>>280802353
Frieren uses a writing technique called Frontloading. It's when the writer puts every exciting event and premise on the first chapters of his story in order to grab the most attention possible from the reader. You can picture this like a fisherman casting as many hooks as he can on the water, hoping to get something to bite.
And it works. Once the reader is hooked it's very hard for the writer to lose, the reader will now excuse and ignore a lot of flaws and problems in the story and characters because he already decided that what he's reading is objectively good. Changing their minds through argumentation is basically a futile effort.
Moreover the longer a story drags the more another effect comes into place: the Sunk Cost fallacy. The reader will fool himself into believing he didn't waste his time on such drivel and that something good surely awaits him at the end, even though he already saw the end during the first chapters of the story.
This is how Frieren gets away with the incessant mimic gags, the silly uguu faces, the characters that don't evolve at all and the shounen cliches that plague it later on such as power levels and tournament arcs.
Frontloading is the polar opposite of what is referred to as a slow burner. And in a saturated market where reader attention is the most precious and scarce resource the competition gets brutal. Therefore Frontloading is a common approach to storytelling in modern anime.
Which is to say if you like Frieren and think that it is among the greatest stories to ever be conceived in anime/manga I will immediately disregard everything you say as cattle-speak.
