Rarely has a Japanese cultural phenomenon stirred emotions like Frieren – Beyond the Journey. An international fan community anticipated the start of the second season on January 16th with the same fervor usually reserved for New Year’s Day.
The source material—first published in 2020—belongs among the most successful manga of recent history with 32 million copies sold and numerous awards to its credit. On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has a stunning 100% rating. Critics and anime sites are already evaluating Frieren as one of, if not the best, anime series of all time.
Frieren breaks with nearly all modern trends. Not only in the West have cynicism and nihilism— for example Game of Thrones and its influence on the entertainment industry—taken root. In Japan, a trend has recently emerged that relies on fan service and the gratification of base instincts. Fantasy formats frequently reflected power fantasies or harem situations, likely aimed at an audience increasingly composed of so-called “herbivore men.” The anime industry no longer criticised this directionless generation but instead sought to cater to their desires.
Enter the elf Frieren. The series follows the mage 80 years after she achieved victory over the Demon King with a group of heroes. In flashbacks, she reflects on the past journey that had shaped her more than she initially understood it had done. Beyond surprisingly profound characters, the narrative delivers on atmospheric density and interpersonal interactions. Its medieval world is modeled on Western Europe, yet evokes the slowness and inwardness of East Asian nature painting. It is a world where black and white are permitted, where a soul-caressing purity lies, and where male heroes may be multidimensional and masculine without the taint of being mere hulking brutes or ‘toxic’.
An Entertainment Industry Giant
The impressive success underscores the scope of the Japanese animation industry. Its millions-strong fan community and sales figures show that anime has long ceased to be a niche. In 2024, the Association of Japanese Animations estimated the market in Japan at $25.3 billion—in 1990, it was merely $3 billion. Projections suggest this revenue could climb to $47.14 billion by 2028. Worldwide, the industry currently expects to have 800 million anime fans, a figure anticipated to reach one billion by the end of the decade. The Japanese government regards anime and video games as core industries for their country—both economically and for establishing a positive image of Japan (”Cool Japan”) throughout the world.
In this respect too, Frieren is remarkable. As a pop-cultural phenomenon, it captured the zeitgeist, and online platforms were soon flooded with posts and comments dedicated to categorising the elf. Progressive voices in particular took issue with the portrayal of demons. In the world of Frieren, there is a clear distinction between good and evil. Frieren is portrayed positively because she does not fall for the supposed motives or constraints of her demonic adversaries. She kills them mercilessly, knowing that these opponents seduce with their words. Theologically speaking, Frieren is thus considerably closer to biblical tradition than many other productions. Hollywood now tends to portray villains merely as misunderstood creatures.
Liberal critics already saw in this storytelling the danger of essentialism, biologism, racism—and ultimately, fascism. No sooner had the elf become a victim of “woke” critics than the opposing side immediately entered the fray: Frieren was soon declared a spokeswoman for the online right. She has since appeared in memes and cartoons of right-wing counterculture. Recently, there have even been crossovers with Luce, the Catholic mascot of the Holy Year 2025. The meme has unexpectedly become a remarkably powerful weapon—because Frieren is so popular. So powerful that now the left is attempting to break the established narrative and win the elf back to their own political side.
Longing for Lost Values
The political war over Frieren, however, runs deeper. It is rooted in longing. A quarter-century after Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, the fantasy scene languishes. Representative of this is Amazon’s Rings of Power series. It is a debacle both artistically and in terms of ratings. Simply aping something that looks like Tolkien is not enough when Tolkien’s spirit is not present.
Frieren offers what has been lost not only to fantasy but to entertainment industry productions as a whole: sincerity, purity, courage to embrace slowness, self-reflection, characterisation over cheap shock effects, a clear distinction between good and evil. Frieren is a simple story. But it is often more difficult to tell a simple story than a complicated one. Many classic works are constructed very simply in terms of plot.
Anime grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki is attributed with the saying: “Anime was a mistake. It’s nothing but trash.” Whether invented or not—this captures an observation by the Ghibli founder (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Totoro): the players in the current industry have betrayed the trust their predecessors placed in them. After the experiments of the 1980s and 1990s, from Akira through Ghost in the Shell to Cowboy Bebop, a period of increasing commercialisation, aimed at the global market, began.
From Experiment to Mass Product
Anime productions for domestic and foreign audiences became a booming market for the island nation, which drifted into stagflation and deflation during the same period. Of the 20 most successful Japanese films worldwide, 19 are anime films; of the 20 most successful films within Japan, 17 are anime. Recently, the Chinese market has grown in importance, leading to the international market being nearly the same size as the domestic market. Streaming platforms like Crunchyroll and Netflix have contributed significantly to this growth by distributing anime titles worldwide and making them accessible to new audiences.
