Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru no Darou ka 03-04

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All aboard the Lili ship

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In contrast to my analysis on Ore Monogatari!!, I’ll be writing DanMachi more about the actual events that transpire, thus making it appear much more candid, because I can manage a 260% increase in jokes. Also important to note is that there will be a 1,000% reduction in the appearance of a certain Kami-sama’s ribbon. I can feel your anger already, and it makes me smile, so happy in fact that I feel like buying myself a present. Maybe a string. That’s blue. I wonder what I’ll be able to use it for. It’s a string; there’s a rainbow of possibilities.

In the spirit of those statements, I’ll just come right out, and say it. It took way too long for Hestia to give Bell that knife. After doing the math, Hestia was with Bell while holding the knife for six minutes and twenty-one seconds. That doesn’t include time in-between the scenes they were together (for reference, the complete time from meeting to giving is seventeen minutes and twenty-four seconds), which made it appear even longer than that. At first it was alright, because they’re on a date; you expect she’ll give the knife to him at the end. But, when a massive gorilla monster appears, and you still don’t hand over a weapon you were originally going to give until four minutes and fifty seconds after it starts chasing you, it’s too much. Is a bear coming to maul your face off? Don’t worry, I’ll give you the tranquilizer gun in a few minutes.

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My, what big teeth you have.

This issue in particular accentuates the main (and only really) problem with DanMachi; there’s a decent story being told, but it’s inhibited by moments construed mainly for plot convenience. In basic terms, the writing is just poor sometimes. On one hand, thanks to it we did get to see some great fighting of monster and man, but on the other, I’m still left wondering why Bell destroyed more armor than he needs to. If you’re going to stab the monster in the chest, why did you bother cutting his headpiece, and since you broke the headpiece first, why are you bothering with the chest? Bell literally dive-bombed him and didn’t bother to go for the area he previously exposed. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt this time and attribute it to the naivety of a warrior adventurer, and hopefully as he gains experience and confidence, he’ll be able to fight without relying on a pep talk and stat increases even though that’s what the system revolves around right now.

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Even with a few mishaps, there’s good ground being tread. There was more Kami-sama time, Eina got away from the desk (I’d question if they had contacts whenever this takes place, but seeing her without glasses was a nice change so whatever), and the introduction to Lili’s plight (SHE’S SO SMALL GAHHH okay, I’m okay, just had to get that out). It’s been all but outright stated that members of the Soma Familia need money for something and because other adventurers are more…stingy with the loot they obtain, Lili tries to raise it by stealing from the adventurers who swindle her and reselling it to sketchy lawn gnomes who own businesses. If I had to take a guess, I figure from all the evidence that there will be some kind of development where Lili may want to leave her Familia, but because of the financial troubles her current Familia is in, she’ll (or possibly any member) have some ridiculous amount to pay before she’s (they’re) allowed to. It’s a rather standard reason to keep people around, but what’s more compelling is that we don’t know how the Soma Familia became so desperate to begin with. Bell seems to be doing alright for two people just starting out, so what’s the problem with an established Familia? It remains to be seen.

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I lied, there’s the ribbon.

Bonus Dungeons

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Now that Bell’s been built up a bit, we’re starting to get into the more interesting aspects of the story, namely the addition of his team members and Freya’s mysterious intentions. Since the situation regarding leaving and joining other Familias hasn’t been made clear (or the third member entirely), it’ll be interesting to see if Bell’s entourage ends up joining the Familia, or if it’ll remain with just Hestia and him until the end. Freya was slightly suspicious to begin with, but we’re slowly beginning to see her true colors which apparently are red and black. There was also a distinct lack of Hestia in the most recent episode which means if we don’t get a heaping next episode, someone is going to feel cheated, and it’s not going to be me.

About

I am a fear of life, I am afraid of life, and I am a fantasm of life, always a flame, always aflame, and always the same.
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59 Responses to “Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru no Darou ka 03-04”

  1. Di Gi Kazune says:

    Dunno whether this is good new or bad, but questionable Hestia cosplay has appeared on the internets. Also with 34 uses of her ribbon.

  2. ckuri says:

    There was no point to give him the knife earlier as he already had a knife and Hestia’s would not be a better one until she updates his status. But updating his status takes some time, which they hadn’t as they were chased.

    • Kyon says:

      His first knife broke in front of Hestia. If you strike an object and your knife breaks, it’s very reasonable to assume your second, identical knife will also break trying to strike the same object. Pretty much anytime after the first knife was shattered would’ve been a great time for Hestia to mention she had a different knife.

