All posts by Crossark

Ah, I didn't remember any actual physical violence in that interaction, but that would make a lot more sense tbh. Thanks for helping to clear the narrative up a bit for me!

Maybe it's just one of those things certain gods can just do, but for adventurers Falna is required? Or maybe it really is just something Orichalcum weapons just come pre-loaded with.

RE: Apollo, I was actually explicitly saying that there's not a rule that a god has to return to heaven if they lose their familia. I brought up Astrea and Zeus as examples of gods who a) lost their familias and b) didn't leave the Lower World. That's why I was confused as to why the gods who were sent back to Heaven in AR would do so, given that Erebus couldn't get away with Arcanum use (as Phobos couldn't) and mortals couldn't kill a god. However, the info you provided on how gods can sustain mortal injuries and then be sent back would explain how those gods were sent up -- and if they were, in fact, Evilus-affiliated gods (which I don't recall, but again, I could be misremembering) then presumably they could just return of their own volition. Though, I don't know why them leaving voluntarily would trigger the reaction from the Dungeon that was so integral to Evilus's strategy at the time. That still doesn't quite clear up how Astrea sends Erebus back after Alfia and Zard are defeated, nor how gods who violate the rules on Arcanum are sent and/or pulled back to Heaven, but as you say, it's probably something you're just not meant to think much about.

P.S.: I do believe in the anime it was implied that Apollo returned to Heaven following the loss of the War Game. I recently rewatched the second season and can remember it being mentioned as one of the stakes on a few occasions, but I reiterate that my memory isn't perfectly reliable even with such recent information. It's interesting to learn that he's merely banished from Orario in the LN. I'm not exclusively anime/game-only, but my exposure with the light novels and manga series is limited and starts only after where S2 of the show left off.

I see. Thanks for the more thorough explanation.

One last, small question: Where are you getting your info that gods can't use magic? Is that just another thing Oomori said once in an interview somewhere? I was under the impression (from something another Admin mentioned once) that the reason gods aren't shown to use magic like adventurers do was that they didn't possess Falna, but non-Falna magic should still be an option, no? Sure, only the elves have been shown to possess such magic, but surely the creators of the Lower World could work out a way to use magic without needing Falna, right? How would Hephaestus be able to use Hestia's Falna link with Bell to create the Hestia Knife if she wasn't directly interacting, in some way, with magic -- to say nothing of the Durandal enchantment on it, which is, like, explicitly a magical attribute. Durandal isn't limited to equipment created by gods, either, so that, specifically, doesn't seem like it can be explained entirely by Hephaestus just having another special ability -- it's enchantment magic that adventurers can use. I hope this justifies why I was under the impression that gods still had a few possible routes available to them to utilize certain forms of magic. It doesn't seem to make sense to me for certain gods to be able to impart the exact same magical enchantments on items, weapons, and potions that their familia members can, and then to turn around and say that gods can't use magic.

IIRC, the in-fiction justification was that Alfia's illness weakened her magical ability/strength the more it was used. So, as far as I remember, the only reason they were able to overcome her was just by virtue of typical Anime Character Resilience allowing them to withstand her first attack despite already having fought against a dragon. Once they were able to withstand one attack from her without kicking the bucket, each successful attack would be less and less powerful and eventually she wouldn't be able to deal with an entire familia of adventurers attacking at once.

RE: Freya's soul-seeing ability, I was under the impression that said ability was just sorta part of her sight inherently, and not something she could toggle on and off. She seems capable of ignoring it most of the time, but I was under the impression that it worked along the same lines as something like Blindsight in DnD, where it's always "on" but you can still see with just your eyes as well. Even if it is part of her godly powers, it wouldn't be fair to punish her for something she was just sorta born seeing.

