Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? V

Episode 9

Until the year 395 C.E., a holy flame burned in Rome. It was housed within the Temple of Vesta, a great round building dedicated to the goddess of the hearth – someone you know in DanMachi as Hestia. It's by invoking this sacred flame that Hestia finally breaks Freya's spell on Orario, a move facilitated by Ouranos and Hermes, and when Hestia calls upon her power, she does so using the Latin name of her Roman home: Aedes Vesta. Even if we disregard the fact that this shows, once again, that original series author Fujino Ōmori did his research, it's a symbolically important move in the story's world. By vanquishing Freya's false memories with the fires of the hearth, Hestia and Bell prove that what's most important is where you feel you belong, not where someone tells you you're supposed to be.

Hörn, I think, knows that somewhere in her heart of hearts. Although she's been Freya's collaborator in creating the Syr persona, she's never felt like her (Syr's) love for Bell was real. For Hörn, there's only Freya, and Bell represents the risk of losing the one person who gave her hope. Hörn resents Syr's existence, seeing her almost as a parasite inside her heart, torn between jealousy of Syr (Freya's) love for Bell and the need to keep Syr around because acting out the role of an ordinary girl is so important to her beloved goddess. When Hörn confronts Bell this week, we can see her turmoil breaking free: she attacks Bell with the Hestia Knife, knowing that her attempts to kill him with his own sacred blade will fail, but hoping that they'll fail in a way that will force Bell to kill her. It's a desperate last attempt to stop what she sees as a Syr-borne madness, even as she frees Lyu and sets in motion the distraction necessary for Hestia to create her hearth fire.

It's also a little sad for Freya. I don't like her as a character, and I think her actions in this season have been utterly reprehensible, but I do recognize why she did them. Even though Freya's a goddess of love, she's been unable to find her oðr, the one person just for her. Her children love her, and she's had lovers, but all of them saw a goddess, not a woman. Being Syr and falling for Bell allowed her to experience what her life might have been like if she was just a girl, but a piece of her may have known all along that this was a false life. When she tells Bell that Syr was just an act, a role she was playing, she may believe that. But Bell knows better – he can see, through his interactions with Syr, Freya, and Hörn, that they're all part of the same whole. In a poem in her 1964 collection Ode to Hands, Polish poet Halina Poświatowska wrote, “I cannot be merely a human/a scared mouse is in me/and a weasel that knows the smell of blood.” That's Freya in a nutshell – she's not just one thing; she's many, and all of them together make up a single person. Her problems arise when she finds herself unable to acknowledge that she doesn't have to be just one of them.

Between Freya and Hörn dueling visions of who Freya is compete. Hörn wants Freya to be “pure,” and to a degree, she seems to mean sexual purity, as we can see when she accuses Bell of being “carnal” in his position towards the goddess. But it feels more like she wants Freya to belong just to her, and that may be a more widespread view in Freya Familia than we've seen; remember the cult-like way most of the members act. Hedin and Bors may be the only two who don't fall into that category, which their behavior seems to indicate this week. Both of them make moves to stop Lyu, but when compared to the other familia members, that cooperation looks a bit lackluster. Maybe they don't see Freya Familia as their “home” as much as the others, or at least in a different way. They've been a little off this whole time, and he clearly likes Bell as a person, which may be significant now that Freya has declared war (game) on Hestia Familia. We know most of Orario is ready to rip Freya to shreds – and not just the Greco-Roman pantheon; Loki's pissed, too.

Freya's taking a real risk with her declaration. Her familia is strong, but she's not likely to find many allies. I feel like it's symbolic that Lyu, a follower of the goddess of justice, is the person who gets the ball rolling. Even a blind goddess can see that the odds are not in Freya's favor.

Rating:

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? V is currently streaming on HIDIVE.