If you look at the official maps for the series, the route will make no sense.
Summary:
- The official maps for Frieren suggest that the party took a huge detour and went in a circle during a part of their journey.
- Fans are speculating about why that might be the case.
- The most plausible explanations are a mistake on the map or the party getting lost.
If you’ve been following Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End since the very beginning, you were probably wondering about the exact route the characters are taking during their journey.
Interestingly enough, there are some maps for the series drawn by Seiko Yoshioka, the concept artist for the anime. However, if you try to trace the route with them, it won’t make much sense — and there are many theories about why.
The travel route makes no sense
The most noticeable part is that the route seems very suboptimal — the party almost never travels in a straight line. This, however, makes some amount of sense, as they’re probably following major travel routes and visiting important places.
The most bizarre part of the journey happened around the Bande Woods. If you look at the map, it would seem that after visiting the Alt Woods in Episode 13, the party suddenly turned west.
After Raad, they ended up in Bande Woods — which are actually east of Alt! This part especially confused people, as it wouldn’t make sense for the party to make such a detour. Of course, this spawned some fan theories about what actually happened.
Fan theories
This isn’t the only odd detour that happened around that part of the series. The next important point after the Bande Woods is Laub Hills, which is quite far away — and the party would have to cross their previous path to get there, which would make no sense. Why wouldn’t they go there in the first place?
Some fans speculate that the giant bird that grabbed their cart dropped them in a completely different place. The problem with that theory is that it’s very unlikely for the bird to cover such a distance, and in the series, they were dropped back in Bande anyway — just in a different part of it.
Realistic explanations
The most realistic solution to the problem is actually very boring. The map probably doesn’t directly show every detail, and the Bande Woods region might be larger than it’s shown on the map. It may also be a mistake by the map creator.
If you really want an in-universe explanation for a detour like that, it might also be simple. The party might have taken a sidequest or simply gotten lost, which wasn’t shown in the manga or anime because of time constraints (and, presumably, because nothing interesting actually happened).
They might also be retracing the travel destinations of Frieren’s previous party — who knows which detours Himmel or others might have wanted to take.