this feels like a school assignment presentation

I figured the red in Frieren's eyes tied in well with the jewelry, making it more cohesive but less saturated to avoid any clashing or an evil/mysterious look. The wider variation compared to other characters is definitely intentional, but also highlights her otherness as an elf, not just her main character status. Would have been cool if all elves had interesting eyes like Frieren (albeit not as detailed ofc)

I think with kaburo it is kind of intentional or made to butt heads with his super stand out intesne eye color, as he seems like a sort of drop in traditional main character / hero / chosen one trope and feels like his purpose is also to contrast our main hero party and show how they might be a little more atypical. So choosing the most intense eye colour for him that almost feels like its glowing is sort of a "lets make him look like he is the main character and have all of these main character tropes to really bring home the contrast that were not following the traditional trope"

My thoughts about the eyes and how they're justified in Dungeon Meshi: Marcille, having the most vibrant (even distracting) eyes feels purposeful to me. Rather than just windows into the soul, an eye is also the conveyer of a character's emotion, and within the plot of Dungeon Meshi, Marcille's emotions are often portrayed as a significantly distracting force, thus her eyes are as well. Moreover, even though Laios is the main character, and Senshi is the most important character, Marcille usually does most of the work as the perspective character, being a voice of logic (flawed or not) to the other characters and constantly voicing her concerns about things that the average audience member might reasonably be concerned about as well. Of all characters, Marcille is the one whose emotions are generally supposed to be the most opaque to us. Thus, her eyes are often visually stimulating to the point of distraction. In contrast, the mentality of the main character, Laios, is supposed to remain something of a mystery to us. We might follow him with certain thought processes, and we might constantly be hearing monster facts from him, and his opinions on those facts, but without a doubt, the emotions coming off of Laios are meant to be weird, they're meant to be a bit off-putting on occasion, but most of all, they're meant to be subtly so. Laios is exactly the sort of person who can pass himself off as normal and side-character-like until you ask him the right sort of questions. Eyes following the hierarchy would give the game away for too much of his character. Chilchuck's eyes aren't always as simple as the shots you showcased him in, as occasionally, his eyes will differ from pure black into a spectrum of subtle shades of dark brown, which I think fit his character well. Chilchuck is a pretty simple and unexciting guy after all, to the point where side-character is exactly the spot where he'd naturally want other people to place him. Yet the fact that his eyes aren't always painted the same way allows for an incredibly full range of emotion to be siphoned off of this otherwise basic character. And finally, Senshi's eyes, and moreover his entire character design, calls upon an almost terrifying simplicity. Senshi has been in the dungeon for the longest by far, and if anyone can look at life in the dungeon objectively and without deep emotional response, Senshi can. A fact that makes his failures to do so occasionally, to be that much more blatant, but a fact still. Dungeon Meshi isn't following your school of logic for eye colors, but I'd still say it's pretty deliberate, and generally, I've still found it to be fairly effective. Edit: Oh, and this was a good video. I particularly liked the Frieren part of the analysis. Though the thing to consider there is that in Frieren, distractingly strong emotions are a real rarity, so your advice on muted colors matchs more 1 for 1.

In some ways stark and himmel have more similar eyes. The bottom of stark's eyes are almost orange. This is partly because they are foils of each other. Friren's foils are Flamme and Fern. And that is paret of the reason that their eyes are parallel in structure.

Apart from Frieren, I never even noticed the complexity of the other characters' eye designs! It's hard to miss now that you've brought it up. Great video, and a new sub!

I didn't understand why there was the red color at the top till I watched the video. The eyelid light bounce is a cool detail that makes me curious if it's present in other anime. Anyways, great video!

Great video! As an aspiring colourist, I found this really interesting. I always noticed that there was something more captivating about the eyes in this particular anime, but I never thought about it in depth before. That little red slither that shows up in the upper rim of Frieren's eyes sometimes is my favourite feature. It's only a thin line but it probably also works much more effectively as a "this is the main character" tool than in comparison to the girl with green eyes and the red tomato in the other anime at the end you talked about because though it's still a red/green complimentary colour scheme which is gonna highlight Frieren's eyes just that little bit more than anybody else's, it's not too distracting or out of place like you mentioned with the other one, especially as it's much less saturated like you say. Genius 👌

I was thinking the same thing while watching frieren , its really well done and kinda gives me a vibe of a nicely solved jigsaw puzzle with the eyes. Unfortunately i feel like this goes over the head for most viewers but it leaves a subconcious impact nonetheless , great video!

This is such an interesting take! Love how you analyse each colour palette. I'm sure Dungeon Meshi just has a different justifcation for their eye colour and character design choices. I find Kabru's intense blue eyes really striking and they instantly signalled to me that he is a charasmatic character that others feel drawn to follow as their leader. It could also signal how perceptive and curious he is. By drawing attention to his eyes, we may unconsciously 'see' things from his perspective. That's just my theory! I love to think about this stuff.

I don't know anything about art & color but _it just looks very pretty._ is all that I can say.

I'm probably gushing over a typical animation technique that I never give much thought of in other anime but I love how they use eye movements in Frieren. One would character would say something and the other character would look away to contemplate. It's simple but it made everything feel so alive.

