"Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?" (DanMachi) celebrates its 10th anniversary as a fantasy series where gods live among humans and form "familias" that explore monster-filled dungeons beneath the city of Orario.
• Bell Cranell, the protagonist, is the sole member of the Hestia familia who develops rapid power growth due to his feelings for swordswoman Ais Wallenstein
• Despite catching the romantic attention of numerous women and goddesses, Bell consistently friendzones them all while pursuing Ais
• The five seasons follow distinct arcs: introduction, saving a fox girl, protecting a dragon girl from prejudice, a tsundere elf's feelings, and Freya's manipulation
• Season 5 reveals the shocking twist that Syr was actually the goddess Freya (or her protégé Horn) in disguise, gaslighting Bell
• The series balances RPG-like progression with romantic comedy elements but never becomes as violent as similar fantasy anime
• The series earns an 8/10 rating, with the light novels now reaching their final arc
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Episode Transcript
is it wrong to pick up girls in a dungeon?
Aka don machi, more like friendzoning, literal goddesses for
my idol.
But no, seriously, happy 10thanniversary to don machi.
Not gonna lie, I kind ofglossed over this anime for a
(00:22):
while, but five anime seasons ofthis must be worth a watch,
right?
So let's go ahead and dive intoit.
For starters, plot the storytaking place in the fictional
serial Oryo.
Excuse me if I butchered thatpronunciation.
The city is home to a number ofgods who seek in excitement.
(00:44):
They chose to limit theirdivine powers In order to
experience the hardships Ofthose who reside in the mortal
world.
So, yeah, gods got bored anddecided yeah, you know what
would be cool Constipate ashumans.
Meanwhile, one of themliterally did.
I'll get to that.
Each god maintains a Retinue ofadventurers and support
(01:07):
personnel drawn from the peopleof the city, known as a familia.
The primary activity of theseorganizations is exploring the
labyrinth under the city, knownas the dungeon, in order to
battle monsters and harvest thecrystal shards they leave behind
when destroyed.
These shards are used to craftmagic items and other treasures.
However, they can also beexchanged directly for a world's
(01:30):
currency.
Okay, okay, and in a fashion,typical role-playing game, the
power of an adventurer isquantified by their leveling and
number of ability scores.
So by defeating more powerfulmonsters, an advent adventure is
able to increase their ownlevel and ability scores, as
well as unlock special powersknown as skills.
(01:51):
Oh yeah, like very video game.
This story follows bell cornell,14 year old rookie and sole
member of the hessia family.
At first he looks up to icewallenstein, a famous and sole
member of the Hestia family.
At first he looks up to IceWallenstein, a famous and
powerful swordswoman of the Lokifamilia, and vows to become as
(02:11):
strong as her following a chanceencounter where he saves his
life from a powerful minotaur ispowerful in them.
You play enough video games yourealize minotaurs are more like
basic monsters.
I'm like come on, dog.
(02:32):
I mean I guess if it's powerfulyou're like brand new to
adventuring, but I don't know.
That's an oversell for me.
But he ends up unknowinglydeveloping a special ability
known as Lyra's Freeze, which isgranting him a rapid growth and
strength as a result of hisfeelings.
Think, kind of like a temporaryZenkai boost, except it's
(02:59):
linked to his feelings.
Well, it's the same thing withSaiyan Permanent, but it's more
like a temporary boost,especially when you use argonaut
.
But that's beside the point.
I'm derailing now.
As bell goes on adventures andhis quest becomes stronger, he
(03:20):
ends up casting the attention ofmany others in the series
alongside romantic affections,for other girls, deities and
mortals alike, most notablyHestia herself.
But he never reciprocates anyof them whatsoever as he only
has feelings for eyes.
So I'm looking at this animethinking friendzone.
(03:40):
Like every time those girlslike admit their feelings
towards Belle, he would justlook them dead in their face and
be like friendzone.
Like every time those girlslike admit their feelings
towards bill, he would just lookhim dead in their face and be
like friendzone.
Oh yeah, speaking of eyes, uh,she got a spin-off series or
oratoria.
Uh, I'm sorry if I butcheredthat.
Actually no fucking way, Idon't care.
(04:03):
Focusing on Eyes, only oneseason run in parallel to season
one of Don Monty and retoldfrom the perspective of the Loki
, familiar In a sense.
Yeah, like I want to say it was.
The writing was pretty good,like I feel like by the time
they got this, um, that one, itwas like one is like okay, they
(04:25):
get into their stride of openingup the world.
Like what can we expect fromdon machi as a whole.
But if I could boil down theseries in simple terms, I'd say
season one is the introductoryarc, season 2 is save the fox
girl from prostitution.
(04:45):
Season 3 is save the dragongirl and friendly monsters from
prejudice.
