Most fantasy stories end when the Demon King falls. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End starts there. The hero Himmel, the priest Heiter, the dwarf warrior Eisen and the elf mage Frieren come home to a parade, and then the story skips ahead fifty years. Himmel is an old man, and he dies soon after the four of them meet one last time. At his funeral, Frieren realises she spent ten years with him and never really got to know him.
So she sets out again. This time she travels with a human apprentice and a young warrior, retracing the old route north toward a place where the souls of the dead are said to rest. The cast is split across two timelines: the party Frieren remembers, seen in flashbacks, and the people she meets in the present, from a group of ambitious mages to demons who use human words as bait. This guide follows those groups.
- Story
- Kanehito Yamada
- Art
- Tsukasa Abe
- Manga
- Weekly Shonen Sunday, from 2020
- Anime studio
- Madhouse (season one, 2023–2024)
- Japanese title
- Sousou no Frieren
The hero's party
These four defeated the Demon King together after a ten-year journey. Three of them are human or dwarf and will die long before Frieren does, and the story keeps coming back to small moments from their trip that only mean something to her now.
Frieren
Elf mage · Protagonist
Frieren is a thousand-year-old elf who looks young, sleeps late and is happiest collecting useless spells: one that makes flowers bloom, one that cleans statues, one that makes grapes sour. She can seem cold, but that's mostly her sense of time; a decade feels short to her. Underneath is a very capable fighter who has hidden the true size of her mana for her whole life. The series follows her learning, slowly, to treasure people while they're still here.
- Voice
- Atsumi Tanezaki (JP), Mallorie Rodak (EN)
Himmel
The Hero
Himmel is the hero who defeated the Demon King, and he's a little vain about it: he insists on statues of himself in every town so Frieren won't be lonely in the future. He's also kind to the point of foolishness and helps anyone he meets. Though he dies in the first episode, he's on almost every page. Frieren keeps asking what Himmel would have done.
- Voice
- Nobuhiko Okamoto (JP)
Heiter
Priest
Heiter is a holy priest who drinks too much and cheerfully calls himself corrupt. In old age he takes in an orphaned girl, Fern, and asks Frieren to teach her magic. That request starts the new journey. He's the party's joker and its most quietly wise member.
- Voice
- Hiroki Touchi (JP)
Eisen
Dwarf warrior
Eisen is a stoic dwarf with an axe and a deadpan sense of humour. He outlives Himmel and Heiter and is still alive in the present, though too old to travel far. He sends Frieren his apprentice, Stark, and through Stark we see the kind of patient, unshowy teacher he became.
- Voice
- Yoji Ueda (JP)
Frieren's new party
Fifty years on, Frieren travels north with two young people who were raised by her old friends. The dynamic is often more like a family than a party: Fern scolds Frieren for oversleeping, Stark tries not to get in trouble with either of them, and everyone eats a lot.
Fern
Frieren's apprentice
Fern is a war orphan from the southern lands whom Heiter saved and raised. She's calm, polite and very serious, and she runs the party's daily life, which means managing Frieren like a parent with a lazy child. As a mage she's a prodigy: her offensive spells are fast and she hides her mana almost as well as Frieren. She sulks when she's upset and expects Stark to notice without being told.
- Voice
- Kana Ichinose (JP), Jill Harris (EN)
Stark
Warrior · Eisen's apprentice
Stark is a young warrior who thinks of himself as a coward. He fled his home village when demons attacked and has carried that shame ever since. In fact he's enormously strong, and Eisen says he's the most promising pupil he ever had. His hands shake before every fight, and he goes in anyway. His teasing, awkward friendship with Fern is one of the series' gentlest threads.
- Voice
- Chiaki Kobayashi (JP), Jordan Dash Cruz (EN)
Sein
Priest · Temporary companion
Sein is a talented village priest who smokes, gambles and drinks and is too sharp to fool. He has spent ten years regretting that he didn't leave with his best friend, a warrior who went off to adventure. He travels with Frieren's party for a while, acting as a kind of older brother to Fern and Stark, before setting off to find his friend.
Mentors and elves
Frieren's long life means she has teachers who are legends to everyone else. Elves are rare in this world and slowly dying out, so the few who appear tend to have known each other for centuries.
Flamme
Great Mage · Frieren's teacher
Flamme was a legendary human mage who lived about a thousand years ago. She is seen as the founder of human magic. She found the young Frieren after her village was destroyed and taught her to keep her mana suppressed at all times, so demons would underestimate her. Notes Flamme left behind send Frieren on her new journey.