Something I noted regarding Fern, Shades of Purple are the colors of her eyes and hair. In Terry Pratchetts story "The Color of Magic", purple was the color of magic and I wonder if the choice for Fern's hair and eyes was representing this. When Fern appears before Serie, Frieren states in a voiceover "The era of Humans has arrived", as Serie surveys Fern.

I think the reason why sometimes the red isn't in her eye is an illustration technique manga/anime uses a lot. Instead of having the same amount of detail in every frame, they will draw the same character in different amounts of detail to bring emphasis to different parts of the panel. I think it's genius to have that red highlight there sometimes to draw your eye to hers when that is where they want you to look, but also being able to simplify the design by omitting it when it isn't needed. Glad you made a video on this though. The color in Frieren's character design is so gorgeous, especially the eyes

super interesting ! to me if fern's eyes have this redish color in the shadow, it might be to show the influence frieren has on her. She's her master, so she put a bit of her print on her student. Love to see so much though went into small details

This is so underrated! I love when actual artists who've worked on a show does these studies bc it's great learning material for artists, and information for those who aren't even one! I LOVE color and anatomy studies so this video is such a treat, esp when you went into more detail abt even the color and value codes haha

This kind of content is amazing!!

Such a fascinating video, I love it ☺☺

This is really cool! Thanks

You earned yourself a sub! Super Informative and digestible video that showcases a bit of your research workflow and I especially liked how you recreated the eyes and your deduction. I would love to see more content like this in the future!

Great video. I love hearing about color theory and how it fits into works of art and animation. Being red green color blind I tend to focus on contrasts and adore artwork with greater color contrasts between light and dark and Frieren Beyond Journey’s end has a wonderful color and bright and dark palette. Adored the story and the animation is gorgeously designed and executed. Agin thank you for the wonderful analysis of color usage and design and how they are used to focus attention and give additional depth to the characters.

Excellent video. Thank you for sharing your insights, knowledge & skills. Have liked & subbed.

Great video! Cool to hear about the level of detail. Now I’m wondering what more thematic meaning could be pulled from the color choices themselves. Like facets of the characters, relationships with other characters, etc.

please make more videos analyzing color design of different anime, I found this very helpful

the first think I noticed about frierens eyes is the red part. also, beside flammes hair, I immediately noticed how she has such similar eyes to frieren. so pretty

very cool!

Flamme's earings are pointed at the end, whereas Frieren's are rounded. Not the same. Though I do like the thought of Flamme passing something down to Frieren as a keepsake.

Like himself, Kabru's eyes are meant to look uncanny, intense, beautiful, and _especially_ to draw attention. It fits his purpose in the story imo

The attention to detail in this anime is amazing. One small thing, are the character's limbal rings, that dark ring around the irises, which is something most animations miss when going for full detailed eyes... On top of that, limbal rings slowly fade with age. I think Denken and Lernen still has them, hard to say, but it still makes the eyes in Frieren feel so complete

Kabru’s eyes being bright blue is explained in the manga- so it does make sense.

I agree with what u said about marcille's eyes, but like the kebru eyes since they give that creepy intense unique look!

3:54 Crackin a cold one

As someone with color blindness I totally agree, the colors are beautiful - even for me 😅 Nice someone else had that thought of the earrings, I had that thought as well, especially since Frieren don't really care for jewelry and don't wear any when she was young

Has anyone mentioned yet how that initial frame from this vid is a reference to Lars Von Trier Melancholia? That was one of the first things that caught my attention when I first started watching Frieren, and I've seen many essays but no one has even mentioned it.

Welcome back

I like this recent trend of communicating to the audience using eye movement and eye colour. Arcane did it too.

The redness at the the top of Frieren's eyes reminds me of the special glint in Galadriel's (from The Lord of the Rings) eyes

I wonder if you would be willing to look at maomao's eyes in apothecary diaries and the changes.

What about apothecary diaries? Maomao's eyes are soo pretty

you have a lovely voice!

I always thought the red in Frieren's eyes were to symbolize her connection to Flamme. Though the irises reflecting the upper eyelid makes a better logical explaination.

Oh himmel’s eyes remind you of the beach bc he uses a coastal colour scheme

"Stark isnt a main character" "Himmel x Frieren is the main romance in the story" oof you could not be more wrong

Interesting take and interesting opinion, would you share your opinion in the eye design in Kimetsu no Yaiba and Oshi no Ko (if you've seen them) in comparison to Frieren?. Nice video!

Why doesn't Fern have white eye reflection like everyone else?

Nice video, but at 2:33 I have to disagree about Frieren's clothes. That design and colors are basically Heiter's ceremonial clothing. Check out Himmel's funeral. When in flashbacks Himmel, Heiter and Eisen approach Frieren to ask her to join them, she doesn't have that outfit yet. It looks like Heiter had some tailor working for the Goddess church design and make Frieren a uniform more fitting of an adventurer. Before that she indeed actually wore clothes like Flamme, retro/ancient Greek.

it's not about them being main characters or not, all guy eyes are less detailed

first time seeing a video where a woman talks about Frieren. Great video also 👌 ❤

Now I am convinced: People do these videos about Frieren as a satire at this point.