Given how the first season of Sousou no Frieren ended on a shitty note, it’s not surprising that the second season starts badly too. At least we already got past the battle shonen arc that covered 1/3 of the first season, so we get back to the adventure of our favorite bland character band. I would like to say that I’m pleased to be past that arc, but I’m not, as this season is just worse than the previous one, basically everything about it is a downgrade, whether the slice of life adventures or the fights, the characters are as stagnant as ever, and this season decided to recontextualize some scenes making them worse.

You see, the very first couple of episodes of this season render the entire Chunin Hunter Exam arc pointless, the Northern Plateau has checkpoints where you have to present your first class mage certificate to pass, once you get to these villages, you see there are completely normal people leaving there, there are also some knights whom I doubt are good enough to protect the people from these extremely dangerous monsters given that, as established before, not any mage can enter the place, you specifically need to have special permission to enter here. The mere fact that people who aren’t first class mages, or people that have absolutely no way of defending themselves, or that not a single other first class mage is around any of these villages tells you that the entire previous arc was just a massive time sink, that was there to provide an artificial obstacle that didn’t matter.

This season is just a blander version of the first one, the slice of life elements are very clearly duller than what they were before, last season you would actually learn things from the characters in flashbacks, Himmel’s quirks, maybe something different about Heiter aside from him being a drunk priest, Frieren looking at something that happened in the past in a different way thanks to a new experience, but no, this season is just doing something and then having a flashback where they said and did the exact same thing, and it’s not as if the previous season didn’t have this problem, but it wasn’t something so omnipresent as it is here. Not only that, the “romance” subplot between Fern and Stark also became the dullest shit, this happens because Fern and Stark posses absolutely no chemistry at all and because their characters are pieces of cardboard, these two cannot even hold a conversation, and watching them on a date is eye rolling, as all they can say is just repeating what’s happening around them, there’s a cloud and they tell exactly what the cloud looks like, they are quiet and then someone says that it is a quiet moment, and this isn’t exactly surprising, as I think the romance between Fern and Stark always felt forced, but you just need to take a good look at what has happened before, as in the previous season, there was the episode where they danced together, that single moment is much more significant than anything that happened this season between them.

In one of the earlier episodes of this season, the author gives us an attempt at world building, as he introduces an anti-magic crystal, crystals with the ability to stop mages from casting their magic, so as you should expect, these could easily be used as some kind of weapon against some of the strongest characters in the setting, but obviously nobody thinks much about them, they just talk a little bit about them and then ask “well, what’s for dinner?” before throwing them. This series doesn’t even understand the implications of what anti-magic crystals can do, the argument used against them is that they are too resistant, so trying to dig them and work on them is a waste of effort, however, if you know anything about rocks you should be able to understand that, if a rock is too sturdy, then you dig the earth around it and grab it, if they are too sturdy to work with them, then you just need to stick them on the weapon or armor you want to use it on, but their use is completely ignored. They apparently are also worth a lot of money, which is exactly what Frieren’s party was looking for given they need it, but again, they just threw them away because they aren’t worth keeping for them, which I guess it’s not a completely bad idea given that they are mages and that would cripple them if they had the crystals too close to them, but honestly this could be circumvented by just having Stark carry it with a rope, but as they would still need to find someone who would buy them (which shouldn’t be hard, mind you), so they don’t even entertain the idea. I know, most people who thought about these crystals did more thinking about them than the author, and I doubt they will ever be brought up again because they are treated as an irrelevant element, but it’s surprising that no one ever thought of using them as weapons against mages or maybe try them out against demons given how prevalent magic is in the setting.

Of course, some moments of this season have done nothing but actively damage the previous one, and I’ll start with a very simple one, this season introduces a character called “Hero of the South” (he doesn’t even have a name) and he is a character actively damaging the previous story despite the fact that he barely appears at all. You see, in season 1, there was this powerful moment when Himmel fails to pull the sword, at that moment Himmel basically got told that he wasn’t the one destined to end the calamity happening, that he wasn’t the hero the sword was made for, he receives an ego blow, but he doesn’t decide to leave, he decides that he will continue his journey and be courageous independently of the meaning of that sword, because he wants to help people, and he manages to beat the Demon King because he persisted and not because he was a chosen one. Now, this 5 minutes long scene about the Hero of the South destroys all that, you know why? Because this guy who can see the future and appeared out of nowhere in front of Frieren, before Himmel came to her, told her that there was a young hero that will appear and defeat the Demon King, and that this hero is Himmel. As you should be able to tell, this means that Himmel defeating the Demon King was an event that was predestined, so Himmel was, in fact, the one chosen to defeat the Demon King, which means this short scene completely breaks the previous scene I mentioned, as the reason why that scene was powerful is because Himmel went against fate and triumphed anyway, but apparently the future that was predestined was that Himmel was going to be the one who would defeat the Demon King anyway, rendering all meaning of that scene moot.

As much as I complain about how dull the slice of life scenes tend to be, they are much more better than the other parts, since this series also wishes to be a battle shonen, it has meaningless fights every episode for almost any quest they take, and then there are the small arcs that tend to focus on battles, and when these battles aren’t just bad, they are completely dreadful, as they usually take over from the worst parts of battle shonen battles. The battles featuring Stark are the ones that mainly suffer from this, as he is the warrior of the group, so he fights with weapons instead of beams of light. Last season, he had his fight with Linie which consisted of him getting pummeled, then having a flashback about his master, standing up, saying Linie’s attacks don’t hurt (please, ignore the blood he has as he says that) and then one-shotting her. This season decided to do something even worse, he and another first class mage whose name is not even worth remembering were fighting against a demon, and this demon blasts them both through their torso leaving a big hole, and they just stand up and keep fighting, the severe injury they had taken not mattering until after the battle is over. As you should know, Frieren is a mature series, or at least, that’s what people say it is, so this scene is something mind breaking, this series got outrealism’d by One Piece and Dragon Ball Z, it’s very hard to understand why the author would try to write these fights when he is so bad at it, and the problem of this scene isn’t that they got healed afterwards because they survived with 1HP, the problem of this scene is that it should have never reached this territory into stupidity and immaturity, if you get a hole across the middle of your torso, if you aren’t dead, then you shouldn’t even be able to walk because your spine would get destroyed, this series should know better than to copy battle shonen where the protagonists just stand up again no matter how much damage they received.

The animation is the only part about this show that I can still praise, Madhouse is clearly giving all of its love towards it, even if at the cost of all other series they have been making since 2023. Despite the cities all looking the same, at least they look pretty and the animation in battles, as much as their actual content annoys me, is outstanding. The thing that still is horrible is the comedy, I have to thank the author for stopping doing mimic jokes that were run through the ground, but the things replacing them aren’t better, one of the scenes plays out like this: Frieren and Stark enter a bar laugh track and then they are talking about how Fern feels about a date invitation, they have a little conversation where Stark treats Frieren like an old lady and Frieren says that he shouldn’t make her mad because she would start throwing a tantrum cuts to the most obnoxious flashback you’ve ever seen of Frieren crying while her party watches and then we return to the present laugh track, the laugh track is an exaggeration from my part, but it looks like you are watching Family Guy with the cutaway gags.

It's exhausting to watch this season, the premise was already run thin back in the first season, specially because the theme of “passage of time” is irrelevant when time doesn’t pass in the story beyond the first couple of episodes, I know it would be a pain to replace Stark and Fern with another type of cardboard cutouts, but I can’t take seriously this series when the themes it wants to explore aren’t explored as it doesn’t allow itself to do it.

Thank you for reading.