The story is nothing to write home about. To try and make it seem like DanMachi is doing something original with the players getting trapped in a video game premise, because for all intents and purposes, the real world IS the video game. Granted, it is fairly interesting seeing simple gaming terms such as leveling up and skills being name dropped in a setting that isn't actually a video game, but it still doesn't make it any more original. I really do like the setting though. It isn't that much more special than your typical anime fantasy setting, but it coincides well with other plot points such as the gods and goddesses.
The actual plot is about as simple as you can get. Our main character, Bell Cranel, wants to become a hero and get stronger so a girl who was much stronger than him at ep 1 will respect and fall in love with him. No seriously, that's it. You really can't get much more of a paper thin plot than that.
The characters are actually worse off than the story if you can believe it. Bell Cranel has many noticeable character flaws, but to his credit, there are some things done to alleviate a few of his problems. Even though he is extremely overpowered after a while, and a bunch of stupid powerful skills and weapons get asspulled out of nowhere to make him ever more powerful, the simple fact that he starts off with basically nothing makes him a little better off. He and his goddess, Hestia, have little to nothing, and his determination to get off the ground and get stronger makes the whole "become a hero" plot thing have more humility and humbleness. Unfortunately, there isn't really anything to alleviate his massive case of harem syndrome, where almost every single female (keep in mind most of the cast is female, probably to drive home this sole fact) has at least a crush on him. It's silly and unrealistic, but there isn't much you can do with a harem to begin with, so I won't harp on it too much.
Hestia was the talk of the town in the anime community for a while with her character design. Apparently combining big boobs with the loli stature and a boob ribbon makes for a riveting character. She does get some decent development early on with her earnest dedication to help Bell as much as she can, but loses lots of screentime after the halfway point, making her character feel fairly insignificant as time goes on.
Other than that, there is an incredibly large cast of characters, and many of them have little to nothing other than their standard sole character trait, but I'll quickly explain my thoughts on some of the more prominent ones.
I think they went too far with Lili to the point where I couldn't reason with her actions even though they were explained. I get her lack of trust, but it doesn't make sense to me that she would still try to actively hurt Bell after how honest Bell was (Bell was stupid about the situation too, but it kind of comes with the territory with characters of his nature).
Welf's whole thing with magic weapons didn't really make sense.
Quiet characters can make some of the best characters if written well, and Aiz wasn't interesting. She was just plain boring. Ryu was a little better off, but not by much.
For the most part, the art looks like typical J.C. Staff fare. That's not really a bad thing, it just has that very soft and faint look that a lot of there shows have. The animation definitely has it's high points though. There weren't many, but there were a couple of fight scenes were really well choreographed with great use of camera work. Bell's fight with a minotaur was easily the best part of the whole series because it not only utilized those elements well, it also created perfect tension. I mean, you know Bell is gonna win, but it certainly doesn't hinder your show to give him a losing perspective from time to time, now does it?
Even though the show doesn't try to do much, and also has a great deal of flaws, I still managed to enjoy it for what it was. Even though the story and characters were weak, the simple fact of it being set in a fantasy world with game mechanics and some good fight scenes makes even the most mediocre of shows such as this still bearable. Call me a pleb if you must, but sometimes I just can't help myself. I still wouldn't really recommend this to most people unless you are like me and just like the idea of RPG anime.
