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.
