The Event Opened With a Surprise for Atsumi Tanezaki
Before the retrospective started, the stage turned into a birthday party. Kana Ichinose handed Atsumi Tanezaki a bouquet, and the audience and the rest of the panel sang "Happy Birthday" together. Tanezaki, who voices Frieren and also plays Anya Forger in Spy x Family, opened the evening on that note. A new third-anniversary visual was revealed next.
Once the screening ended, five cast members took the stage at TOHO Cinemas Hibiya in Tokyo: Tanezaki, Ichinose as Fern, Chiaki Kobayashi as Stark, Tarusuke Shingaki as Genau, and Reina Ueda (Kanao Tsuyuri in Demon Slayer, Reze in Chainsaw Man) as Methode. Looking back on the three years since the anime premiered, they talked about how far the show has traveled through events and overseas releases, and thanked fans whose enthusiasm has not cooled, according to a report from Japanese anime news site Animate Times.
What the Cast Said About Season 2's Two Halves
The screening pulled episodes from across Season 2, and the talk followed the season's own split structure.
The early picks were the quiet ones: the trio on the road, plus the episode where Fern and Stark go on a date. The cast described the three as having grown into something like a family, with the teamwork showing up in ordinary conversation rather than in big declarations.
The back half brought in Genau and Methode and turned combat-heavy. Shingaki said the quiet stretch earlier in the season was what made its absence hit harder later. Ueda said she voiced Methode with the sense that the character herself enjoys the magic and the fighting. The panel also spent time on the two improvised pairings, Stark with Genau and Fern with Methode, and how each duo built trust in the middle of a fight.
Tanezaki turned to the season's closing stretch, where the present-day journey starts overlapping with memories of the old hero party. The deeper the bond with her current companions got, she said, the more often the story reached back to that earlier journey. She framed Season 2 as a season about both the things that change and the things that don't.
Genau Went From 62nd Place to First
Late in the event, Shingaki posed for a special photo session marking Genau's win in the manga's third official character popularity poll. He said the result surprised him, and that he was glad the anime had introduced Genau to so many people.
Genau drew 1,396,535 votes out of 12,700,122 cast, finishing about 69,000 ahead of Himmel at 1,327,500, with Aura the Guillotine third at 1,020,761. The first-class mage placed 62nd in the previous poll.
Looking Ahead
Season 3, subtitled the Golden Land arc, is set for October 2027 on Nippon TV. Recording has not begun, the cast said at the event, though the teaser visual released with the Season 2 finale already introduced Macht of the Golden Land, billed in that announcement as the last and strongest of the Seven Sages of Destruction. The arc starts at chapter 81, collected in volume 9 of the manga by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe, which runs in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday.
The event also launched the first entry in a countdown illustration series running toward Season 3, with the cast performing live dubbing on stage to match the artwork.
Ichinose said the new demon arriving in Season 3 has her nervous after all the meetings and partings of the first two seasons. She wants to see the trio's journey through, she added. Kobayashi called Season 2 thematically heavy, with the trio's bond deepening while traces of the old hero party stayed visible, and said he is looking forward to Season 3 as a fan himself. Ueda said she has come to feel reassured that with these members, the show will be fine. Tanezaki closed by thanking fans for celebrating the anniversary and promising that the "Frieren production party" would do its best, borrowing the show's own word for an adventuring group.
Madhouse animates the series, with Tomohiro Suzuki on series composition and Evan Call on music. The Season 3 cast list published with the Animate Times event report confirms Tanezaki, Ichinose and Kobayashi returning, alongside Nobuhiko Okamoto as Himmel, Hiroki Tōchi as Heiter and Yōji Ueda as Eisen. Crunchyroll streams the series internationally, with Netflix carrying it in some regions, and Viz Media publishes the manga in English.
(C) Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe / Shogakukan / "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" Production Committee