is a Japanese manga series written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by . It has been serialized in Shogakukan's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday since April 2020; its chapters have been collected in 15 volumes as of December 2025. It is licensed for English release in North America by Viz Media and in Southeast Asia by Shogakukan Asia. The series takes place in a fantasy world and follows Frieren, an elven mage on a journey to the resting place of souls to reunite with her former comrade Himmel, whose Hero Party slew the Demon King.
Madhouse produced an anime television series adaptation, with its first season airing from September 2023 to March 2024. A second season aired from January to March 2026. A third season is set to premiere in October 2027.
By January 2026, the Frieren: Beyond Journey's End manga had over 35 million copies in circulation. The manga won the 14th Manga Taishō and the 25th annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize's New Creator Prize in 2021, and the 69th Shogakukan Manga Award and the 48th Kodansha Manga Award (in the category) in 2024.
Plot
The elven mage Frieren is a former member of a party of adventurers who defeated the Demon King and restored harmony to the world after a ten-year quest. The party also consists of the human hero Himmel, the dwarven warrior Eisen, and the human priest Heiter. Before they part, they observe the Era Meteors, a meteor shower that occurs once every fifty years. Even though she knows that humans like Himmel have shorter lifespans than elves like herself or dwarves like Eisen, Frieren agrees to see the group again for the next occurrence of the Era Meteors. Afterwards, Frieren departs and travels the world in pursuit of magical knowledge.
Fifty years later, Frieren returns to the capital to find humanity has changed and her former companions have aged. After one last adventure to see the meteor shower, Himmel dies of old age. During his funeral, Frieren expresses guilt for not attempting to learn more about him. She visits her other former comrades, and accepts Heiter's request to teach and care for Fern, an orphaned child he had adopted. She also receives an invitation to travel north to the resting place of souls to see Himmel again, express her feelings and bid him farewell. Frieren travels with Fern while still learning magic. Along the way, she is joined by Stark, a young warrior boy Eisen had taught.
Frieren's elven nature grants her an extremely long lifespan, causing her to experience years or decades as ephemeral. With this perception of time, Frieren considers the ten-year adventure with Himmel's party a fleeting experience. Despite this, the impact of her relationships with her companions and how they have shaped her outlook on life is often revisited through periodic flashbacks.
Production Katsuma Ogura, the editor-in-chief of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, noted Yamada's previous work Bocchi Hakase to Robot Shōjo no Zetsubō Teki Utopia did not sell well, but Ogura considered it a masterpiece. This led to a suggestion to give Yamada an illustrator for his next manga. They had several ideas, including a gag manga, which resulted in storyboards for a one-shot of Frieren. Upon reading the storyboards, Ogura started laughing, saying it was not a comedy at all. When Yamada finished the first storyboard, Ogura contacted Tsukasa Abe, and asked him to draw a character chart and send the work to the editorial department. Yamada was impressed, and submitted the project to the editorial department after Ogura asked him to do it. Ogura was pleased with Abe's artwork and suggested he work with Yamada. Yamada approved of the first illustration of protagonist Frieren, believing that she had an aura of humanity.
During an editorial department meeting, the editor in charge said: "If we decide on a good title, we will pay a prize of 10,000 yen out of our own pocket". One of the title ideas submitted by the deputy editor-in-chief was Sōsō no Frieren, and Yamada and Abe decided to use it for the manga.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End began serialization in Shogakukan's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday on April 28, 2020. In January 2023, it was announced the manga would go on hiatus; it resumed in March of that same year. It went on another hiatus in May 2024 and resumed in August; it went on hiatus again in December of the same year. The series resumed on July 23, 2025; however, in October of the same year, it was announced that the manga would enter indefinite hiatus. The announcement noted that the hiatus is for Yamada and Abe to focus on their health, adding that it came after discussions between the creators and the magazine's editorial staff about adjusting the serialization pace of the manga.
Media Manga
Written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by , Frieren: Beyond Journey's End debuted in Shogakukan's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday on April 28, 2020. Shogakukan has collected its chapters into individual volumes, the first of which was published on August 18, 2020. As of December 18, 2025, 15 volumes have been released.
In February 2021, Viz Media announced it had licensed the series for English release in North America, and the first volume was published on November 9, 2021. On May 9, 2023, Viz Media launched its Viz Manga digital distribution service, where the series' chapters are published simultaneously with their release in Japan. In Southeast Asia, the manga has been licensed by Shogakukan's subsidiary, Shogakukan Asia, under the title Frieren: Remnants of the Departed.
