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.