Either way, I think whether Charm is Arcanum or some sort of congenital magic, both explanations provide a potential basis for Freya being able to alter her appearance. I don't recall if, in Vol. 16, it was explicitly stated that she used her Arcanum to do so, but the way I see it: 1) either her shapeshifting is confirmed to be Arcanum use, in which case it would make sense in theory for Charm to be Arcanum as well since it confirms Freya's been getting away with using her Arcanum for upwards of 7 years, or; 2) it's not confirmed to be Arcanum, and therefore the option of it being some form of non-Falna magic (which I would assume would need to be different from the elves') is left open in order to avoid the rules on Arcanum use. There are ways of making either option fit, but all of them come with their own difficulties that would need to be addressed in order to avoid outright contradicting established lore.

Regarding the latter option, though, Rigel mentioned something that struck me as odd. I didn't recall the elves' magic being explicitly tied to something different in their genetic code or something like that -- I was always just under the impression that the techniques needed to use it were elven secrets that were passed down from generation to generation. After all, there is an elf who we know to be the progenitor of all their non-Falna magic -- Wishe -- and we know that she wasn't the only elf around at the time. Therefore, it's clear that it's not like they just inherit their non-Falna magic simply by virtue of being an elf (akin to a racial trait in DnD). I may be wrong, though, or misremembering something about Wishe's arc in Danmemo, but that was my understanding. Your remarks on elven non-Falna magic made it sound like something that just comes to elves automatically instead of, say, a simple predisposition or capacity for learning that type of magic, and that confused me given my current understanding of it.

Anyhow, I think Charm could potentially be the key to explaining recent revelations about Freya, because it's another ability she has that doesn't really make sense in the context of the known rules. Tl;dr: The way I see it, either she's a habitual rulebreaker or she's found a loophole. I don't know if we'll ever see an official justification one way or the other, but Charm's nature at least provides a bit of possible structure to those of us slowly losing their sanity over how these new details could potentially make sense in the current context.

P.S.: I don't think we can just leave it as a special ability that she can use without consequences -- especially when Ishtar felt the need to cordon off an entire section of the city to use it to benefit her. That would make it a godly power -- i.e.: an ability that's exclusive to gods. I don't understand why the contract with the dungeon would forbid Arcanum (so Zeus can't just lightning-bolt everything to death) but would allow other godly abilities as overpowered as Charm. (Of course, if it's a form of non-Falna magic they picked up/developed after arriving in the Lower World, it would be a loophole to such rules.) But I don't think just calling it a "special ability" and leaving it at that really explains it away, because it calls into question a) what the real difference between Arcanum (the gods' magic) and a "special ability" is, b) why bother placing restrictions on Arcanum if a god can just use their massively overpowered "special ability" as a backup, and c) why no restrictions were placed on using "special abilities" when all the other gods without such abilities were getting kneecapped by having their Arcanum rights stripped away. Of course, the ultimate metanarrative answer for all these questions likely is that, as you say, Oomori simply didn't think too much about Charm when he put it into the story. However, I'm hopeful (perhaps foolishly) that he'll someday get around to working out something resembling a solution. I still think either illicit Arcanum use or non-Falna magic use is the most workable explanation for both Charm and Freya's shapeshifting.

Yeah, have to second what MAHB says about SO and the main LN. They're inseparable. Several (often significant) things that occur in the main LN wouldn't have happened if they weren't set in motion by something that transpired in SO. Treating it as if its content is non-canonical to the Ais in the Bell-centric novels would be tantamount to implying that the Ais in SO is some sort of an alternate-reality version of Ais from the "real" one in the LN, meaning that the events of SO don't necessarily occur in the version of Orario we see in the LN. It would make no sense for some of the content of SO to be true to the LN (e.g.: the escaped Minotaur that starts Bell's entire story) despite not appearing firsthand in the LN, while other content of SO is disregarded for the very reason that it doesn't appear in the LN.

Volume 16 revelations notwithstanding, I always liked Bell/Ryuu/Syr more as a thrupple than Bell and anyone else, but I also always found myself secretly thinking about just a Bell/Ryuu pairing sans-Syr. I just found their dynamic a lot more compelling than I did Bell's dynamic with anyone else, excepting perhaps Liliruca (who I feel has maybe the most objectively legitimate reason for being interested in him). I just want to see Ryuu find a happy partnership ultimately, and I think good, pure boy Bell presents that opportunity for her.