Just OK.
It didn't impress me, but it kept me entertained for its run so I guess it wasn't that bad. I'd watch it again if a friend really wanted to watch it with me, but I'd never pull it up myself. I'm not sorry I watched it, but I won't recommend it.
A lot of people have compared this show to Sword Art Online, but for my part, I watched this after KonoSuba and immediately thought "oh, this is what that was a parody of." So what does "Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka" (DanMachi from here on in the review) have to offer?
It has action, harem antics, and comedy mostly centered around said harem antics. And that doesn't sound so bad. It's at least a decent looking show, and both action and comedy are rather nice to have, and I'm not even opposed to harem antics.
There are a couple places, though, where it falls apart. The elements of the show don't mix will. This is a world where the gods of mythology, such as Hestia and Loki, have come down from the heavens to live among mortals and grant favored champions their blessing... which takes the form of being a player character in an RPG, apparently. Maybe coming in from the west I have a different perspective but when I see a straight-up RPG-mechanics universe it strikes me as inherently farcical, yet here that aspect is played surprisingly entirely seriously. It's a slight disconnect, but it highlights the most important thing I feel that DanMachi gets wrong: I never really know whether I should take it seriously or not.
There are shows where a disconnect between serious and humorous can work, but here the elements distracted from each other. It was hard to laugh at Hestia's antics when the fighting takes itself deadly serious, and at times it was hard to get into the death, bloodshed, and trauma to be inflicted on some characters when coming off more lighthearted or playful elements. If this wanted to be a serious show (well, work, I haven't read the light novels but I imagine at least some of this applies there), that would be fine -- drop or downplay the RPG mechanics, play the harem aspects with more emotional weight, and cut down or out the fanservice-style comedy antics. If it wanted to be parodical, that would be fine too -- take some emphasis off the life-or-death nature of dungeon delving and the suffering certain characters go through. As it is it's just muddy.
The other weak point in the show is the cast. I don't hate them, there aren't any characters whose names I'll be cursing, but I think that they were overall... well, the on-site rating system says it all: Mediocre. Bell is mostly a bland nice guy who's not comedy-stupid but isn't the sharpest tack either. Supposedly he wants to pick up girls which could have been a really funny start for a character, but you'd think he'd notice the girls throwing themselves at him if he actually ran with that. Ais Wallenstein is the tight-lipped (EXTREMELY tight-lipped) seemingly emotionless girl we're supposed to assume has a sweet core who really hammered home to me how I'm tired of the amount of play that sort of love interest is getting. Hestia actually annoyed me. She had some annoying moments but her clingy love interest act got kind of old kind of fast. The supporting cast could be nice at times, but at times what seemed like a good bit of development could be thrown out, either by the arc being resolved too soon or the character who comes out of it not feeling like an outgrowth of the character who came before.
That said, was this a bad show? No. It was pretty to look at, the action was decent, and even the comedy had at least a couple hits. I just have no desire to go back for seconds.
