Sousou no Frieren

TL;DR Whimsy refreshing fantasy/comedy/calm/parody manga.



Some comments

Whimsy manga that somehow feels fresh because of the premise and whimsiness of it. I say whimsy because the mood switches very often abruptly. Personally I think that's my expectation of the manga but those that come expecting a stable mood or feel going through it kinda like the sadness of Oyasumi Punpun or the rom-com isekai feel of Konosuba might be surprised.

It doesn't have power-trip service like many other fantasy manga do. In that sense, it's a clean refreshing manga I can read when so many other bore me.



Aspect by aspect comments

Story 8
All over the place in a whimsy fashion

Art 9
Clean and cool

Character 8
Main cast is cool. No overly exaggerated trait that made any one of them dislikeable

Enjoyment 10
Captivated my attention because of the uniqueness

SouSou no Frieren is a story about an elf and her life after slaying the demon lord in the hero’s party. More importantly, it's a story about age and immortality.

Something usually glossed over in typical fantasy when mentioned that an elf is over a 1000 y/o old besides a justification of something gross.

In casual passing it’s mentioned how the character and her human apprentice will stay 6 months or even 3 years doing something trivial or just waiting around.
In any other scenario this would be a shock considering how long a time that is, but for an elf it's hardly a minute. This comes off a well written meta narration to give perspective to how the main character sees time and the world around her.

How a character who has gone emotionally numb knowing that nothing around her matters if it's gone before she can blink and watching people she's slowly learned to care about slow age and wither before her is a big focus in the story and a very touching one at that.

Emphasis on “slowly learning to care about” as she only realizes that she cares about them by the time they’ve already passed away or are at the last inches of their life.
Why else would an elf that lived for 2000 years care so deeply about 13 years spent adventuring with a group of strangers.

It’s a little funny how heartbreaking it is to think about for any other character around her.
But really makes you root for her to try and find meaning and open up.
A thought captured in hardly any of today’s literature let alone manga.

When you die you want the people around you to remember you and remember all the accomplishments you’ve made.
That's something easy for humans or dwarfs to do, but for elves it's impossible as after the several millennia they've been alive, everything they've built up, every feat they’ve done to shape the world, the great evils they’ve defeated, is lost to history as no one is alive to remember them through it all.

Watching an elf learn what it means to care about others in the face of this void that casts absolute pessimism and in turn realize how much the people she's befriended meant to her is an emotional rollercoaster and executed in an excellent and perfect manner both in story and meta narration.

This thoughtful story telling carries on to the world the main character inhabits and how things like demons, monsters, mana, power, and magic, operate, function, and interact with each other.
While not going off on tangents that take away from the main focus and message.

Kind like what I’m about to do now:
I also like how it uses the german language for it's fictional names and characters rather than japanese ones.
I’ll be it simple words or phrases.
It's a nice return to traditional fantasy.

Makes me feel like the writer is a big fan of these more traditional works or just likes DnD a lot.

Anyway:
SouSou no Frieren is an easy 10/10 and a highly recommended read for anyone who has a feeling of wanting a break from the typical shonen, romance, or comedy genres to explore a well thought out and meaningful story.

Btw are you tired of me saying thoughtful yet?

For full disclosure, at the time of this review the manga currently has 33 translated chapters, so this review is based solely off of the first 33 chapters of the manga. I cannot promise that this review will be relevant for the chapters onward from chapter 33, but I have high hopes that the writer of this manga will manage to keep this manga as sublime as it is.

Although I usually write my reviews containing spoilers, as it is hard to truly convey how I feel about a manga or anime without telling the better part of its plot, I omitted any major spoilers in this review as I felt that this manga truly deserved to be read with a blind mind.

Very light spoilers ahead

Perhaps my greatest criticism for Japanese manga as a whole is its lack of comprehensive story-telling when the plot takes place in a fantastical setting. Sure, I'm not the type of person to spend time playing Dungeons and Dragons, nor have I ever had any interest to, but I have a basic belief that if the setting takes place in a magical world, then the story-telling should likewise be magical. Instead, many of these manga that take place in a fantastical setting involve a massive interspecies harem surrounding the main character, unexplainable super powers that can end any fight with a single chat of a spell and a yell, and some incredibly lucky set of circumstances that lead the peasant protagonist to become the king of the world. Because of this, I had casted off any hope that a manga involving a fantastical setting would have any depth in plot.

Sousou No Frieren, in that aspect, blew my expectations away.

The manga starts with the introduction of the Hero's party. Now, many readers are aware of this basic setup of "the Hero's party", it was the party consisting of the main character, the Hero, and his group of reliable and quirky friends as they battle the Demon Lord (or whatever entity is causing the threat of global domination) and save the world. It's not anything too special to think about. However, this manga starts with the death of the Hero. The Hero isn't the protagonist of the manga, but rather Frieren, an Elf who was apart of his party. This manga wasn't a story about The Hero's epic killing of the beast who caused terror everywhere in the world, but rather the story of what happens after the Hero kills the beast.

