Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End took the anime world by storm, practically redefining the standard of quality for fantasy anime and showing the world some of the best storytelling, characterization, and action to come from anime in years. This sort of stellar performance was the result of teamwork and contributions from all of the staff involved; the project was a creative endeavor that was the sum of many people’s work. At this year’s Anime Expo, we had the opportunity to speak with two members of the series’ staff: Evan Call, who composed the soundtrack for the series, and Yuichiro Fukushi, a member of the production staff.
In our conversation, Evan Call discussed his approach to capturing Frieren‘s introspective and emotional tone through careful orchestration and careful selection of melodies and sound in general. Fukushi-san gave insight into the selection of staff and how those staff were able to make use of different techniques and technologies to create, develop, and enhance different aspects of the world of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. For both of their parts, it was an incredible opportunity to get a peak inside the minds of people infinitely closer to the project than fans will ever be.
Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.
Breaking Down Frieren’s Music
To start, we first wanted to understand how some of the core elements of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End were translated into music. The series is unique and notable amongst fantasy anime for its quiet introspection and deep, layered storytelling. we asked Evan Call about his approach to this process.
“I think that was, like you mentioned, a big point, the feeling of introspection and whatnot. While it is kind of an epic story, the focus isn’t the epic-ness of the story, it’s the interactions with the characters, their personal feelings, the way they interact with the world around them. And musically, while there are moments of grandeur — and I don’t think that was the main focus of it, those are just to highlight certain points here and there — I think musically I kept things toned down quite a bit. Very simple ensembles, and if I am using the full orchestra, a lot of times it’s not all at once. Sometimes it will alternate between different instruments, just giving it little different feelings, different emotions here and there, and it’s just like the fine details in between what makes a song sad versus sentimental versus melancholic, and while I’m composing, just trying to figure out those slight variations and choose the right one, depending on what is required of the scenes.”
Last time we at Anime Corner spoke with the composer, he discussed starting the process of creating a score with the overall tonal palette that matches the anime’s world. We wanted to know what that process was like for Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End specifically, as well as how deep he dives into the details when it comes to the anime’s plot and characters.
“Regarding plot and characters, I read through the whole script, and for Frieren, it’s based on a manga, so I read through the manga as well. Because while there are variations between the anime and the manga, it gives you a really good idea for the general visual aspect of it, rather than just reading through the scenario. So once I get a good, firm grasp on that, then I start trying to figure out how I want to do the music.”
“I’m very careful in Frieren about my use of melody, what notes I choose in the melodies to try to create a general feeling that feels like Frieren. And one thing — it gets into a bit musical, specific kind of musical terminology — but for example, if I’m writing in major keys and whatnot, I will avoid the fourth of the key in the major keys, . . . because I think that it takes away from the kind of general folky aspect of it when you put that note in there. Whereas in minor keys . . . there’s a note that would be in a scale called a flat six, and once you put that note in, it makes it too dark sounding, and you can still have minor keys, kind of a darker feeling, without it feeling kind of like dangerous and dark. So in my melodies, I try to avoid those notes when I’m writing, depending of course on what type of song I’m going for. I think that creates a sense of cohesion between the general melodic feel of the show — is what notes I’m deciding to use and why I decide to use them where. And then along with that, just how I choose my tonal colors. I don’t want to — for example, if it’s a big adventure, but the adventure isn’t the point of the story, it’s the interactions between the characters, and it’s the smaller things that make the big difference, and I wanted to make sure that rather than just highlighting the epic fantasy-ness — the adventure — that I highlighted more the introspection and the closeness of both parties. I just took a lot of time figuring out how to do that versus just a fantasy score in general.”
With that much detail and thought going into creating the melodies and music of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, I wondered if there was any sort of up front instruction that could be used as a basis, or if all of that evolved from Call’s individual approach to composing music. We asked what sort of initial direction, song menu, and level of instruction Call received and how much was designed ahead of time versus fully envisioned by him personally.
“I did get a menu. Usually the case when working on an anime is you get a menu of how many songs that they would like you to compose, record, and deliver. So at that point, I think before I got the menu, before we had the meeting, and after the job was offered to me, I wanted to just give my sincere feeling about what I think the music should sound like, in my own opinion, without being influenced by the direction of the main staff. So, I decided to just write the main theme without any instruction. The song is “The Journey of a Lifetime.” That was the first song I wrote for the whole soundtrack, and I wanted to use that kind of as a proof of concept, I guess you could say, like this is the general vibe that I’m going for. Of course, that song is a bit dramatic and whatnot, and so some of the songs don’t need that level of drama.
So when I had the first meeting with everybody, it was mostly like, ‘Hey, you know what? You have the right idea. Just do what you feel would sound best.’ And so, my level of direction was basically keep on doing what you’re doing, and they were super encouraging about it and always giving me great feedback, positive feedback. That was a super smooth production for me, and that was awesome.
Understanding Frieren’s Production
For Fukushi-san, we started by asking what kinds of qualities or past experience were prioritized when selecting staff for Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.
“Basically, for Season 1, it was Director Saito, and then the main reasons to choose someone — the criteria — were people who have the same creative vision as the director. The other criteria was people who can enhance the work of other staff members.”
Similarly to the question we directed toward Call about transforming the key elements of Frieren into song, we wanted to know what sorts of strategies were used by the broader staff to maintain the fantastical and introspective elements of Frieren, as well as if there was any particular part of the project that different teams emphasized to one another.
“I basically talked it out with the director on how to express the world view. We both agreed that the emotional depictions are very delicate, and the world depiction is very delicate, so to start off, the backgrounds need to be very drawn to be emotionally delicate as well. So we made sure that all the backgrounds are hand-drawn so that we can breathe life into all the people living in the various towns they visit. And, on the other hand, this is a world where magic coexists in society, so we used the technological side to make it look more geometric, and we used the anime special effects to have that more artificial look as opposed to the natural look. There were several staff members that are not really used to drawing analog by hand, so we would actually meet up with the people who aren’t used to analog drawing as much to talk out the difference between digital painting and analog painting and get them more used to the old school art.”
Lastly for Fukushi-san, looking toward the overall structure of Frieren, we asked whether any aspects of the series’ pacing, two cours, or production timeline created difficulty in getting the anime out into the world.
“Creating an anime is very difficult to begin with. The hardest part of Season 1 was definitely keeping the high threshold of quality throughout the two-cour series. The biggest bottleneck was definitely one of the main components of the art, which is the hand-drawn backgrounds, as mentioned earlier, because such meticulous analog drawing takes so long that I always had to keep in mind the scheduling and adjusting to the needs of the artists as I went along. And it’s not just the background, you have the animation, and then you have the music. So, we have that three-way check between the background, the animation, and the music. I feel that all — or at least most — of the staff had the same vision and were looking in the same direction so that they performed the best they could and to provide such great work so that you have that trifecta.”
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End Season 2 will be coming to Crunchyroll in January 2026. You can watch Season 1 of the series on Crunchyroll now.
This interview was conducted by Jay Gibbs and Grant Wolfgramm, with questions contributed by Jay Gibbs.
©Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe/Shogakukan/”Frieren” Project
Participate In Discussions