She’s a little bit scary sometimes.
Summary:
- Frieren always finds a way to win.
- She seems too overpowered.
- It’s difficult to care about her battles when she’s always the victor.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Sousou no Frieren) has an incredible main protagonist, and hardly anyone would argue with that. One of the traits we love her so much for is definitely her power.
She’s a Bit Too Strong
Despite looking nonchalant and even bored most of the time, Frieren may be very dangerous and deadly on a battlefield. Just one swift motion of her staff, and almost every opponent is defeated.
Even when it feels like Frieren is not the most powerful person in a fight, she manages to come out a victor. She’s not only good at magic and spells, she also has great strategic abilities and intelligence that helped her outsmart her opponents in the past.
Frieren defeated monsters, demons, Aura, various mages, and every time her victory seemed quite effortless. And this is exactly the problem with the series.
There’s No Danger
Even though we understand that there are characters who are stronger than Frieren, the anime fails to properly explore it. Frieren keeps moving forward no matter what, so at some point you just stop feeling the danger coming from other people and creatures in the series. It seems like Frieren just can’t fail.
Fans agree that there are characters who could defeat Frieren, and Serie is the first one who comes to mind. Moreover, Frieren doesn’t really focus on becoming stronger, so there’s a pretty good chance that there are some who can deal with her. But the series doesn’t show this to us.
Of course, we still don’t know the end of the story, even the manga is yet to be finished, but for now Frieren looks too overpowered. We love her, of course, and want her to keep winning, but there are little to no stakes in Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, and it’s upsetting.
Every new encounter makes you think “Okay, how will Frieren get out of this one?”, and you don’t even humor the idea that there might be no way for her to deal with the situation. Frieren always wins, that’s just a fact.
The series is trying to sell us the idea that Frieren is not special even though she’s the main protagonist, but keeps proving that she’s special indeed. She admits that she’s lost in the past, but we never actually see that, which is why it feels like she’s too strong.
No matter how bizarre it may sound, we crave some Frieren weakness. It will make her more human (even though she’s an elf) and show us that she’s not this god-like creature that’s completely impossible to beat.