Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Vol. 4 by Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe
Series Name: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
Genres: Adventure, Elves, Fantasy, Magic
Intended Age Group: Teen
Publisher: Viz/Shonen Sunday
Edition: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-9747-2725-4
Rating: 4/5
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Description from the Book
Elf mage Frieren and her courageous fellow adventurers have defeated the Demon King and brought peace to the land. But Frieren will long outlive the rest of her former party. How will she come to understand what life means to the people around her?
The village priest Sein has no intention of becoming an adventurer, but his desire to find a long-lost friend may lead him to join Frieren’s party on their journey north. They are headed for the magical city of Äußerst, where Frieren can obtain the first-class mage certification needed to enter the Northern Plateau region. At Fieren’s urging, Fern decides to take the certification exam as well, and faces some unexpected competition…
Personal & Info
I’m slowly catching up on this series. I want to be up to current volumes before I watch the anime, which is supposed to come out sometime later this year.
Characters
Frieren is an elf mage famous for defeating the demon king with her companions around 80 years ago. She’s a bit of a slob and rather lazy. Her hobby is collecting any and all types of magic spells, no matter how useless they may seem.
Fern is Frieren’s mage companion and apprentice. She seems to take a motherly role in caring for Frieren.
Stark is Eisen’s apprentice. He has low self confidence, but great skill as a warrior.
Sein is the party’s new priest. He seems to be the peacemaker of the party.
Story & Thoughts
The story picks up where volume three left off. The group is in a village trying to recruit a priest for their travels. Of course, the guys also get their stuff back. It doesn’t seem like they learn their lesson, though, because there’s a panel later that implies they lose it again. Sein and Stark shouldn’t gamble. They obviously aren’t good at it.
After they leave the village, they continue their travels to Äußerst. This series is the best I’ve seen at actually portraying travel. I mean, aside from a few gems, like maybe Inuyasha, for example. It takes a certain kind of skill to cover travel without it getting dull. There are plenty of random encounters and towns to visit.
It always seems like someone learns something, or some of them grow closer from the events of their journey. None of it feels insignificant, and the characters themselves are wonderfully portrayed enough to make their interactions entertaining. Stark and Fern are lucky to have Sein with them, because they appear to be navigating some difficult times communicating with each other due to their young ages. Frieren is not one to assist in mediating things like that.
Based on their interactions, I’m starting to ship Stark and Fern. They always want to apologize to each other, but don’t know how. They have definitely gotten more comfortable with each other compared to when Stark first joined the party. Fern seemed almost mean to him back then.
Near the end of the volume, they finally make it to Äußerst, where they can take the first class mage exam. Either Fern or Frieren will need to pass. They need one first class mage certification to get permission to continue their main quest of going to Ende in search of Aureole. The test itself will be in the next volume.