Adventures, spells and treasures: Frieren Beyond Journey’s End’s Mallorie Rodak’s Calgary Expo 2025 takeover
By Michael Sarsito, Hannah Caparino, April 30 2025—
Calgary Expo 2025 had a number of guests and voice actors make appearances for fans to interact with. Mallorie Rodak, most known for portraying Frieren in the English dubbed version of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, attended Expo to speak on the voice acting industry and being part of a beloved franchise.
Anime fans can instantly recognize the name Frieren, especially since it just won Anime of the Year at the 11th Anime Trending Awards. Rodak is a well known name in the anime community, voicing many of beloved characters from different anime series namely Yukino from Fairy Tail and the Great Sage from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.
The voice actress spoke with the Gauntlet about Frieren, her favourite voice lines, and fan interactions.
“I’ve been a part of I think now probably like two hundred to three hundred different anime. I’ve been doing it now for maybe twelve or so years, so it’s been really neat to see anime especially in North America just get bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and in many ways more mainstream,” said Rodak.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End first aired back in 2023 and was based on a manga series with the same name. Rodak recalls how she was not familiar with the series at first, but quickly became interested by how passionate the fanbase was with the announcement of the show. Her excitement after being cast was expressed in her immediate interest in the original manga and dedication to tell the story. After learning of the story’s premise, exploring deeper themes like time and friendship, Rodak felt an immediate connection to the manga series.
“Just hearing the description of it, being set after the big event, dealing with themes about the passage of time, friendship and those sort of things. I was like, okay, this sounds like my style of anime,” she said.
As her work on the show progressed, Rodak found herself more and more invested in the series — diving even deeper into the manga to follow along with the story beyond the recording booth.
“As we started recording I picked up some of the manga, started reading it as the season concluded,” said Rodak, “So that’s been pretty cool to see some of the things that are yet to come too. I am so excited for season 2. I think it’s going to be amazing.”
Frieren has a lot of iconic and unforgettable moments—scenes that left fans’ jaws drop, amazed, or emotionally moved. Rodak shares one of her personal favourite moments and why it is precious to her.
“There’s really epic moments, so we could talk about the Aura scene and the three words that she says to Aura, Aura, kill yourself’, and how that just exploded on the internet,” she said. “That line was kind of precious to me because I have a lot of people who will come up to me and say, ‘I wasn’t watching the show but I saw a clip of that scene with Aura online and I said oh my gosh I have to watch this.’”
But it’s not just epic moments that made Frieren so popular and loved worldwide. Some of the most beloved moments are the ones that show Frieren’s personality peeking through. Rodak also shared one of her favourite lines from the show.
“When Frieren is being kind of sleepy and silly, there is one little line that she says when she sees a horde of treasure, she says, ‘now this horde of treasure is mine’ and she kinds of sings it like that and those little moments where you see Frieren become animated or excited, or I guess more human like. It gives her such complexity as a character and that’s why she’s just a delight to voice,“ Rodak said.
Continuous support from the fans and Rodak’s commitment to portraying the titular character create a reciprocal relationship between the actors and the audiences.
For information about Calgary Expo 2025 and the list of anime guests and voice actors, click here. For details about Rodak’s past credits, her website can be found here.