Season 4 is the Sundari elfmaid finally catches feelings
for the MC main character.
And Season 5 is undercover.
The ops catch feelings for themain character.
(05:06):
Well, not cats.
Well, you know, like beingcardboard at this point she's
not being very subtle about itanymore.
Not gonna lie, I was gonna writethe whole series off as mid
until I read season 5, withFreya's intention for Belle
becoming more queer, cere beingFreya all along and her protege,
(05:28):
horn, whose original name wasCere, but essentially Freya was
like I like that name, I'm gonnatake that name and your new
name is gonna be Horn.
Like, oh, if you're gonna be myprotege, you're gonna need a
new name.
And Freya was essentially roleplaying.
Uh, well, here's the crazy part.
(05:50):
It was like, okay, so every nowand then, like, freya will be
herself and then horn willcosplay as seer, so to speak,
like, in other words, sometimesshe will actually be herself, so
to speak, but you know, being afollower of Freya, but then
they sometimes switch places.
(06:11):
So every now and then, whenBelle is chopping up with Sears,
sometimes that's Freya,sometimes that's Horn.
That was a swerve for me,honestly.
And freya, this bitch,brainwashed most of the town
into thinking that bell was partof the freya familiar, while
(06:33):
gaslighting the poor boy like apimp breaking in a new girl in
his stable.
It's like just slapping us likelook, baby.
I'm sorry I had to do that toyou.
I know.
Look, I don't like hurting you,but you need to stop upsetting
me.
Okay, like you're present to me, I don't want to hurt you, but
(06:54):
if you disrespect me, I can talkabout other women in front of
my face.
That one time in that scenewhere he accidentally called
Freya a seer because you knowthe gaslighting getting juiced
(07:14):
with that Freya was trying tohave built under and she got mad
at him for calling her a seer.
And I was like how dare youcall me by another woman's name?
You know what Get the fuck outof here.
I even thought it was funny how,in the end, with the whole war
game and what not, bill finallygot to Freya and she asked him
(07:38):
One more time Could you pleaseaccept my feelings?
And Bill was like Bitch, listen, I tried to be nice, but now
I'm just going to be straight up.
I only like you as a friend.
I mean I'll be your knight.
Well, if you need my servicesthen sure I'll come help you,
(08:02):
but I'm not vibing with you likethat.
And then you pretty much cutoff the flower because you know
they had like the flower thinggoing on how you win the war
game.
In this one, rhea even offeredto share Belle with Ryu, but Ryu
(08:23):
turned her down as she should.
I thought that was kind offunny.
Hestia, she impressed me alittle, especially in season
five, with how powerful she canbe.
Also the virgin goddess wearingthe virgin dress makes a whole
lot of sense.
Now the dub acting, I'll admit,also impressed me just a little
(08:44):
bit.
Here and there, like sometimeswhen horn starts talking and
whatnot, I I was like okay, Ican tell that the voice actor
for Horn is definitely likeselling it to me, like selling
the emotion to me.
Everybody else, you know onceagain, here and there, like I
have to call Sierra slash Freya,some bluesy skin.
(09:09):
See Gear Slash Freya, somefloozy.
This hussy Going on a date withmy man.
And season 5, episode 2.
Bell literally had to learn howto pick up girls in a dungeon
and having his teacher, so tospeak, had a whole Professor
(09:33):
Snake thing going on with him.
He said something so wild I'mlike this dude got to be
certified or something when hesaid women are expensive.
The more you spend on them, themore you show your sincerity,
bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro,sincerity, bruh, bruh, bruh.
How many women have you dated?
(09:57):
So the war game near the end ofseason 5 kind of reminds me of
the choice art from Patekio,hitman and Bourne in a way Like
not completely, but in a wayOtaro, the main boy on Freya's
side, looking built like a jojo,bizarre adventure.
This is a north star typecharacter.
I just wanted to mention thatabout the sleeper mvp during the
(10:22):
war game between the lokifamiliar, including loki herself
, and some members of the freyafamiliar, including Hedon and
Hogni.
In other words, they were moreconcerned About Freya's
happiness, even if it meant Likeyeah, like this ain't right If
(10:43):
you want true happiness.
Like yeah, you know, just go Behere.
But Ultimately and it's likeyeah, you know, just go this
year, like you know, you know,but ultimately this anime felt
like slow burn, solo level andyeah, I know why I don't exactly
like that, I know, I know.
But especially with Bellwielding two knives, kind of
(11:08):
like Jin who did, and I'm like,bro, it's like, I swear to god,
it's like when you see jennywith two knives and whatnot, you
think you're like, oh man, thisgonna be like a stone cold
menace.
And then you see a bell and I'mfeeling like, look at this cute
ass kid.
