Initially, I did not plan to watch Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka (ダンジョンに出会いを求めるのは間違っているだろうか, lit. Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?) until pictures of a main heroine, Hestia exploded on my Twitter timeline. Does it live up to the hype and the title? Not quite.
The story focuses on a young aspiring adventurer named Bell Cranel. He became one with the dreams of picking up a girl in a dungeon. In order to achieve his goals, he joined the Hestia familia. Sadly, she ends up getting saved by a beautiful female knight named Aizu Wallenstein after he ran into a high-level Minotaur while being frightened. After that embarrassing incident, he becomes motivated in order to become as strong as Aizu, who he currently has a crush on.
Initially, I felt that the show was very interesting and enjoyable. The setting felt very similar to an actual Japanese role-playing and dungeon crawling games. Since I play a lot of these games, I enjoyed the overall premise of Bell trying to level up since he felt like an underdog becoming an actual hero.
Sadly, this was not the case after he beaten the boosted Minotaur and gained the Argonaut ability. In short, Bell managed to become worse than Kirito from Sword Art Online in the second half because the directors decided to make that ability overpowered in the anime. In short, it can one-hit knock out any monsters at any level. To top that off with his tendency to become timid around girls, he gets annoying real quick.
As for the characters, I like most of them. As always, Erina is a great receptionist that helps Bell along the way. Of course, there is Hestia, who has a cheerful personality and tends to become jealous towards other girls who have an interest in him. Lastly, there is Aizu, who is a very strong and capable woman despite being a natural air head.
Still, it is kind of sad that once the side characters finish their arc, they get shoved into the background with only a few lines. Lilly is a good example of this after she attempted to betray Bell and eventually got saved by him. Aside from being his love interest and helping him out in the dungeon as a supporter, she does not have a major role outside of that. Ryuu, who is one of the maids from the restaurant, might get the same treatment. Sure, it is too early to tell until a sequel happens, but it might happen since she already revealed her past along with helping out with the final boss in the final episode. It is a shame since I liked her character along with Lilly along with being a far more interesting character than Bell.
Overall, Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka had a lot of potential, but I felt that most of it was wasted. To me, by making Bell’s Argonaut skill overpowered, it basically took all the excitement out of the battles. I will not be surprised if they will give him more overpowered abilities when he levels up. Even so, I still enjoyed some moments from the show and if they make another season, hopefully the directors will come to their senses and nerf some of his abilities along with making him less annoying. I doubt it, but you will never know.
Overall Rating: 8.0/10, B-, Good
Which is why I say the LN is always better…
Anyways, anyways, glad to hear that you came around to watching it. Although quite boring, as you had admitted, we were all initially excited for this show. And the first episode didn’t sweat. But sadly…on and on, it became what we feared…or more than that.
Who was your favorite? You highlighted my favorites very well in what they are not as well measured to be.
It seems that most shows don’t do light novels right, although there are some that are really good. Of course, Bell defeating every monster in one shot in the second half kind of made the battles boring when the show was exciting at first. Yep, they surely tricked us.
For me, Lilly is my favorite since she is cute with dog ears and tails… of course, I also like Ryu, but too bad she doesn’t get much screen time.
I brought volume 01 of the light novel within a few days of the anime getting announced, so I was sort of excited for it. While I didn’t take much issue with Bell getting overpowered, the anime itself just seem like it was very thin. The setting, characters, their behavior – all of that was portrayed just like in the light novels, but some of it just felt like it didn’t translate on-screen all that well. Nonetheless, being a sucker for anything fantasy, I still enjoyed the series greatly and hope gets another season. Other than that, never expected Hestia to be as popular as she was – seen a whole lot of fanart and other characters parodying her style of dress more than I wanted to surfing image boards. Must be a Japanese thing…
While it’s easy to adapt a light novel, it’s very difficult to make a good adaptation. Considering the whole premise, I wouldn’t be surprised if only the surface of the story is told in the Anime and they left so many points out. Still, I kind of enjoy fantasy stories since I play a good amount of Japanese role playing games. They make a good escape for a few hours after work.