Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is an incredible anime that follows the story of an elf named Frieren who, after defeating the Demon King with her companions and slowly watching them die, embarks on a new journey to discover more about her past journey and how she felt. She picks up companions along the way and goes on side adventures while having one goal in mind: heading to Heaven.
Now, while I could ramble endlessly about this show, today I want to talk about the video made for the show’s ending song, “The Story of Us”, by Milet, and I also want to talk about how many of the frames in this anime are amazing works of art just on their own and what I’ve learned from them.
The video showcases two characters: Frieren and Himmel. Himmel is one of Frieren’s past companions and the main spark that, after his death, ignited her into starting a new journey to reach Heaven and see Himmel again.
Throughout the video, the artist Mimei Aoume uses colored pencil and a myriad of drawings with change in shading and texture when the character is still. This constant change in texture gives life to the art and makes them more interesting to look at. Mimei Aoume is the only artist who worked on the video, so I’m sure it took her a lot of time to do.
And it’s not just the ending video for Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End that looks amazing. Both the anime and the manga have stunning visuals. The animation style is smooth and consistent and always adds to the story of what they are doing in that episode.
As I rewatched Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End recently, I tried to pay more attention to the elements the professional animators used so I could practice them in my art and improve. The main thing I noticed in this scene where they are sitting around the campfire is the background. It’s not something that was given a complex design and it adds to the atmosphere.
With the bright colors of the different flowers contrasting with the dark background of the nighttime forest and the perspective where you’re looking up at the characters with the flowers in the foreground, this is one of my favorite scenes in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. Here, I noticed a lot of saturation of colors versus unsaturated colors. It really does make the overall scene pop more and is definitely something I want to try out in my next artwork.
In this scene, I noticed again the amount of contrast that was used and the planes of the body that were being hit by light and why some of the others parts wouldn’t be based on the light source.
Are there any shows that you get inspired by that make you want to improve? Because Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is definitely a big one for me.
Thanks for reading and be sure to look out for my next post!
~Isaiah
Frieren colored pencil headshots: https://x.com/aoumemimei/status/2012342422525661647/photo/1