Sousou no FrierenYou're probably at least aware of it as it's the latest flavor of the month anime. however I would recommend the manga far above the anime (I'll get to why). The story itself bounces somewhat intelligently between battle shounen and slice of life in a orthodox fantasy setting. It doesn't usually weave the storytelling styles together so it can get wearisome waiting for the battle arc to finish up and get back to the comfy slice of life stuff (or vice versa if you're preferences are opposite mine) but both are well done and very enjoyable. It has an overtone of melancholic themes such as death and regret (though it's not a sad story), while keeping them as minor elements supporting the main focus on the wonderful characters. It can be joyous, hilarious, comfy, bittersweet, sad, and epic as it needs to be; balancing all these tones excellently. Though the setting is tropes ad nauseum at first glance, it is willing to diverge. For some basic examples dwaves do not live underground and elves have no special connection to nature. More importantly for the setting, it highly developed and exceeds in two core aspects, the magic and demons, both of which get a massive amount of focus. The magic system is well developed and allows for characters to have very diverse powers, meaning that even the many, many fights between mages don't get samey. The demons are in my mind the true standout of the series, a truly alien species with a truly alien psychology that gets explored thoroughly in the most recent arc of the manga. This series is proof posative that simple, evil races can still be nuanced and interesting without compromise. Theirs much more to be said but I (even without spoilers) but this is what suck out most to me.
As for why I don't recommend the anime; not only is the animation poor (though good when not in motion), but the music is incredibly overbearing, the voice acting is flat and removes humor that was present in the manga, and a key feature of the most common combat (mage on mage) is animated wrong. The last bit is what got me to finally give up on episode three; mages in the setting can erect very powerful magical shields around themselves at will but it's very tiring. So rather than constantly have a bubble shield they generally only summon small shields right when and where they're being attacked. And due to this a common attacking pattern is a multiple blasts of magic hitting from differe
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