I started watching this after a whole month of not watching anything, which is pretty rare in this day and age. I took a little break to focus all of my free time on playing games on the new PC I built. When some games are like 20 hours long, it’s very hard to fit anything else into my already tight schedule. Coming back to this treat of an anime after playing Alien Isolation has to be one of the best feelings ever.
Ever since I saw the first trailer for this, I knew I was gonna love it. The animation, the music, the vibe. It all culminated to give it that ‘anime of the year’ kind of vibe. And I don’t mean this in the Oscars way where the movies are purposefully engineered to be award-winning. This just had a natural aura to it. On top of that, this seemed like the type of show that would make me cry. And oh boy, was I right, in less than two episodes no less. For as slowly paced a show as this is, which is why it feels like watching a show about the mundane life of an elf, my emotions were always running wild.
It’s rare for me to appreciate an anime’s dialogue as much as I appreciated the dialogue in this one. Every utterance had the nuance of a real human being, with enough depth that certain phrases stuck with me for the whole length of my watch. I have even repeated some lines at work, trying to see between the lines, trying to decipher the perspective of a millennia-year-old elf.
MadHouse knows exactly how to create a perfect show. I don’t know how, but this formula is something else. What I’m experiencing with this is akin to Violet Evergarden. The emotions. The characters. Everything blends together beautifully.
I’m surprised I’m not finding even a single character annoying, which is surprising. Even in some of my favourite shows, there are characters that I just can’t stand. Not this.
The first cour is what I would call a contemplative piece, where each episode made me think more from Frieren’s perspective. And the second season is all about the application of that thought into an action scenario. Because let’s be real, there’s only so far you can go with only contemplation before it gets boring. So I believe the story progressed naturally into that state, though when the tone first switched it rubbed me the wrong way. This is mainly because I watched the whole first cour in one sitting, and then the second cour in another. The around four-day break between the two accentuated the dismay I was feeling.