      I could agree with linking the knife to Bell would take time, but the whole status system is entirely created for convenience. There isn’t a practical reasoning for it being there, unlike say Log Horizon; it’s bending rules just for the sake of breaking them, which is fine, but in this case it’s abusing that to draw the whole ordeal out. And I actually went back to skim through, and it took less than a minute to link the knife and update his status. There’s a weird disconnect between when Bell locks Hestia in to where he’s suddenly fighting the gorilla again, so we don’t know how much time really passed, but it seemed like it would’ve been enough to get it done.

      There’s also a panning shot that shows the size inside of the passageway (not the cavern) Hestia was locked into. If this gorilla has to try and squeeze between two buildings to get through, Bell could’ve locked himself in there with her and been completely fine.

      • cryum says:

        Bell could’ve locked himself in there with her and been completely fine.

        the gorilla got through in the end, by destroying the walls in the way. Besides, that chain had a lot of reach.

        Updating Status is something that is done from the complete safety of home. It isn’t fast and it isn’t supposed to be fast. What we see is always the END of a Status Update.

        • Kyon says:

          That wall looked to be about a foot thick, and while the wall the gate was attached seemed to be around the same thickness, the thickness of the surrounding walls would be closer to a couple meters. What I meant was that the gorilla wouldn’t fit if you compare to Hestia’s proportions, and the way that structure is designed would’ve made it take an extremely long time for him to try and muscle his way through, if he could at all.

          Then it’s on the adaptation (or source) for not explaining that. Every time it’s been shown being done, it was completed in less than a minute, so if it looks to be the whole thing, and they don’t state otherwise, people are going to think it doesn’t take that long.

          • cryum says:

            any retort I have was already given in my initial comment, but it isn’t here. Did the commenting system eat it?

            Basically, a lot of stuff was omitted in the anime, and they even flat out changed some stuff to be wrong, like taking the time to break the armor and the gorilla thing leaving a magic stone when it died.

            As for the Status thing….think about it. Some gods might be good at doing it quickly(and others can encrypt, but that will never come up in the anime), but come on: a divine ritual that grants a god’s blessing onto a mortal? Of course it’ll take long. Gods are hammy, the ritual was not intended to be done in time-sensitive situations, and the time involved demands respect(so tens of adventurers don’t bother their god everyday and treat them like a robot. The gods do this for fun, after all.)

            Purposely making the process inefficient would not be surprising, although I don’t believe the source ever addresses exactly how much time it takes, nor why.

            Basically, if you’ve read any of the stories where gods are generally dicks for no reason, this wouldn’t be the hardest thing to assume.

          • cryum says:

            Is there a problem when posts are too long? My comments keep getting eaten.

            Lots of things are omitted in the anime, and they even made things flat out wrong for some parts. Bell didn’t waste time breaking armor, he broke the magic stone, which kills the monster. It’s just that no magic stone=no money, so people don’t do it often.

            • Kyon says:

              I know there’s some issue, but I honestly can’t remember what it was. I think it’s that the spam filter randomly goes out of whack and eats comments.

              Even though it sounds like I’m being negative, I’m not; I’m just very critical. Nothing in the anime bothers me that much (there’s only one scene I actively dislike), it’s just the little things like that would’ve explained most of the gripes being brought up.

            • Highway says:

              We don’t know why comments get trapped by the spam filter. We run dual spam filters on the site, and if you saw the volume of spam we got, you’d understand why. But unfortunately, that means that some legitimate comments get caught in the spam filter. Staff go through and look for legit comments before deleting the rest multiple times per day.

              The best thing to do if you submit acomment and have the page refresh without your comment showing up (and the URL will show a comment number) is to just make a quick comment that you had a comment caught by the spam filter. That lets us know to look for it, even though we do look anyway. What you shouldn’t do is make the same comment again, because whatever made it get caught will make it get caught again. Try not to get too frustrated, it happens to everyone (it happened to me most of all, that’s why I got this nickname).

            • skylion says:

              Also…if you want a bit of a peek behind the curtain. The UI for our spam page gives us ten hit’s at a time per page to review. Many of them are at least 20 paragraphs of gobbledy-gob. We typically have around 100 spam comments at a given time. So when you alert us with a Spammy! comment we can search by your handle and fish out the comment.