I mean I mean he did, but likenot that impressive, but yeah,
(11:33):
like not keeping Don Machi likethat.
But it did kind of feel likeslow burn soul in a way, but
with more romance and lessgruesome violence.
You know what I'm saying.
Like I mean there were someviolence, like there were deaths
and blood spilled and whatnot,but it didn't get crazy like
soul level, that's what I'msaying.
Like I mean there were someviolence, like there were deaths
and blood spilled and whatnot,but it didn't get crazy like
solo level.
(11:53):
That's all I'm saying.
And these characters, it's likethese people the women more so
either once built for itspotential or for the typical
anime rom-com protagonist reasonhe accepted them for who they
are when they were misunderstoodor on the wrong side of things
(12:15):
and that just got their pantieswet.
The real irony is, like I saidin the beginning, del Friendzone
just about every other girlexcept Ives, who he looks up to
more than literal goddesses.
If I was new to this anime, if Iwas new to anime in general,
(12:39):
I'd probably give it a higherscore.
But it's fairly good for whatit is A boy willing to climb the
heights in order to impress hiscrush.
Wait a minute.
I give Don Monty as a whole, asof now, an 8 out of 10.
They just got to their finalarc in the light novel, so I'm
(13:07):
just going to have to see what apotential season 6 and beyond
got for us, or I change myschool.
But yeah, I'll try to keep thisfairly sure.
I'm not trying to give away toomuch.
That's the thing.
Like I'm trying to make itshorter and ultimately it should
be more about giving myimpression of it all.
(13:31):
How did I feel about it?
It's one thing if I go into theplot, but that's just a thing
to give you context on what thehell we're talking about.
But then I'm mainly moreconcerned about the audience
probably want to know how wefeel about it.
Go on any YouTube channel, anypodcast or whoever else doing
(13:55):
this sort of thing and hear thesame shit.
But what makes it different ishow do we individually about
this content and I just told youhow it is.
It's fine, but it ain't allthat either.
Like I would say, I would beeven more impressed if I was
(14:19):
brand new to anime in general,like if I was one of those dudes
that was like oh yeah, don Monk, it was like my first anime
ever.
I'm like bro, I'm like 900anime d-blood.
This ain't nothing new for me.
So, yeah, like Don Monty'spretty good, pretty good.
(14:40):
So let me go ahead and zone outhere.
We got more anime reviews andreviews in general coming up,
especially anime lightningcoming up.
Don Monty was almost part ofthe anime lightning, but because
the 10th anniversary was today,april 4th, I thought you know
(15:03):
what fuck it, we'll just make itlike a short thing of it's own
and let it be what it is.
Yeah, I hope you enjoyed thisepisode.
I'm gonna try to do a littlebetter with being more
consistent with the episode,because things have been kind of
(15:24):
messy, not too messy.
Don't look at this like that.
Not that messy, but more likewe need to organize some shit
because we got the summer gamescoming up.
We trying to launch a youtubechannel.
We trying to get peoplesubscribing to our patreon and
(15:45):
we got our website,zonealliancecom, where we got
new items in our merch store.
We trying to get more blogs putout.
We're trying to do better onsocial media with the
newsflashes and whatnot that youcan see on Instagram, facebook
and whatnot.
I'm trying to increase mypresence on Twitter, even though
(16:10):
I'm like ugh, not saying it'sbetter than Facebook or anything
, just like it's just so fuckingwild on Twitter.
It's like I don't even know ifI want to be that active on
Twitter.
Tiktok it's supposed to be goingdown tomorrow.
So well, supposedly, I justdon't know for sure yet Like, we
(16:31):
didn't get no announcement oranything.
We didn't hear shit about abuyer.
So I mean, yeah, yeah, therewere some people that bought,
want to buy, like, uh, mr beason, some folks.
But what I'm saying is I didn'thear anything about official
negotiations being done.
So it kind of feels like, yeah,it might be it this time or,
(16:58):
who knows, you might like, hey,hold on, let's get another
TikTok, give these people achance, work things out.
I don't know anymore.
I don't even care if TikToks godown.
I only care if CapCut goes down, because CapCut made things
very, very convenient as far asediting, and I'm just like I
(17:19):
just got around to learn how touse CapCut more efficiently,
just for it to be gone, like, ifanything, at least let us keep
CapCut.
If TikTok goes down, whatever,we can move on to Instagram
Reels we got YouTube Shorts.
We can do this shit on Facebookreels and maybe Twitter.
I don't care either way ifTikTok goes down, but can we at
(17:46):
least please keep Capcom?
Can we keep that please?
But nah, bro, not indeed realtoo much.
Thank you for listening.
You go ahead and take it easy.
Have yourself a good morning,good afternoon, good night.
You know the whole spiel.
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