Spin-offs Five one-shot spin-off chapters by different authors were published on the manga website from May 22 to 26, 2023; by Kassan (May 22); by Ren Miura (May 23); by Jona (May 24); by Kazumi Yamaguchi (May 25); and by Sōichi Igarashi (May 26). The chapters were later collected in a single volume, titled , released on December 18, 2023. Shogakukan Asia published the volume in English in Southeast Asia in September 2024.
Anime
A 28-episode anime television series adaptation, produced by Madhouse and directed by Keiichirō Saitō, premiered with a two-hour special on September 29, 2023, on Nippon TV's film programming block . Later episodes debuted on the new block Friday Anime Night on the same network and its affiliates, and ended on March 22, 2024. A second season, directed by Tomoya Kitagawa, broadcast from January 16 to March 27, 2026. A third season, covering the "Golden Land" arc, is set to premiere in October 2027.
Eleven short episodes, titled , were released on Toho Animation's YouTube channel, and on X and TikTok by the anime's official accounts from October 11, 2023, to March 24, 2024. A second six-episode season was released from April 2 to September 3, 2025. A third five-episode season was released from January 19 to March 26, 2026.
Other media Shogakukan published an official fanbook that features information about the series, illustrations, summaries, and initial rough character designs, on January 12, 2024.
A prequel novel, , written by Mei Hachimoku with supervision by Yamada, was released on April 17, 2024. The novel includes five original short stories centered around Frieren, Fern, Stark, Kanne, Lawine, and Aura. In August 2025, Yen Press announced that it had licensed the novel and was released on March 24, 2026.
A 24-page novella, also written by Hachimoku, subtitled , was bundled with the special edition of the manga's fourteenth volume, released on March 18, 2025.
In April 2024, s Real Escape Game announced the creation of an escape room based on the manga, titled "Escape from the Millennium Dream".
Reception Sales By March 2021, over two million copies of the manga were in circulation, which steadily increased in the following years. By January 2026, it had over 35 million copies in circulation. the 12th volume was Shogakukan's second-highest first-print-run manga volume of 2023–2024 (period from April 2023 to March 2024), with 600,000 copies printed; the 14th volume was the publisher's highest first-print-run manga volume of 2024–2025 (period from April 2024 to March 2025), with 700,000 copies printed; volumes 12 and 13 were the fifth and ninth best-selling manga volumes of the first half of 2024, with sales of 637,022 units and 509,573 copies, respectively; the 14th volume was the seventh best-selling manga volume of the first half of 2025, with 521,551 copies sold; the 15th volume was the third best-selling manga volume of the first half of 2026, with 521,551 copies sold.
The manga ranked second on Takarajimasha's Kono Manga ga Sugoi! list of best manga of 2021 for male readers; it ranked sixth on the 2022 list; and twelfth on the 2025 list. The series ranked second on the "Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics of 2021" by the website "Honya Club". The series ranked seventeenth on the 2021 "Book of the Year" list by Da Vinci magazine; it ranked tenth on the 2022 list; twelfth on the 2023 list; and ninth on the 2024 list.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End was ranked in the top-ten graphic novels by the American Library Association's Graphic Novels and Comics Round Table's 2022 list of "Best Graphic Novels for Adults". Its volumes were ranked on Circana (formerly NPD) BookScan's monthly top 20 adult graphic novels list since February 2025.BookScan's ranking for each month: February 2025: May 2025: February 2026:
Critical reception Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network gave the first volume of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End an A−. Silverman praised the concept of Frieren outliving her companions, and being forced to live with an understanding of the human world and her own emotions, calling it an "interesting take on the fantasy genre", but said the art is not "quite up to the emotional tasks of the story". Richard Eisenbeis from the same website praised the second volume of the series, saying it "delivers both emotional tales and deep thematic explorations of human nature". He described the third and fourth volumes of the manga as "an action climax that delivers not only a grand battle but also character-development and world-building. Smaller one-off tales that hit you right in your emotional core." Ross Locksley of UK Anime Network considered it as an interesting take on the fantasy genre by contrasting the enduring existence of one race with the ephemeral lifespan of another, finding it similar to the manga series To Your Eternity, highlighting how the series explores the relationships Frieren builds with the people around her.