  3. Wanderer says:

    In the spirit of those statements, I’ll just come right out, and say it. It took way too long for Hestia to give Bell that knife. After doing the math, Hestia was with Bell while holding the knife for six minutes and twenty-one seconds. That doesn’t include time in-between the scenes they were together (for reference, the complete time from meeting to giving is seventeen minutes and twenty-four seconds), which made it appear even longer than that. At first it was alright, because they’re on a date; you expect she’ll give the knife to him at the end. But, when a massive gorilla monster appears, and you still don’t hand over a weapon you were originally going to give until four minutes and fifty seconds after it starts chasing you, it’s too much. Is a bear coming to maul your face off? Don’t worry, I’ll give you the tranquilizer gun in a few minutes.

    The Hestia Knife could not be used until she updated his status, using that ritual where she does the magic thing with the runes on his back. In case that isn’t obvious, that cannot be done while running from a monster! Ergo, she could not “simply hand him the knife.” This complaint has become something of a pet-peeve of mine because it keeps showing up, leading me to wonder if anyone was actually paying any attention to the episode, or if they were just looking for things to complain about.

    In regards to the chest armor, that’s because the thing had a weak-point right where he stabbed it. The anime apparently skipped over this detail.

    • Kyon says:

      After Bell blinded it, they hardly ran before stopping for thirty-seven seconds, which was enough time for Bell to lock Hestia in, say a few things, and run away. At least from what is seen, the ritual took fifty-one seconds. I said it above too, but there’s a time lapse to where Bell is fighting the gorilla somewhere else. I don’t care about the rest of the time they were running, it just looked like this specific moment would have given them enough time for the ritual instead of their exchange, and it was extended for suspense.

      Thanks for mentioning that; it makes more sense now.

  4. cryum says:

    As already stated, the knife would be useless without updating Bell’s status and binding it to him.

    Hestia COULD have mentioned it when Bell told her to run, but they were both high on emotions and adrenaline, nor did Hestia have enough time to update his status, so it gets a pass.

    It just took an ungodly amount of PLOT time, rather than actual time.

    As for breaking the armor thing, LN>=manga>>anime. So many things were changed in favor of style and not having to draw as much. The weakpoint of every monster is their gem-thing. Break that, and it’s dead(and you don’t get money). In everywhere except the anime, Bell aimed straight for the gem. Just one attack, his only flashy parts were avoiding/breaking the chain.

    The main themes are still present, but much of the setting details were thrown out the window.

  5. belatkuro says:

    Like I said in the episode 2 post, it was a weird place to stop with Bell caging Hestia to save her. If only they could have started episode 3 with the Silverback chasing them then we wouldn’t have gotten complaints from everyone as to why Hestia didn’t give the knife. Because she would have given it to him eventually in the same episode along with showing the status updating which is the explanation everyone was looking for.

    One thing to mention about since we’re introduced to the concept of Supporters. The monsters dying aren’t suppose to disintegrate like that. They only disintegrate after the Magic Stones are extracted from their bodies. Making them disintegrate kind of lessens the work that Supporters are suppose to do. Supporters are the ones who move the bodies away in the middle of the fights and extract the stones.

    And google Soma and you’d know what the Soma Familia are getting desperate for.

    • skylion says:

      …really? The supporters are supposed to do more than stand around and do a Nodwick imitation? Sometime the cuts director choose to do are just to minimal.

    • Kyon says:

      I was wondering what Supporters really were supposed to do since all it showed was that they pick up Magic Stones and wear a huge backpack you also don’t know what’s the use of. It was kind of odd hearing it said that Supporters help a lot, and then you’re stuck questioning if collecting the Magic Stones really helps that much.

  6. JPNIgor says:

    Is Lilli another oppai-loli character? I know that if she’s seen upfront, she doesn’t seem to have anything, but when she’s seen from the side, her sillhouete seems bigger than expected .-.

    • Kyon says:

      I noticed that too, but I don’t think so. It seems like it’s more her design makes her look that way and not that she really is.

    • BlackBriar says:

      If she is, it’s totally welcome. About time these pettanko lovers were defied. 😛

      • JPNIgor says:

        Aww, pettanko is not that bad either D= Don’t discriminate against flat-chested gurls or all of Kugimiya Rie’s characters will come scare in your sweetest dreams.

  7. skylion says:

    Wait a second! Just hold the phone here! What the heck am I doing on this side of the post? 🙂

    For my viewing pleasure, and discrimination, I’m on the fence about the knife reveal/Status Update thing. It works for moment, as it does provide tension and release. And despite the foundation, they made the scenes work really well with each other. Good stuff.

