The series should’ve shown us more sides of them.
Summary:
- Despite it being an incredible series, Frieren has its flaws.
- Characters are one of the weakest points of the series.
- Frieren’s characters lack interesting development.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Sousou no Frieren) is a once-in-a-lifetime type of anime. It beat all the records, it became the highest rated series on MyAnimeList (with the score of 9.37), and everyone keeps praising it even now, many weeks after Season 1 finished airing.
However, it doesn’t mean that Frieren has no flaws, and its characters are one of the weak points of the series.
Characters Are Very Important For Frieren
Since Frieren (and especially the first part of it) lacks action, it has to catch your attention another way. And the best way to do so is to impress the viewer with outstanding worldbuilding and make them fall in love with its characters. And Frieren succeeds only with the former.
Frieren’s characters lack diversity. They talk the same way, they do the same things, they have similar morals and worldview. Demons are the only ones who differ from the rest of the characters, that’s why it’s so fascinating when they’re on the screen.
When characters have just been introduced, they all feel the same to viewers. They don’t know much about them, and it takes some time for them to start caring.
This is where character development should strike. Viewers have to see the journey of the main leads and bit by bit, all the pieces should come together to form a proper picture.
And this is Frieren’s weakness. Of course, the series’ characters aren’t just shallow mindless dolls, they all have their journeys and their goals, but there’s hardly any great development going on for any of them.
Main Trio Doesn’t Develop Much
Frieren realized that she had to reevaluate human bonds early in the series, and her development as a person practically stopped there. Yes, she’s been forming a bond with Fern and Stark after that realization, but we can’t help but feel like something else is missing. Another purpose, another revelation.
The same goes for Fern. When Frieren found Fern and took her in, Fern was just a quiet girl with great potential and quite a temper. And this is exactly how we would describe Fern at the end of the season. She got stronger, yes, but that’s it.
Stark has the most development out of the main trio, but it’s still not enough. He used to be one of the main characters, but the last part of the season barely even remembers about him. There was so little of him that viewers forgot about his existence for a moment.
It halted any character development that he achieved and didn’t really show us what kind of person he was. Again, he just got stronger and a little bit smarter, but we can’t help the urge to ask “so what?"