somethings. For the show a mage is someone who is physically strong and can endure much pain instead of being stealthy and deadly, the so called “demons” are a bunch of unorganized idiots who apparently have a lot of power (they at least have a lot of mana) which is contradictory in every way and let me question the whole world building of this anime and we still don't know what a demon is and does. The writers have no idea of how mana works, which wouldn’t be a problem if they hadn’t dedicated a whole arc just for training mana purposes, which later on is also completely useless. Not to forget the story is full of convenience, which goes beyond the acceptable amount. Some of the arcs are complete filler since they either are pointless or have nothing to do with the final goal (the motivation of the main protagonist). There is even one arc were the main protagonist is inside a video game and literally the first thing she hears there is that being here is completely pointless, but she doesn’t care and goes on anyway, which makes the whole arc pointless and questions the existence of the build up to it.

This show becomes less endurable from arc to arc, with the village barrier arc being an exception but still not good. It’s like comparing a pile of shit with a pile of shit which has a cherry on top of it. Seeing the later arcs lets you remember the earlier ones as if they were in any way good, that’s how horrible this show gets.

Frieren also likes to copy or include everything that was or is popular it seems. That goes from character design (Vinland saga) even to whole story arcs (the bird catching arc).

A thing that really bothers me as well is the fact that this show has no scale what so ever. The abilities and the strength of every character are so completely random and out of order. It even shifts during the whole anime, making character who should be strong considering their rank utterly weak and character who should be weak unnecessary strong. Its like as if one writer wrote the hierarchy of all the characters and their relationship and then another decided, because how much he liked their appearance how strong they are.

All of the above was pretty much the first half of the show. The show was like I said very bad but had at least some arcs which were watchable and had a decent pacing.

The bird catching arc is the worst thing I have seen in a long time in terms of writing. You can’t take anything they say and do seriously, since the character design is so freaking retarded. They say they are birds but then Fern and Mr Stark is sitting there with them. The writers wanted to make this arc dark and mature but only present it in such a childish way.

In this arc Frieren really shows how little time they spend with thinking through the whole thing. Where villains came from and what their motivation is was never a thing Frieren spends any time in but in this case it makes absolutely no sense that some demon-people who just came into existence are able to be as strong as one of the strongest person in the whole anime. So again.. no scale existend. And with no time spend with motivation and personification the writers now believe they can put drama in the show when the demons die. Are you freaking kidding me? Yeah the demon just killed hundreds if not thousands of people and now I should feel sorry for them? The drama in this whole anime is the worst sort of melodrama, forced and reliable so much on double standarts.

In the last arc the tactics really shine, in terms of sucking. At the rock clone arc episodes there is only a handful of fights anyways, so there is not much to talk about, but the tactics there is so utterly idiotic. There is so much bullshit that happened during this arc, there was not 1 episode where I wasn’t facepalming.
But all of the above would have been minor points if it wasn’t for how boring this whole arc was. The reason I criticize their “tactics” is only because they spend so much time with talking and every fan thinks the tactics are so great. 90% of the time they talk about irrelevant stuff and when it comes to real tactics they are utterly bullshit, convenient or deus ex machina.

Characters of this show are not in any terms special. Have you seen either Naruto, One Piece, Bleach you know the personality of the main character. Add a bunch of extra typical side characters and you got them all. It’s just the typical teenager character who is strong enough to change the world stuff. In Frieren they at least didnt go full overpowered with the main character, but considering the age of the protagonist and the enemies she is fighting later on I would say its pretty unrealistic (also there are some moments later on were our MC goes into deus ex machina overpowered mode for some reason). She is a very wish-fulfilling character and not that much of a role model (so instead of giving her realistic trades she is super positive all the time and strong etc.). I think there is nothing really wrong with this wish-fulfilling kind of anime, but they just feel very childish. So saying this is more than a shounen is really wrong.


Music is also pretty bad. All the good songs were copies of famous classical songs, such as Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem, the rest is rather forgettable boring background music. Artstyle is simple and character design in the WHOLE show is the worst I have ever seen, but that’s ofc only my opinion. I found it to be nice to see no cgi, if I remember correctly.


So overall: This show is not more than a isekai shounen and I might add the worst written shonen I have ever seen, but I am not into that genre so I only saw a few of them. If you are a person who likes more mature stuff and think there is something behind this anime, otherwise it wouldn’t be so popular, don’t fall for the trap and stay away from it. At the end you will just regret it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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	Poll: frieren is shonen so is demographics tag still useful? ( 1 2 3 ) deg - Feb 2	129 replies	by Dublis91 »» 1 minute ago
	Poll: Sousou no Frieren Episode 5 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Oct 6, 2023	279 replies	by RickDickem »» Yesterday, 2:04 PM
	Poll: Sousou no Frieren Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Nov 10, 2023	657 replies	by NowiFate »» Yesterday, 10:59 AM
	Poll: Sousou no Frieren Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Nov 3, 2023	488 replies	by NowiFate »» Yesterday, 10:32 AM
	Poll: Sousou no Frieren Episode 3 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Sep 29, 2023	300 replies	by RickDickem »» Feb 1, 5:11 PM