Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka

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Alternative Titles

English: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

Synonyms: DanMachi, Is It Wrong That I Want to Meet You in a Dungeon

Japanese: ダンジョンに出会いを求めるのは間違っているだろうか

Information

Type: TV

Episodes: 13

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Apr 4, 2015 to Jun 27, 2015

Premiered: Spring 2015

Broadcast: Saturdays at 01:05 (JST)

Producers: Genco, Movic, Warner Bros. Japan, KlockWorx, SoftBank Creative, Showgate, MAGES., FuRyu

Licensors: Sentai Filmworks

Studios: J.C.Staff

Source: Light novel

Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Romance, Fantasy

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 7.65¹ (scored by 639,009 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #1164²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #59

Members: 1,048,546

Favorites: 10,110

7.65

Ranked #1164Popularity #59Members 1,048,546

Spring 2015TVJ.C.Staff

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Episodes: /13

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Synopsis

Life in the bustling city of Orario is never dull, especially for Bell Cranel, a naïve young man who hopes to become the greatest adventurer in the land. After a chance encounter with the lonely goddess, Hestia, his dreams become a little closer to reality. With her support, Bell embarks on a fantastic quest as he ventures deep within the city's monster-filled catacombs, known only as the "Dungeon." Death lurks around every corner in the cavernous depths of this terrifying labyrinth, and a mysterious power moves amidst the shadows.

Even on the surface, survival is a hard-earned privilege. Indeed, nothing is ever certain in a world where gods and humans live and work together, especially when they often struggle to get along. One thing is for sure, though: a myriad of blunders, triumphs and friendships awaits the dauntlessly optimistic protagonist of this herculean tale.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

The series adapts the first 5 novels of Fujino Omori's light novel series of the same title.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka
Side story:	Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka OVA, Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria, Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Movie: Orion no Ya
Sequel:	Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka II
Summary:	Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka II: Past & Future

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Cranel, Bell

Main

Matsuoka, Yoshitsugu
Japanese

Hestia

Main

Minase, Inori
Japanese

Wallenstein, Ais

Supporting

Oonishi, Saori
Japanese

Lion, Ryuu

Supporting

Hayami, Saori
Japanese

Arde, Liliruca

Supporting

Uchida, Maaya
Japanese

Freya

Supporting

Hikasa, Yoko
Japanese

Crozzo, Welf

Supporting

Hosoya, Yoshimasa
Japanese

Hermes

Supporting

Saitou, Souma
Japanese

Yamato, Mikoto

Supporting

Akasaki, Chinatsu
Japanese

Loga, Bete

Supporting

Okamoto, Nobuhiko
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Nakayama, Nobuhiro

Producer

Yamakawa, Yoshiki

Director

Aketagawa, Jin

Sound Director

Takashima, Daisuke

Episode Director

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Opening Theme

"Hey World" by Yuka Iguchi (eps 2-13)

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Ending Theme

#1: "Hey World" by Yuka Iguchi (ep 1)
#2: "RIGHT LIGHT RISE" by Kanon Wakeshima (eps 2-5, 7-13)
#3: "REALIZE ~Hajimari no Toki~ (REALIZE ～始まりのとき～)" by Liliruca Arde (Maaya Uchida) (ep 6)

More reviews

Reviews

Jun 26, 2015

13 of 13 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 3

Tozzy (All reviews)

614 people found this review helpful

There are times you get a reminder that no matter how many swords, boobs and magic you throw at a show it can’t save it from the boring characters among it all. Welcome to the world of Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka, where strong personalities are obviously illegal and main characters are inexplicably attractive to women. A 13-episode fantasy story put to screen by J.C. Staff and based on a light novel, ‘DanMachi’ can at times be an enjoyable experience if you shut your brain off. Action is served up in droves but in an equal share comes a bland read more

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Jun 26, 2015

13 of 13 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 2

Link_of_Hyrule (All reviews)

440 people found this review helpful

**SPOILER FREE REVIEW**

The easiest way to sum up Is it Wrong to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon, or Danmachi for short, was eloquently put by Youtuber Demolition-D as “Sword Art Online: Fat-Fucking-Titties edition”. Who am I to argue with such a flawless summation? There is no question about what Danmachi is; it’s an otaku-pandering, self-insertion, video-game-inspired LN adaptation. The real question lies in whether you will love it for what it is, or hate it for what it is. In case you haven’t guessed it by now, I fall into the latter category. This shallow, ridiculous, and remarkably unoriginal work is a good example of everything wrong with anime today.

