Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon

IS IT WRONG TO TRY TO PICK UP GIRLS IN A DUNGEON

What’s the best thing that you can search for in a Fantasy Show? Is it a ton of sword fights and comedy, or is it well-animated females by a studio that cares about being as successful mainstream-wise as possible? Well, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon does everything of that sort and then some!

It’s a series that revolves entirely around giving the audience the fan service they want, along with being a highly entertaining show which is easy to understand and fun to watch throughout its entirety!

The story is based in the massive fantasy city of Orario, in a world that entirely functions like an MMORPG! The story follows Bell Cranel, one of the many wannabe adventurers who want to be the very best! One day, Bell’s life is saved by a fellow adventurer named Aiz Wallenstein, popularly known as the "Sword Princess” in this world.

He is entirely swooned by her personality and strength and aims to become a better sword fighter and adventurer. Now, with the aid of Goddess Hestia, Bell sets off on a journey to do exactly that!

I’ll be honest, Sword Art Online has essentially kicked off a trend that is gaining traction like wildfire, and it’s turned into a sub-genre of its very own. However, this doesn’t mean Orario is the same as other Isekai MMORPG-type anime; it’s based on a fantastical world that somewhat functions like a video game.

The adventurers will go on adventures and journeys to gain experience points, loot, skills, and magical abilities. They also level up in this world as people all in their very own reality. There’s a vast magical dungeon that most adventurers choose to go to for their loot, skill upgrade, level upgrade, and increase their magical abilities.

This is where they find most of their companions or on route to the dungeon. It’s a refreshing take on the video game isekai genre and very well-timed because that specific concept is highly overused! So, it is their interpretation of the natural world but with video game mechanics to their lives.

Now moving on to the characters, Bell is shy, introverted, somewhat skittish, and passionate about becoming the best. The thing that you like about Bell from the very start is that he’s real within the confines of his world.

He feels like a character from a video game, but that is precisely their world. He’s not overpowered or imbalanced; he’s just someone super-strong who can still have the winds knocked out of him in the dungeon at times.

The female lead Hestia on the other hand, she’s essentially a fan-service character with minimal amounts of clothing and barely much screen-time where she’s not acting like a klutz. She became wildly popular in the anime world, and for a good reason; she’s singlehandedly responsible for the first season’s popularity.

She’s an oppai loli character, which means they’re cracking open the fact that she looks like an underage girl, but she’s actually ten million years old (or something like that).

However, she’s popular because she’s just an energetic and entertaining character to watch; it doesn’t matter if she was there just to look good; she breathes life into every scene.

Not to mention, there are a plethora of other girl characters that are also there for fan service, but they do very well in terms of giving Bell and Hestia some decent character development.

These girls definitely push the show’s boundaries towards more of a harem anime because all of them fall in love with Bell at some point.

However, mostly it’s never about the harem aspects and focuses strictly on the adventuring and dungeon-dwelling parts of its world, which are highly entertaining to watch.

Now I will say this, the art in this anime is nothing special at all. The anime has a repetition of enemy types. It’s almost surprising that the enemies lack any variety. It is usually the same kind of enemy during the end, but they did try to fix this in the later episodes, although it was a bit too late at that point.

The other part where I feel like the art is a miss is in its character designs and its overall armor and weapon variety as well. You see some really cool stuff in the shops across Bell’s adventures, but literally, no character uses cool fancy weapons or armor, even the highest level ones.

However, the action quality was excellent; episode 8, in particular, had a specific fight which was just pure perfection. It was well choreographed for the most part, along with some outstanding animation work which was smooth and precise.

Now to be fair, Danmachi’s soundtrack isn’t something that will leave you wanting more; but it’s just good enough to fit the show’s themes perfectly.

The battle OST that usually plays in most fight scenes is epic, and the opening song and the ending songs are much more lighthearted and mellow, making for a good combination of the two.

Most of the comedic scenes and the regular slice of life moments in the show are elevated due to the consistently decent soundtrack.

So, in conclusion, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick up Girls in a Dungeon starts strong with its story and its bold character writing design. However, it lacks a lot in some aspects of art and musical variety. The series manages to be heavily investing all of its time into its characters while showing little to no love to the overall art department.

On the other hand, the fights are uniquely done, which aligns with the refreshing world and the refreshing characters’ stories. In conclusion, it’s a series that knows what it wants to show to the audience and does it well despite missing a few marks in terms of the overall presentation.