Join the Beginner Book Club Here!
View this book on Natively
Welcome to the 葬送のフリーレン ・Frieren 
Book Club!
Currently reading Volume 3
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is a Japanese manga series written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe. The series won the 14th Manga Taishō and the New Creator Prize of the 25th annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2021 and the 69th Shogakukan Manga Award in 2024.
Story: After a ten-year odyssey, the elf mage Frieren and Sky’s band of heroes succeed in overthrowing the demon king and bringing peace to the land. As an elf with a long lifespan, Frieren continues to roam the lands. The death of a former comrade brings her pain and deep regret - regret at not having spent enough time with them. With this regret in her heart, she sets off on a journey to meet a wide variety of people and share new adventures with them.
A post-apocalyptic fantasy telling the story of how the heroes lived after their great adventure.
View the nomination post here!
How it works
We create a reading schedule, with a set number of pages to work through each week. Each week we create a new discussion thread for that week’s reading. In those threads we discuss everything from vocab and grammar to the characters and story. We try to help each other by contributing to the shared vocab list, by answering each other’s questions and by keeping each other motivated.
Discussion Guidelines
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
- Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
- Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
- Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).
Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:
Example
This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.
The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.
This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.
Posting Advice
- When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
- Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!
How do I join in?
- Get yourself a copy of the book (see “Where to purchase” below)
- Click on the participation poll below to let us know you’re planning to join in
- Set this thread to “watching” so you get updates on the group (go just past the last post in this thread, click on the grey box that says “normal” or “tracking” and change this to “watching”)
Where to purchase
Physical: Amazon JP, CD Japan.
Digital: Kindle, Kobo and BookWalker.
Discuss threads by volume
Volume 1 thread links
| Week | Start Date | Chapter | Page Numbers | Pages with text |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | April 19th | Chapter 1 Pt 1 | 3 - 15 | 10 |
| Week 2 | April 26th | Chapter 1 Pt 2 | 16 - 29 | 10 |
| Week 3 | May 3rd | Chapter 1 Pt 3 | 30 - 40 | 9 |
| Week 4 | May 10th | Chapter 2 Pt 1 | 41 - 55 | 12 |
| Week 5 | May 17th | Chapter 2 Pt 2 | 56 - 76 | 14 |
| Week 6 | May 24th | Chapter 3 Pt 1 | 77 - 91 | 14 |
| Week 7 | May 31st | Chapter 3 Pt 2 | 92 - 110 | 14 |
| Week 8 | June 7th | Chapter 4 | 111 - 128 | 17 |
| Week 9 | June 14th | Chapter 5 | 129 - 148 | 18 |
| Week 10 | June 21st | Chapter 6 | 149 - 166 | 16 |
| Week 11 | June 28th | Chapter 7 (+ Omake) | 167 - end | 18 |
Resources and vocabulary
- VOLUME 1 Vocabulary spreadsheet
Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words. With special features (such as highest frequency words marked by *** in volume 1) - kindly provided by ChristopherFritz - Frieren vocab roots: there are many names that derive from German words. Here is a page that looks into those roots
- Manga Kotoba has frequency-based vocabulary lists for all volumes (website by ChristopherFritz). A free account enables tracking and if you go to settings you can also sort words chronologically. You can ask questions about it here.
- Advice for those new to reading
- Jisho is a popular online Japanese-English dictionary.
- ichi.moe is a tool for parsing out sentences. You can type/paste in a whole sentence and it will try and break the sentence down into its individual parts.
- Deepl will translate a sentence from Japanese to English. It’s obviously not going to be right all the time, so if you want to check your translation it’s often better to ask in the thread.
- If you want to watch the anime after reading the manga, someone on reddit made a correspondence list of episodes and chapters
- Volume 1 read-aloud sessions on Youtube
Suggested vocabulary to pre-learn (vol 1):
- Magical Encounters - top 10 words related to magic and the people you’ll meet in Frieren
- Adventuring - top 8 words related to heros and their travels
- Time and Place - top 9 words related to time and place
Membership
- Yes
- Yes, but I might start late
- Maybe
- No
- Digital
- Physical
. Or 
if you interpret the fact that it’s a verb in German more strictly.
maybe for how much the passage of time is important to the plot?
amazing, thank you so much! Your creations and methods are just so incredibly useful! I feel like we need to make a 
The FritzBadge TM 
I have to admit, I’m leaning toward the 
, so maybe not.