Title: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Vol. 7
Author: Kanehito Yamada (Story), Tsukasa Abe (Art)
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genre: Shojo, Romance
Publication Date: January 10, 2023
The Story
With the First Class Mage arc over, we see the remnants of the event with Serie noting who passes and who doesn’t. Obviously, Fern passes otherwise our journey wouldn’t really have a point in continuing. Some others that passed were expected and some were surprising. Despite this, it seems that Serie was a bit miffed at Frieren and banned her from the land for the next 1,000 years! Ouch
With this, we continue our journey into The Northern Lands. Along the way, we run into Wirbel who tries to coax Stark to join his party. He refuses and there’s a bit of a touching moment there. Afterward, they stop by to polish a statue of The Hero of the South. We get some history and how Himmel wasn’t the only hero of the land. It even talks about the Seven Sages of Destruction and what The Hero of the South truly was. Nice little lore chapter.
From there, they stop off in a town where a request is made to have the Graf’s sword returned as a demon made off with it. Here I thought we would get a nice little mini-arc; however, the whole thing ended up getting wrapped up in a chapter. After this, the volume concludes with them heading to a hot spring… and fighting a three-headed dragon along the way!
Characters
Stark received a bit of development here. At first, all he wanted to do was run away from everything, including his village; however, there was a reason why he chose Frieren so even with Wirbel trying to steal him away, he remembered that resolve. There was a bit of a moment between Stark and Fern after that which (of course) ended up a bit awkward. That would later come into play on their journeys where the two share a cute time together. It’s obvious these two will end up together at some point!
The Hero of the South seemed pretty cool. While his appearance made him seem very arrogant, he was extremely humble. This was due to his gift/curse… aka the type of power that he had as a mage. While it was a gift in the fact that it gave him the upper hand, it was also a curse because he knew when things would come to an end. He and Frieren had a nice conversation but at that point in time, it was simply mere words to her. I think her recalling what he said is starting to sink in now that she has experienced so much.
Final Thoughts
After an action-packed volume, we were due for a cooldown and that’s exactly what this volume was. It kind of felt like a filler volume with us going from town to town. While they are progressing toward their destination, it felt pretty episodic and with the volume ending on a non-cliffhanger, it doesn’t really do much to suggest what is going to come next. There were definitely some seeds that were planted here but who knows when it’ll be time to harvest them. I mean, at least they can turn red apples into green apples and use magic to scratch the itches on their backs that they can’t reach… I mean… that’s useful and a sign of progress… right?
Typically, a filler volume would set up the next grand adventure, and, again, while there were hints, nothing was really set in stone. This just leads me to believe we’ll probably have a few more episodic chapters before we get to the next major focus. All in all, though, it was nice learning a bit of history, running into some recurring characters, seeing more examples of how the people of today perceived the Heroes’ party and, of course, more teasing of a Fern x Stark relationship!
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This item was provided for review by VIZ Media