Man, that was bad. Everyone was so useless. Everyone letting Bell take the fall. Especially Hermes and Ouranos. Who are they to judge Bell? They didn't lift a finger. They spout noble words, but are just as bad as Dix, it's only because they are presented as the good guys and that it's the kinda of anime where the protagonist will always pull through. And if not, literal divine intervention - just not by one of the many gods, but buy the only guy who at least does *something*, though if he is alive (well, for certain kinds of alive) for 800 years or more, he should easily wipe the floor with everyone, instead he barely manages to fend of some goons. And then he pulls that shit, instead of having real character development for ell.
Bell also needs a training session with the baddest guy or girl they can find, he still falls for EVERY single attack that is not with the main weapon of teh opponent.
So far, he also never had any real repercussions for whatever he did. They always talk big, but e.g. the Isthar familia threatend him with war after having abducting him and Mikoto. If the guild and the gods were not the biggest cowards of all, he could simply have walked straight to the guild, or Hestia would have presented in a council of the gods, and the Ishtar family would haven been forced to let Haruhime go and ecompensate for the damages done or face ALL of the other familias.
But no, the rules are written and applied so arbirtarily that it would be better to get rid of them. Then at least the bully familias would have to step up their game and be bullies, were everyone can see, instead of hiding behind "after I killed half of their familia, i slipped on the bloodstained stairs of their house. Obviously they are liable for that, either they hand over everything voluntarily, or I declare war on them". Wtf.
And obviously the bad guys exploit all the rules, while the good guys know that and are like "oh noes, they illegally attacked someone, whatever can we do, if we help them we are participatng in that war, guess there's nothing we can do". If the Loki familia steped up, who would dare wage war over a bullshit reason they manufactured themselves? Or NOW Hermes has his family member drop smoke bombs to prevent the Minotaur from being killed, and he had dozens of people shadowing the Ikelos familia. But defending Bell against accusations, or sneakingly drop a couple of attackers, that is too much.
It's kinda realistic in that way, the strongest write the rules so that they can bend or even break them, who's gonna do say something even if they get caught? And the weaker guys have to follow it, because if inot, the strong ones are going to come for them, and everyone will bel like "you broke the rules, only fair what happening now". It's even realistic given that the gods are so different etc., but Ouranos kinda throws a spanner in the works, he seems like he wants to do the right thing, but maybe first get the human socieity in order before making it a thousand times more complex with the Xenos, who are not even agreed on whether they even want whatever Ouranos has planned. And if Ouranos had created a sociiety that actually follows rules, he could simply used the 18th floor as neutral ground. We even saw and they talked a bit about that even in this safe spot there are monster, but people don't hunt there, and they don't get attacked.
And then we have Bell, who could have prevented most of the damage to the city if he wouldn't conventiently go into another crisis there, and instead simply slapped that crystal back on. And of course everyone is waiting for him while he's staring into the void for five minutes. How can he survive at all in the dungeon if he goes into crisis every time he has to make a difficult decision?
If we ignore that it's bad writting enforcing a plot like this, the only explanation is that Ouranos is incredible incompentent but quite lucky. Or maybe he wanted to achieve something completely different, and he's messed it up so bad that this is what he ended up wtih.
Also, they didn't even try to animate Lyd or Gros speaking.
So yeah, overall really terrible - the arc, and this episode partcular. |