Mass appeal has thus replaced innovation in the last two decades. Similar to Hollywood, the last decade saw a trend toward sequels and remakes, while creative freedom became increasingly restricted in what has now become a structurally risk-averse environment. Alongside the tendency toward mass products, there has occurred a changing of the guard. Miyazaki celebrated his 85th birthday in January, and his studio has now been acquired by broadcaster Nippon Television Holdings. Meanwhile, Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis Evangelion) recently announced the dissolution of his studio Gainax.
Frieren itself would have almost been rejected as a manga because the titular character is nothing like the idea of female heroes we normally see in today’s media: The elf was initially considered not “likeable” enough. The plot may be simple, but the themes are not. Because Frieren lives for thousands of years, human lives pass by her in a flash. Relationships, at least initially, mean nothing to her. This quality makes her seem distant, even cold, to the audience. But all that changes when she realises upon the death of a heroic leader that he meant something to her. Frieren has lived centuries day by day. Humans, by contrast, given only a short time, live their lives far more intensely. They value the moment.
The Appreciation of the Moment
This is presumably one reason why the series strikes a nerve with audiences. Digital and virtual insanity has become a topos. Frieren’s “awakening” resembles the reckoning with a life spent mostly in front of a keyboard and screen without appreciating actual life. In the false belief of having enough time, an appreciation for what truly matters declines. Frieren discovers and explores this “essence” on her journey—even if only by grasping the value of a birthday present and making an effort to find one for her companions. That the powerful mage’s favorite spell makes flowers bloom is ridiculed by others—in reality, it is this small spell that unexpectedly brings about great things.
But Frieren stands not only for the rediscovery of the spirit of Tolkien, the triumph of art over mass entertainment, and a possible renaissance of Japanese animation film; she also stands for finding one’s way back to oneself. Keiichiro Saito, director of the first Frieren season, advocated in an interview for a return to artistic diversity and creativity. Saito also warned that trends abroad threatened to exert too much influence on anime’s development. This echoes a statement by Anno, who emphasised that he does not gear orient himself toward international audiences. There must be more courage again to gear toward Japanese storytelling, he argued.
At the same time, the Japanese government has announced it would provide better protection for entertainment media like manga and anime abroad. That the new prime minister, who has governed the country since October, leans politically to the right, completes the picture.
The phenomenon of Frieren thus represents a new zeitgeist taking hold in the Land of the Rising Sun—meanwhile, Western culture continues to wade through the morass of nihilism.
I agree with this article, i really do. Mostly.
Though as any self respecting commenter on the internets i need to shit all over it by adding some perspective and insist on how i am right and everybody else is wrong.
The aspect that made Frieren so successful within the alt-right wasn't that there are black and white characters who became allowed again somehow.
A short look at Übel, who may have the most fan art after Frieren, shows that very clear.
Yes, she may be popular because of her armpits and her smugness when bullying Land, but she also is morally ambiguous and exremely grey, not black or white in the slightest.
One might argue she is a total psychopath who is able to kill without any remorse whatsoever. And she still is one of the "good guys".
The "good guys", as seen during the magic evaluation tests, do not really follow western morality. There, might makes right and if you have to kill to advance your path? So be it.
Darwins law rules there and neither Frieren nor Serie, the oldest and most powerful elfen wizard alive, are an exemption to it and just accept this as an aspect of life itself.
But where it really became the alt-rights newest hype was the blatant unapolegetic racism against demons, not anything "morally" black.
Where other popular shows like "Demon Slayer" show demons as capable of to be reasoned with and some of them even helping humans to achieve some kind of co-existence, Frieren time and time again scolds other characters for even trying to listen to demons, because to her (and the show proves that true) demons only ever evolved the ability to talk to lure humans into traps, which later evolved into sophisticated rhetorics which may fool humans into thinking demons could be reasoned with.
To Frieren it's them or us and everything else ist just weakness.
That somehow intigued 4chans /pol/:
https://ibb.co/nNy8dS9Y
https://ibb.co/SCYKx4p
https://ibb.co/Swn4vNXT
Something similar happened with "Attack on Titan", where a somewhat gifted people was persecuted gruesome and merciless for a historic guilt and the whole world was out to erase them from existence.
There is a pattern here.
Oh, and last but not least: Asian shows in general have one distinct feature that makes them more appealing to broader audiences day by day: Yes, some wholesome plot like in Frieren but also most K-Dramas which also gain traction.
But it's also more simple, really: Close to zero black people, close to zero transgender people, close to zero ugly people (except the villain of course).
Well, that's my two cents and like i said before: i am right about this.
Frieren’s world is boring and almost intentionally generic as an every-man’s JRPG universe. There is nothing authentically “western” about the world or values of the story, at least no more than the Mushroom Kingdom. In fact, the Mushroom Kingdom is at least full of Occidentalist imagery… There is nothing uniquely Christian about the concept of absolutely evil, irredeemable, animalistic villains, and if it wasn’t for the existence of insane woke people I don’t think anyone would ever see this as political. It’s a good show but I think it’s overrated, and I think its fans are extremely cringey.