Synopsis: Bell Cranel is an adventurer; someone who explores dangerous dungeons and fights monsters for a living. He and his “goddess”, which is basically a glorified manager, Hestia, make up the smallest “familia” in all the land. This is the story of Bell winning every fight he’s ever been involved in one way or another, making every girl he comes into contact with fall in love with him despite his obvious lack of any charisma whatsoever, and gaining special abilities that nobody else can use for no discernable reason. In other words, it’s your standard LN adaptation.

Danmachi’s plot is what you get when you take SAO’s plot and crank it up a notch on the pandering scale. MORE fanservice. MORE blood. LARGER harems. MORE white-knighting from the protagonist. DOUCHIER side characters to make the protagonist look good by comparison. And, of course, LESS actual substance. It’s seriously like someone looked at the already stupid LN video game formula and said “Hmmm, how do we make this even harder to take seriously?” But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the first reason Danmachi’s plot is bad: plot armor and melodrama. Much like a battle shounen, it is painfully obvious in any video game LN adaptation that the MC is never actually in any danger. However, the show spares no expense in convincing you that he is using the cheapest tactics possible. Last second saves? Check. Asspulled power ups? Check. Deus ex machina? Check-aruney. The entirety of the plot consists of Bell and the other main characters being put it perilous situations that even the most naïve of viewers can recognize will be resolved smoothly at the last second. Over and over and over again. It’s bad writing, it’s repetitive, and it’s not entertaining.

It’s at this point in the review that I realize there were so many things wrong with the show that I don’t even know what to talk about next. This may be a bizarre order of doing things, but now let’s talk about Bell Cranel; the protagonist. Dear. God. What an annoying, insufferable, shallow, clichéd, gary-stu, self-insert, AWFUL character. When you talk about characters who might as well be literally Gandhi, you can go ahead and put this saint at the top of the list. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING would ever cause this guy to do something wrong or immoral. People can betray him, steal from him, assault him, whatever; he just takes the abuse like a proverbial Jesus Christ and instantly forgives all wrongdoings. After all, they wouldn’t want to give off the impression that he is human or anything! Real people don’t have flaws or negative emotions, right? It’s SO much more interesting to have an idealized concept of all that is good in the world without an ounce of moral ambiguity so that otakus can fap to fantasies of the hundreds of sex objects that flock to his holy cock! Oh, and you better believe that he has special abilities that nobody else in the entire world has! It’s not enough that he’s the most righteous organism on planet Earth, but he also has a super special power that enables all of his skills to be as high as they possibly can AND enables him to level up faster than anyone else who has ever lived! Now, I want you to guess the explanation they give for why this makes sense; this is their GENIUS explanation for why Bell has this one-of-a-kind ability that makes him the most special person in all the land: BECAUSE HE’S IN LOVE. …OHHHHH! WELL THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE! FUCK. I mean... just… fuck. I won’t even question it. In conclusion, Bell sucks. Moving on.

Unfortunately, the trend of shallow, awful characters continues with the rest of the cast. Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room; Hestia. Fucking. Hestia. *Sigh… Just… why? I must be the ten-billionth person to ask this, but what the hell is the obsession with her? She is no different than any other 1 dimensional, big-boobed, harem-fodder nobody in a slutty outfit that allows us to instantly identify her as a sex-object, as if we wouldn’t have figured it out anyway. The absolute best description you can give about Hestia is that she functions as comic relief, and I don’t even think she’s very funny. That brings us to Lili, the other 1-dimmensional sex object who occupies the loli, furry, and tortured fetishes all at the same time. Impressive writers. Very impressive. Fetish writers around the world will have to come up with an answer to that. Maybe if she was also a robot-childhood-friend? Anyway, I’m not even going to mention the rest of the harem since they are completely one-dimensional and indistinguishable. Let’s also go over the nameless side-characters; I feel the need to bring attention to the fact that Bell is the ONLY adventurer in the entire world who is not a tremendous asshole. The “villain” adventurers have no depth at all, of course, but they are still made out as such blatantly awful people in order to FURTHER drive home the fact that Bell is Jesus. Not only is this lazy characterization, it’s also blatantly black-and-white morality, which makes the show require even less thought. This is one of the worst character casts since, well, Sword Art Online.

