Forum - View topic

EP. REVIEW: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? V

That was a fun episode, but the 'war game' feels contrived to me. They literally just broke Freya's city-wide mind control, including on essentially everyone in the guild. And, she constructed and maintained it entirely to gaslight a single 14-year old hero into loving her; it's not like there's any argument about whether it was a necessary evil or something. The idea that it's necessary to construct an artificial contest to deal with the fallout of that is totally bizarre.

And to add to what Rebecca said about the Episode Freya novel, that novel also demonstrates quite clearly while the seemingly-overwhelming numerical advantage Hestia's alliance has doesn't mean squat in the face of Freya Familia's elites. "Quality trumps quantity" has been the unspoken rule in this setting since the beginning. Between that and some other factors, I'm very curious to see how this plays out in animated form - what details they're going to trim vs. keep.

One point about episode 10 that I feel should be clarified for anime-only viewers: Royman (the Guildmaster) offered quite a bit more of a hook to Finn (and by extension Loki Familia) to convince them to cooperate on staying out than what is apparent in the anime. (I'm putting this in spoiler tags, but if the anime was going to bring this it up, it would have been in this episode.) spoiler[The broken sword inside the crystal is a major clue to a mystery that Loki Familia has long been seeking an answer to, and Royman also feeds them info on where it came from. Why exactly it's so important hasn't yet been explained in the novels, but It's a weighty enough matter that Loki Familia's leaders can't ignore it. Royman had been holding it back partly because getting there would be hugely risky and he didn't want to encourage Loki Familia to take such dire chances.]

And to add to what Rebecca said about the Episode Freya novel, that novel also demonstrates quite clearly while the seemingly-overwhelming numerical advantage Hestia's alliance has doesn't mean squat in the face of Freya Familia's elites. "Quality trumps quantity" has been the unspoken rule in this setting since the beginning. Between that and some other factors, I'm very curious to see how this plays out in animated form - what details they're going to trim vs. keep.

Key wrote:

And to add to what Rebecca said about the Episode Freya novel, that novel also demonstrates quite clearly while the seemingly-overwhelming numerical advantage Hestia's alliance has doesn't mean squat in the face of Freya Familia's elites. "Quality trumps quantity" has been the unspoken rule in this setting since the beginning. Between that and some other factors, I'm very curious to see how this plays out in animated form - what details they're going to trim vs. keep.

Yet another reason why this series needs to end immediately after this season. Ottarl should be able to just walk through basically every single adventurer in Hestia's Alliance, possibly without even using a weapon.

The fact that your spoiler states that the series isn't over yet clearly shows that it's just getting milked to death, so maybe it's just better to drop the series than even bother trying to convince myself that whatever contrived excuse they put forward for the Hestia alliance somehow winning the war game actually makes any legitimate sense...

Man, all this really showcases why the author's newer work was a bland pile of garbage...

Its time for this series to ride quietly off into the sunset. I figured Season 3 was enough to stick a fork in it and call it a day. However season 4 proved me wrong, and it seemed to be making a strong comeback. Now Season 5... and why?

Honestly I thought S3 was the low point of this series, going down a rabbit hole and veering too far off course. The whole Freya thing is history repeating itself, Another fight over Bell, and another Wargame, and another thing that has already been done previously.

I am not familiar with the LN, so I don't know where this is going, but honestly its no longer a fight over Bell. It's a fight for the relevancy of this entire franchise in Anime form.. and S5 lost.

Yet another reason why this series needs to end immediately after this season. Ottarl should be able to just walk through basically every single adventurer in Hestia's Alliance, possibly without even using a weapon.

The fact that your spoiler states that the series isn't over yet clearly shows that it's just getting milked to death, so maybe it's just better to drop the series than even bother trying to convince myself that whatever contrived excuse they put forward for the Hestia alliance somehow winning the war game actually makes any legitimate sense...

Of course he could, but there are other Freya Familia members to do that, so why would he bother when he could just take the head off the snake as it were?

Or maybe you could just watch it and judge instead of making up your mind before you even see what's going to happen?

Why bother? This season has been filled with plot holes and inconsistencies from start to finish. It's not like it's gonna get any better now that they've completely unbalanced the entire War Game. It either ends with Bell beating Ottarl, which isn't possible unless you hard break the rules of the world, or it ends with some utterly out-the-ass plot device that will be beyond stupid, like Bell outrunning Ottarl to get to Freya (since they bothered to bring up the stupid "You're faster when people are chasing you" skill that Bell just conveniently got for leveling up.). Holy plot contrivance Batman!

Does the background material try to offer some kind of explanation for why Bell's familia accepted Freya's challenge, if they're so confident they have no chance of winning, and accepting it is apparently the only way for Freya to "claim" him?

I'm glad the Freya family has something resembling a coherent strategy. Hard to tell what's going on with Bell's -- they obviously have no reason to try to win an actual fight. They could try to throw so many bodies at Freya et al that they get to Freya first, despite losing the fight, or they could disperse and force the Freya folk to spread their forces extremely thin to hunt them, then take advantage of holes that opens in their defense. But concluding that they should just genuinely try to take the Freya group's members in legitimate combat is bizarre.

I had mostly quite enjoyed this arc before this whole battle-game gimmick, so a bit bummed it's turned out like this. I hope they at least turn up the animation quality and hype up whatever last-minute tactic or power-up or whatever it may be that Bell ends up using to win. Animation this episode was not all that impressive.