Since I came across a promotion video of YouTube by "Weekly Shonen Sunday" , one of Japanese comic magazine for juniors, I immediately get this . Eventually I found a excellent work , and this is not only for juniors.

This is set in a fantasy of middle age with magic and of Japanese RPG video games like a Dragon Quest III and Final Fantasy I, or little bit obsolete for many Japanese under 60 years old. In the situation, this work has human drama in the center, so this is a literary work. Themes of this work seems human essences such as Friendship, Practice , Master-apprentice ship, Idea, Humor, Courage. In order to rollout the story to these themes , there is a lot of hidden backstory and foreshadowings.

I am so impressed about a way how to curve the human essences out . The first one of them is from story side. This story starts from the success of an adventure in that a party of a brave ,”Hinmel” , a priest , a warrior and a mage , “Frieren” , defeated a deamon King . In this sequel, a mage Frieren looks back the adventure. She is a female elf and lives pretty much longer than a human. Although she had a different lens about friendship from human’s lens once and don’t care her friends of the Brave’s party so much. After span of natural life of the Brave Hinmel, she is changed to like to understand humans more. She starts a journey with some new accompanying and looks back her adventure , and she finds what her friends take care most one-by-one ,such as Friendship etc.. Frieren and Hinmel seem to love each other , but she is not aware of that because she is an elf and very slow sense of time , and she finally gets to be aware of it on the time point she can’t get back. The difference of species and difference of sense of time become tragic and , it results that her findings are very very resonated brightly. Although a part of method that a long life existence like an elf finds human essences is same as “The tale of the Princess Kaguya” of Isao Takahata from Studio Ghibli, the other portion “a sequel and tragedy” is totally new for me .

Another way how to curve the essences out is drawings. Simply , the works are not only good as drawings, but also as Manga and direction to characters performance in the Manga (how to say?). Some character “Koma” (=box in comic page) doesn’t have any word , but it has enough meanings . Some of them are actually good because of wordless and character performance such as faint smile face rather than a lot of word. Some of them , the author hides a character face in latest ( 3rd ) series in the last scene , so you have to imagine his face. On the other hand, expected in the Junior comic, there are many humor ,and I very like atmosphere of this work. I am impressed that this work have a very few words despite the volume of the story. Drawings support it. Very sophisticated.

I am feed by "Weekly Shonen Sunday" in my junior youth and now I around 40 . This work is emotional for adults. You can drop your tears once read this work and see a YouTube video again.