Danmachi Familia Chronicle Episode: Heith
Collaborator: Fumikaru Nishijima
Release Date: 15 May 2026
This volume is split into three stories, each providing further characterisation of Heith, our favourite yandere healer.
In the first, Airmid asks Heith to party with her in the dungeon to investigate a case of adventurers reviving as essentially zombies. Heith doesn't want to but changes her mind after a certain grey-haired waitress announces loudly that she'd love to see Dear Saint and Vana Mardoll team up and how cool it would be if Heith accepted. The afterword states that this story takes place half a year before the start of the series. Along with providing us some Airmid/Heith content, it also provides plenty of food for Heith/Horn shippers. I found myself being charmed by both dynamics. There's also some interesting information about Airmid's abilities that has implications for the Freya arc. I don't think Airmid appeared much in that arc (and yeah why would she? I don't think her and Bell have ever directly interacted) but I wonder if we'll get more info about that in the announced Airmid volume.
The second story is backstory time as we learn how Heith joined the Freya Familia and how she became a healer. As you'd expect from the Freya Familia, and Heith in particular, there's some dark stuff in this story including descriptions of child Heith training with the Einherjar and being beat up to make her stronger. It was an interesting story but be warned that it gets heavy.
The third story has the most ridiculous premise but manages to turn it around to expanding more on Heith's character by the end. It takes place after volume 21 and the former women of the Freya Familia trick Bell into going to the former home of the Freya Familia in order to seduce him. The logic is that if they have Bell's child, that's basically Freya's grandchild right and wouldn't Freya just love to have a grandchild. It's an incredibly silly story that's frustrating to read for the first half but it does get better and ends up providing a good conclusion for the volume. Omori mentions in the afterward that the reason to release this volume now instead of the Haruhime volume that they've been promising for a long time was in part because of this story. Part of it was of course that Heith was featured in the most recent anime season and in volume 21 but the other part was because they knew this story had such a silly ecchi premise and was too embarrassed to write it themself so wanted to get Nishijima to do it (which begs the question as to why Omori wrote it this way in the outline but I digress).
Was this volume necessary? No, but it was interesting. Danmachi is one of those series that has such a good cast of characters where any of them could be a protagonist. I don't usually like that descriptor because it begs the question: why are we following the actual series protagonist instead of any of the more interesting characters? Thankfully, I actually like Bell as a protagonist and we get enough spin-offs that allow other characters to be protagonists that it doesn't bother me with Danmachi. And I really am glad that Omori has allowed another writer to help them expand on the world. I've always wanted Danmachi to be one of those series with a lot of different writers contributing to the world, similar to Sword Art Online, and I'm pleased that we seem to be heading in that direction. I really liked this volume overall and it's made me like Heith more so it did it's job.
The release dates for future volumes are up on bookwalker as follows:
Sword Oratoria 17 15/1/27
Familia Chronicle Episode: Airmid 12/2/27
I'm a bit surprised SO is still going to continue after volume 16 felt like it concluded it's main threads nicely but I won't complain about more time spent with the Loki Familia. The Airmid volume is probably the one I'm most excited about from these three honestly, but that may be because I have the clearest idea as to what it's going to be. I don't know what direction the main story is going to take next but I'm looking forward to it.
