Frieren: Beyond Journey's End is an Anti-Deathwork
The anime/manga series is a love letter to classic fantasy
I recently watched the first season1 of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End after seeing it listed on almost every single “best anime of 2023” type of list online. After watching the trailer, I knew I had to give the show a try.2 The series is about an elf named Frieren and is set after she and her friends defeated a demon king and saved the world. Taking a fairly standard fantasy premise, the show explores themes of mortality and the passing of time, following a nearly-immortal character in the aftermath of the big adventure. I can say it deserves the hype around it; in many ways, it’s better than even what I hoped. Not only is Frieren a well-crafted anime with stunning animation, an amazing soundtrack, and sophisticated character writing, it’s also an anti-deathwork.
A fictional “deathwork” is, essentially, the phenomenon I criticized in my earlier post titled “Heroes, Human Experience, and Why We Love Stories.” Carl Trueman provides a definition of deathworks: “the act of using the sacred symbols of a previous era in order to subvert, and then destroy, their original significance and purpose.”3 The subversion of established fictional themes, characters, and images that we see in much of our pop culture is related to this idea of deathworks.
And this is where a series like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End stands out.
Frieren doesn’t retell the same story we’ve all heard many times. But it doesn’t subvert it, either. Instead, the series builds upon established tropes to create something new, all the while respecting the works that have come before it. The characters are at first glance stock epic fantasy archetypes, but they quickly grow beyond these archetypes. The world is in many ways a generic Europe-like fantasy world, but Frieren isn’t trying to impress you with its innovation.
Aesthetically, Frieren captures the beauty and wonder of iconic fantasy franchises like The Lord of the Rings and The Legend of Zelda. The animation is high-quality and is a visual delight. The world itself is pleasant and vibrant, and the travelling montages of Frieren and her friends encountering woodland animals and finding treasure hearkens back to adventure tales everyone remembers reading fondly as a child. This is what classic fantasy does: it transports you to a world you enjoy spending time in, much like Middle Earth and Hyrule.
At one point, I expected the story to follow the “you thought the villains were bad but they’re just misunderstood” trope that is so overdone these days (and often a point of intentional subversion), but Frieren just assumed its own moral framework and pressed on with it. The series doesn’t ask you to second-guess your assumptions about heroes and villains, right and wrong, good and evil. Instead, like classic fantasy, it asks you to cheer when the heroes triumph over evil.
There were many other times while watching the first season where I expected the subversion, the deconstruction, that seems inevitable these days. The obvious subject for this would be a character like Heiter, the priest. How often are religious characters shown to be corrupt in fiction? The other characters make fun of Heiter’s love of drinking, but otherwise, he is a loyal, kind character.
The characters are complex, but the series shows their complexity without making them morally gray and full of angst. Instead, Frieren opts for treating its characters like real human beings, lovingly poking fun at their flaws. Frieren herself is a bit of a paradox: she is an elf for whom fifty years is an insignificant period of time, but she is also childish, needing prodding to get out of bed in the morning. Fern, Frieren’s apprentice, is easily annoyed but is loyal and responsible. Stark, the warrior, serves as comic relief, but never in a mean-spirited way. He is comedically afraid in dangerous situations, but he always exhibits courage. This is one of the most sincere, earnest, and charming main casts I have seen in a long time.
The characters’ charm is what makes the story’s themes work so well. At the center of Frieren is a subtle analysis of how we view time and how ought to live in light of the fact that we don’t live forever. Frieren herself is often a bit thoughtless, since for her, spending months or even years on a seemingly insignificant side quest is nothing. The human characters, however, feel the passing of time. The audience sees the importance of, as the book of Ephesians says, “making the best use of time,” but also is shown the value of appreciating the goodness of ordinary things (4:16 ESV).
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is brilliant because of how it utilizes established tropes, themes, and archetypes, not in spite of them. I was struck by how enchanting and beautiful this series was. Frieren shows that stories resonate with us not because they try to be overly original and innovative by subverting what came before, but because they tap into the themes and archetypes we already love.
Thank you for reading! If you’ve watched Frieren or have any thoughts about this post, please leave a comment. I love to chat about stories!
And sadly, only season, since season two hasn’t been announced as of the writing of this post.
Here is the trailer.
Carl R. Trueman, “The Church Among the Deathworks,” First Things, October 21, 2021, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/10/the-church-among-the-deathworks.
I discovered Trueman’s definition because it was used in this article, which applies the concept of deathworks to some recent superhero movies and shows.
That was an excellent analysis. Frieren really is a tribute to an older way of storytelling that is worth the investment even for non-Anime people.