    But, it does rather feel like the writing got a bit to close to being in the corner. I feel it’s too much to assume. Yes, we can understand that the Status Update does take more time off screen, and we are seeing the final phase onscreen. But that is still to much to leave to assumption, as many things could be assumed and be wrong. Not bad stuff, but a risky enterprise on a cliffhanger. Leaves to much time for the viewer to ruminate at the Fridge.

    …and I thought they plaed LILi so well. There’s quite a bit going on there with some very simple tricks. She’s assumed to be one fantasy race, but is actually another. She’s on the shady side with a few character assuming the worst of her, and not being totally wrong. That gives Bell a great character to work with as a “supporter” Plus she is so darn squee worthy. Those ears, those FEEEELS.

    …and now we know why they cast Tomato-chan! Kirito plus Asuna in any fantasy setting is just to cute to ignore. I cast her as a “big sister” in the FI, but she’s expanding beyond that. DAT BLUSH!

  8. zztop says:

    Sales of Dungeon’s LNs, especially the recently released Vol 7, have skyrocketed ever since the anime came out.
    The question now is whether a Season 2 is possible.

    The novels also explain that magic stones are magic fuel; they can be used to power various devices such as street lamps and elevators. The guild sells the stones collected to other places outside Orario. So there’s a rather viable economic system inside Orario.

    • skylion says:

      I couldn’t find the information quickly. How many LNs are there? And does it look like they are “compressing” too many volumes to fit a single 13 episode cour?

      The magic stones detail needs to be in the show!

      • belatkuro says:

        Volume 7 just came out this month. Check the Manga/LN sales news that will come out on MAL in a few hours. Last week, all volumes were charting with volume 7 selling 62k(both regular and limited edition combined).

        And yes, they’re trying to cover a lot of volumes it seems. Initial projections were up to volume 3 but from the OP and the pacing, seems they’re planning to cover up to volume 5. We’re currently halfway through volume 2.

        • skylion says:

          So…confirmed for late-night “let’s advertise the merch” variety of show?

          • belatkuro says:

            It’s already done its job given the LNs charting again and getting a big boost in sales. Plus, lots of Hestia merchandise that can be pumped out. So yeah.

      • cryum says:

        And does it look like they are “compressing” too many volumes to fit a single 13 episode cour?

        Haha. Hahahaha. If only you knew how unbelievably fast the pacing is compared to the source, and how much was cut.

        I mean, the manga was a little slow, but it certainly didn’t waste the extra time they took.

    • Di Gi Kazune says:

      Theory: Magic stones = Fossiled Mana from dead monsters

      In some places, it would be called: Fossil Fuel.

  9. zztop says:

    Freya was slightly suspicious to begin with, but we’re slowly beginning to see her true colors.

    I thought her true intentions were very obvious. She wants to take Bell home with her, have tea together and turn him into her eternal love slave. Cosmic maneating at its finest!

    I’m definitely planning to contribute some parody art to the Hestia ribbon scene. Anyone got any good ideas?

  10. Highway says:

    I was a little disappointed in the straightforwardness of episode 3. Not necessarily that they dragged out Hestia giving Bell the knife, but that it felt like it was the whole episode. Comparing it to episode 4, which I felt was a very well-layered multi-faceted story episode, episode 3 was very one-note and rather paled in comparison.

  11. BlackBriar says:

    In the spirit of those statements, I’ll just come right out, and say it. It took way too long for Hestia to give Bell that knife. After doing the math, Hestia was with Bell while holding the knife for six minutes and twenty-one seconds.

    The thing is there’s a difference of time between the viewers watching and the characters themselves interacting with each other. Therefore, no way of determining what or what didn’t take long. Besides, Hestia didn’t get a good opportunity with Bell flailing around. Then came the gorilla.

    No disrespect to the megane fans but I find Eina looks better without wearing her glasses. With them on her in particular, they give the impression of someone stuffy and strict. I was surprised when Hestia pointed out to her being a half elf. Those kinds of breeds are becoming more common than pureblooded elves in anime.

    • Kyon says:

      The next line (and that whole paragraph in case no one noticed) was ironically hinting that the point is when you spend so much actual time on something, it starts dominating everything else. When that stretch of time is spent for the knife being given, regardless of the time it’s really been in the show, it’s going to feel like that’s all that went on, because we’re dealing with exposure bias. It took part of the end to episode two and the entire first half of episode three; it felt like so much time was spent on it, that the other important scenes in the rest of the episode felt very subdued and downplayed in comparison.

      I can’t decide which I like better. :/ But I liked the time spent showing the other sides of her outside of work.

  12. Di Gi Kazune says:

    HestiaFesta has taken over! Click at your own peril.

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