Rating: B
The saying “it’s always darkest before the dawn” is practically a writing guideline for shonen action shows, and it is one that has often applied to this franchise, too. The situation isn’t at its absolute lowest point yet as the episode ends, as Hestia and her allied gods are all still safely in hiding (and remember, this is Hide-and-Seek, so their flowers getting taken is the true defeat here), but it’s definitely trending in that direction.
In this episode, we can see the alliance’s valiant efforts to compensate for the Freya Familia’s advantage. Haruhime’s Level Boost makes them at least more competitive against Freya Familia’s qualitative edge, Finn’s training of Lily at least partially offsets Hedin’s tactical brilliance, and the many magical swords provided by Welf (and to a lesser extent Hephaistos) can offset Hedin’s elite magic. Asfi’s items are also getting put to good use, and the combat-shy Nahza using her archery to dispute magic swords as needed is a neat trick.
However, there’s only so far that the alliance can go to even the playing field, and this episode also shows that. Hedin, who has much more experience both in general than Lily and with Freya’s followers specifically, can anticipate nearly everything the alliance will do except for Haruhime, so he keeps Freya’s forces concentrated to take advantage of their power gap. Freya Familia also has a trump card that the alliance can’t easily account for, and one that’s only been vaguely hinted at in the anime: it has the best healers of any combat-oriented familia. This makes sense, since the brutal training regimens of Folkvangr wouldn’t be possible to maintain without quality mass healing, but the real kicker is that that lead healer Heith is quite capable of defending herself against predictable headhunting strategies; she has both an amazing self-regeneration spell and combat capabilities easily good enough to fend off Level 2 adventurers. (She is a level 4 in official stat sheets.) The other big problem is that Bell’s Argonaut and Argo Vesta attack can actually match Ottarl when it’s at full charge, but it takes several minutes to reach that level (one minute per level, to be precise), so he can’t use it continuously. Even at Level 5, he’s still not even close to a match for Ottarl without that.
On the good side, we do finally get to see what some of these characters can actually do. Hegni, for instance, has not been shown in a serious fight previously, and the notion that his ace power involves a personality shift is rather amusing. This is also the first time we’ve seen Ottarl use an ability, as in every previous appearance his raw strength alone was enough. On the downside, some of what goes on here stretches credibility to the max. Yes, Freya Familia’s grunts are used to getting wiped out and getting back up from healing, but that still should take at least some toll, right? When this scene came up in the original novels, I was also bothered by how Heith seemed impervious to pain or disability while regenerating from horrific injuries, and the anime version doesn’t mitigate that one bit. I suppose we can assume that some kind of pain-numbing effect is part of Heith’s magic, but seeing her completely unbothered by the damage she took elicited an eye rool. At least the anime didn’t short-change the devastating effect the damage had on her clothing, even if it did keep her just barely decent. Sure, that can be looked at a fan service moment, but her clothing coming through any more intact than than would have strained credibility even more.
In general, the episode does a fine job of keeping the various confrontations and battlefronts in play, but ultimately, it’s just a collection of preliminary battles. The peak of the crisis is yet to come, and several important players have yet to enter the battle field. That includes the waitresses (Chloe and Lunoire), who announced their intention last episode; Mia, who is shown in the OP fighting Ottarl; and the return of Ryu. The Next Episode title strongly suggests that Ryu, at least, will be joining the action next time.
At this point, HIDIVE only has one more episode listed as upcoming. I can’t see how what’s left can be resolved in a single episode, and I’d heard said that this season was going to be 14 episodes, so I am curious to see how this is going to play out.
USA Anime 