The Story

There is a giant dungeon in the middle of the town of Orario. It’s a place where adventurers can go and test themselves and grow their stats. However, you don’t get stats and you can’t become an adventurer unless you are part of a familia. These familia are headed up by gods and goddesses who have come down from the heaven to interact with their children. Bell Cranel is one such adventurer who can only find one god who will work with him, the goddess Hestia, because he is too small and doesn’t look like a normal adventurer. Hestia, also doesn’t look like a normal god and doesn’t have a familia of her own until she brings Bell into the fold. Bell, in the dungeon, encounters Ais Wallenstein, a top level adventurer from the Loki familia when she saves him from a minotaur and he falls for her. This makes Hestia very jealous but grants Bell a skill which allows him to level up quickly.

The Show

Season 1 vs Season 2

So, there are a few things to cover with how this show goes. Let’s start with the first two seasons, since that is what I’ve seen. There is a big tonal shift between the two seasons. The first season is all about Hestia and Bell and how Bell is growing into a hero. The second season focuses more on how the gods interact with each other and I’m not really sure we end up going into the dungeon at all. It is a bit jarring, and while there are parts of it that are still well done, it feels much more scattered in focus, which is a shame, because the first season left more to be explored in the dungeon and with Bell growing. I’m not sure if season three is more focused or not, but I will check it out when it’s dubbed. Season 2 also leans more into the fan service in a different way, I’ll talk about that later.

Sub vs Dub

Before watching the dubbed version of the show recently, I have watched the subbed version as well. The dubbed version is better between the two of them. However, I wanted to watch the subbed version and will likely continue with that in Season 3 now that I’ve watched dubbed because I am working from home, so I can put it on in the background. The dubbed voice acting is good for some characters, but for others is a bit stiff, which is a shame.

Fan Service

Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? is what is known as a harem anime. along with other things. Bell Cranel basically ends up surrounded for the most part by girls. However, he’s more of a clueless leader of the harem versus some anime where characters seem to realize that girls love him. Bell really only has eyes for Ais (pronounced the same) and a lot of the other girls have eyes for Bell. Hestia in particular wants Bell all to herself. And there is fan service because of that, Hestia wears small clothing and is buxom and the same can be said for other goddesses and adventurers as well. In the first season, there is a lot of fan service, but it’s done in a way that really highlights how Bell is such a pure character and only has his focus on Ais. In the second season, we delve into a story arc with Ishtar who runs the redlight distract of Orario and it is much more on display there in a way that is very different than season one. I felt like that arc really pushed it over the top in a way that it didn’t need to.

The Story

But with all of those things, is the story good. Season 1 is one of my favorite anime seasons of all time. They just do a great job of creating this main character who is so focused on becoming the best adventurer and becoming the strongest or catching up to Ais so he is worth her attention. And the interplay between Hestia, the other gods, and Bell is really good. The second season, like I’ve said before, loses some of that focus as the story expands. And the story jumps around a bit more. Now, the first arc in season two is quite good with the Apollo familia, but the subsequent two are less interesting. I want to spend more time in the dungeon and I want more of Bell and Ais, and Hestia complaining about Ais. I hope that season three, whether or not we go back to the dungeon feels like a more cohesive story.

Who Should Watch This Anime?

I do have some final thoughts on this. I have talked about how there is a fair amount of fan service. For that reason, Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? won’t be for everyone. I’ve enjoyed both of my watches of it, though, like I said, the second season wasn’t as good. I think that even with the fan service most anime fans will like season one. The anime has a heavy LitRPG type feel to it, and tells a good story in season one. If that season is just fine, then I’d skip season two. I’m not sure that I’ll ever go back and watch season two again, though I might depending on if more comes out for the anime and I feel like I need to catch up. But season one is good, season two drops off.

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In Ragnorak, Magne, a large but not always the most confident boy due to dyslexia, moves back to Edda, Norway where he was born with his mother, Turid and brother Laurits. It’s a sleepy town with one big industry, Jutul Industries that has most of the jobs. Magne and Laurits are dropped into a new school where Laurits fits in very quickly but Magne has trouble making friends, except for one other loner, a girl named Isolde. But there’s more going on in this town than meets the eye. Magne has an odd encounter with a shopkeeper right away when they come to town and he starts to notice things changing around him. From there the story takes some fantastical turns.

Let’s talk first about how I watched this show. Fairly often when watching shows from other countries I’ll watch it subtitled, this one I did not. I watched it dubbed in English. And I will say compared to some others I’ve seen dubbed, it works well. Yes, the mouths are off because of speaking another language, but overall I felt like it worked. What really works is t hat the voice actors are the same people who did the original voices, this means that you still get the same tone to match their facial expressions since they knew how they said it in the first place. So even if the moths don’t like up with what is being said, you don’t lose the feel. And I think the fact that they are going to carry a Norwegian accent into their English works as well. Growing up in Minnesota surrounded by a bunch of second a third generation Norwegians, there are a lot of mannerisms and speech patterns that carry over into the show. If you’re not as familiar with English/Norwegian speech patterns, I think it’ll still work fine, but might be easier subtitled.

I won’t go too much more into the story than I did in my little introduction, but I really liked it. It definitely has some young adult elements to it, but it isn’t completely young adult. The fact that they are high school students is always going to lend itself a little bit to that, but it does a good job of not dumbing it down to that level. I really enjoy how it delves into Norse Mythology in some ways. There are definite nods to things in the mythology that I didn’t notice right away but eventually became clearer and more interesting. The story is not extremely complex, but it doesn’t need to be, it has enough layers without feeling like it’s overly dramatic or overly convoluted. And they do a good job of developing character in a short time because the season is very short and the episodes aren’t all that long, the final episode is just over thirty minutes.

The look of the show is just beautiful. Now some of that is because Norway has amazing landscapes, because when it comes to special effects those do struggle at times. They clearly don’t have a massive budget for them, but for the most part there aren’t many in an episode. The rest of the filming, that of more standard school or house shots work for the most part. The inside and outside of the Jutul household always seems a bit disconnected because we never get to see a good transition between inside and out, but otherwise everything flows well and builds out the town of Edda.

Overall, this is a very fun show. I think that they do a good job with their blending of the mythology into a modern setting. It is a quick watch at only 6 episodes but still manages to pack a lot into those episodes. If you like that sort of mythology and real world blend, this is definitely one to checkout. And if the concept of Norse Mythology is interesting, I think it’s so fast that it’s probably worth it, even if you don’t love the idea of that fantasy real world blend. One that I’m looking forward to the second season of.

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