John Siracusa recommended the anime adaptation of this on the year-end episode of The Incomparable, and the premise sounded interesting enough to try getting into manga again.

I love stories that explore the mundanity of fantastic worlds—there are lots of things I don’t like about the Star Wars prequels, but Jedi Knights resolving trade disputes is great—and this story delivers on that. It picks up after a D&D-style adventure party has completed their quest and asks what happens next. More particularly, it asks what it means to be a long-lived elf in a world of mortals with lesser lifespans. It leans into low-stakes tasks and semi-useless spells. It has interesting characters and great callbacks and connective tissue.

I still don’t know if manga is my thing. I hate being able to tell that I’m reading something in translation, and it’s strange to me to see this style of art blended with D&D tropes. I know that some of that is cultural chauvinism, though, and I like this story enough that I want to try the second volume sometime.

• Frieren: Beyond Journey's End
• Kanehito Yamada
• Tsukasa Abe
• manga
• anime
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Star Wars
• fantasy
• The Incomparable
• John Siracusa