Let’s also take a moment to discuss how incredibly creative the monsters in this show are. Danmachi brings us such breathtaking and original monster designs such as, a bunny. A wolf. A minotaur. Oh, and who could forget the floor boss, “literally a titan from Attack on Titan”? Truly masterful creativity from these animators. It’s clear that a lot of work went into this show.

This is the paragraph where I planned on talking about how misogynistic this show is and how distracting the constant fan service is, but do I really need to give you that whole spiel? I already briefly talked about this stuff, and I feel like it’s so obvious why these aspects of a show are flaws that I shouldn’t need to explain it. Women with the obedience and dedication of slaves and no complexity whatsoever? It’s every otaku’s dream! And that’s precisely why this show is going to make a ton of money.

I could keep going. Really, I could. I could talk all day about what an awful betrayal of the basic fundamentals of writing this show is, but I think you get the idea. The reality is, a lot of people are going to like this show. A large percentage of anime fans are not at all bothered by anything I just mentioned, because for them, a self-insertion work is all they need. That’s fine and dandy for them, but from my point of view, this show and all shows like it are cancer. Danmachi is the antithesis of the clever and intelligent shows that made me become a fan of the medium in first place; it’s a brain-dead, effortless advertisement for the LN that ends incomplete. If you liked SAO or any other similar LN video game adaptation, you’ll love Danmachi. Everyone else? STAY. AWAY. Far, FAR away.

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Jul 3, 2015

13 of 13 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 7

HaXXspetten (All reviews)

369 people found this review helpful

Danmachi is a textbook example of an anime that is truly a guilty pleasure in its own right. It doesn't have the most impressive writing, there are tons of clichés and fanservice, and the pacing is sometimes questionable but even so it never ever fails to be entertaining, which is something I can't say for most anime.

Danmachi follows a popular trend in recent years of having a setting that takes place entirely within an MMORPG game world. The difference this time however is that... it actually doesn't. Instead, the story takes place in the characters' real world, but their real world functions like a game. Adventurers gain experience points, earn loot, level up, gain skills and magic etcetera, but it all still takes place in their own actual reality. There is a magical dungeon which adventurers go to in search for treasure in order to make a living for themselves. They have to fight the local monsters found inside the dungeon in order to get the loot to drop, and in the process they level up, gain experience and become stronger. Pretty simple. It's a quite fresh take on what is otherwise a somewhat overused concept in recent years.

The story begins when a young rookie adventurer named Bell Cranel one day gets his life saved by a female swordmaster within the dungeon. Her name is Ais Wallenstein, a quiet, airheaded yet very powerful woman whom Bell instantly falls in love with. He sets a goal for himself to become stronger so that he one day might be worthy to stand beside Ais as an equal. Upon doing this, he gains a unique ability which makes him gain experience points at an unbelievable rate as long as he stays true to those feelings of affection.

Bell is an extremely shy and innocent boy, but also a very passionate one. What I like about him is that he actually feels like a real human being. He's not a typical self-insert imbalanced protagonist like Kirito (even if they do have the same voice actor), nor is he a generic shounen lead relying on nakama power. Rather he comes across as a very kind-hearted person who truly cares for those he's close to, and will do anything to help them in any way he can. He's someone you can genuinely relate to and cheer for during his struggles, and given the nature of Danmachi's dungeon crawling oriented storyline, that's a pretty important factor.

