I'd like to preface this review with saying I general don't review sequels or side stories, because you'll find me usually saying it was as enjoyable, slightly less enjoyable, or slightly more enjoyable than the first or original story. This show has forced me to turn it into an exception.
Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria (which is a goddamn mouthful), better known as DanMachi: Sword Oratoria, is a spin-off side-story that shows the main story but from a different perspective. Who's perspective? The Loki Familia's, but more importantly from Ais' perspective.
The entire idea of the show started out well, being able to see things from how Ais saw them, but it very quickly degraded into watching Lefiya be the worst tsunyuri girl ever, every episode. For one reason or another, they thought Lefiya's "I have great potential but currently am fucking useless" mixed with "I love and look up to the girl that's my senior/hero" was going to end up with a good character. They could not have done worse with her. The constant naivete coming from Lefiya, the constant whining, the constant not being able to do anything remotely useful (until the very end), and the constant frustration that she gave me as a viewer was just horrendous. She alone destroyed the fun that this show could've given me.
On the topic of characters other than Lefiya who is probably one of the worst this year alone, every other character has the emotion or depth of a fucking brick, which is painfully tough and flat as an airway run strip. Ais continually acts like a robot whilst showing very little emotion, the twins are just there to be supporting characters and don't ever break that trend, Bete is an angry dick, and the three seniors are all very stiff. Loki probably portrays the most emotion, going from trying to cop a feel on anybody, to somewhat serious on certain matters. The best part of this show was seeing Bell and Hestia, which is just painfully ironic in this scenario.
The story revolves around Ais and the Loki Familia and how Ais goes from being mistaken as her mother to some darker things that may bring the world to ruin. Or something like that. The story in all actuality was less important than they made the character interactions out to be, and those as previously mentioned was like watching paint dry for 12 weeks. Other than some new characters that you can only see through Ais's perspective, Sword Oratoria was made out to be far darker than the original story from Bell. This didn't play out well because the original story did well as a lighthearted fantasy/adventure show. The story was like watching an extremely convoluted game of Clue with DanMachi characters, and then some fighting instead of guessing who the killer is.
One of the redeeming features of Sword Oratoria was that the art and animation were at least somewhat pleasing to look at in some situations. Some fight scenes were nicely done, some nice screenshots to be taken, but it never went up and beyond the "average" level that it had maintained through 12 episodes. The soundtrack was so laughably forgettable that I can't even really make a remark on it anymore in terms of whether it was good or not.
TL;DR: DanMachi: Sword Oratoria is a waste of 12 episodes that could've been put towards making a second season instead. All you'll get from this is how much you realize Bell and Hestia were the best part of DanMachi, and how the characters in this are painful to watch. I would not recommend this unless you really don't mind how awful the character and story are.
