Despite all the shit I just gave the top spot, Frieren does seem to be sticking around, and it is definitely the “best” anime I’ve seen to take the top spot for a while.
I say “best” in quotations because my main issue with Frieren is that it doesn’t particularly excel at anything apart from the unique art-style and downright gorgeous animation. All of it’s elements from the story and characters, to the fantasy world and narrative just range from good to - really good and that’s about it. There are a few key definable elements about the show that I give praise to however: The show presents demons as being inherently evil is unique and interestingly explained in the second arc of the show. I cannot stress enough that the animation and art is fucking immaculate - not only does it radiate a unique fairy-tale aesthetic but you can tell the animation budget for the next year went down the drain on this one project. Frieren’s character arc is an extremely compelling idea, although I do think it was brought down due to the lack of attention it got. However with the amount of praise I give it, I also have a fair number of complaints mainly due to the single fact that:
Frieren is basically a typical Isekai-esque fantasy story refined to the highest level. This does come with the usual-mandatory cliches and drawbacks of the specific genre, but I feel it does well to mitigate and avoid most of them by use of it’s sheer quality.
I don’t think this anime deserves to be #1, especially by this much of a margin compared to FMA. I feel like it’s a contest of which show can do the least wrong instead of the most right in order to not turn away the most people. These are exactly the type of shows I’m normally apathetic about but I watch them anyway because they rank so highly, I thought the exact same when I watched the other victims of the aforementioned trend.
Fern is a boring fucking character; who’s only definable personality trait is being motherly to Frieren and Stark. Harem protagonists are more emotive. This notion has not left me for the entire duration of the show that I convinced myself would improve. It did not.
