While ten years is a huge amount of time for others, its but a drop in the bucket in Frieren’s extremely long lifespan of over a thousand. Upon disbanding after a decade-long quest to defeat the Demon King and returning to her everlasting hobby of traveling to collect spells, outliving two of her former companions, Frieren realizes how the time spent with them truly impacted her and regrets having taken the bonds and precious memories for granted. So, she journeys beyond what was once a task completed to forge stronger bonds with people and strive to create and understand personal connections.
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Created by Madhouse, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End‘s anime has enchanted many with the fantastical viewpoint of an elf mage’s long, relaxed yet adventurous life. And deservedly so, with its messages of making meaningful connections and savoring what life has to offer. And with so many masterful scenes ranging from calm, tranquil scenic leisure to intense, powerful battles, the series’ soundtrack must be composed just right to evoke immersion and complement the distinct sequences. But instead of general, grand paradigms of what an adventure is stereotypically “supposed” to sound like, series composer Evan Call reflects on how he masterfully and strategically prioritizes certain choices of instruments depending on the characters themselves.
Getting the Soundtrack Exactly Right
ComicBook Anime Editor J.R. Waugh conducted an interview with animation producer Yuichiro Fukushi and composer Evan Call, courtesy of Crunchyroll, at Anime Expo 2025, to discuss the anime’s impact, its dominant position in the fandom’s collective eyes since its 2023 debut, their particular impressions on what has worked for the series, and the challenges of composing music for the next season of this fan favorite series. Series composer Call states, “Well, the Hero’s Journey is now over, and so begins a new one.”
Call continued, “Musically speaking, there are of course some bombastic songs here and there, but it’s not necessarily an introverted sound in terms of soft music, but melodically and harmonically, the choices I made more reflect the individual characters’ feelings, and the way they interact with the world rather than a sense of adventure. I had to be careful not to go too overboard with this stuff, like ‘It’d sound cool to have a bunch of brass here, but if I did have a bunch of brass here, then it’s gonna be too much ‘adventurous’. And so composing it had a lot of me trying to reel myself in and not go too far. Sometimes I have an idea, I like this melody, and want to make it epic, but then it doesn’t fit; it always needs to fit.”
“There are a lot of tonal colors in it, too,” Call said. “The thing that I tend to do, especially with Frieren, is switch instruments throughout a song, because, generally speaking, a lot of characters interact with each other in this world quite a bit. Tonally, it keeps the music interesting; you still get to explore each of the tonal colors through each musical instrument, without them having to be at the same time.”
Instead of focusing on the sense of adventure in general, Call says he instead focuses on the characters themselves for each composition, even meticulously, methodically, and multifacetedly switching instruments throughout a single composition to highlight little details of each given character and keep the music interesting.
This different artistic focus makes sense since the series isn’t so much about the end goal of completing a dungeon crawl or the materialistic greed for abundant treasures after defeating a dragon. Instead, in Call’s eyes, the characters of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End themselves, their feelings, and each interaction along the way with each other and the world around them. As Call stated, “It always needs to fit.” This fit is exactly what he manages to accomplish for a series focused on the characters themselves and each interaction, no matter how small, within the journey.
Love the soundtrack of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End? Let us know in the comments how the music has moved you!
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