Looking back at the second season of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, it’s clear that this latest run adapted a transitional chunk of the manga, a little valley between the battle royale brutality of the Mage Exam arc and the upcoming fight against one of this world’s greatest remaining big bads, Macht of the Golden Land. For most series, this would mean a lull. The production staff would probably conserve resources to gear up for the more intensive episodes to come, and the story would stall out in the meantime.
Thankfully, this latest stretch having fewer big events doesn’t really matter because Frieren thrives on “everyday minutiae,” as the last episode put it. Madhouse has gone all out from beginning to end, and the studio’s ability to play up both dramatic fights and grounded scenes of human connection has fully sold this adaptation. “A Beautiful Sight” is a perfect example, as two moving vignettes connect with a greater whole. Little moments of goodwill come together in ways you wouldn’t expect, as positive actions outlive those who carried them out (and there are even a few excuses for our favorite mages to start blasting).
As Frieren & co. head further north toward Aureole, they come across an impassable nightmare canyon with headwinds so intense that our mages can’t fly across. Normally, they’d have to take a two-week detour to get across on foot, but Frieren happens to know a guy. On her last quest through the area, she met Gehen, who has been trying to build a bridge across the impasse for 200 years and counting. This series’ dwarves sure seem to have a thing for seemingly quixotic tasks, and Gehen’s dogged persistence takes us back to episode five, where we met another bearded gentleman in the midst of a 100-year mission to find mythical booze. However, more than these incredibly long-term goals just being “a thing that dwarves do,” both cases explore how near-immortal beings need some greater purpose to avoid being swallowed up by eternity. It’s a damn good point. While this setting has dragons, wizards, and mythical swords, it basically always grounds these fantastical sights in the day-to-day, in this case, what it would be like to have hundreds of years to accomplish your desires.
When the gang arrives at Gehen’s bridge, they get good news and bad news: The bridge is done, but some dirtbag bird monsters keep blowing people off the side. The party agrees to kill the monsters in exchange for a semi-useless magical tome that lets you perfectly flip pancakes, which is a very funny bit. But under the humor, there’s a bit more. After last week’s episode, where we learned why Frieren routinely accepts these bad payments—she’s following Himmel’s heroic lead—there’s an extra bit of heft to her choosing to help. Each side-adventure and lesson ties into the greater whole.
Before Frieren and Fern let loose on the shitty birds terrorizing the bridge, the former clarifies why Gehen is obsessed with his project in the middle of nowhere. It turns out that 200 years ago, his village was wiped out by demons. If there had been a way over the canyon, the cavalry could have come to their aid, but instead, nearly everyone died. Cue one of the series’ banger flashback montages as Gehen builds his bridge plank-by-plank, the animators relishing this craftsman’s deliberate work while he makes countless trips up a hill with lumber in tow. Along the way, he is helped by strangers until his effort is rewarded with a finished creation.
After getting the emotional buy-in for why we should hate these dumb birds who are thwarting Gehen’s centuries of work, the group demolishes these jerks in a brief but flashy explosion of ax swings and magic fireworks. Would it be nice if this world’s magical monsters were treated with the same thoughtfulness and respect that extends to every other corner of this mythos, perhaps by situating them in an interconnected ecosystem much like Delicious In Dungeon? Definitely, but right now, I hate these stupid birds, so it’s mostly fine.
As they head back to the dwarf for their reward, author Kanehito Yamada hits us with that last little gut punch: In the decades Gehen spent building his bridge, a new community has formed on top of the old one. He didn’t just do this out of misplaced survivor’s guilt and unprocessed grief, but as a means to protect his new home, a reveal that ties together this emotionally resonant 10-minute short story.
With the idiot birds vanquished, the group crosses the bridge into a desolate tundra, which, in northern lands tradition, kind of sucks. Making matters worse, Frieren spent all of the party’s money on useless magic artifacts. Her only defense against her pupils’ anger is that “:3” reaction face she pulls out in times of need and a plan to make some quick coin. She remembers that there’s an adventurers’ group in these parts mining for holy snow crystals. They get a gig that requires them to slay a very tough beastie, then put up a barrier to keep anyone else from getting at these mining reserves.
The gang eventually finds their target, a kitsune-like canine aura farming on a rock. Any potential worries that Madhouse would have have nothing left in the tank—especially after the all-out melee against the Divine Revolte—are quickly left in the dust as the giant dog gracefully bounces and weaves through incoming magic projectiles with supernatural grace, the animation team capturing the beast’s incredible agility. We get one more burst of Evan Call’s transportive battle hymns as this action highlight comes to a close with Fern demolishing the creature using a big ass laser blast from really far away. Her pulling this move is a smart callback to the show’s very first arc, where Frieren taught her apprentice to love magic by turning this small bean into a sniper warlock.
With the job done, we get the space for one final burst of poignance. As a deposit of holy snow crystals reflects the early morning light, director Kentaro Hori bridges the past and present with an inspired match-cut, visually conveying how Frieren has continued her friend Himmel’s desire to liberate this land from demon tyranny. As the closing montage plays out, we get callbacks to the stops the gang has been on since arriving in the Northern Plateau, their many side-adventures adding up to a greater whole. As Fern and Stark reflect on how much they’ve learned from their mentor, the series once again doubles down on how small good deeds can eventually cause meaningful change.
It’s a subtle ending to a subtle season, a quiet before the much-hyped upcoming Golden Land arc (which mercifully already got a 2027 release date). But as both this finale and this stretch as a whole have shown, this series can very much do small, big, and everything in between, delighting in melding the magical with the mundane. In a fantasy landscape largely consumed with spectacle, there’s something to be said about a show that can so thoughtfully embrace the quotidian.
Stray observations:
- •If this finale did small well, then the closing tease for the next season alludes to something big. It’s a strong cliffhanger that sets up the stage for the beloved hands-throwing old man wizard, Denken, and his “fairytale” mission to beat up a very intimidating bad guy.
Elijah Gonzalez is The A.V. Club’s associate editor.
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