DanMachi Season 5 Review

Article at a glance:
The build-up to Freya’s reveal and the city-wide hypnosis was excellent, but the resolution felt rushed and lacked real consequences.
Bell’s emotional resilience and Freya’s dual identity were well-handled, but Aiz was severely underutilized.
The soundtrack and fight choreography were solid, but the animation quality remained average, holding back the action scenes.

Season 4 of DanMachi was so good that all further seasons will fall victim to the question “Is it better than Season 4?”. Surpassing season 4 of DanMachi will be like summoning Exodia the Forbidden One. Technically doable but hard in practice, So, what about Season 5? Well, the answer is no. DanMachi Season 5 is not as good as Season 4? But is it bad? Not quite. This brings us to this review: DanMachi Season 5 is quite good for all intents and purposes but has some glaring issues.

So welcome back to another review, today we are talking about DanMachi Season 5. There will be spoilers ahead so you’ve been warned. Let’s get started.

Plot

This is a tale of two halves. I really liked what they were doing with the first half. The build-up to Syr’s true identity reveal was great, the execution was handled well, and now we know why Freya was so infatuated with Bell in the previous seasons. The episodes where Freya brainwashed the whole city were hard to watch because of Bell’s suffering. They were handled exceptionally well. Hermes and Hestia’s plan of breaking Freya’s hypnosis was great as well.

But then the 2nd half falls short. Why wasn’t Freya punished accordingly? She brainwashed an entire city, including the other gods and she still got a “trial by combat” in the form of a War Game instead of a straight punishment. The second half is so contrived at times, that it spoils the awesome build-up of the first half. And at the end, there are no real consequences for Freya. Her Familia gets disbanded and she’s sent into exile but in reality, she continues working at the tavern as Syr upon Ryu and others’ “request”.

Of course, there were a lot of contrived moments during the War Game part as well. And aside from that, the ending to this arc felt rushed in general. Like we spent 14 episodes building up how twisted Freya is and in episode 15, things are fixed just like that? That’s a little…

Characters

Man, I wish Bell got some more character development. But that said, this season did a good job of showcasing his emotional resilience, maybe even better than Season 4. In Season 4, the threats were physical but here, Bell is one of the only ones in the city unaffected by Freya’s hypnosis. So he could’ve had a mental breakdown by all accounts but he persevered through all that and still had the mental strength to wave off Freya’s advances. So hats off to him.

Freya too got a lot of good character development in this season. Freya being Syr all along was one of the best twists of the series so far and Syr, inevitably reflected what kind of life Freya wanted for herself. She didn’t want to be some grand goddess or something, she wanted to have a simple life but couldn’t because of her stature. Yes, the character progression in episode 15 feels a little rushed, if not forced, but still, her character was handled very well here.

Almost all the major members of the Freya Familia had good character moments. Hedin has some character development too. Ryu got more screen time to shine, which is always a win in my book. But damn it, if you want to make Aiz the main heroine, then let her do something. Her screen time throughout the entirety of this season is probably less than 5 minutes.

Animations and Soundtracks

This part of the review will be no different from DanMachi Season 4, Season 5 also has average animations. Man, give this series some more budget, please. The story has been cooking lately and then you watch the fights and they look…flat. And the thing is, the fight choreography is pretty good too. But the animations hold back so much of the potential these fights have. The fights against Oattr could have been so much cooler if the animations were better. Ryu vs. Hogni was so cool already, imagine if we had that with better animations.

The animations feel flat and hence the fights lack a certain “impact”. A massive guy like Ottar should have more weight behind his hits. The lightning impact Hedin gave Bell could’ve looked so much cooler. Come on, this show deserves better.

The soundtracks are not bad though. I really like the ending theme. I could imagine Freya singing something like that. It fits really well. The opening theme is alright but the ending theme really helps dial the tone in for this season.