Series Blurb
The adventure is over but life goes on for an elf mage just beginning to learn what living is all about.
Elf mage Frieren and her courageous fellow adventurers have defeated the Demon King and brought peace to the land. But Frieren will long outlive the rest of her former party. How will she come to understand what life means to the people around her?
Decades after their victory, the funeral of one her friends confronts Frieren with her own near immortality. Frieren sets out to fulfill the las...
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(4.53/5)I didn't know much about this series going in, but I enjoyed this volume.
Language learning:
There is full furigana and a WK book club so this is easier to approach than I assumed it would be. Difficulties will come from characters that speak formally, introspective language, and fantasy vocabulary.
Content:
I enjoy the fantasy genre, and this series is probably best if you're a fantasy reader already. The setting is a traditional DnD-type fantasy world, but the story starts after the hero
Frieren was great!
This is a fantasy novel thats very low on the fantasy vocabulary. If you've grown up watching anime you're probably all set! Such as words like 魔法(magic) and 魔法使い(magician) should all sound quite familiar to any isekai anime fans.
Because of the light magic system, you don't have to learn any complex mombo-jumbo AKA theres no 'fantasy-bable'
Grammar-wise, there's not much here that really sticks out, though Fern does talk a little more formally than I'm used to. なりに and だろうが were the
『葬送のフリーレン』のドイツ語
People who know German can guess the meaning of many names, though not all of them directly. Here is a list for those who do not want to wait for an inspiration: https://www.cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~hiratuka/essays/frieren.html
Lots of vocab, but relatively simple structures
The wistful tone of Frieren (meaning, generally, lower amounts of text and shorter sentences) and plentiful furigana make this an extremely good introduction for fantasy vocabulary, of which there is a lot. It's also a decent source for emotional vocabulary as well given the manga's focus on making sense of the main character's interiority. Also, more to the point, it's just a wonderful read.
Slow start to an incredible story
Just like the anime, this is a very slow start, and while I can appreciate some things more now, it took me a few tries to finally finish this volume.
If you pick this up and feel bored, you may want to: 1. Push through it for now, 2. Watch the anime instead (it's an extremely faithful adaptation that really enhances everything, from what I've read).
Personally, I may just skip to vol 7 (the anime left off at ch 60/61), if I continue.
Challenging but enjoyable.
As an introduction to the fantasy genre, this seems like a perfect place to start.
There's so much useful vocab to pick up that'll carry over to other fantasy books/shows, and it also has furigana for easy lookups (if you're not using Mokuro + Yomitan), although it can be quite dialogue heavy at times.
The difficulty is fairly consistent throughout apart from the 10th and 11th volumes, there was quite a step-up which made it challenging to keep up with the story, but thankfully, it calms down