DanMachi (Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?) – Season 1 (2015) Review

SIDE NOTE: This review is both new writer Cam’s first article for Stuff and That, and it’s the site’s first Anime Review, so it’s all new with this one. We’ll tell you more about ol’ Cam later on About us and the shizzle we dizzle, but, for now, enjoy (sort of) this review of some random anime we’ve never heard of.

I watched this anime when it was first released and it was awesome. If you haven’t seen it already, I’ll give you a brief overview of what it’s actually about.

The anime sets place in a world where adventurers must fight monsters in dungeons to level up and work for their gods. Each adventurer joins a familia and works for a god. Bell is the only adventurer that works for Hestia. And as a result they’re kind lacking money.

Bell does however level up extremely fast in comparison to other adventurers. And of course, he’s got those badass protagonist skills.

When I first watched this anime, I wasn’t expecting too much. But I can safely say it smashed my expectations. It is easily my favourite anime of 2015. The concept of the anime is overall very cool, it is in a way similar to others such as Log Horizon, but in my opinion is better.

I was impressed that the voice acting in this anime isn’t that bad. They picked a good voice actor for Bell Cranel. The guy’s name is Yoshitsugu Matsuoka and he does voices for characters in popular anime such as No Game No Life and Sword Art Online. So the voice actors are pretty good for most of the characters.

And no I’m not going to talk about dub voice actors, because dubbed anime is terrible.

Art Style! The art style is decent. It’s well… Yunno… the same as a lot of other anime. It’s not often you find any recent anime that are low quality. The art style and quality of all the fight scene spells and stuff is pretty good. It doesn’t hurt your eyes like No Game No Life does. I did think it was a little graphic, not sure if that’s a good thing or not. By that I just mean blood, a lot of blood. So just beware of that.

I think art style fits in with how characters look… So yay! Less paragraphs! The character design is pretty good, especially with the main characters. Bell Cranel (the main one) actually looks different to the usual dark haired protagonist you see in anime. Instead he has red eyes with white hair, which I think looks pretty badass. I do have one problem with this anime’s characters though. The fan service. If you don’t know what that is, then search it up. Actually, don’t search it up… If you’re a kid then definitely not. Wait, you’re reading this? Anyway, I’m not going through the pain of explaining it. The design and stuff of all the monsters and dungeons is really cool though. Probably one of the best things about the whole anime.

The anime doesn’t really have any backstory, so not a lot of motivation. Instead it’s more about Bell’s journey to level up and impress Aiz. Aiz is the sword princess chick that saves him in the very first episode. So yunno, lovey dovey stuff. Although you do learn some pretty awesome things about Bell later on in the anime, so it’s well worth watching. However, the character development at the start is a bit scarce, and it definitely isn’t one of the highlights of the show.

Now, the fight scenes. They. Are. Awesome. They’re the best since Parasyte the Maxim. The fights are just insane, awesome and there is motivation and suspense, and the protagonist is awesome in all of it. I can’t even explain it. The boss fights are just insanely cool to watch. I’ll admit, at one point I even stood up and starting shouting at my IPad screen.

There’s all that cool stuff, but unlike most anime there isn’t really a villain. Well, there is… But you never see her, and she never does anything particularly bad. Usually anime have a villain that is really powerful and the main protagonist must reach their level. But DanMachi’s “Villain” type character doesn’t have much light. (No I mean literally, whenever you see her she’s in the shadows.) But I’m not sure if I like that factor or not. I just hope that if there is another season, we actually get so see the villain. Not just an edgy camera angle of her sat in the dark or something. Also, another thing, if you watch the anime, you can quite easily guess the villain’s true identity. Even from the edgy 700% zoom.

So yeah, that’s my review of it. It’s very good and I highly recommend watching it. Its fight scenes, protagonist and generally the whole design is genuinely amazing. It also ends on a cliff hanger type thingy, but don’t get your hopes up. DanMachi is awesome, but it hasn’t got the attention it’s needed, and although I love it, it is a bit flawed, with its small amount of back stories, its kinda generic art style (which don’t look bad though) and sorta flat villain particularly. But I don’t really care about that stuff much and for now, if you’re an anime lover, you should definitely watch this if you haven’t already. I really hope there’ll be a second series.

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