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

Episode 14

You could say that it was already written. In Norse mythology, the kings Heðinn and Hǫgni fight an eternal battle on an island, healed and reborn each evening by Hǫgni's daughter Hildr to begin the endless fight once again with the dawn. DanMachi's Hedin and Hogni are clearly meant to be versions of the myth's warriors, but Hedin sees a way out: he wants to essentially stop the endless wars by preventing Freya from winning the War Game. In this version, Freya stands in for Hildr, who is also the cause of Heðinn and Hǫgni's battles, with the fighting starting due to Heðinn kidnapping Hildr. But Freya is also Heðinn, capturing Bell, and this speaks to what our Hedin wants to put a stop to. In her dual roles of Hildr and Heðinn, Freya is facilitating a war game that will not end. That game could be said to be inside her heart, with her eternal quest for her oðr resurrecting the warriors without end. And unless Hedin stops that cycle, the plot of the Hjaðningavíg will just keep replaying.

What Ottarl and Allen see as Hedin switching sides is anything but in Hedin's mind. He realizes what the other two (and presumably many others in their familia) cannot bring themselves to see: that being a goddess, an object of worship, is killing Freya. Not in the physical sense; she probably can't die a physical death, or at least we've not heard of any deities who have. But her inner self is being torn apart, with “Freya” and “Syr” being held separate for too long. Freya feels like she must be the goddess because that's her role and what people expect of her. But she wants to be the woman and feels she can't. After all, she's got a role to play, a familia to run, and a city to help. Allen's determination to complete the Three Great Quests, specifically the one to kill the black dragon, speaks to how much Orario itself figures into things. How can Freya be the goddess that all her worshippers follow if she prioritizes her own happiness?

Hedin thinks that she can't and that maybe she should put the woman ahead of the goddess in her life. As Hogni points out, she saved the two of them from a version of the Hjaðningavíg, which ultimately helps Hedin decide to take Hestia Familia's side in the War Game. She helped him, freed him from a life he didn't want. He wants to do the same for her, and he's savvy enough to recognize that he can't do so if he's viewing her solely as his goddess. He's not her oðr no matter how much he wants to be, and if she's burdened with her role within their familia, she may never find that person…or at least, may never allow herself to stop looking. If Freya loses the War Game, she will be freed from a life that's become a cage, and as someone who loves her, that's what Hedin wants to do. Hogni can understand because Freya did the same for him, but Allen and Ottarl view her as a source of their motivations and strength, and so they can't. To them, Freya has to be the goddess, and Allen goes a step further in thinking that Freya's the only way he'll be able to save his sister Anya and give her a chance. Hedin is, in some ways, the only person thinking clearly, and maybe that's because he's known, as he puts it, the burden of being king. He and Hogni are uniquely positioned to understand what it means to rule and how it can be an eternal battle in and of itself.

This penultimate episode makes me want to point people towards Episode Freya again, because some motivations are being glossed over or moved through too quickly to fully understand Freya's familia members. But even with that missing, this reminds us that the entire War Game and kidnapping issue boils down to one thing:

Is Freya a goddess? Or is she a woman? And should she be allowed to choose which one she wants to be?

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