Serie
Founder of the Continental Magic Association
Serie is an ancient elf from the age of myth, Flamme's own teacher and probably the strongest mage alive. She calls herself a "living grimoire" because she knows almost every spell there is. She runs the final stage of the First-Class Mage Exam and doesn't care much for Frieren's attitude toward magic.
Kraft
Elf warrior monk
Kraft is an elf even older than Frieren whom she meets on the road. He once did heroic deeds that no one remembers. His calm faith that someone up there remembers is a gentle answer to the series' questions about memory.
Schtolz
Stark's older brother
Schtolz was the gifted warrior of Stark's village who stayed to fight when demons attacked. He appears in Stark's memories and explains much of Stark's guilt and his quiet determination.
Mages of the First-Class Mage Exam
To get into the dangerous northern lands, the party needs a first-class mage. Frieren and Fern enter the Continental Magic Association's exam, and the story suddenly fills with new mages. The exam runs in three stages: a team survival test, a dungeon that creates copies of the examinees, and an interview with Serie.
Denken
Veteran court mage
Denken is an elderly mage who climbed to the top of a royal court through politics and ruthlessness. He enters the exam with a quiet personal reason that has nothing to do with status. When his magic runs out, he keeps fighting with his fists. He's one of the most respected figures of the arc.
Übel
Cutting-magic specialist
Übel is an unsettling, cheerful mage who can cut anything she can imagine cutting. Her magic runs on intuition rather than theory, and that makes her dangerous and unpredictable. She has a habit of reading people too well, and she ends up crossing paths with Fern and Land more than once.
Land
Clone mage
Land is a quiet, suspicious mage who sends magical clones of himself into danger and stays out of sight. He's Übel's reluctant partner in the first stage, and their bickering is one of the arc's running jokes.
Wirbel
Captain in the Northern Magic Corps
Wirbel is a professional soldier who has already fought plenty of demons and doesn't hesitate to fight humans. He leads his exam team with clear tactics, and that turns him into a strong rival for Frieren's group.
Methode
All-round mage
Methode is a capable, versatile mage who can heal, bind and search. She also has an open weakness for small, cute things, which includes Frieren. She becomes one of the more friendly faces among the examinees.
Kanne and Lawine
Frieren's first-stage teammates
Kanne uses water magic and Lawine uses ice. They are childhood friends who squabble constantly and fight well together. Frieren's teamwork with the two of them, two kids she has only just met, is a small sign of how much she's changed.
Laufen and Richter
Denken's teammates
Laufen is a speed specialist and Richter is a gruff earth-magic user who runs a shop selling magical goods. They start out as Denken's uneasy allies and come to respect the old man.
Genau, Sense and Lernen
The examiners
Genau is the stern examiner of the first stage. Sense, a calm first-class mage with very long hair, runs the dungeon stage. Lernen is a senior first-class mage close to Serie. Each of them is a reminder that first-class mages are tough, eccentric and a little dangerous.
Demons
Frieren's demons are not misunderstood monsters. The series is very clear that they are predators who learned human language because words make good bait. They can sound sad, apologetic or kind, and none of it means anything. Frieren has spent centuries learning this the hard way, which is why she kills them without hesitating.
Aura the Guillotine
One of the Seven Sages of Destruction
Aura is a demon general who survived the Demon King's death by hiding. She uses the Scales of Obedience, a magic item that compares two people's mana and lets the stronger one enslave the weaker. She has raised an army of headless dead soldiers that way. Her confrontation with Frieren is one of the most talked-about moments in the anime.
- Voice
- Yoko Hikasa (JP)
Lügner, Linie and Draht
Aura's subordinates
Lügner controls blood, Linie copies the fighting moves of warriors she has seen, and Draht fights with threads that can slice. They slip into a town under the pretence of making peace, and Fern, Stark and Frieren each take one of them on.
Qual
Inventor of Zoltraak
Qual is a demon who created Zoltraak, a killing spell so effective it once slaughtered huge numbers of human mages. Frieren's party sealed him eighty years earlier. When the seal breaks, he finds that humans have studied his spell so well it has become ordinary offensive magic.
The Demon King
Defeated before the story begins
The Demon King never appears directly in the present. Himmel's party killed him in the north, but his surviving generals and the Seven Sages of Destruction keep the war's shadow alive.
Mimics
Treasure chest monsters
Mimics are monsters that pretend to be treasure chests. Frieren has a spell to tell them apart from the real thing, and still opens them anyway. Getting swallowed head-first by one is the series' best-loved running gag.
Macht
One of the Seven Sages of Destruction
Macht can turn anything into gold, and he once turned an entire city into a golden landscape. He's tied to Denken's past and becomes important after the exam arc in the manga.
