DanMachi Season 2 | Anime Review | Pinnedupink.com

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

When it comes to a highly refreshing take on the video game genre that’s very popular in anime these days, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon did it the best. It’s a series that had a refreshing concept for its world design, a fascinating cast of characters, and a really unique sense of humor to it overall.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon Season 2 Anime Review - Pinnedupink.com

The show’s first season was a breath of fresh air, which introduced us to a new concept and a fantastic set of stories and dungeon crawling that wasn’t prevalent in anime before this. So, does the second season of the popular series miss the mark, or does it hit the target right at the center? Let’s find out!

In the same medieval fantasy mega-city of Orario, Bell Cranel, and Hestia, the goddess wishes to turn the Hestia Familia into the most powerful and well-known family in Orario. In this quoted ‘legendary’ quest, they recruit some new, while other old and recurring characters to their party. While I do wish to say more about the season’s overall plot, that’s essentially it. Now, just because the series has a tiny plot that seems to lack in content heavily doesn’t automatically make it wrong. However, there are other issues in this season that need to be addressed.

Honestly, I don’t want to be a bully here, but this season fails at quite literally everything that made the first season such a blast. This second season is a catalog of various anime tropes that have been there for ages, which are made worse by the often poor execution. Every single conflict in this series feels out of place and has lackluster culminations.

The main story doesn’t even seem to go anywhere by the end of the season. Not to mention, even the comedy, which was quickly the best part of the first season, falls flat on its face here. The arcs are so predictable that you see the culmination of it coming two episodes before it happens. There is no sense of intensity here; it’s just good old lighthearted jokes which wouldn’t be an issue if the comedy was better. These fundamental elements combined make for a dull experience overall in terms of the story.

Now for the characters; everything you love about Bell in the previous seasons is gone here. He has the bland, shy demeanor of the typical Isekai hero; he lacks any realism even within the confines of his video-game world.

The problem here lies in the fact that you cannot relate to Bell, which is made worse by his powers getting a bit out of hand. Now I will say he goes through some hefty character development and is very likable by the end of the second season, but the sudden personality change was off-putting.

Hestia is used excessively for pure fan service, and it usually doesn’t work at all and makes her character much less entertaining to watch. This is part of the problem of season 2, everything is played off as laughs and giggles, and nothing is made essential or intense. The serious factors don’t feel that way due to the characters making stupid decisions.

Now JC Staff’s art is much better here; in my opinion, it isn’t much different from the overall quality in the previous season, but it is much sharper and focused. The backgrounds are more detailed, and the characters have more personality showing off just by their armor.

The Familia Wars arc brings an element of strategy to the combat scenarios, making the fight scenes much more fun to watch in overall choreography. Not to mention the insanely fluid animation that JC Staff is known for is highly prevalent here.

The aesthetic of the previous season with the much sharper designs works wonderfully, every single shot looks crisp, and each character’s design is way more accented. The fights are as cool as they’ve always been, but now they look cooler due to much better artwork being done.

In terms of the soundtrack, this new season keeps it relatively the same. It felt like I was hearing the same tunes from the first season very much on repeat; however, they’re a bit different to them sonically, which makes sense.

They’re fine-tuned to be more emotionally resonant with whatever scene is on screen; unfortunately, there aren’t many scenes that hit that way even with the great music. The opening was probably the best one yet, which is still a decent silver lining despite the show being pretty bad overall.

In conclusion, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon II fails horribly at most of the things that it tries to showcase. It’s a massive downfall in quality; from being an anime that was vastly entertaining, somewhat embarrassing for the main character, and highly unique was turned into a hodge-podge mash-up of typical anime tropes and terrible comedy.

The great takeaways from this were the increased quality of art and animation and the soundtrack being even better than the previous season. However, in terms of the story and characters, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon II is entirely inadequate.