Manga Review – Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Vol 01-03
Language: English
Direction: Right to Left
Story: Fujino Omori/Art: Kunieda/Character Design: Suzuhito Yasuda
Publisher: Yen Press
Type: Series, Manga, LightNovel
Genre: RPG, Shounen, Romance
Availability: Volume/Digital
ISBN: Vol01: 9780316302173/ Vol 02: 9780316345910/ Vol 03: 9780316352079
Synopsis:Bell Cranel is just trying to find his way in the world. Of course, in his case, the “world” is an enormous dungeon filled with monsters, below a city run by gods and goddesses who have way too much time on their hands.
He’s got big dreams but not much more when a roll on the random encounter table brings him face-to-face with the girl of his dreams–but what does a beginning adventurer have to offer a brilliant swords-woman? And what if the lonely goddess who sponsors his solo adventuring gets jealous…?!
This post will cover the first three volumes of the manga, and a subsequent one will cover the light novel.
DanMachi (an abbreviated form of the Japanese title) is without a doubt, one of my current top five series. It’s got everything I love in series. Great story, great writing, and great art.
The series follows the misadventures of Bell Cranel, a recent arrival into the city of Orario. He’s here to seek his fortune as an adventurer, save a damsel in distress and essentially build his harem. Things don’t go quite the way he planned however as he has a hard time getting himself established, and then just as things were starting to look good he runs into Minotaur and is about to get killed.
As a character I immediately liked Bell Cranel, he wasn’t two dimensional like a lot of 
heroes tend to be. Nor did he feel like he was OP from the start, and was just limited in some way, or holding back. You get to see him deal with facing death, humiliation and fear. In the first volume alone he has some much depth revealed, that it was refreshing.
Over the course of the three volumes we see Bell grow and grow more resolute and stronger. Yet he still maintains a bit of the naïveté that makes him such refreshing character. He doesn’t go from a naive, weak kid to a strong OP know it all. Rather we actually get to see him develop, and his strength grow while his naïveté stays the same. I personally felt it made for an interesting read, and combination.
The other aspect I liked was that all of the ‘support’ characters are really well fleshed out as well. In fact almost all of them could take over and become main characters in their own right. The balance is perfect, and makes for a world that has a lot of depth and feeling to it.
Hestia, Bell’s Goddess, has had me chuckling to myself almost from the start. Like Bell she’s very naive, but in a different way, which actually compliments Bell’s in a way that made me feel like I was going to die with laughter.
Naturally we don’t get a lot in the way of story in these three volumes, rather it’s all about setting up the characters. Introducing you to their traits and personalities. So far all but Aiz has been introduced and developed, I expect she’ll get some time in the fourth volume (still waiting for it to arrive).
I can’t wait for the story to progress and Bell to set off on his true adventure!
I think one of the more surprising elements is that you go into the series expecting fluff fanservice, but it’s not like that at all. In fact the fanservice is very mild, almost none existent, and we get a good solid story with some greek mythos thrown into the mix.
Lets talk art next, and how awesome it is, for the most part. In fact I’d say 99.99% of it is superb, the only thing I hate is Freya, for a supposed goddess of beauty I just can’t get used to how ugly she looks, fake and plastic, like she’s had one to many face lifts.
She’s the only character design I can’t get behind fully, which is a shame because as a character I really like her. I can’t decide if she’s evil, or just doesn’t care about anything other than her desires; which I love!
Yasuda has created some good looking characters, with a lot of diversity in them. Kunieda follows this up with some exceptional art, with amazing set designs and fight scenes.
These three elements meld together to make an almost near perfect experience, but how does Yen Press handle this?
Actually, they live up to their reputation yet again and have released a really well put together package. They do include colour pages (thank you!!!) and a short side story (light novel chapter) at the end of the volumes. The editing is spot on, and rather than localising things they leave them in and just have a glossary at the end. For me this is a huge thing, since I personally hate over localisation.
Truth be told the only thing I would complain about really is the paper quality. It’s not that good, rather it’s pretty bad. a bit of water (and I do mean a bit, like a drop) of water dropped onto volume one and it literally disintegrated the page.
I’d like to see an improvement on paper quality all round in manga to be honest. As this is one area where the vast majority of publishers drop the ball, presumably in an effort to cut costs.
Final Verdict
However all told this is a great series well worth your time and money, and one of the the few out there (that I’ve read) that actually does the light novel justice!
