Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End volume 3, written by Kanehito Yamada and drawn by Tsukasa Abe, keeps up with the good quality set by both previous volumes. Continuing the previous arc, Frieren confronts the demon Aura the Guillotine, while Fern and Stark do battle with her subordinates, Linie and Lugner. While this happens the story also flashes back to Frieren’s first meeting with her old master, Flamme, and shows their relationship during the years of her apprenticeship.

The art is very much the same this volume as the previous. The double spreads this volume were drawn better than the last, with the standout being at the start of chapter 23. The panelling is good, and I found that the flow of the volume was easy to follow. The combat, particularly in Stark’s fight, was a bit boring to follow. This manga is mainly story driven so it was not a big issue, but I would have liked if it felt more impactful. The mage fights were better, but it still was not particularly engaging.

The way the characters are unemotive is still here but compared to the last volume, it poses more of an issue for me. For everything else this is fine but for combat, I do wish there was more life to the characters. The only ones it worked for was Frieren herself due to the perception that I have of her being stoic and having fought so much it is routine, and the demons due to them being so distant from humanity regarding emotions, but the calmness of the rest of characters stood out.

The story was good this volume, it was a bit less interesting due to the focus on combat here, which is not this manga’s strength for me. I do like the interspersed bits of Frieren’s past with Flamme. It was interesting to see how Flamme instructed Frieren in killing demons and seeing how that is passed down Fern. Seeing more of Flamme herself and how her character changed from being a young woman to how she is as an elderly one was interesting and makes me wish to see a longer, more focused backstory for her.

Aura as an antagonist was interesting to me. Not so much her character, but how she was used to show Frieren’s ruthlessness against demons, as well as how she and how her subordinates were used to flesh out some of the worldbuilding about demons and their societal structure via their actions. How power ties into their internal hierarchy and how easily exploited this was, is very interesting. The author’s way of making demon’s alien to humanity via a lack of emotions and extending this to their social hierarchy is unique. Making this Frieren and Fern take advantage of this knowledge to deceive the demons and ultimately kill them was well thought out and made them feel extremely competent.

The rest of the volume focuses takes some downtime to focus a bit more on Stark and his backstory and then introduces another Elf who is older than Frieren. It was interesting how Yamada was able to show their differing views on religion, as well as showing how their longer lifespans have influenced this differently in each of them. The use of this to bring things back to the overall theme of death, grief and afterlife was well done as well.

The chapter where they show that Himmel never pulled sword from stone was one of the more interesting chapters this volume, as it showed his strength of will, as well as set up that the Demon King is likely still alive and that someone else will have to pull it. I do see this being Stark, as a personal theory. The use of the Arthurian myth here as inspiration was a good choice in my opinion, it really highlights how grand a character Himmel was in the setting by how it was subverted.

The next larger arc seems to have lower stakes and I do think that this is where this story excels at, with focus on the characters and their development as well as their relationships. This volume kept up with this well, with the fights at the beginning being used effectively as a vehicle to add more character depth to the main trio, particularly Frieren, and the flashes to Frieren’s past adding even more depth.

Overall, this was a very good volume. It was marginally weaker than the last 2 due to the focus on combat but everything else was very good and kept up with the previous level of quality.

I’d rate this a 4.7/5

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