Frieren: Beyond Journey's End vol 1
I don't read much non-yuri manga these days, but gave this a go due to a feature on ANN gushing that it's the best manga ever. It's... fine, I guess.
The premise is interesting. After the hero's party defeats the demon lord, they go their separate ways. For the team's immortal elf wizard, that 10-year adventure was just a brief diversion, but as the decades pass and her comrades age and die she starts to regret not having spent more time getting to know them. This all takes place in the first issue, by the way, which spans 50 years.
That's really where this story brings something interesting to the table: if something doesn't hold Frieren's attention, we get a one page montage of her doing other things and suddenly decades have passed. If it maintains that, this could be an interesting series, but by the end of volume 1 the time span of each issue has dropped from decades to months. Unsurprisingly this coincides with Frieren's girl apprentice reaching the merchandise-bait age of 16. My concern now is whether going forward the priority will be given to story or marketability. It's possible that spending more time with this character is priming us for a heavier gut punch when the years start rolling on again, but I fear it may be letting its unique selling point slip in the name of keeping a teenage girl around. That may just be my inner cynic talking though.
The only real flaws at this stage are the lazy setting and character archetypes, which are pulled from the usual generic sub-D&D fantasy land. The story has enough potential for me to give volume 2 a go though.