Frieren voice cast
The Japanese cast is led by Atsumi Tanezaki as Frieren. English dub credits are listed only where we're confident of them. For more on these actors' other roles, see our voice actors guide.
| Character | Japanese | English |
|---|---|---|
| Frieren | Atsumi Tanezaki | Mallorie Rodak |
| Fern | Kana Ichinose | Jill Harris |
| Stark | Chiaki Kobayashi | Jordan Dash Cruz |
| Himmel | Nobuhiko Okamoto | — |
| Heiter | Hiroki Touchi | — |
| Eisen | Yoji Ueda | — |
| Aura | Yoko Hikasa | — |
Story arcs and where to start
Frieren is episodic but in order, and it's worth watching from the start. Season one runs for 28 episodes and covers these stretches of the journey:
- The journey's end Himmel's death, Heiter's request and Fern becoming Frieren's apprentice.
- Stark joins Eisen sends his apprentice, and the party heads north.
- Aura the Guillotine The first major demon arc, with Fern, Stark and Frieren each fighting alone.
- Sein's detour A priest joins the group for a while.
- The First-Class Mage Exam The longest arc of season one, introducing dozens of new mages.
The manga continues past the exam into the northern lands, including the Golden Land arc with Macht and Denken. If you're deciding whether to read or watch, the anime is very faithful, and our manga vs anime guide covers what each format does best. The watch order guide explains how to slot new seasons around an ongoing manga.
What the characters are about
Frieren is a quiet fantasy about time, grief and memory. Its battles are excellent, but what people remember are smaller scenes: a ring chosen without thinking, a statue cleaned for no reason, a festival everyone else has forgotten.
- Regret and second chances. Frieren's whole journey is a second attempt at friendship. She knows Fern and Stark will die long before she does, and this time she decides to pay attention.
- Inheritance. Fern carries Heiter's kindness, Stark carries Eisen's courage, and Frieren carries what Flamme taught her. The new party is literally the old party's legacy.
- Words and meaning. The demons use language without meaning any of it. The humans often say very little and mean everything. That contrast runs right through the story.
If you like this gentle, reflective kind of story, Spy x Family builds its own small found family, and Fullmetal Alchemist asks similar questions about loss and what can't be undone. Frieren and Fern also make a good pairing to read alongside our guide to female protagonists.
All Frieren character names A–Z
A–D
- Aura the Guillotine — Demon
- Demon King — Demon
- Denken — Exam mage
- Draht — Demon
E–F
- Eisen — Hero's party
- Fern — Frieren's party
- Flamme — Great Mage
- Frieren — Protagonist
G–K
- Genau — Examiner
- Heiter — Hero's party
- Himmel — Hero's party
- Kanne — Exam mage
- Kraft — Elf monk
L
- Land — Exam mage
- Laufen — Exam mage
- Lawine — Exam mage
- Lernen — First-class mage
- Linie — Demon
- Lügner — Demon
M–Q
- Macht — Demon
- Methode — Exam mage
- Qual — Demon
R–S
- Richter — Exam mage
- Schtolz — Stark's brother
- Sein — Priest
- Sense — Examiner
- Serie — Great Mage
- Stark — Frieren's party
U–W
- Übel — Exam mage
- Wirbel — Exam mage
Frequently asked questions
Who are the main characters in Frieren?
Frieren, an elf mage who helped defeat the Demon King; Fern, her human apprentice; and Stark, a young warrior trained by the dwarf Eisen. The other members of the original hero's party, Himmel, Heiter and Eisen, appear mostly in flashbacks but shape everything Frieren does.
How old is Frieren?
Frieren is over a thousand years old. Elves in the series live so long that the ten-year journey to defeat the Demon King was, in her words, a tiny fraction of her life. That gap between her sense of time and her human friends' is the heart of the story.
What does Frieren's name mean?
Most characters in the series have German-derived names. Frieren comes from the German verb for "to freeze," Himmel means "heaven" or "sky," Eisen means "iron" and Stark means "strong." The names are a small joke the fandom enjoys spotting.
Does Frieren pass the First-Class Mage Exam?
No. Serie, the elf who runs the final stage, fails her almost immediately, partly because of an old grudge involving Frieren's teacher Flamme. Fern passes, as do several of the other examinees, including Denken and Übel.
Who is the strongest character in Frieren?
Serie, the ancient elf who founded the Continental Magic Association, is presented as the most powerful mage alive. Among the demons, the Demon King and his top generals outrank anyone the party has faced. Frieren herself is among the strongest mages in history, and much of her strength comes from hiding it.
Is there a Frieren season 2?
Yes. A second season followed in 2026. This guide covers the cast through the events of season one, which ends with the First-Class Mage Exam.