After a meteoric rise in manga spheres, Frieren's anime adaptation began airing this season. It's animated by Madhouse and directed by the Bocchi the Rock! director. They gave it the whole-ass Oshi no Ko treatment with a quad-episode premiere and an OP by YOASOBI, in case it wasn't clear this was meant to be An Event for anime watchers.
For those not in the know, Frieren follows its eponymous character - an elf mage who's part of the Hero's adventuring party (a typical Hero, Fighter, Mage, Priest lineup) - and the story opens with them returning home (implicitly, to the Starting Town) after defeating the Demon Lord offscreen. To her three compatriots, this decade-long journey was the adventure of a lifetime, the period that defined their entire existences. But Frieren is an elf, with a lifespan measured in millennia; for her, it was Tuesday.
This disconnect is the series' emotional crux. Frieren promises to watch the once-every-50-years meteor shower with her party in the same way you or I might agree to grab lunch this weekend. Time is measured in years since the defeat of the Demon Lord, and then, in how many years since the Hero Himmel passed from old age. She cries at his funeral, but barely understands why, since from her perspective they might as well have been the cool strangers you hung out with at a weekend convention.
The story follows Frieren retracing that old quest with different companions, considering her steps with a new lens fundamentally changed from her experiences, slight as they were.
It would have been so easy to make this isekai, and I'm so glad it isn't.
I've publicly complained about isekai before, but to those not in the know: it's the "sent to another world" genre, which has a very long history in various mediums but over the past decade has attached to Japanese media like a leech. There are multiple reasons for this - some worse than others - but it is kind of uniquely suited to attach to the fantasy genre in the context of anime/manga.
In the west, when you think about fantasy, you're probably thinking of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Or, if you play games, possibly something like Dungeons & Dragons, which is basically Lord of the Rings anyway. In Japan, the prevailing conception of western-"style" fantasy is the Dragon Quest series.
Now, like, sure, we could get into the weeds of how DQ was informed by Wizardry which was informed by D&D which was informed by LOTR, but by this point the bough has sort of taken a life of its own. The tropes of Dragon Quest 3 are codified: the all-rounder Hero and their party of mechanically-rigid Job Classes journeying to defeat the Demon Lord, who will offer the Hero half the world should they abandon their journey and join forces, et cetera.
The pertinent point is that Dragon Quest is a video game. If there's a Hero, you know what kind of stat spread they have. You can reasonably assume what Skills they have (a slate of strong physical attacks, Lightning magic, and low-to-mid level healing/support). The party members are more notable for their Job Class (Fighter, Priest, Mage) than for any sort of personality or character.
Isekai is so huge in the fantasy genre because isekai loves video games. Video games, especially RPGs, create a sense of agency. The player is put in a place of power because they have the knowledge of the artifice and therefore can manipulate it. Even in examples where the protagonist isn't trapped inside a literal video game, it's pretty damn likely you're going to see game-like trappings. Stat windows, skill trees, equipment, numbers. It's almost a given, because this branch of fantasy is rooted in Dragon Quest and its fundamental game-ness. Who needs real character development when you can point to how the number is going up?
And even if there aren't necessarily these sorts of quantified elements in an isekai anime, it's common to create a similar of power and agency in other ways. Time travel is a standard version: you can throw the protagonist back before a cataclysm they work to avert with somehow-perfectly-recalled foreknowledge, or throw them into the future where their presumed unremarkable abilities are now considered Ancient and Powerful. Take your pick of the myriad ways in which a protagonist is The Worst (But Actually The Best!) so they can show how cool they are. Et cetera.
If it wasn't clear, I don't particularly hold isekai in high regard. Maybe you disagree. That's fine.
In the context of this currently being the dominant form of anime fantasy, Frieren and its sense of odd stoicism is like a breath of fresh air. It avoids most of the more annoying pitfalls simply by virtue of not being isekai.
Frieren is only a hair away from being an insufferable isekai protagonist. She's literally a powerful wizard with thousands of years of knowledge in the body of a pretty anime teen; she acts like a spoiled brat one minute and as a wise, all-knowing sage the next. She is fully capable of, as is so commonly espoused in the genre, leading a slow life where she just does what she wants.
But the series isn't about that. It's still deeply informed by Dragon Quest and its descendants, but it understands that the artifice functions as a convenient backdrop to examine something more specific. Frieren's elven agelessness isn't just to show off how she's Cool and Strong (though admittedly it is occasionally that) but a vector to communicate the transience and nostalgia of things we may have taken for granted.
I don't mind a "generic fantasy setting" or even generic archetypical characters - I mean hell, I ain't gonna pretend the "Ageless Elf" isn't an incredibly old trope out here - but I want a story to at least try to do something with them, give me something to grasp onto as I'm forced to drown under the waves of extruded isekai product. Frieren does, and it doesn't need stat windows to do it.
Every time I finish a chapter of Frieren or, now, an episode of Frieren, I turn to my partner and say "imagine if we had more of this instead of 200 isekai anime...."
Thanks to one-weird-trick that lets you sell a bunch of light novels and presumably some financial wizardry meant to prevent investors from gaining creative control over individual anime series, we now live in a world of dozens and dozens of greenlit isekai anime that I feel like are way too similar. Like, tbh, some of these comedic premises could probably be combined into the same show, right?
For now, Frieren and Witch Hat Atelier are like the golden standard for anime fantasy for me. And I'm definitely gonna try out Delicious in Dungeon when the anime starts.
If anyone else has anime/manga reccs in a similar vein, let me know!
