Frieren: beyond journey’s end vol 7 by kanehito yamada

Illustrated by Tsukasa Abe
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Frieren and Fern face the final of their three trials for Mage First Class, and it’s a personal test with Serie, the elf mage who trained Frieren’s master, Flamme. The results come out exactly as Frieren predicted, knowing all too well the grudge Serie still bears. Finally, the party can move into the Northern Lands and continue their journey. In this part of the kingdom, there’s no shortage of odd quests and small jobs to be requested of the powerful Demon King-killer, and she continues to happily trade work for spells just as before in her journey. In the great walled city of Heib, Fern and Stark find themselves with some spare time, so Stark jokingly suggests they go on a day-long date. Not to be outdone, Fern acquiesces.

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We're back to the feel and pace of the story before the trials for the mage test, and back to the silly odd jobs and equally silly spells Frieren gets because of them. This volume was a nice relaxing one after the tense, comparatively battle-heavy previous two. I am happy to see Fern and Stark going somewhere with the cute romantic tension, even if it's for a joke, but the ending of the novel lays some groundwork for the two of them to be possibly a little more than friends for reals. But, I don't anticipate anything anytime soon given the track record of slow, methodical pacing Yamada has had with everything else.

Sara's Rating: 9/10
Suitability Level: Grades 7-12

Reviews of previous volumes in this series: vol 1, vol 2, vol 3, vol 4, vol 5, vol 6

Publisher: VIZ Media
Publication Date: January 17, 2023​
ISBN: 9781974736201​ (Paperback)

​Tags: Rating: 9/10, Suitability: Middle School, Suitability: High School, Manga, Fantasy, Iyashikei, VIZ Media