Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Sōsō no Furīren) has only four episodes aired, but those episodes show very well Frieren's stance on humanity and life and death.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is an ongoing anime series that discusses what happens after the grand journey of a group of heroes ends. And it turns out that life continues, and some lives are shorter than those of others.
We will be spoiling the existing four episodes. Go give them a watch and then come back for a discussion.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End has an elf as its main character, who seems to be close to immortality. Despite that choice, short, human-sized lives are not made to seem unimportant; quite the opposite, in fact.
The titular elf, Frieren, used to be rather detached and did not think much about the fact that her mortal friends were going to die sooner than her. However, the funeral of one of her friends gets her to realize that some things are over and some people are gone forever.
She cries her heart out during that funeral and confesses that she had not even tried to get to know that friend of hers. Her detached nature seemed to make her less caring, and her eternal (or nearly eternal) life made it easy for her to forget that the people she spent ten years with have different lifespans.
After all, she does not consider ten years to be a long time because she does not have to care about time as much. When another dying human from her group asks her to stay for several years with him (under the pretense of deciphering a book of magic), she does so without much thought. Just five, just ten years are nothing to Frieren. She can spend them on a quest given to her by whoever, really. She spends weeks looking for a flower; she spends months cleaning a beach, and the time does not seem excessive to her.
What does seem frightening to her is that people she had been invested in, people she possibly even loved, with all their quirks and flaws, are dying before she figures out how to get to know them.
She tries to correct that mistake in future relationships. When she gets a new companion, who is also human, she tries to get to know her and gives her gifts and is working on being a good friend to someone who, she now fully realizes, will die earlier than herself.
As a result, Frieren's longevity highlights the value of short human lives instead of devaluing it. Human life is shown to be precious in the world of Frieren, and that is a powerful statement given that it takes just four episodes to make it. We will follow Frieren: Beyond Journey's End for more insights on what an elf might need to learn about humans in the next episodes.