It's a rather common trope in Japanese literature that the Elven race is one of the races that live the longest. While this aspect of the elven race is often brushed past my most manga writers, Yamada explores this theme and its effect on the Elven race. Through extensive yet alluring dialogue, we see how the prolonged lifespan of elves cause them to be melancholic about daily life. It's also the reason why Frieren's race is dying; the elves were simply too apathetic to possess any sort of sexual drive. At the time of the manga, Frieren had lived the better part of a millennium. We as humans of course can never understand how this fictional elf character truly feels, but Yamada paints Frieren's indifference to life vividly.

This is really as far as I can write without disclosing any major spoilers, so I'll end this review with a very important note:
This manga is truly beautiful.

I think i've been reading Sousou no Frieren almost since chapter 1 but I don't like to jump on reviews too quickly, I need so see how the manga established itself, the story, the characters, the overall pace and just in general, my pure enjoyment to what I'm reading.

As crucial as the first chapters are, I found just as difficult if not more being able to still catch the attention of the readers after the prologue.
Sousou no Frieren is a prime exemple of why I don't rush a review after 3 chapters. We are 26 chapters in for the moment and the story developped through several phases of itself.
If I remember correctly, there's about 10-13 chapters before the story begins, before that it was just smoothly presenting the protagonists. And it did a wonderful job. The first arc of the manga is as wonderful altought a bit short. At first it felt like a peaceful initiatory journey, wrong. Well, not entirely wrong but it's not as peaceful as you may think.

Everytime a new chapter is out, I just grab my best bottle of wine and I'm relishing it. Sousou is a truly good masterpiece, each chapter needs to be enjoyed to the fullest.

Just go read it as soon as you can. You're missing something.

The story of a world where the demon king has already been vanquished. A world where the heroes who saved the world have grown old and some have passed, all but one that is. The elf mage who helped the hero save the world looks as though she hasn’t aged a day since they parted ways after that journey. For one who lives so long understanding the lives and personality of the people around her who are so short lived is something she has trouble doing and she’s not even sure if she wants to. Despite this she still makes an effort to learn more of those people she spent so little time with yet seem to have effected her so much. A story of melancholy and beauty, of a mage on an endless carefree, yet also devoted journey through a world that moves so fast around her.

What the hell!? This is not the normal fantasy that I have been reading!? No ecchiness. No heroes seeking revenge or victory. None of those flashiness and cliche plots.

Only about life, death, and memory. Bittersweet.

In this manga, we are going to see how Frieren, an elf, deals with the "unfortunate" immortality inherited from her race and the memories she made through a seemingly never-ending life journey.

It has been a long time since I kinda teared up while reading a manga. Goosebumps.

P.S. The first chapter of this manga hits me like a truck as if the time I finished "Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana wo Kazarou". Even till now, 31 chapters in, this manga never ceases to amaze me with its subtle yet profound story planning and the amount of onions it offers.

chapter 9 -> *edit chapter 31

Well this is an early review but from what i can see, it is truly worth to read.

A common thing every hero vs demon lord manga has is the presence of an elf in the party.

This manga can be dubbed as "After happily ever after" by showing us the life of the elf years and years after defeating the demon lord.

This will truly be a change of pace for all the isekai type anime/manga fans.

People should be ready to be hit in the feels with every chapter so i suggest everyone to keep some tissues with them while reading this one.

If I had to describe this story with a single word, it'd be "emotional". This is a story that is largely about emotion, as we follow the titular elf Frieren in her attempt learn about and understand humans, and it is fittingly jam-packed with emotion. It's rare for a series to make me feel so consistently emotional with every chapter.

This series has one of my favourite depictions of the way different fantasy races must interact and view each other, due to their lifespans, as well as a great depiction of magic as a technology that progresses over time in the same way technologies do in the real world. In general, I think it handles the flow of time and the disconnect between how it affects society and individuals in a really interesting and unique manner.

I highly recommend this manga to anyone who is interested in a less conventional fantasy story. There are only a few chapters out at the moment, but I've got high hopes for the series going forward.

I very rarely rate things highly, but this is one of the cases where I felt this is justified.

It is 9/10 overall.

The work hasn't concluded yet, meaning there's still a small chance for them to screw it up and turn into something horrible, but chapters released so far were on masterpiece level.

Deep characters, great worldbuilding, tackling mortality, emotions, differences in lifespan and profound implication - all of this resulted in a work that is both gloomy, dark and at the same time awe-inspiring. It also contains one of the best takes on certain types of antagonists I ever encountered. There are also no usual cliches. No isekaied overpowered characters, no harems, no reincarnators, cheat powers, and other nonsense. The manga is taking itself seriously.

This is one of the rare cases where a manga fascinated me from the first chapters and kept delivering with every release.

I highly recommend it.

Wow, this is kinda a new way to tell a fantasy story. The plot is something new, and the story so sad. When the apex of a story about heroes vs king demon is the beginning, the final fight and the victory, this part of the story is so sad, it's like a shadow of a great past.

Each chapter has this sad feeling of something you lost, something precious that you lost and don't know that you lost it.

If you looking for a manga like naruto, dragonball, well this is not for you, but if you looking for something else, here you go