From our other sites
The story
It’s been almost a year since the original manga of ‘Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End’ went on hiatus. The anime has earned rave reviews, but the source manga remains on extended pause. The thread’s title teased a “return from hiatus,” but based on the actual comments from thread-watchers, nothing confirms that. In the thread, theories flew about the reason for the pause: some argued the story, originally conceived as short, got stretched out by the anime’s massive success until the author could no longer keep writing it, while others suggested the plot hit a wall early, right around the time the group reached the Demon King’s castle.
What people said
Probably got dragged so far off the original plan that he doesn't even know how to write it anymore.
The story basically starts from a point where the tale is already "over," so
it probably hit a wall pretty early on.
It was supposed to be about heading to where the Demon King's castle stood and meeting Himmel there,
but partway through it jumped to the past and she met Himmel that way instead.
Sounds like it'd have worked better as done-in-one chapters that jump ahead by decades each time.
Yeah, it was a "one-and-done" premise from the start — the kind of gag that only really lands once.
If you plan for something to sell around 700K copies and it hits 10 million instead, yeah, you'd buckle too.
Bringing Aura back to life is bound to cause friction.
Same pattern as Demon Slayer, but credit where it's due — Demon Slayer's author actually stepped up in response to the anime.
That's probably what sent him into a depression.
If it's Weekly Shonen Sunday, that's entirely believable.
Just throw in some anime-original filler, like Frieren going out to get her driver's license.
The early part was good, though —
it's about one of the now-retired heroes, an elf, retracing that old journey while reflecting on those days and coming to understand how humans think.
Yeah, the whole point is that elves and humans experience time differently.
Even Fern said she'd need to set a time limit if she were going to stay somewhere to study.
I bet he originally meant to go all the way with that — maybe he even had a vague plan for Fern to get married, have kids, and eventually meet her grandchildren.
But as the series grew popular enough to become a flagship title, the characters got too well-known and beloved for him to actually pull that off.
However you look at it, you don't even need a tank.
Yeah, since you don't even need incantations to cast spells.
Was the One Piece one-shot even that good?
Nah, not really, that's just being a contrarian.
The One Piece one-shot is Romance Dawn, right?
Seeing terms like "Morgania" and "Piece Main" in there (leftover names/concepts from the original prototype) made me think "oh, this isn't gonna work."
There just wasn't enough manga material banked up, so Season 2 couldn't get anywhere near the good part.
Then partway through he tacked on the idea that the Demon King was trying to understand humans, which broke the consistency and made it impossible to keep writing.
Weekly serialization is the kind of thing you're supposed to push through on momentum without worrying too much about consistency — but Frieren's author is probably too much of a perfectionist to just wing it like that.
Probably just some vague, unspecified break.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
‘Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End’ became a massive topic thanks to its anime adaptation, but the source manga (serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday) ended up far more popular than originally expected — one thread comment claimed print runs went from an anticipated 700,000 copies to something on the scale of 10 million. Opinions on the reason for the hiatus split mainly into two camps: (1) that after the series became a hit, the editorial side pushed the author to stretch the story out, leaving him stuck on how to proceed, and (2) that the very structure of the story — a “fallen hero retracing her old journey” — was always suited to a short run, and the plot simply ran out of road around the time the group reached the Demon King’s castle and reunited with Himmel. One point readers can easily misread is that the anime’s polish doesn’t necessarily track with the pace of the source material — in fact, some noted that Season 2 of the anime couldn’t reach its climax because there wasn’t enough manga material to draw from. Note that although the original thread’s title teased a “return from hiatus,” nothing in the actual replies backs that up — the discussion was built entirely on the assumption that the hiatus is still ongoing.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5channel (Nanidemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Breaking] Frieren Finally Returns to Serialization wwwwwwwww wwwwwwwww wwwwwwwww wwwwwwwww” (the string of “w”s is Japanese internet shorthand for laughter, like “lol”).
Leave a Reply