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

Episode 7

The gods do not adhere to the same moral systems that humans do. That's basically a given if you've read any of the mythologies used in DanMachi as a whole; gods are often portrayed as humans writ large, without the same constraints that apply to mere mortals but many of the same motivations. That is very much on display in this episode, which primarily focuses on how little Freya cares about how what she's doing affects everyone else. She has one goal, and one goal only: to make Bell Cranel hers. And to do that, she doesn't care who she hurts or tramples on in the process.

One of the best examples of this is also one of the most understated ones. Hedin, a high-ranking elf in her familia, has been shown as willing to work around Freya from the start of this arc. His decision to teach Bell how to treat a lady right was entirely his own idea, and one Freya's clearly not entirely pleased with, but the more striking moment this week is when he asks for permission to make Bell his special project. He wants to be the one in charge of Bell's training, although he doesn't fully explain why. He allows the rest of the top brass to think that he's trying to make Bell a worthier consort for their goddess, but I think there's something more to it. Hedin seems to have a clearer head than any of the other familia members, and it feels like he's not entirely comfortable with his goddess' actions. When he stands in the hall after essentially driving Hörn off, he sounds like he's trying to convince himself that he's doing all of this for Freya…but it feels a lot like he's doing it for Bell – or all of Freya Familia as a whole.

Freya has been deceiving everyone in Orario from the start, and maybe that's something that Hedin is at least tangentially aware of. As we see from her interactions with Anya and Ryu, she doesn't see anything wrong with it – she tells Ryu that everyone lies about something, and Syr was simply her lie. But that doesn't acknowledge what Freya's lie actually means to the people who loved Syr. Based on Anya's interactions with the goddess, she harbors no warm feelings for her; she may even feel like Freya stole her older brother, a symbolic precursor to what Freya's attempting to do with Bell. But to Anya Syr was her savior, the one person she could believe in. Learning that Syr never existed is a blow, and just another case of Freya taking someone away from her. Ryu may see it that way as well; after losing her entire familia, she found a place to belong at the tavern, and Syr was instrumental in that. To go from having a close friend to having someone wearing that friend's face offer her a threesome and/or an orgy is shocking. Ryu's many things, but a hedonist is not one of them, and to have someone she previously believed knew her well make such an offer could feel like a betrayal in itself. That this person is now revealed to have been lying to Ryu's face all along and kidnapped her friend/love interest is an unthinkable blow.

But gods operate on a different system than mortals do. We perhaps haven't always had a good grasp of that, because Hestia is the most human of the gods we've met, and she's been the primary deity of the story. All of the other gods are after something, whether it's Hermes fulfilling a plan, Soma crafting his wine, or Freya stealing Bell. Freya's more overt about what she's doing, and she's holding less back, but that doesn't mean that her selfishness comes out of the blue. In fact, she may simply be doing much the same as Ishtar did, just in a different context.

What that says about Fujino Ōmori's take on goddesses of love and fertility is an essay for another time. Right now what we ought to be worried about is how Freya will react if she cannot “break” Bell, and Hedin looks like he may take Bell's side in all of this, which would decrease Freya's chances. We all saw how things turned out for Ishtar and Apollo. Maybe Freya would do better to stop thinking with her heart and start reading some history.

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