Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is one of the best fantasy anime ever, and fans often look up other series just like it. Madhouse has been able to paint a beautiful journey that is often quite emotional. It pulls at your heartstrings while dealing with the fleeting, ephemeral nature of life.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End follows the adventure of the titular elven mage, Frieren. The narrative begins after she and the hero’s party defeat the Demon King. While the party disbands, Frieren, a long-living elf, goes on a fifty-year-long journey to indulge in her hobby of collecting new spells.
However, after she returns, she finds that all of her former party members have grown old. A new journey begins for Frieren when Heiter gives her the responsibility of training and looking after his young ward, Fren.
Heiter soon passes away, and Freiren and Fren embark on an adventure to collect new spells once again. But this time, they will stop at locations Frieren once visited with the hero’s party.
The genius of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End lies in how the story is told. The narrative style is not linear, and there are very few fantasy anime that have been able to capture what Madhouse so beautifully has.
Today’s list will discuss some of the best anime that deal with the fantasy genre as brilliantly as Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.
5 best anime like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End that you should not be sleeping on
5) To Your Eternity
To Your Eternity and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End represents characters who are age-less and lead long lives. Human existence, for them, is an experience that is over in the blink of an eye. This makes them struggle to grasp human emotions, but they try their best to understand them.
To Your Eternity starts with an entity deciding to throw an orb to Earth one day. This orb has neither any emotions nor an identity but boasts the ability to change its shape into anything. However, it is tasked to gather the sensations of a living being.
The orb was first a rock, afterward moss, and then a wolf, till it finally became a young boy. As it gains human form, a whole array of sensations opens up to it. The boy now begins a journey where he meets new people and gathers new experiences from them.
However, unlike in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, where the journey has a purpose and a goal in mind, the boy’s wandering is often portrayed to be aimless. To Your Eternity paints a bleak picture of the fleeting nature of life. But it remains of the best fantasy anime like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End that beautifully captures this transcience.
4) Girls’ Last Tour
Girls’ Last Tour follows the story of Chito and Yuuri, the last remaining humans on Earth. While the setting is extremely bleak, the genius of the anime lies in how it deals with the theme of “Mono no Aware.”
It’s a key concept of the Japanese culture which talks about the evocation of powerful emotions that certain objects can have on you. Chito and Yuuri, much like Frieren, have a deep understanding of the ephemeral nature of life. And in a world devoid of any other form of civilization, they find a constant need to enjoy the moment as this world, too, is temporary.
The pathos of things or the deep feelings towards everyday objects are much stronger in Girls’ Last Tour than in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. In the latter, the protagonist realizes that every life has an inevitable end, but there will always be new life after it. However, in Girls’ Last Tour, all life has perished, and there can no longer be a fresh start.
Life bears no meaning for Chito and Yuuri, but the protagonists still seek to live on and enjoy every moment they get.
3) Kino’s Journey
Kino’s Journey is about the titular hero who travels the world with her talking bike, Hermes. Kino’s world is filled with many mysteries. Throughout her journey, she meets people from all walks of life.
However, Kino follows some set rules during her travel. One of the biggest rules is that she will never stop in a town for more than three days and two nights. Kino believes that three days are enough to get to know the lay of the place and the nature of the people who inhabit it.
What lies beneath usually does not reflect what is apparent on the surface in Kino’s Journey. This is one of the reasons why exploration plays such a big role in the series.
Where in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End the emphasis is more on the travel and the bond that the characters share. Kino’s Journey is a solitary and more philosophical undertaking. The emotional undertones are often cut with philosophical revelations that deal with the meaning and vastness of human life.
The focus of Kino’s Journey is not on Kino herself. But it’s more on the people and the towns that she visits. Daily human existence is put at the forefront. This is what makes Kino’s Journey a very unique take on the fantasy anime genre like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.
2) Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash’s similarities with Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End lie in the bond that the characters slowly start forming with each other. Frieren seeks to understand more of what she shared with Himmel and the hero’s group through Fren and Stark. In Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, a ragtag group of strangers are suddenly thrust into a world where they need to survive as fighters.
However, things would have been easier for them if they were strong. Each of the main characters is weak, and they are barely surviving because they are sticking together. The patchwork group slowly starts forming a bond, and eventually, they become a well-coordinated team of fighters.
Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash is a fresh take on the dungeon-crawler genre. The series emphasizes the camaraderie that party members eventually build with each other.
It’s quite reminiscent of how Frieren slowly becomes more fond of Fren and Stark as they travel together. While human life is fleeting, both anime have a beautiful way of capturing the transient nature of the world.
1) Mushishi
Mushishi is a breathtaking example of how beautiful the world can be with all its perils and mysteries. The anime follows the life of a Mushi-shi named Ginko, who researches the phenomenon that is caused by Mushi
Mushi are spirits that exist in the world. They are often formless and invisible, and they generally do not have a purpose of existing. However, there are moments when they interact with human life that can often result in disease or the birth of a beautiful phenomenon.
Ginko travels to learn more about Mushi-related incidents, learning more about people along the way. He even helps those he meets. Ginko is often seen to exude a child-like curiosity when it comes to new Mushi he has not discovered before.
It is this curiosity that Ginko shares with Frieren. They both travel their worlds to learn more. While one collects new spells, the other wants to know everything he can about Mushi.
Another similarity that Mushishi shares with Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is how the narrative is set up. The story-telling is very unique in both series. While progression might seem linear, there are layers of backtracking that impart a good deal of cinematic brilliance.
It’s not surprising why many in the community feel that Mushishi is one of the best fantasy anime that fans of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End should get into.
This concludes our list of the best fantasy anime Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. For a similar list of some of the best anime out there, here are a few related topics you can check out:
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