The female lead on the other hand would be the poster girl of the 2015 anime fanart community, namely the illustrious goddess Hestia; perhaps the only character ever who somehow ended up more famous than the series which she actually comes from. There are numerous reasons for her insane popularity outbreak. For one, she's an oppai loli, which is an incredibly rare sight in anime regardless of series, but she's also an incredibly energetic, fun and loveable genki girl who keeps breathing life into the show and makes it interesting for the viewer. She's madly in love with Bell, but she doesn't try to hide it any way whatsoever. She keeps dropping hints everywhere that she just wants him to push her down already, but of course Bell doesn't pick up on this very well… because you know, protagonists in anime don't do that for whatever reason. Lastly of course there's the unmistakable outfit and boob string she wears which took the internet by storm so hard it became an actual fashion trend in real life Japan, but I'm sure you know all about that by now. Anyway, as a goddess Hestia is the leader of a "Familia" which operates more or less like a Guild in your typical RPG, where Bell is the only other member, and thus they spend their lives together in a rundown church, barely scraping by with what little money they can earn. Watching the pair of them living their unorthodox lives together never fails to make me smile.

Then there's half a dozen other girls as well, either side characters or main characters introduced later on in the story who also conveniently enough end up falling in love with Bell (shocking, I know) so Danmachi is definitely a harem in the end even if MAL might not have it tagged as one. That being said it doesn't really focus on the harem elements all that much; it's mostly a secondary factor. The main attention is pretty much always on the adventuring aspect itself.

The plot progression of Danmachi is fairly straightforward. It basically follows Bell's struggles as well as how his relationships progress with the other adventurers he ends up encountering during them. You can probably imagine what a shounen adventure anime about RPG dungeon crawling is like, and that image is probably dead on as far as Danmachi is concerned. What I really like about it though is how it manages to present the dungeon as an environment. It actually feels threatening and ominous the deeper you get inside it. Have you ever ended up in a zone that is way too difficult for your character's current level when playing an RPG, and you can't manage to find a way to get back out alive? I mean in the kind of game where you only have one life, or at least you really can't afford to die? That's kind of the same feeling as Danmachi manages to give off to the viewer. As a result, the harder fights in the story feel awfully tense and relatable to any somewhat experienced gamer watching it.

Adaptation-wise, Danmachi is honestly pretty rushed as it spans a whole 5 light novel volumes in just 13 episodes. Yet despite that I never really felt like it was too much of a problem. Somehow, someway even from an anime-only standpoint the plot feels perfectly coherent and understandable. In fact as far as enjoyment value goes I'd even say I liked the anime *more* than the novels, because a) the fight scenes come across better animated, and b) Hestia's character is *way* more likeable in the anime. Yes, there is a lot of content from the novels that is skipped, but it feels like it didn't hurt the overall story very much to leave it out either, so it works out anyway. The only thing the anime occasionally lacks is some proper explanations of certain skills' and items' functionalities, but other than that I don't have a whole lot to complain about.

All-in-all, Danmachi is far from a masterpiece, yet given the premise I think it delivers a lot more than most people probably expected coming into it. The story has most definitely been done before, but Danmachi adds its own twist to it and more importantly it does it *well*. It goes to show that with proper execution, a time-tested concept is still perfectly viable, and as a result it provides an anime that always leaves you with a smile on your face. Call it generic or shallow or whatever, but that doesn't change the fact that it's easily one of the most entertaining anime of the year thus far. And really, when it all comes down to it... that's essentially all that matters.

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Jul 27, 2015

13 of 13 episodes seen

Overall Rating: 3

ZephSilver (All reviews)

291 people found this review helpful

Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon?
a.k.a. DanMachi
a.k.a. Dungeon Harem
a.k.a. Loli Big Boobs
a.k.a. The Misadventures of Breastia
a.k.a. My Breastia Can't Be This Cute
a.k.a. Not SAO
is the latest anime to follow the video game trend that's become increasingly popular within the anime medium. These video game type series, usually MMORPG based, have gotten so commonplace in the last handful of years that they're starting to form their own sub-genre altogether, in a similar fashion to the "moe/cute girls doing cute things" craze in the mid-2000s. With an easy premise to understand, little to nothing to read more

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	Poll: Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Episode 13 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Stark700 - Jun 26, 2015	533 replies	by owokitsu »» Jan 20, 9:52 AM
	Who does Bell end up with? ClassySheepdog - Feb 19, 2017	29 replies	by kKkrAtos »» Dec 15, 2020 5:17 AM

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