Rating: A-
Appropriately titled “The Warriors of the Goddess,” episode 14 features a lot of dramatic action scenes involving said warriors, but despite the War Games winding down to its final stages, that’s not the main focus or point of the episode at all. Instead, the focus is much more on what motivates those warriors, and that’s plenty interesting enough that I can justify giving this episode a high rating despite my normal disdain for “let’s stretch the battle out” episodes.
Whatever you may think of the Freya Familia elite as characters, one of the most intriguing aspects of them as a group is that they are far from monolithic. Yes, they all love and idolize Freya and place no loyalties above their loyalties to her, and they all were to some degree saved by Freya; Ottarl was picked up off the street, there’s some suggestion that Freya may have bargained sex to free the Gulliver brothers from slavery, and Hedin was a king freed from the perpetual cycle of warfare on his home island. The episode states that Allen and Ahnya lost their family and village to the Black Dragon, so anime viewers can presume that Freya likewise rescued them. (The novel clarifies this.) The anime version is less explicit about Hogni, but he was Hedin’s rival back before Freya took them in, and so can be presumed to be picked up under similar circumstances. (Again, the novels are much clearer on this point.) And yes, all of them – even proud, arrogant Hedin! – want Freya’s love focused on them.
But all of them differ in how they look at Freya, and this is the point where the writing most stands out. Allen idolizes the power she represents and can give him; he cherishes most the domineering aspect of the goddess. Ottarl is the stalwart gatekeeper, the one who cannot acknowledge anyone approaching the goddess unless they prove worthy by him; he seeks not to interpret, only to execute Freya’s spoken will. Hedin, on the other hand, does seek to interpret Freya’s true will, to look at her inner heart and act accordingly. While previous episodes have implied that he is acting this way, in his confrontation with Hogni this episode he finally explicitly lays out how he sees the situation: Freya will never be genuinely happy as long as she’s still a goddess, and her own familia can’t rectify that problem precisely because they idolize her. And, as much as it pains him, he recognizes that Bell can fill that role because he values the girl she is inside rather than the goddess she is on the surface. Everything he’s done this season has been deliberate moves to position Bell for that purpose. That’s something Hogni can appreciate, too, when it’s explained to him. Where, exactly, the Gulliver brothers stand is less clear, though there’s some implication that they may be motivated to protect their savior’s virtue.
One other conflict is afoot here, too: the relationship between Ahnya and Allen. The nature of their relationship comes off a bit thin in anime form compared to the novels, but even the anime has acknowledged for a while now that she was cast aside by Freya and her brother – though, notably, not stripped of the falna which makes her tough enough to delve deep into the Dungeon or take out numerous lower-level members of Freya’s Einherjar. (Canonically, she is a Level 3.) Hogni confronting Allen on Ahnya’s behalf brings out the truth: that Allen asked Freya to kick Ahnya out not because she was incompetent, but because he was worried that the brutal life in Freya Familia didn’t suit her. In one of the episode’s few amusing moments, even Loki Familia’s Bete – who is the character in the franchise most like Allen in disposition – points out that Ahnya wouldn’t be alive, much less living a peaceful life, if Allen actually meant the rhetoric he spews about her. He does still love and care for her as family but is much too prideful to admit it and absolutely won’t let that get in the way of his loyalty to Freya.
Of course, this is a War Game, so the action component is still present. Allen finally gets to show off his special gimmick, the power we see him use in the OP which earns him the nickname of Freya’s chariot. (This is actually an important mythological reference, since Freya’s chariot was traditionally pulled by two cats. Not a stretch to interpret that Ahnya may have been meant to be the other one.) From the anime’s limited depiction, it looks like it allows him to make a power charge across the battlefield. Compared to that, his stand-offs with Hogni and Ahnya are but a scuffle, as is Alfrigg standing back up against the second-stringers. The real fight is the now-four-on-one effort to take down Ottarl. He’s not the strongest in Orario for nothing, as even with newly-arrived back-up from a Level 6 mage and tactician, it’s not enough to do anything beyond wounding him a bit and destroying his armor. But he is the Battle-Swine of Freya; in mythology, Freya was accompanied in battle by the boar Hildisvini (the same name as Ottarl’s sword-enhancing ability), and that boar was the transformed form of a man name Ottar. Never let it be said that original writer Fujino Omori hasn’t thoroughly studied his mythology!
Ultimately, the well-executed action elements provide a nice complement to the heavier but important background elements throughout the rest of the episode. The result is a good-looking episode which also finds a good writing balance and covers the last few bases necessary to set up the finale next week.
USA Anime 