Summary
This past weekend atAnime Expo, two noteworthy talents appeared as exclusive guests. Evan Call and Yuichiro Fukushi, the composer and producer ofFrieren: Beyond Journey’s End, sat down withGame Rantto answer questions about the anime adaptation. Evan Call is an American composer from California.
Growing up, he took an interest in anime and manga, which inspired him to pursue music. Upon his high school graduation, he went to college for film scoring and later on traveled to Japan, where he began his career as a composer. He is also known for his work onViolet Evergarden.Yuichiro Fukushi is an anime producer best known for his works onOne Punch ManandHunter x Hunter.
Game Rant:What’s your favorite soundtrack and whatinspiration/feeling went into it?
Call:So my favorite soundtrack in the show is actually from the first episode. It’s “One Last Adventure” with Frieren and the heroes party embarking on their last adventure a few years later, and seeing the meteor shower one last time - and justHimmel’s voice-overon the scene, just describing how happy he is to finally be back together with everybody again one last time. It was one of the earlier songs I wrote in the show, and the first part was a film score, so I was able to particularly put a lot of effort into how I craft the music, the scene cuts, dialogue, and everything. And for me, that scene just stayed with me the most in the whole show, and both in terms of how I approach the music as well as the meaning and depiction of that scene.
Game Rant:Are there anyreal world issuesor people that helped inspire the production of Frieren?
Fukushi:So not really much for the characters, because all the characters are based on the manga, so there wasn’t any real-life influences for the characters. But on the other hand, the world that they live in needs to be very believable, in that it needs to be realistic - so that they would set up various cities inEuropeto say “this town is gonna model after this town in Europe”, including the town in the first scene.
But at the same time, we can’t really draw modern Europe because the series kind of has that medieval fantasy feel - so we would take high fantasy series likeLord of the RingsorGame of Thrones, or basically that medieval fantasy-esque setting, drama shows, and we would have the staff do a showing and educational viewing party to basically brush up on–and get everyone on the same page for the “medieval-ness”.
Game Rant:Oh wow, that’s really cool. Okay, before Frieren, have you ever heard of the series itself? What were yourfirst impressionsgoing into it?
Fukushi:I would say it’s simply just an interesting series, when I first read the manga–and it might even sound a little cheap when I put it into words, but the drama that you feel when you’re basicallyliving their lives alongside themas you read through the storyline, which is just exquisite…and it was just, that was the part of the allure that makes it so interesting. And so in the anime adaptation, that feeling, the lore from all the characters and the plot development needed to be really cherished and preserved in production, so that, as the world broadens and the music adds vibrant colors to the world, we made sure to keep that allure that I felt reading the manga for the anime adaptation.
Call:Actually, I didn’t know about the manga before I was offered the job. So immediately, I read through it and just from the very beginning, I washooked on it and the premise. Normally it’s–you’d expect “oh it’s an adventure story” but the “adventure” already happened, and now–well, it’s another adventure. It’s not quite the same as what you’d expect, and so you get introduced to the hero’s party at first, and then, as they all - except for Frieren, age and die off - and a new beginning starts, it keeps the memories going and how it reflects the theme, the cycles, of those old party members in the present day for her.
And it’s just–to me that felt like such an interesting concept, like, it’s telling two stories at the same time. You didn’t get to see the full adventure of the heroes party, but you get to relive it through Frieren’s memories, and how sherealizes different thingsthat, at the time, she just kind of didn’t put too much thought in; and now looking back at it with fresh eyes, “oh this is what people meant when they said this”, and those kinds of realizations that I think…was such acoolidea, and I was just super into it.
Game Rant:How does thesoundtrackand production of the series itself affect each other?
Call:So the soundtrack itself generally comes a lot later in the production, so while they’re underway planning the scenarios of the scripts, the locations, and all that stuff, I still haven’t started anything yet. And, eventually, I probably haven’t even heard it, but generally it’s in production a couple years before I get deeply involved - and in my case, luckily, I was involved with it a lot more early than usual because there was film scoring, so writing the actual video for the first four episodes–and so, they had just started with giving me the rough sketches ofvideo content. So, while I did come in towards the end of production, it wasn’t as quite as late as I usually do; for us–for me, I write my demos and I send them to the client of the production team, and I hope they like it, of course.
And then they give me feedback, what I think about it - this time, luckily, it was allpositive feedback, which really helps too, cause I see that they’re enjoying it, rather than just like “oh okay”, they give me like real proper “I like this a lot”, “this part’s great” and stuff, so it gives me an idea of what they enjoy, what they like about it too - along with the rest of the soundtrack. So yeah, while I’m not super involved as much as Fukushi-san is, but with everybody else in production, and working on my own, in my own studio, they don’t really see anybody much. But there’s still the back and forth when I send my demos and get feedback from them.
Fukushi:They basically contacted Evan when most of the scenarios and scripts were all written out. They would kind of get together in a meeting, touch bases with the overall direction, and then they just let Evan out into the wild. In this case, they were actually given Evan’s demo to production staff - so the production staff would actually listen to the demo to get an image of what themusic sounds like, so they could animate and draw with something that would actually match the music.
So, to mention the film score, they basically have the animatics done, so that way, for the first 4 episodes, it’s like “here you go”, so Evan had the film score, and then use that to create the demos for the followingepisodes, and then the anime staff would receive the demos to work on the remaining. So it was kind of a backup.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s Endseason 2 is set to be released in January 2026 and will be available for streaming onCrunchryroll.
